Numbers 31:19-24

International Standard Version

Purification after the Battle

¹⁹ “Now you are to stay outside the camp for seven days, after which any of you who has killed a person^[a] or touched someone who was killed may purify yourselves on the third day. You and your captives will be pure on the seventh day. ²⁰ Furthermore, you are to purify every garment—that is, everything made of leather, goat’s hair, or containing wood.”

²¹ Eleazar the priest told the soldiers who had gone to battle, “This is the ordinance of the law that the Lord commanded Moses ²² concerning anything containing gold, silver, brass, iron, tin, lead, ²³ or anything else that can survive a refiner’s fire: You are to pass it through fire, after which it will be clean. Then it is to be purified with the water of impurity. Everything that cannot survive a refiner’s fire is to be washed in water. ²⁴ Wash your clothes on the seventh day, after which you will be clean. Then you may enter the camp.”