Numbers 16:37

out of the burning From the heap of burnt corpses.

for they are holy These words probably belong to the next verse (see n. there). The fire-pans had previously been the private property of the 250 princes (see on Numbers 16:6); but when they had once been employed for a sacred purpose, and had been in contact with sacred incense, they had acquired (according to a very wide-spread Semitic notion) a new quality of sacredness, which made it dangerous and wrong to use them in future for secular purposes. For this Semitic idea cf. Numbers 19:21; Ezekiel 44:19; Ezekiel 46:20; Leviticus 6:27; Haggai 2:12 f.; Isaiah 45:5; and see art. -Holiness" in DB.ii.