Numbers 19:13

Summary

Numbers 19:13 states that anyone who touches a corpse and fails to purify himself defiles the mishkan ("tabernacle", H4908) of Yehovah, and that person must be cut off from Israel. The verse closes by explaining the reason: because the water of impurity was not sprinkled on him, he remains unclean, his uncleanness still on him.

Key words

• no.Ge.a' ("the one touching", H5060) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as a substantive ("the toucher"); it names the agent by his ongoing action rather than a finished event.
• yit.cha.Ta' ("he will purify himself", H2398) — hithpael imperfect, reflexive stem showing the subject acts upon himself; negated by lo' ("not", H3808), it describes the absence of self-purification as the condition triggering defilement.
• ti.Me' ("he has made unclean", H2930A) — piel perfect, intensive stem with completed aspect; marks defilement of the mishkan as an accomplished result, not a possibility.
• nikh.re.Tah ("it will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal sequential perfect, passive/reflexive, feminine to agree with ne.Fesh ("person", H5315J); continues the narrative chain begun by the vav.
• zo.Rak ("it was sprinkled", H2236) — pual perfect, intensive passive, describing the completed (non-)act of sprinkling as the stated cause (ki, "for", H3588A) of the person's continued impurity.

What the text says

The verse opens with kal-ha.no.Ge.a' ("every one who touches", H3605 + H5060), a construction using the article plus participle to create a general class ("whoever touches"), followed by a chain of prepositional phrases (be.Met, "in a dead [body]", H4191; be.ne.Fesh ha.'a.Dam, "in the corpse of the person", H5315M + H0120G) that specify the source of impurity as contact with a human corpse. The relative clause 'asher-ya.Mut ("who will die", H0834A + H4191) uses an imperfect verb, marking the death as an event within a general or hypothetical scope rather than a single occurrence.

The main clause pairs two verbs describing the negligent person: the negated hithpael ve.lo' yit.cha.Ta' ("and he will not purify himself") and the piel perfect ti.Me' ("he has made unclean"). The shift from imperfect (potential, ongoing failure) to perfect (completed defilement) marks a logical result: failure to undergo the reflexive purification act produces a completed state of contamination on the mishkan yehovah ("tabernacle of Yehovah", H4908 + H3068G). The narrative vav then introduces the niphal nikh.re.Tah ("she will be cut off"), continuing the sequence with a passive verb agreeing with the feminine ne.Fesh ("person", H5315J), a noun that in Hebrew is grammatically feminine regardless of the referent's sex.

The final clause, introduced by ki ("for/because", H3588A), gives the causal explanation using the pual (intensive passive) zo.Rak ("it was sprinkled", H2236), negated, followed by the adjective ta.Me' ("unclean", H2931) with the imperfect yih.Yeh ("he will be", H1961), stressing an ongoing unclean state, and closing with the construct tum.'a.To vo ("his uncleanness in him") — the possessive suffix directly binding the impurity to the person's body ("in him"), a nuance that flattens somewhat in translations rendering it simply as "on him."