Deuteronomy 33:8

The children of the third generation … shall enter the congregation] Jeremiah 36:14 mentions a man under King Jehoiakim called Yehudi, i.e. Jew, whose great-grandfather was called Kushi, i.e. Egyptian, and whose father and grandfather had names derived from the name of Israel's God.

9 14 (10 15). Of the Holiness of the Camp

In camp Israel shall avoid every evil (Deuteronomy 33:9). If a man suffer from pollution he must leave the camp till evening, bathe and then return (Deuteronomy 33:10 f.). There shall be a place outside for natural needs, where a man shall cover with earth what comes from him (Deuteronomy 33:12 f.); Israel's God, who walketh the camp, must not see shameful things (Deuteronomy 33:14). In the Sg. address, like other laws of War, Deuteronomy 20:1-19 f., Deuteronomy 21:10-14, and with the same form of opening, and appeal to the same sacred reason.

The reason is D's own, in his language, but the ideas behind the law were primitive: either, as in the case of the first, sexual uncleanness as a disqualification for service already in practice in Israel (1 Samuel 21:5; 2 Samuel 11:11); or, as in the case of the second, the danger of leaving one's excrement exposed, as though it might be used in magic against one (Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 327 f.; Schwally, Kriegsalterthümer, 61 f., 67). See further note introd. to ch. 20. This law is therefore possibly an earlier one, adapted and partly transformed by D. See below on Deuteronomy 33:14. A parallel in P, Numbers 5:1-4. For Brahminical laws for the same occasions see Beauchamp's edition of Dubois, Hindu Manners, etc., 2 239 ff.