15. Moses said to them, “Have you saved all the women alive?
16. These caused the children of Israel, through the word of Balaam, to act unfaithfully against the Lord concerning the thing of Peor, and there was a plague among the assembly of the Lord.
17. So now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him.
18. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him.
19. “And you stay outside the camp seven days. Whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day.
20. Purify all your clothes, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats’ hair, and all things made of wood.”
21. Eleazar the priest said to the fighting men of Israel who went to the battle, “This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord commanded Moses:
22. Only the gold, and the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead,
23. everything that can go through the fire, you will make it go through the fire, and it will be clean, but some of it will be purified with the water of purification, and all that cannot pass through the fire you will make go through the water.
24. You will wash your clothes on the seventh day, and you will be clean, and afterward you will come into the camp.”
25. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
26. “Take the count of the plunder that was taken, of man and of beast, you and Eleazar the priest, and the chief of the fathers of the assembly.
27. And divide the prey into two parts between those that took the war on themselves, who went out to battle, and between all the assembly.
28. And levy a tribute to the Lord from the fighting men of Israel who went out to battle: one person out of five hundred, of the people and of the oxen, and of the donkeys, and of the sheep;
29. take it from their half, and give it to Eleazar the priest as an offering to the Lord.
30. Of the half of the children of Israel, you will take one portion of fifty, of the people, of the oxen, of the donkeys, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them to the Levites, who keep the guard of the tabernacle of the Lord.”
31. Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.
32. The plunder, being the rest of the prey, which the fighting men of Israel had caught, was six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep,
33. seventy-two thousand oxen,
34. and sixty-one thousand donkeys,
35. and thirty-two thousand people in all, of women who had not known a man by lying with him.