_Rāhatz._ While _kābas_ indicates a purifying of the substance, _rāhatz_ signifies a washing of the surface. This is the word which is invariably used to express the ritual self-washings or bathings of the hands, the feet, and the person. It is sometimes assumed that, like the English, to wash, _rāhatz_ is strictly generic in its meaning—that it signifies to cleanse with, or in, water, without any regard to mode. This is an error, as a single fact shows. It is never used for the cleansing of skins, clothes, or garments. Nor is this an accidental omission. Such washings are mentioned nearly fifty times, and in nineteen places they are brought into connection with the bathing of the person. But in no one place is the word in question used either generically, as comprehensive of both the person and garments, or specifically for the latter. In every place where the two processes come in the same connection, the language is accurately discriminated. The directions are, to _wash_, or scour (_kābas_), the clothes, and to _bathe_ (_rāhatz_) the flesh. This word occurs over seventy times. In five or six places, it applies to the washing of sacrificial flesh, before it was placed on the altar. (Lev. i, 9, 13, etc.) In every other instance it refers to the human person. It expresses cleansing with water actively applied to the surface. Thus, when Joseph ”_washed_ his face,” to obliterate the traces of tears (Gen. xliii, 31), and when the Beloved is described, “His eyes, as the eyes of doves by the rivers [rivulets] of waters, _washed_ with milk and fitly set” (Cant. v, 12), the reference is clearly to the familiar mode of washing the face with water applied. When the Lord, by Isaiah, speaks of the time when he “shall have _washed away_ the filth of the daughters of Zion” (Isa. iv, 4), and when the Preacher describes “a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not _washed from_ their filthiness” (Prov. xxx, 12), the idea presented is the same—that of water actively applied to the surface, so as to detach and carry off the dirt. In another place this definition is even more imperatively indicated. “Then (_rāhatz_) washed I thee with water; yea (_shātaph_), I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.”—Ezek. xvi, 9. Here three things unite to determine the meaning of _rāhatz_. 1. It is explained by _shātaph_, the signification of which we have seen. 2. The defilement from which the washing is promised, is that of _nidda_, for which expressly the sprinkled “water of _nidda_” was appointed and named. 3. The construction is precisely the same in the two clauses of the verse, “I washed thee _with_ water,” and “I anointed thee _with_ oil.” Of the mode of the latter there can be no question. In both clauses the element named is the _instrument_ of the action specified. The ideas of washing and of immersion are not merely different, but sharply contrasted with each other.