Thread by @JoelBaden

#Numbers 19:11-22

Corpse impurity

One of the most severe types of impurity in the priestly system, but also one that demonstrates - along with impurity from childbirth and sex - that becoming impure isn’t just not bad, it’s also sometimes required.

Here we also see that impurity is transmitted not just by contact, but even through the air, at least in this severe case: just being in a tent with a corpse makes you impure for seven days, same as if you touch a corpse directly.

Procedurally it’s again similar to other severe priestly impurities, with a multi-stage process - elsewhere on the seventh and eighth days, here on the third and seventh. Point is, as a part of the impurity system this is all recognizable.

But there are a couple of unique features. Here, the concern seems to be entirely for the individual Israelite, and how he is to become pure - there is no mention in this chapter of any sacrifice offered to purify the sanctuary, as we always had before. Why not?

I don’t think it’s because this ritual is imagined to take place in a Temple-less world. It is, rather, because P is here doing what it does all over the place: assuming that you understand how things work now, such that you don’t need to be told basic stuff again.

Of course you have to offer a sacrifice when your purification process is complete. And the text still recognizes the existence of the sanctuary, and the way that impurity affects it: “he has defiled YHWH’s sanctuary.” That’s still the main issue.

The second strange thing here, perhaps even more prominently, is the placement of the law. Why here, and not back in Lev 11–15 with the rest of the impurities? For a long time I assumed this was because it was a later layer of P. I’ve been convinced otherwise.

It was, of course, @lianemfeldman who convinced me, because whom else would I implicitly trust on the P ritual material? As she points out, this moment, following the decree against the generation of the spies and after the Korah episode, is Israel’s first encounter with death.

“What about Nadav and Avihu?” Good question, you. And the answer is: there was no such thing as impurity when they died. That happened in Lev 10, and impurity laws are given first in Lev 11.

All the other impurities occur in a natural living community, even one that is being brought by YHWH’s own hand through the wilderness. But I can imagine that death was not really on the table until here. But now, both generally and specifically, it absolutely is.

So here again we see, as @lianemfeldman continually shows us, that the laws and the narrative of P are inseparably intertwined, not just textually but conceptually, building off and reacting to each other.