Dealing with the Dead

Reading:   Numbers 5:1-4

Snuck in four verses under the wire today and found another reference to the impurity of the dead...

NUMBERS 5:2-3

2 Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: 

3 Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell. 

Obviously, for medical reasons, it is wise to avoid contact with others if you are a leper or assist a leper in any way.  This precaution is for contagion purposes and is likewise the case for anyone with an issue (meaning a flow of infection, blood, etc., something "issuing" forth from the body).  So it stands to reason that a similar precaution should be set forth for anyone that deals with the dead.  Instead of listing numerous ways in which it is safe to deal with the dead, based on cause of death, it is easier to blanket the subject with the encompassing rule of "all."  If you touch the body of a deceased person you are defiled and must not join the company of others until you are deemed clean, without disease.

Again, as pointed out in Medical Ignorance Exposed, this is a medical precaution set up way before the clinical understanding of infection and is a fantastic lesson in the true power of God.  Millennia before infection and contagion are truly understood, God sets up a system by which quarantine is instituted to avoid such plagues - simply awesome!

~Kipling