Numbers 19:11–16, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Numbers 19:11–16
Corpse Contact Creates Seven Days of Impurity
A human corpse makes a seven-day status
Whoever touches a dead human body is unclean seven days. Purification is required on the third day and the seventh. If that water is not used, the person remains unclean. The text then names a further charge: the unclean person defiles the LORD's tabernacle and is cut off from Israel.
The status is timed and ritual. It is not a verdict that mourners are guilty, contagious in a medical sense, or cursed. Burial, battle, and bedside presence all produce contact with death. The law regulates approach to the sanctuary, not the worth of the person who has handled a body.
Tent, grave, bone, and the slain widen the same problem
If a person dies in a tent, everyone who enters and everything in the tent is unclean seven days, and an open vessel is unclean. In the open field, touching someone slain with a sword, a dead body, a bone, or a grave has the same seven-day effect.
Death's reach is described through ordinary spaces: a dwelling, a container, a battlefield, a burial place. The law does not license excluding today's nurses, soldiers, funeral workers, or grieving families from community. It names how this camp treated contact with human death before anyone could come near the tent.
How this should shape us
When someone has been near death, distinguish ritual language from blame. Support mourners and people whose work touches bodies. Do not treat grief, a funeral, or a hospital shift as moral stain, and do not use this chapter to quarantine people who are already carrying loss.
Teach it back
Explain Numbers 19:11–16 in your own words. Include its place in Numbers' movement from Sinai to Moab, both movements within this thought unit, one material uncertainty, one affected person or group, and one use the complete context rules out.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters debate ritual logic, compositional history, actual practice, gendered power, symbolic meaning, medical analogies, and later reception. No source permits a modern diagnosis or a claim that the vulnerable person deserved exclusion. For “Corpse Contact Creates Seven Days of Impurity,” confidence is strongest in the received unit's stated sequence and literary function; source, date, demography, geography, mechanism, archaeology, and historical reconstruction remain probable, plausible, or uncertain as the evidence warrants.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Numbers 19:11–16, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, numbers, speeches, poems, legal clauses, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Num.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 19:11–16
Supports: Unit-bounded translation, syntax, lexical, ritual, legal, number, name, poetic, and selected textual notes; silence is not evidence.
NET Bible Numbers PDF, complete 134-page PDF, translation and translator notes attached to 19:11–16
Supports: Final-form movement, wilderness setting, census and camp, complaint, leadership, composition, and ethical framing.
Yale Bible Study, Numbers Part 1, complete study guide sections “Introduction,” “At Sinai (1:1–10:10),” “From Sinai to Moab (10:11–22:1),” and “Composition,” applied to Numbers 19:11–16
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: Numbers 19:11–16, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Numbers
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project
Open Scriptures, release 2.2, 2021
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, numbers, speeches, poems, legal clauses, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Num.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 19:11–16
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Numbers with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
eBible.org distribution of the NET Bible, source files dated 2026-08-08
Supports: Unit-bounded translation, syntax, lexical, ritual, legal, number, name, poetic, and selected textual notes; silence is not evidence.
Exact location: NET Bible Numbers PDF, complete 134-page PDF, translation and translator notes attached to 19:11–16
Open source ↗modern critical open study guide
Numbers Part 1
Yale Bible Study
Yale Divinity School, 2023 course edition
Supports: Final-form movement, wilderness setting, census and camp, complaint, leadership, composition, and ethical framing.
Exact location: Yale Bible Study, Numbers Part 1, complete study guide sections “Introduction,” “At Sinai (1:1–10:10),” “From Sinai to Moab (10:11–22:1),” and “Composition,” applied to Numbers 19:11–16
Open source ↗