Numbers 19 · a question people ask
Why would the water that makes someone clean make those who handle it unclean?
The chapter doesn't say why. It only says so, plainly: "He who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening" (19:21). The priest (19:7), the one who burns the heifer (19:8) and the man who gathers the ashes (19:10) are each unclean until the evening, though the gatherer had to be "a man who is clean" to do it (19:9). Leviticus has something like it on the Day of Atonement: the one who burns the sin offerings outside the camp "shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp" (Leviticus 16:28). Their uncleanness lasted "until evening" (19:21), while the one they sprinkled was clean at evening on the seventh day (19:19). The chapter gives no reason beyond that.
The verses
“The clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he shall purify him. He shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening.”
“It shall be a perpetual statute to them. He who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening.”
“The bull for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp; and they shall burn their skins, their flesh, and their dung with fire. He who burns them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp.”