Bible Question:
shalom y'all, I may be asking prematurely but I just read a verse that is somewhat confusing. Num. 19:9 states to take the ashes outside the camp "to a place that is clean." So far in my studies, up to this point, it appears that ALL of the area outside of the camp was considered unclean. Any ideas? Thanks Cheri |
Bible Answer: I'm no Old Testament Scholar, but I'm just curious why you would think everything outside the camp was unclean? Unclean things were kept outside the camp, but I wouldn't say everything outside the camp was unclean. The soldiers were considered unclean and had to camp outside the camp for seven days until clean (Num. 31:19). After they were purified, then they could enter the camp. My thought process (which could be wrong) is if everything was unclean outside the camp, then you could never get clean to come back into the camp. All unclean things had to go through a ritual cleaning, which generally involved moving the unclean thing outside of camp, but (to me at least) that doesn't mean everything outside of camp was unclean. Hopefully I made some kind of sense there. Brad |