Bible Strands
Numbers 19:16
Anyone in the open field who touches someone who has been killed by the sword or has died of natural causes, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God issues this ritual directive through Moses to the Israelite assembly as part of the broader purification instructions surrounding the red heifer ceremony.
The words — יִגַּע (yi.Ga') means "he will touch," and שָׂדֶה (sa.Deh) denotes "field." These terms specify the physical contact that triggers the impurity status described in the verse.
The thread — The seven-day impurity from contact with the dead appears in Numbers 19:11 and Numbers 31:19, while the imagery of graves and tombs recurs in Matthew 23:27.
Why it lands — The text establishes that contact with death, whether by sword, natural causes, or a grave, requires a defined period of separation before ritual restoration.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
Cross-references
- Numbers 19:11 Whoever touches any dead body will be unclean for seven days.
- Numbers 31:19 All of you who have killed a person or touched the dead are to remain outside the camp for seven days. On the third day and the seventh day you are to purify both yourselves and your captives.
- Matthew 23:27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.
- Luke 11:44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without even noticing.”
- Ezekiel 39:11 And on that day I will give Gog a burial place in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers, east of the Sea. It will block those who travel through, because Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it will be called the Valley of Hamon-gog.