Contact with Dead Bodies

[Goodcheer68]

Im studying Numbers 5:1-4 and it mentions that those exposed to dead bodies were to be expelled outside the camp. My question is how likely of an occurence would this have been. I mean lots of people were being killed because of their disobedience, but what was the likely hood that the average Israelite would be exposed to a corpse and made unclean. Was it low, or highly likely? What do you think and why?

 

[iainduguid]

In the course of the average week? Fairly low. In the course of the average lifetime, pretty high. Suppose you have six children. Perhaps three of them will die in childhood and you will have to bury them. Plus your parents and perhaps your spouse. Perhaps several friends. There are no funeral homes so preparing a dead body for burial was a home-based labor of love that typically involved several people. In the case of Jesus, three women went to attend to his body, and presumably it would usually have been men who carried the wrapped corpse to a tomb or grave. Unless you were a priest, you would likely have had the experience of coming in contact with a dead body fairly regularly. Priests mere more limited in their interaction with corpses and the high priest even more so, because they were not permitted to contract defilement in the same way as regular folks.