Common English Bible

Numbers 31:15-26 Common English Bible (CEB)

15. Moses said to them, "Have you let all the women live?

16. These very women, on Balaam’s advice, made the Israelites break faith with the Lord in the affair at Peor, so there was a plague among the Lord’s community.

17. Now kill every male child and every female who has known a man intimately by sleeping with him.

18. But all the young girls who have not known a man intimately by sleeping with him, spare for yourselves.

19. You will remain outside the camp for seven days. Everyone among you or your captives who has killed a person or touched a corpse must purify themselves on the third and seventh days.

20. You must also purify every garment, and everything made of leather, goats’ hair, or wood."

21. Eleazar the priest said to the men of battle who had gone out to war, "This is the regulation in the Instruction that the Lord commanded Moses:

22. Gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead—

23. anything that can withstand fire—you will put through the fire and it will be clean. It will also be purified with the water of purification. Anything that isn’t able to withstand fire, you will immerse in water.

24. You must wash your clothes on the seventh day and you will be clean. Afterward you may enter the camp."

25. The Lord said to Moses:

26. You, Eleazar the priest, and the leaders of the community’s households must take an inventory of the valuable property and the captives, both human and animals,