What is the context?
Contact with a human corpse brings seven days of uncleanness and requires purification on the third and seventh days. The rule includes people in a tent where someone dies, open vessels there, and contact with a slain person, bone, or grave.
The warning concerns failing to undergo the prescribed cleansing and thereby defiling the tabernacle. The passage does not say that every person who handles the dead has committed murder or is guilty of the dead person’s sins. It gives the response for the ritual condition that contact brings.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Wesley reads the restriction in relation to approaching sacred worship while unclean. The USCCB notes describe the spread of ritual uncleanness through contact. This is an explanation of the law’s categories, not a modern account of how an infection is transmitted.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.
Where can I study this further?
No deeper study linked yet.