6I hereby take your fellow Levites from among the Israelites; they are assigned to you in dedication to the LORD, to do the work of the Tent of Meeting; 7while you and your sons shall be careful to perform your priestly duties in everything pertaining to the altar and to what is behind the curtain. I make your priesthood a service of dedication; any outsider who encroaches shall be put to death.
8The LORD spoke further to Aaron: I hereby give you charge of My gifts, all the sacred donations of the Israelites; I grant them to you and to your sons as a perquisite,b a due for all time. 9This shall be yours from the most holy sacrifices, c-the offerings by fire:-c every such offering that they render to Me as most holy sacrifices, namely, every meal offering, sin offering, and guilt offering of theirs, shall belong to you and your sons. 10You shall partake of them as most sacred donations: only males may eat them; you shall treat them as consecrated.d
11This, too, shall be yours: the gift offeringse of their contributions, all the elevation offerings of the Israelites, I give to you, to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time; everyone of your household who is clean may eat it.
12All the best of the new oil, wine, and grain—the choice parts that they present to the LORD—I give to you. 13The first fruits of everything in their land, that they bring to the LORD, shall be yours; everyone of your household who is clean may eat them. 14Everything that has been proscribed in Israelf shall be yours. 15The first issue of the womb of every being, man or beast, that is offered to the LORD, shall be yours; but you shall have the first-born of man redeemed, and you shall also have the firstling of unclean animals redeemed. 16Take as their redemption price,g from the age of one month up, the money equivalent of five shekels by the sanctuary weight, which is twenty gerahs. 17But the firstlings of cattle, sheep, or goats may not be redeemed; they are consecrated. You shall dash their blood against the altar, and turn their fat into smoke as an offering by fire for a pleasing odor to the LORD. 18But their meat shall be yours: it shall be yours like the breast of elevation offering and like the right thigh.
19All the sacred gifts that the Israelites set aside for the LORD I give to you, to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time. It shall be an everlasting covenant of salth before the LORD for you and for your offspring as well. 20And the LORD said to Aaron: You shall, however, have no territorial share among them or own any portion in their midst; I am your portion and your share among the Israelites.
21And to the Levites I hereby give all the tithes in Israel as their share in return for the services that they perform, the services of the Tent of Meeting. 22Henceforth, Israelites shall not trespass on the Tent of Meeting, and thus incur guilt and die: 23only Levites shall perform the services of the Tent of Meeting; othersi would incur guilt. It is the law for all time throughout the ages. But they shall have no territorial share among the Israelites; 24for it is the tithes set aside by the Israelites as a gift to the LORD that I give to the Levites as their share. Therefore I have said concerning them: They shall have no territorial share among the Israelites.
25The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 26Speak to the Levites and say to them: When you receive from the Israelites their tithes, which I have assigned to you as your share, you shall set aside from them one-tenth of the tithe as a gift to the LORD. 27This shall be accounted to you as your gift. As with the new grain from the threshing floor or the flow from the vat, 28so shall you on your part set aside a gift for the LORD from all the tithes that you receive from the Israelites; and from them you shall bring the gift for the LORD to Aaron the priest. 29You shall set aside all gifts due to the LORD from everything that is donated to you, from each thing its best portion, the part thereof that is to be consecrated.
30Say to them further: When you have removed the best part from it, you Levites may consider it the same as the yield of threshing floor or vat. 31You and your households may eat it anywhere, for it is your recompense for your services in the Tent of Meeting. 32You will incur no guilt through it, once you have removed the best part from it; but you must not profane the sacred donations of the Israelites, lest you die.
19 The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: 2This is the ritual law that the LORD has commanded:
Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. 3You shall give it to Eleazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. 4Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. 5The cow shall be burned in his sight—its hide, flesh, and blood shall be burned, its dung included—6and the priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff, and throw them into the fire consuming the cow. 7The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be unclean until evening. 8He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening. 9A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, to be kept for water of lustrationa for the Israelite community. It is for cleansing. 10He who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.
This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among you.
11He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be unclean for seven days. 12He shall cleanse himself with itb on the third day and on the seventh day, and then be clean; if he fails to cleanse himself on the third and seventh days, he shall not be clean. 13Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the LORD’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he remains unclean; his uncleanness is still upon him.
14This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be unclean seven days; 15and every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be unclean. 16And in the open, anyone who touches a person who was killedc or who died naturally, or human bone, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17Some of the ashesd from the fire of cleansing shall be taken for the unclean person, and fresh water shall be added to them in a vessel. 18A person who is clean shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle on the tent and on all the vessels and people who were there, or on him who touched the bones or the person who was killed or died naturally or the grave. 19The clean person shall sprinkle it upon the unclean person on the third day and on the seventh day, thus cleansing him by the seventh day. Hee shall then wash his clothes and bathe in water, and at nightfall he shall be clean. 20If anyone who has become unclean fails to cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the congregation, for he has defiled the LORD’s sanctuary. The water of lustration was not dashed on him: he is unclean.
21That shall be for them a law for all time. Further, he who sprinkled the water of lustration shall wash his clothes; and whoever touches the water of lustration shall be unclean until evening. 22Whatever that unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches him shall be unclean until evening.
20 The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon,a and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died there and was buried
