Anyone who picks up one of their carcasses must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening. Picking up an unclean animal's carcass — not merely touching it but lifting it — requires washing one's clothes in addition to the personal cleansing implied by the until-evening duration. The more intensive contact (lifting) requires the more intensive purification (washing clothes). The graduated response to graduated levels of contact communicates the covenant's proportional approach to ritual impurity: the depth of the purification response corresponds to the depth of the impurity-producing contact.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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