2. This is the statute for the ritual which the Lord has commanded. Tell the Israelites to procure for you a red heifer without defect and free from every blemish and on which no yoke has ever been laid.
3. You will give it to Eleazar the priest, and it will be led outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.
4. Eleazar the priest will take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the tent of meeting.
5. Then the heifer will be burned in his sight; it will be burned with its hide and flesh, its blood and dung;
6. and the priest will take cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet yarn and throw them into the fire in which the heifer is being burned.
7. The priest shall then wash his garments and bathe his body in water, afterward he may enter the camp. The priest remains unclean until the evening.
8. Likewise, the one who burned the heifer shall wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening.
9. Then somebody who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them in a clean place outside the camp. There they are to be kept to prepare purification water for the Israelite community. This is a purification offering.
10. The one who has gathered up the ashes of the heifer shall also wash his garments and be unclean until evening. This is a permanent statute, both for the Israelites and for the alien residing among them.
11. Those who touch the corpse of any human being will be unclean for seven days;
12. they shall purify themselves with the water on the third and on the seventh day, and then be clean. But if they fail to purify themselves on the third and on the seventh day, they will not become clean.