Numbers 19:21

Summary

Numbers 19:21 closes a set of purification regulations by declaring them a permanent statute. It specifies that the person who sprinkles the "water of impurity" must wash his clothes, and anyone who touches that water becomes unclean until evening.

Key words

• chuqqat ("statute of", H2708) — construct form linking to olam ("perpetuity", H5769G), together forming the fixed phrase "a statute of perpetuity," marking the rule as lasting.
• mazzeh ("the one who spatters", H5137A) — hiphil participle in construct, denoting the person who performs the causative action of sprinkling; the participle form frames this as an ongoing role/function rather than a single event.
• mei ha-niddah ("water of impurity", H4325G + H5079) — construct chain "waters of niddah"; niddah denotes ritual impurity, and the phrase names the specific liquid used in the purification rite.
• yekhabbes ("he will wash", H3526H) — piel imperfect, an intensive stem indicating a thorough washing action, projected into future/ongoing time.
• noge'a ("one who touches", H5060) — qal participle, describing anyone in the act of touching, used generically for "whoever touches."

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative ve-hayetah ("and it will become", H1961+H9001), a sequential perfect that ties this statement to the preceding verses as the next link in the legal sequence. The clause ve-hayetah lahem le-chuqqat olam ("and it will be for them for a statute of perpetuity") uses the construct pair chuqqat olam to classify the whole preceding set of instructions as a fixed, lasting rule for the group referenced by the third-person plural suffix -hem ("them", H9038).

The verse then splits into two parallel clauses, each built on a participle plus a finite verb. First, u-mazzeh mei ha-niddah yekhabbes begadav ("and the one who sprinkles the water of impurity will wash his clothes") — the hiphil participle mazzeh identifies the agent by his function (the sprinkler), and the piel imperfect yekhabbes prescribes the resulting action, washing, applied to begadav ("his clothes", H0899B+H9023). Second, ve-ha-noge'a be-mei ha-niddah yitma' ad ha-'arev ("and the one touching the water of impurity will be unclean until evening") — here the qal participle noge'a generalizes to anyone who touches, and the qal imperfect yitma' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) states the consequence, bounded temporally by ad ha-'arev ("until the evening", H5704+H6153). The construct chain mei ha-niddah appears twice, each time anchoring the impurity-status of the water as the object triggering ritual consequences for both the one who dispenses it and the one who merely contacts it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mei ha-niddah ("water of impurity") as ὕδωρ ῥαντισμοῦ / τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ ῥαντισμοῦ ("water of sprinkling"), shifting the descriptive term from impurity to the ritual action of sprinkling. The Vulgate follows a similar shift, using "aquas expiationis" ("waters of expiation") for the second occurrence, framing the water by its purifying function rather than the Hebrew's term for impurity itself.