Numbers 19:11-22

THE USE OF THE PURIFYING WATER, Numbers 19:11-22.

The water of separation is chiefly used to remove the uncleanness arising from the dead. From remote antiquity many nations have shared in the notion that death and its attendant putrefaction, as the embodiment of sin in consequence of the fall, defiled and excluded from fellowship with the holy God. This notion is presupposed by the laws given on Sinai, and confirmed by the prohibition of the priests to attend the funerals of any except their nearest blood relations, (Leviticus 21:1-6; Leviticus 21:10-12, notes,) and by the order to remove from the camp every corpse-defiled person.

Numbers 5:2-4, note. The Egyptian priests were required to shun graves, funerals, and funeral feasts; the Persian Zenda-vesta, the ancient and modern religions of India, as well as the old Grecian and Roman rituals, were remarkably emphatic in this injunction. In New Zealand the man who has handled the dead is deemed so impure that he may not put forth his hands to his own food. In all these nations the rites of purification have points of resemblance to the Mosaic.