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¹ And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron,² This is the rule of the law which the Lord has made, saying, Give orders to the children of Israel to give you a red cow without any mark on her, and on which the yoke has never been put:³ Give her to Eleazar the priest and let him take her outside the tent-circle and have her put to death before him.⁴ Then let Eleazar the priest take some of her blood on his finger, shaking the blood seven times in the direction of the front of the Tent of meeting:⁵ And the cow is to be burned before him, her skin and her flesh and her blood and her waste are to be burned:⁶ Then let the priest take cedar-wood and hyssop and red thread, and put them into the fire where the cow is burning.⁷ And the priest, after washing his clothing and bathing his body in water, may come back to the tent-circle, and will be unclean till evening.⁸ And he who does the burning is to have his clothing washed and his body bathed in water and be unclean till evening.⁹ Then let a man who is clean take the dust of the burned cow and put it outside the tent-circle in a clean place, where it is to be kept for the children of Israel and used in making the water which takes away what is unclean: it is a sin-offering.¹⁰ And he who takes up the dust of the burned cow is to have his clothing washed with water and be unclean till evening: this is to be a law for ever, for the children of Israel as well as for the man from another country who is living among them.

¹¹ Anyone touching a dead body will be unclean for seven days:¹² On the third day and on the seventh day he is to make himself clean with the water, and so he will be clean: but if he does not do this on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean.¹³ Anyone touching the body of a dead man without making himself clean in this way, makes the House of the Lord unclean; and that man will be cut off from Israel: because the water was not put on him, he will be unclean; his unclean condition is unchanged.¹⁴ This is the law when death comes to a man in his tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, will be unclean for seven days.¹⁵ And every open vessel without a cover fixed on it will be unclean.¹⁶ And anyone touching one who has been put to death with the sword in the open country, or the body of one who has come to his end by a natural death, or a man's bone, or the resting-place of a dead body, will be unclean for seven days.¹⁷ And for the unclean, they are to take the dust of the burning of the sin-offering, and put flowing water on it in a vessel:¹⁸ And a clean person is to take hyssop and put it in the water, shaking it over the tent, and all the vessels, and the people who were there, and over him by whom the bone, or the body of one who has been put to death with the sword, or the body of one who has come to his end by a natural death, or the resting-place was touched.¹⁹ Let the clean person do this to the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he is to make him clean; and after washing his clothing and bathing himself in water, he will be clean in the evening.²⁰ But the man who, being unclean, does not make himself clean in this way, will be cut off from the meeting of the people, because he has made the holy place of the Lord unclean: the water has not been put on him, he is unclean.²¹ This is to be a law for them for ever: he who puts the water on the unclean person is to have his clothing washed; and anyone touching the water will be unclean till evening.²² Anything touched by the unclean person will be unclean; and any person touching it will be unclean till evening.