Numbers 19:7

Summary

The verse describes a purification sequence for the priest involved in the red heifer ritual: he must wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and only then may he re-enter the camp. Despite these washings, the text states he remains ritually unclean until evening.

Key words

• khi.Bes ("he will wash", H3526H) — piel (intensive) stem, sequential perfect form continuing the narrative chain; the intensive stem marks thorough washing, applied specifically to bgadav ("his clothes").
• ra.Chatz ("he will wash", H7364) — qal (simple) stem, distinct verb from the previous one, used for washing the body (besaro, "his body/flesh") rather than clothing, paired with ba.mayim ("with the water", H4325G).
• ya.Vo' ("he will come", H0935G) — qal imperfect, marking a shift from the sequential perfect chain to an imperfect form, introduced by 'a.Char ("after", H0310A), indicating the entry into the camp occurs only after the washings are complete.
• ta.Me' ("he will be unclean", H2930A) — qal sequential perfect, returning to the narrative chain after the imperfect ya.Vo'; states the priest's status despite having washed and entered the camp.
• 'ad ("until", H5704) + ha.'A.rev ("the evening", H6153) — prepositional phrase marking the temporal boundary of the uncleanness.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfects (ve.khi.Bes, ve.ra.Chatz, ve.ta.Me') interrupted once by an imperfect verb (ya.Vo'). This interruption is grammatically marked by the temporal expression ve.'a.Char ("and after", H310A), which signals that entry into the camp is contingent on completion of the prior two actions — washing clothes and bathing the body. The return to the sequential perfect with ta.Me' ("he will be unclean") after the imperfect ya.Vo' keeps this final clause within the same narrative sequence as the washing actions, presenting the uncleanness as the next event in the chain rather than a separate observation.

The text distinguishes two washing actions with two different verbs: khi.Bes (H3526H, piel) for the clothes, and ra.Chatz (H7364, qal) for the body. This lexical distinction is not preserved as sharply in some target-language translations, which may use one general term ("wash") for both actions. The Hebrew also uses two separate nouns in construct with a possessive suffix — be.ga.Da...v ("his clothes") and be.sa.r...o ("his body/flesh") — each governing its own washing verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ta.Me' ("he will be unclean") with ἀκάθαρτος ("unclean/impure"), matching the Hebrew sense directly. The Vulgate uses commaculatus ("stained/defiled"), a term with a slightly different semantic range (suggesting active contamination rather than simply a status of "impurity"), though referring to the same ritual condition. The Vulgate also restructures the sequence syntactically with Et tunc demum ("and only then"), placing the washing actions in an ablative clause before the main verb, differing from the Hebrew's paratactic chain of sequential perfects.