Numbers 19 · a question people ask
Was touching the dead a sin?
The chapter doesn't call it one. Someone who touched a dead body "shall be unclean seven days" (19:11), and he was made clean with the water on the third and seventh days (19:12). The law let a priest "defile himself" for his nearest relatives (Leviticus 21:1-3), and men who were "unclean because of the dead body of a man" were given a second date so that they could still keep the Passover (Numbers 9:6-11). Two of its words are, in Hebrew, words of sin: it says of what is kept for the water, "It is a sin offering" (19:9), and purify himself (19:12) is the verb that in other forms means to sin (tap purify himself). For a Nazirite made unclean by a sudden death beside him, the priest was to "make atonement for him, because he sinned by reason of the dead" (Numbers 6:9-11). What the chapter names as defiling the LORD's tabernacle is touching the dead and not being purified (19:13, 19:20).
The verses
““A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering.”
““He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself with water on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he doesn’t purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and doesn’t purify himself, defiles the LORD’s tabernacle; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet on him.”
“But the man who shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD. The water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him. He is unclean.”
“The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, ‘A priest shall not defile himself for the dead among his people, except for his relatives that are near to him: for his mother, for his father, for his son, for his daughter, for his brother, and for his virgin sister who is near to him, who has had no husband; for her he may defile himself.”