Numbers 19:11 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

He that toucheth the dead body of any man— He that touched a dead beast was unclean only one day, Leviticus 11:24; Leviticus 11:47. He that touched the dead body of a man was unclean seven days; so that this was among the greater legal-pollutions; to teach, says Ainsworth, that sin has made mankind the vilest of creatures. The notion of this pollution, which seems to have been almost universal, might probably arise from the natural offensiveness of the object, both to sight and to smell, in hot countries, where dead bodies sooner corrupt. Le Clerc thinks, that the political reason of this law might be, to hinder people from being hardened into cruelty or insensibility, by frequently viewing or touching dead bodies; as also to oblige them to bury their dead as soon as possible, to prevent the inconveniences which might arise from their being unburied in those warm regions; for we may collect from Numbers 19:15 that they conceive some foul and noxious effluvia to arise from a dead body. Some, however, have conjectured, and with great probability, that the Lord, by Moses, had a higher view in enacting this law; namely, to prevent the Israelites from degenerating into the Egyptian idolatry of worshipping the dead, by preserving their bodies or relics with a superstitious veneration, or performing religious honours at their graves or sepulchral monuments; in opposition to which, Moses ordains, that all persons who did but touch a dead body, or, even the bone of a man, or a grave, Numbers 19:16 should be unclean seven days.