Priests, Purity, and the Camp: Chapter 5 returns to the twelve tribes in the camp. The common thread throughout the chapter is a concern with purity.

5:1–4  These verses report divine instruction to ensure that the camp is clear of those who have contracted contagious impurity. The impurity could spread and threaten the divine presence. These verses are a kind of extension of the Manual of Purity in Leviticus 11–16 (see the commentary there). The three groups to be excluded from the camp are anyone who has an infectious skin disease or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. Again, the people followed the divine instructions.

5:5–7  These verses move to the matter of restitution for wrongs done to another, and so to ethical purity in the camp. The vers…