Recovering data from _BAK table

I had a new user mistakenly use the Purge function without asking what it did. There were about 40 records purged and he would now like them back. I noticed that the records are still available within the _BAK table but I wanted to know if there was a way to recover them from here?

I had the user create all new content items for each of the records that were purged so I will just copy the information from the _BAK table into the newly created items but if there is an easier way, I would greatly appreciate it.