1 Then Jehovah spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2 This is the statute of the law which Jehovah has commanded, saying, Tell the children of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which is no blemish and upon which a yoke has never come.
3 And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and he shall bring it outside the camp, and one shall slaughter it in his presence.
4 And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle its blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times.
5 And the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its skin and its flesh and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned.
6 And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet strands, and cast them into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp; but the priest shall be unclean until the evening.
8 And he who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until the evening.
9 And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and place them outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the assembly of the children of Israel as water for impurity; it is a sin offering.
10 And he who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening. And it shall be a perpetual statute to the children of Israel and to the stranger who sojourns among them.
11 One who touches the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days.
12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day and on the seventh day, and then he shall be clean; but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he shall not be clean.
13 Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a human being who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of Jehovah; and that person shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water for impurity was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is still on him.
14 This is the law when a man dies in a tent: Anyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shall be unclean seven days.
15 And every open vessel, which has no covering tied down on it, is unclean.
16 And whoever in the open field touches one who has been slain with a sword or a dead body or a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
17 And for the unclean they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering, and running water shall be added to them in a vessel;
18 And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the persons who were there, or on the one who touched the bone or the one slain or the one who died or the grave.
19 And the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day, and on the seventh day he shall purify him. And he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and shall be clean in the evening.
20 But the man who shall be unclean and does not purify himself, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the congregation, because he has defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah; the water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him; he is unclean.
21 So it shall be a perpetual statute for them. And he who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening.
22 And whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches it shall be unclean until evening.