You shall purify every garment …: Levine (page 457) points out that, strictly speaking, verse 20 still refers to the ritual purification of the soldiers themselves, not the purification of the items mentioned here. So he begins this verse with “Furthermore, you must purify yourselves [with respect to] any clothing….” Compare also Buber with “All clothing … let it be purified from you.” Indeed, the Hebrew verb form for purify is the same as in verse 19, where it is rendered “purify yourselves.” However, according to almost every translation, including Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, it is the items listed here that need purification. Since these items are specified in such detail, it is possible that they themselves needed purification, since they were associated with the soldiers who had been in contact with corpses. The Septuagint and the Peshitta understood the Hebrew here in this way. However, this understanding implies a slight change to the Hebrew verb for purify, so that it reads “you must purify [something]” instead of “you must purify yourselves.”

The Hebrew word for garment is a generic word for clothing (beged). Every article of skin refers to “anything made from animal skin” (Contemporary English Version). Good News Translation and New Living Translation say “everything made of leather.” All work of goats’ hair refers to cloth made from the hair of goats. Every article of wood refers to any frame, box, or other wooden device used to carry or store the items listed above.

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 .