And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place: The priest and the man who burned the cow were ritually unclean until the evening, so only someone else, a person who was ritually clean, could bring its ashes to a ritually clean place. It may be necessary to render a man as “another man” or “a different person.” By handling the ashes, this third person also became ritually unclean (verse 10). For the Hebrew word rendered clean, see 5.28.

And they shall be kept for the congregation of the people of Israel … is literally “and it [the ashes] shall be for the community of the people of Israel into something kept….” This clause refers to a ritual preservation of the cow’s ashes, not the water. In many languages it will be necessary to begin a new sentence here for naturalness; for example, New International Readers Version has “The ashes will be kept [there] by the community of Israel….” The Hebrew word for congregation (ʿedah) is better rendered “community” (see 1.2). The Hebrew word for “something kept” is mishmeret (see 3.25). Here it refers to “preserving” the ashes.

For the water of impurity: The Hebrew word for impurity (niddah) literally means “separation,” “exclusion,” “casting off” or “riddance,” so this phrase refers to the water for removing ritual impurity. Good News Translation renders it accurately by saying “to use in preparing the water for removing ritual uncleanness.” The ashes mixed with water were used to rid the community of ritual contamination, which is discussed in verses 11-22.

For the removal of sin renders a short independent sentence in Hebrew, which is literally “She is a sin offering” (similarly Alter with “it is an offense offering”). For “sin offering,” see 6.11. As mentioned there, the sin offering restored a person to a state of ritual purity when a taboo had been broken unintentionally. So a more accurate rendering for “sin offering” is “purification-offering” (Revised English Bible), which focuses on the outcome rather than the cause of this offering. The feminine Hebrew pronoun for “She” most likely refers to the cow, which Revised English Bible makes clear by rendering this sentence as “for the cow is a purification-offering.” (For Ashley [page 367] this pronoun refers to the ashes of the cow, which would be available for future purification rituals.) In some languages it will be more natural at this point in the ritual to employ a different tense, for example, “The cow was a purification offering” (similarly Nije Fryske Bibeloersetting, Willibrordvertaling).

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .