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Numbers 19

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1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,

2 This is the statute of the law which Jehovah has commanded, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel, that they fetch to thee a perfect red she·​·calf, wherein is no blemish, and upon which a yoke has not gone·​·up;

3 and you shall give her to Eleazar the priest, that he may bring· her ·forth to the outside of the camp, and he shall slaughter her before his face;

4 and Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and spatter of her blood opposite to the faces of the Tabernacle of the congregation seven times;

5 and he shall burn·​·up the she·​·calf before his eyes; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, upon her dung shall he burn· it ·up;

6 and the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet twice-dyed, and cast it into the midst of the burning·​·up of the she·​·calf.

7 Then the priest shall wash his garments, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and after this he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall·​·be·​·unclean until the evening.

8 And he who burns· her ·up shall wash his garments in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall·​·be·​·unclean until the evening.

9 And a man who is clean shall gather the ashes of the she·​·calf, and place them outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be for the congregation of the sons of Israel for the keeping of the water of isolation; it is a purging.

10 And he who gathers the ashes of the she·​·calf shall wash his garments, and be·​·unclean until the evening; and it shall be to the sons of Israel, and to the sojourner who sojourns among them, for an eternal statute.

11 He who touches one dead, as·​·to any soul of man, shall be·​·unclean seven days.

12 He shall purge himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be·​·clean; but if he purge not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be·​·clean.

13 Whoever touches one dead, as to the soul of man who is dying, and purges not himself, makes·​·unclean the Habitation of Jehovah, and that soul shall be cut·​·off from Israel, for the water of isolation was not sprinkled upon him; he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is still on him.

14 This is the law concerning man when he dies in a tent: all who come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be·​·unclean seven days.

15 And every open vessel that has no covering* of stranded cloth upon it, it is unclean.

16 And anyone who touches one who is slain with a sword on the face of the field, or a dead body, or a bone of man, or a grave, shall be·​·unclean seven days.

17 And for someone unclean they shall take of the dust of what was burnt·​·up for purging, and on it living water shall be put into a vessel;

18 and a clean man shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and spatter it upon the Tabernacle, and upon all the vessels, and upon the souls who were there, and upon him who touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave;

19 and the one clean shall spatter on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purge himself, and wash his garments, and bathe himself in water, and shall be·​·clean at the evening.

20 And a man who shall·​·be·​·unclean, and shall not purge himself, even that soul shall be cut·​·off from the midst of the assembly, for the sanctuary of Jehovah he has made·​·unclean; the water of isolation has not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.

21 And it shall be an eternal statute to them that he who spatters the water of the isolation shall wash his garments; and he who touches the water of the isolation shall be·​·unclean until the evening.

22 And all that the unclean one touches shall be·​·unclean; and the soul who touches it shall be·​·unclean until the evening.

   


Thanks to the Kempton Project for the permission to use this New Church translation of the Word.

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.