Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “This is the statute of the law which Yahweh has commanded. Tell the children of Israel to bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is no defect, and which was never yoked. You shall give her to Eleazar the priest, and he shall bring her outside of the camp, and one shall kill her before his face. Eleazar the priest shall take some of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle her blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times. One shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her meat, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn. The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the evening. He who burns her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the evening.
“A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering. He who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening. It shall be to the children of Israel, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them, for a statute forever.
“He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself with water on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he doesn’t purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and doesn’t purify himself, defiles Yahweh’s tabernacle; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet on him.
“This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. Every open vessel, which has no covering bound on it, is unclean.
“Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain with a sword, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
“For the unclean, they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering; and running water shall be poured on them in a vessel. A clean person shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave. The clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he shall purify him. He shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening. But the man who shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of Yahweh. The water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him. He is unclean. It shall be a perpetual statute to them. He who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening.
“Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the soul that touches it shall be unclean until evening.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22 According to this law and ceremony ye shall sacrifice…
According to this law and ceremony ye shall sacrifice the red cow.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18 Num 19:2 This [is] the ordinance of the law…
Num 19:2 This [is] the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein [is] no blemish, [and] upon which never came yoke:
Ver. 2. This is the ordinance of the law, which.] An ordinance, a law, a commanded law: all this to show the peremptoriness of the Lord in this point, that unless we lay hold upon the blood of Christ, prefigured by this red heifer, we cannot escape the damnation of hell.
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That they bring thee.] At a common charge, because for a common good. All the congregation must get them a bloody Saviour.
A red heifer.] Typing out Christum cruentatum, Christ covered with his own blood: {see Isa 63:1-2} white and ruddy, as the Church says of him: {Son 5:10} Tam recens mihi Christus crucifixus, ac si iam fudisset sanguinem. {a} The pressure of his sufferings made him sweat great drops, or rather clods of blood, in a cold night, besides what afterwards issued from his many wounds in his head and body.
Never came yoke.] Christ never bore the yoke either of sin or servitude. He laid down his life of himself. {Joh 10:17-18} See Heb 9:13-14. He was not subject to any command of man. {Luk 2:44 Joh 2:4}
{a} Luther.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 The ordinance of the law, or, the constitution of…
The ordinance of the law, or, the constitution of the law, i.e. that which God hath ordained or established by law.
That they bring thee, at their common charge, because it was for the common good. Red; a fit colour to shadow forth both the bloody nature and complexion of sin, Isa 1:8, and the human nature, and especially the blood, of Christ, from which this water and all other rites had their purifying virtue.
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Wherein is no blemish; a fit type of Christ, who was such, Heb 7:26; 1Pe 1:19.
Upon which never came yoke; whereby may be signified, either that Christ in himself was free from all the yoke or obligation of God’s command, till for our sakes he took up our yoke, and put himself under the law; or that Christ was not drawn or forced to undertake our burden and cross, but that lie did voluntarily choose it. See Joh 10:17,18.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 11 We have here the divine appointment concerning the solemn…
We have here the divine appointment concerning the solemn burning of a red heifer to ashes, and the preserving of the ashes, that of them might be made, not a beautifying, but a purifying, water, for that was the utmost the law reached to; it offered not to adorn as the gospel does, but to cleanse only. This burning of the heifer, though it was not properly a sacrifice of expiation, being not performed at the altar, yet was typical of the death and sufferings of Christ, by which he intended, not only to satisfy God's justice, but to purify and pacify our consciences, that we may have peace with God and also peace in our own bosoms, to prepare for which Christ died, not only like the bulls and goats at the altar, but like the heifer without the camp.
I. There was a great deal of care employed in the choice of the heifer that was to be burnt, much more than in the choice of any other offering, Num 19:2. It must not only be without blemish, typifying the spotless purity and sinless perfection of the Lord Jesus, but it must a red heifer, because of the rarity of the colour, that it might be the more remarkable: the Jews say, "If but two hairs were black or white, it was unlawful." Christ, as man, was the Son of Adam, red earth, and we find him red in his apparel, red with his own blood, and red with the blood of his enemies. And it must be one on which never came yoke, which was not insisted on in other sacrifices, but thus was typified the voluntary offer of the Lord Jesus, when he said, Lo, I come, He was bound and held with no other cords than those of his own love. This heifer was to be provided at the expense of the congregation, because they were all to have a joint interest in it; and so all believers have in Christ.
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II. There was to be a great deal of ceremony in the burning of it. The care of doing it was committed to Eleazar, not to Aaron himself, because it was not fit that he should do any thing to render himself ceremonially unclean, no, not so much as till the evening (Num 19:8); yet it being an affair of great concern especially in the significancy of it, it was to be performed by him that was next to Aaron in dignity. The chief priests of that time had the principal hand in the death of Christ. Now,
1. The heifer was to be slain without the camp, as an impure thing, which bespeaks the insufficiency of the methods prescribed by the ceremonial law to take away sin. So far were they from cleansing effectually that they were themselves unclean; as if the pollution that was laid upon them continued to cleave to them. Yet, to answer this type, our Lord Jesus, being made sin and a curse for us, suffered without the gate, Heb 13:12.
2. Eleazar was to sprinkle the blood directly before the door of the tabernacle, and looking steadfastly towards it, Num 19:4. This made it in some sort an expiation; for the sprinkling of the blood before the Lord was the chief solemnity in all the sacrifices of atonement; therefore, though this was not done at the altar, yet, being done towards the sanctuary, it was intimated that the virtue and validity of it depended upon the sanctuary, and were derived from it. This signified the satisfaction that was made to God by the death of Christ, our great high priest, who by the eternal Spirit (and the Spirit is called the finger of God, as Ainsworth observes, Luk 11:20) offered himself without spot unto God; directly before the sanctuary, when he said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. It also signifies how necessary it was to the purifying of our hearts that satisfaction should be made to divine justice. This sprinkling of the blood put virtue into the ashes.
3. The heifer was to be wholly burnt, Num 19:5. This typified the extreme sufferings of our Lord Jesus, both in soul and body, as a sacrifice made by fire. The priest was to cast into the fire, while it was burning, cedarwood, hyssop, and scarlet, which were used in the cleansing of lepers (Lev 14:6, Lev 14:7), that the ashes of these might be mingled with the ashes of the heifer, because they were designed for purification.
4. The ashes of the heifer (separated as well as they could from the ashes of the wood wherewith it was burnt) were to be carefully gathered up by the hand of a clean person, and (as the Jews say) pounded and sifted, and so laid up for the use of the congregation, as there was occasion (Num 19:9), not only for that generation, but for posterity; for the ashes of this one heifer were sufficient to season as many vessels of water as the people of Israel would need for many ages. The Jews say that this one served till the captivity, nearly 1000 years, and that there was never another heifer burnt till Ezra's time, after their return, to which tradition of theirs, grounded (I suppose) only upon the silence of their old records, I see no reason we have to give credit, since in the later times of their church, of which they had more full records, they find eight burnt between Ezra's time and the destruction of the second temple, which was about 500 years, These ashes are said to be laid up here as a purification for sin, because, though they were intended to purify only from ceremonial uncleanness, yet they were a type of that purification for sin which our Lord Jesus made by his death. Ashes mixed with water are used in scouring, but these had their virtue purely from the divine institution, and their accomplishment and perfection in Christ, who is the end of this law for righteousness. Now observe, (1.) That the water of purification was made so by the ashes of a heifer, whose blood was sprinkled before the sanctuary; so that which cleanses our consciences is the abiding virtue of the death of Christ; it is his blood that cleanses from all sin, Jo1 1:7. (2.) That the ashes were sufficient for all the people. There needed not to be a fresh heifer slain for every person or family that had occasion to be purified, but this one was enough for all, even for the strangers that sojourned among them (Num 19:10); so there is virtue enough in the blood of Christ for all that repent and believe the gospel, for every Israelite, and not for their sins only, but for the sins of the whole world, Jo1 2:2. (3.) That these ashes were capable of being preserved without waste to many ages. No bodily substance is so incorruptible as ashes are, which (says bishop Patrick) made these a very fit emblem of the everlasting efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ. He is able to save, and, in order to that, able to cleanse, to the uttermost, both of person and times. (4.) These ashes were laid up as a stock or treasure, for the constant purification of Israel from their pollutions; so the blood of Christ is laid up for us in the word and sacraments, as an inexhaustible fountain of merit, to which by faith we may have recourse daily for the purging of our consciences; see Zac 13:1.
5. All those that were employed in this service were made ceremonially unclean by it; even Eleazar himself, though he did but sprinkle the blood, Num 19:7. He that burned the heifer was unclean (Num 19:8), and he that gathered up the ashes (Num 19:10); so all that had a hand in putting Christ to death contracted guilt by it: his betrayer, his prosecutors, his judge, his executioner, all did what they did with wicked hands, though it was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Act 2:23); yet some of them were, and all might have been cleansed by the virtue of that same blood which they had brought themselves under the guilt of. Some make this to signify the imperfection of the legal services, and their insufficiency to take away sin, inasmuch as those who prepared for the purifying of others were themselves polluted by the preparation. The Jews say, This is a mystery which Solomon himself did not understand, that the same thing should pollute those that were clean and purify those that were unclean. But (says bishop Patrick) it is not strange to those who consider that all the sacrifices which were offered for sin were therefore looked upon as impure, because the sins of men were laid upon them, as all our sins were upon Christ, who therefore is said to be made sin for us, Co2 5:21.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–22 And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron,....…
And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron,.... Not at this time, after the business of the spies, and the affair of Korah, but before the children of Israel departed from Sinai; and so Aben Ezra observes, that this was spoken in the wilderness of Sinai, when the Lord commanded to put unclean persons out of the camp, and when some were defiled with a dead body, and unfit for the passover, Num 5:2; and mention is made of the "water of purifying", Num 8:7,
saying; as follows.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22 The manner of preparing the water of purification, ver.…
The manner of preparing the water of purification, ver. 1-10. Of using it, ver. 11-22.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 9, 11, 12 The ordinance of the red heifer, 1, 2.
CHAPTER XIX
The ordinance of the red heifer, 1, 2.
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She shall be slain by Eleazar without the camp, and her blood
sprinkled before the tabernacle, 3, 4.
Her whole body and appurtenance shall be reduced to ashes, and
while burning, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop, shall be thrown
into the fire, 5, 6.
The priest, and he that burns her, to bathe themselves, and be
reputed unclean till the evening, 7, 8.
Her ashes to be laid up for a water of purification, 9.
How, and in what cases it is to be applied, 10-13.
The law concerning him who dies in a tent, or who is killed in
the open field, 14-16.
How the persons, tent, and vessels are to be purified by the
application of these ashes, 17-19.
The unclean person who does not apply them, to be cut off from
the congregation, 20.
This is to be a perpetual statute, 21, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. XIX
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20 Num 19:1. The people had complained of the strictness…
Num 19:1. The people had complained of the strictness of the law which forbade their near approach to the tabernacle, (Num 17:13,) and the sudden death of so many by the late plague had put such numbers of their friends and relations into a state of legal uncleanness, which rendered them incapable of approaching it, and filled them with a fear of perishing in their uncleanness; in answer, therefore, to their complaints, and to free them from this fear, they are here shown how they might be purified from the greatest legal uncleanness, so as to approach God in his ordinances and among his people, without either fear or danger.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11 The principle that death and all pertaining to it,…
The principle that death and all pertaining to it, as being the manifestation and result of sin Gen 2:17, are defiling, and so lead to interruption of the living relationship between God and His people, is not now introduced for the first time, nor is it at all peculiar to the Mosaic law. It was, on the contrary, traditional among the Israelites from the earliest times, it is assumed in various enactments made already (compare Num 5:2; Num 9:6 ff; Lev 10:1, Lev 10:7; Lev 11:8, Lev 11:11, Lev 11:24; Lev 21:1 ff), and it is traceable in various forms among many nations, both ancient and modern. Moses adopted, here as elsewhere, existing and ancient customs, with significant additions, as helps in the spiritual education of his people.
The ordinance was probably given at this time because the plague which happened Num 16:46-50 about the matter of Korah had spread the defilement of death so widely through the camp as to seem to require some special measures of purification, more particularly as the deaths through it were in an extraordinary manner the penalty of sin.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22 Observance. Hebrew, "ceremony." Septuagint, "distinction, (diastole, St. Augustine, q.…
Observance. Hebrew, "ceremony." Septuagint, "distinction, (diastole, St. Augustine, q. 33,) or ordinance." (Calmet) --- Victim. Hebrew, "the ordinance of the law." (Du Hamel) --- A red cow, &c. This red cow, offered in sacrifice for sin, and consumed with fire without the camp, with the ashes of which, mingled with water, the unclean were to be expiated and purified; was a figure of the passion of Christ, by whose precious blood, applied to our souls in the holy sacraments, we are cleansed from our sins. (Challoner) --- Age, three years old. Some translate, "entirely red." They suppose, that these regulations are in opposition to the customs of the Egyptians, who never sacrificed the cow, esteeming it sacred to Isis, or to the moon. Spencer (Rit. ii. 15) adds, that the red colour was formerly in the highest estimation; and this victim represented the death of Christ, who expiated our defilements. The Egyptians immolated bulls of a red colour, in hatred of Typhon, and to appease that dangerous god, whom they depicted perfectly red. Plut.[Plutarch?] (Isis) observes, that they hate all animals of that colour; and the Copths precipitated a red ass down a precipice. The ancient kings of Egypt sacrificed red men on the tomb of Osiris or Dyphon; (Diodorus, Bib. 1,) and Manetho assures us, that they scattered their ashes in the wind. If this custom prevailed in the days of Moses, we need not wonder that he teaches the Hebrews to have so little dread of Typhon, as even to chose a red cow in preference, to purify themselves. --- Yoke. Such victims were generally chosen by the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians, as more delicate and respectful. Intacta totidem cervice juvencus. (Georg. iv.; Bochart, anim. 2. 33.) St. Jerome (ep. 27,) says, that a red cow was sacrificed every year, as in reality one would be requisite for all the people, though the Rabbins pretend that only seven, or ten at most, were treated in this manner, from Moses till the destruction of the temple by Titus. (Drusius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 General Means of Purification for those Defiled by Touching…
SIXTH SECTION
General Means of Purification for those Defiled by Touching the Dead
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Num_19:1-22
1, 2And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke. 3And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, 1that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face: 4And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood 2directly before the 3tabernacle of the congregation seven 5times. And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn: 6And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. 7Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even. 8And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even. 9And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of 4separation: 5it is a purification for sin. 10And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: and it shall be unto the children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them, for a statute for ever.
11He that toucheth the dead body of any 6man shall be unclean seven days. Hebrews 12 shall 7purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he fpurify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 13Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and 8purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of dseparation was not sprinkled upon him, 14he shall be unclean: his uncleanness is yet upon him. This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that 9 is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. 15And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon 16it, is unclean. And 10whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17And for an unclean person they shall take of the 11ashes 12of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and 13running water shall be put thereto in a vessel: 18And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched 14a bone, or lone slain, or l one dead, or la grave: 19And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall 15purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even. 20But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not f purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from 16among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: the water of dseparation hath not been sprinkled upon him: he is unclean. 21And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, 17that he that sprinkleth the water of dseparation shall wash his clothes: and he that toucheth the water of dseparation shall be unclean until even. 22And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Num_19:13; Num_19:20. כִּי מֵי נִדָּה לֹא־זרַ֗ק עָלָיו. “This is the only instance of מַיִם being construed with a verb in the singular” (Maurer). Such is Ewald’s construction also (see § 318 a), who refers it to a rule that “plurals whose meaning appears as a singular gradually come to be joined with the (verb in the) singular. But the solitariness of this (supposed) instance in the case of מַיִם shows that the word retained tenaciously its plural notion, and that in its case there was no gradual change to a use in the singular. The construction given by Naegelsbach, § 100, 2, sis better. The passive in Hebrew may receive the accusative of the remoter and of the nearer object. In the case before us it is the nearer object. As Naegelsbach says: “it seems that in this case the passive includes the notion of its active.” Accordingly the construction would be: for one did not sprinkle the water of purification upon him. But our passive with the object changed to subject, as in the text, correctly renders the meaning.—Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Once more the legislation reminds us of the great fatality occasioned by the rebellion of Koran. After this dreadful mortality it became apparent, that it would be impossible to attend to the purification of the persons defiled by corpses by the individual purifications heretofore prescribed. The most numerous priesthood would not suffice for this. Hence a general means of purification is instituted, the sprinkling of the defiled with the ashes of the red heifer dissolved in living water. Compare Keil in loc. This institution appears so strange that investigation has been very busy with it. See the literary references in Keil and Knobel in loc.
The very fact, however, that a previously existing custom is made an ordinance leads us to go back to the former elements. It is a fine trait of pious humanity that the declaration of the defilement by the dead comes out so gently and gradually. No doubt the defilement by the dead is indirectly included in the law of the guilt-offering (Lev_5:2-3), but not so definitely affirmed. One might indeed, by too great severity, easily do injury to the duties of love and compassion. But in the law for the priests (Leviticus 21) the assumption necessarily crops out that contact with dead bodies occasions defilement. So, too, in the law for the Nazirites (6). Here, too, the defilement is fixed at seven days. Thus the ordinance, taken quite generally, is here fixed, and further on with more exact specifications in Num_31:19; Num_31:24. Here a double absolution is commanded, viz., on the third and on the seventh day of exclusion from the congregation. As regards the rite of absolution, the law goes back to what was prescribed with reference to purifying lepers and leprous houses (Leviticus 14). In the latter case, the material to be sprinkled was the blood of a slaughtered bird dropped into living water into which the other bird has been dipped, combined with cedar-wood, hyssop, and scarlet. Here we have again the living (running) water, only the admixture is not blood but ashes, yet ashes of the blood-colored young cow, and then the additions, cedar-wood, hyssop and scarlet, which are burned in the burning of the cow. But the symbolism is meant to be the same. The red color of the heifer may therefore be better referred to the blood-color than to the color of blooming life. But we must consider that the fresh blood makes the blooming color of life (see below). And if the additions, cedar-wood, etc., symbolize life itself, then the blood, consequently, too, the blood-color, must signify the surrender of life.
This then leads to a further necessary distinction, viz., between death itself and the dead. Death is not only pure in itself, but also purifying (Rom_5:7), but all that may be called a corpse is unclean, yea, it may even become poison; and not only in a symbolical sense, but also in a physical it is unclean. We must emphasize this distinction, since Keil in many ways confounds, or at least confuse, death itself, and that which is dead, “that death and mortal corruption as the embodiment (?) of sin defiles and excludes from communion with the holy God, was a view banded down from the earliest times, from the fall of Adam and its consequences. The whole congregation incurred danger of being infected with the defilement of death.” It is a fact that all antiquity saw in death itself a sort of expiation, in the death of one devoted to God the actual expiation. But it is likewise a fact, that all antiquity instinctively saw in the corpses a monstrous peril for the living, and primarily in a physical sense. Everything that, as lifeless stuff, is severed from the actual man, by digestion or disease, and finally by the process of dying, threatens to react against life as a poison, unless it be given back to the elements, the chemical cosmos for dissolution, by the earth or by fire. Hence the defilement by corpses forms the central point of impurity. But this has a great meaning also in a symbolical sense. If it is wicked to wish to rob the living body of truth of a drop of blood, not to speak of a pound of flesh from the side of the heart, it is just as senseless to wish to preserve the dead elements, even though it were done by embalming in beautiful forms, whether of style or of party. Thus the custom of antiquity observed the most various degrees according to which touching the dead was regarded as defiling. See in Knobel, p. 95 sqq., a discussion of this. “The Egyptians appear to have had less stringent notions in this respect,” writes Knobel; he might know that the Egyptians, with their worship of the dead, with their embalming corpses for the mummy pits, represented decidedly the absolute conservatism in this respect. In our time it is known how fearfully a little pestilential poison, or cholera poison may react among the ranks of the living.
And yet the Israelites should bury their dead with sympathy and honorably. Hence only the high-priests and the Nazirites were unconditionally restrained from burials, the ordinary priest to a limited extent, the rest of the people not at all. Rather it is assumed that, according to the law of love, defilements must be unavoidable and occur frequently, so that the exaction of purification can only be met by a general means of purifying. Hence this means is called a fixed statute. Thus a pure life is assured, and also provision is made for the promptings of humanity, and the red heifer (as in the case of the jealousy-offering) is an evidence of a marvelous, deep penetration of the theocratic spirit. It is a monument of divine wisdom in the removal of apparent collisions within the law or in duty.
Num_19:1-2. The Red Heifer.—“This is חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה a statute of instruction. This combination of the two words commonly used for law and statute, is probably intended to give emphasis to the design of the law about to be given, to point it out as one of great importance, but not as a decretum absque ulla ratione, as the Rabbins suppose,” Keil. We would read: an ordinance for securing the Torah. Without this expedient, for instance, the law of purification would have occasioned endless offences on the right hand and on the left. The cow, δάμαλις, juvenca, must be red, free from blemish, not yet subjected to the yoke; all traits of the freshest life. Concerning תְּמִימָה see Keil, [who says that “אֲדֻמָּה, ‘of a red color,’ is not to be connected with תמימה in the sense of “quite red,” as the Rabbins interpret it; but תמימה, integra, is to be taken by itself, and the words which follow, ‘wherein is no blemish,’ to be regarded as defining it still more precisely.”—Tr.]. But it may be questioned whether the Rabbins are not right in this instance.
“The sacrificial beast must not be a bullock, as in the case of the usual sin-offerings of the congregation (Lev_4:14), but a female beast, because the female sex is the one that bears offspring.” Much more likely, because the purification was always to be applied only to a certain “number of persons of the nation” (Knobel), as indeed also the sins of individuals were expiated by a female sacrificial beast (Lev_4:27). Moreover, in this case, it is not a major trespass that is expiated, but a collective expiation is instituted, that shall constitute a substitute for expiations of the individual defilements (Lev_5:6). Hence one may not say, the slaughter of the heifer is called, Num_19:9; Num_19:17, a sin-offering, “in order to remind the congregation that death is the wages of sin.” Of course all sacrifices served that purpose in various senses; but here the beast is called sin-offering, because, as general sin-offering, it was to comprehend all individual sin-offerings with reference to defilement by corpses. “The antidote against the defilement of death (!) should be taken from a sin-offering.” It would be nearer the mark to say: death was to be put to death by this death of the most perfect blooming life; but what is spoken of here is an antidote against the effect of corpses. An elixir of life is prepared from the ashes of the most beautiful form of life, that is to deprive of its power the defiling (noxious) effects of the form of death, of the corpse. “Of a red color, not because the blood-red points to sin (Hengstenberg, following the Rabbins and earlier theologians), but as the color of the most intense life, that has its seat in the blood, and appears in the redness of the face (the cheeks, lips) (Baehr, Kurtz, Leyrer, et al.),” Keil.
Num_19:3-10. The preparation of the water of purification.—In this business as in Num_17:1, Eleazer must take the place of his father, since the latter, as high-priest, must keep away from everything connected with corpses, although the high-priest himself administered the sin-offering of a general sort (Lev_4:16). Moreover the whole act must be performed outside of the camp, for the heifer is originally no sacrifice, but only the young, fresh blood is made a substitute for many sacrifices. And one shall bring her forth, etc. The leading out and the slaughtering of the beast was to be attended to by any one, not by the priest. Sprinkle of her blood seven times, etc. (as in Lev_4:17); this the priest did, and with that what was slaughtered was a sin-offering, distinct from a curse-offering, incorporated in the sphere of sacrifices. It is a new feature here, that a sprinkling of blood toward the front of the Tabernacle from a distance, should avail the same as a sprinkling inside of the fore-court. All aspirations after the true life, even outside of the Theocracy and the Church, tend to Jehovah, and are accepted of Him. According to Keil, “the victim was to represent those members of the congregation who had fallen victims to temporal death as the wages of sin, and as such were separated from the earthly Theocracy.” This would be more according to 1 Peter 3, 4., than one could demand from the Old Testament: but corpses are what are spoken of here, and not death. The dead person is purified from his corpse. After the sprinkling, the entire heifer is burnt, all the ingredients of this fresh life turn to ashes, Num_19:5. Does not this mean: all perishableness of earthly life serves, in the fire of God’s government, to abolish the curse of perishableness? Here with the rest is consumed the life of the life, the blood; along with the rest are burned the symbolical attributes of life, cedar-wood as macrobiotic life [longevity], hyssop as life renewed by purification; scarlet wool as the transit of the life through the blood, all which constitutes a concentration toward imperishable life, the sublime life. The persons that perform this ceremony, the priest, the burner, the gatherer of the ashes, have become unclean, but only for one day, because they have performed an act of purification without the camp; Knobel says: “because they acted for those that were unclean;” Keil: the uncleanness of sin and of death had passed over to the sin-offering. One cannot so explain in this way the words: he that toucheth the water of purification shall be unclean until even, Num_19:21; even the water for sprinkling rendered any one unclean that touched it, although as means of purification it was pure. He is unclean, even if he was not unclean, in so far as he is subjected to the rite of purification. The precious material of the ashes is treasured up in a clean place, but, which is very remarkable, outside the camp. A confession that the Levitical cultus in itself cannot annul the effects of death.
Num_19:11-13. The use. Whoever has become defiled from a corpse is unclean seven days. He must purify himself by an absolution (done by sprinkling) on the third and seventh day. In case he omits to do this, he defiles the dwelling of Jehovah and incurs the penalty of death.
Num_19:14-22. Nearer definitions: presence in or entrance into a tent of one dead defiles. Every vessel in the tent not closed by a cord becomes unclean. Any one that touches a dead person in the field, or a bone, or even a grave. In each case a portion of ashes is combined with living water and made into water for sprinkling. It is worthy of remark that no priest, no Levite is necessary, only a man that is clean is requisite to sprinkle the tent, the vessels, the defiled men. Free as this form was, its observance was to be correspondingly strict. The penalty of non-performance, which had as its effect the defilement of the Sanctuary, was death. Moreover, the man that accomplished the purification became unclean till evening; not less did every one and everything whom the unclean person touched become unclean till evening. This in legal form is the expression of the reminder of an unspotted and imperishable life. In a symbolical sense, then, the endeavor after complete purity of life is a statute for all time. The first sprinkling occurs on the third day, for the purification must proceed from the spirit; the second on the seventh day, on the day of the Sabbath number, of completed work of purification until the celebration of purity.
HOMILETICAL HINTS
Chap. 19. The water of sprinkling. The blessing of the most blooming life should deprive of its power the defiling intercourse with the world of the dead, with corpses. The adjustment between piety toward the dead and care for the living. Once again: let one carefully discriminate between death itself and the bones of the dead, corpses. Ashes and water, two combined factors of the purifying preservation of life, emblems of all disinfection in the simplest fundamental form.
Footnotes:
[1]and one shall bring.
[2]in the direction toward.
[3]Tent of Meeting.
[4]purification [literally: “water of uncleanness,” i.e., for removing uncleanness; similarly “water of sin,” Num_8:7.—Tr.]
[5]it is a sin offering.
[6]Heb. soul of man.
[7]absolve.
[8]absolveth.
[9]are.
[10]whosoever in the open field toucheth, etc.
[11]Heb. dust.
[12]of the burning of the sin-offering.
[13]Heb. living water shall be given.
[14]the.
[15]absolve him; and he shall wash, etc.
[16]the midst of the assembly.
[17]And.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3, 7, 11, 12, 14, 21 ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest that…
ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest that he may bring her forth without the camp--He was the second or deputy high priest, and he was selected for this duty because the execution of it entailed temporary defilement, from which the acting high priest was to be preserved with the greatest care. It was led "forth without the camp," in accordance with the law regarding victims laden with the sins of the people, and thus typical of Christ (Heb 13:12; also Lev 24:14). The priest was to sprinkle the blood "seven times" before--literally, "towards" or "near" the tabernacle, a description which seems to imply either that he carried a portion of the blood in a basin to the door of the tabernacle (Lev 4:17), or that in the act of sprinkling he turned his face towards the sacred edifice, being disqualified through the defiling influence of this operation from approaching close to it. By this attitude he indicated that he was presenting an expiatory sacrifice, for the acceptance of which he hoped, in the grace of God, by looking to the mercy seat. Every part of it was consumed by fire except the blood used in sprinkling, and the ingredients mixed with the ashes were the same as those employed in the sprinkling of lepers (Lev 14:4-7). It was a water of separation--that is, of "sanctification" for the people of Israel.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21 THE PREPARATION OF THE WATER OF SEPARATION, Num_19:1-10.
THE PREPARATION OF THE WATER OF SEPARATION, Num_19:1-10.
Running or living water applied to the body is sufficient for the removal of ordinary pollutions. But as the uncleanness of death was the most obstinately tenacious of all ceremonial defilements, by its continuance through seven days, and by requiring a double sprinkling, pure water alone was not adequate to its removal. Hence it was strengthened by the ashes of a sin offering, forming a holy alkali.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 2. a red heifer] a red cow. The Heb.…
2. a red heifer] a red cow. The Heb. word is that ordinarily used for the full-grown animal (e.g. Gen_41:2-4; 1Sa_6:7). The reason for the particular colour is not known. The red animal and the scarlet thread may both, perhaps, have had reference to blood as an instrument of purification.
without spot] perfect. Any blemish, such as lameness, blindness, or the malformation of a limb, would disqualify it.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19 (4) And Eleazar the priest shall take of her…
(4) And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood . . . —The appointed rites were to be discharged by Eleazar, not by Aaron, who would otherwise have been temporarily disqualified by legal impurity from the discharge of his high-priestly functions.
Before the tabernacle of the congregation . . . —i.e., opposite to the entrance of the Tabernacle, but, as stated in the preceding verse, outside the camp, because the act had reference to the uncleanness of death.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Numbers 19
Numbers 19
One of the most important sections of the book of Numbers now lies open before us, presenting for our consideration the deeply interesting and instructive ordinance of "The red Heifer." A thoughtful student of scripture would naturally feel disposed to inquire why it is that we get this type in Numbers and not in Leviticus. In the first seven chapters of the latter book, we have a very elaborate statement of the doctrine of sacrifice; and yet we have no allusion whatever to the red heifer. Why is this? What are we to learn from the fact that this beautiful ordinance is presented in the Book of Numbers and nowhere else? We believe it furnishes another striking illustration of the distinctive character of Our book. The red heifer is, pre-eminently, a wilderness type. It was God’s provision for defilements by the way, and it prefigures the death of Christ as a purification for sin, to meet our need in passing through a defiling world, home to our eternal rest above. It is a most instructive figure, and unfolds most precious and needed truth. May the holy Ghost, who has penned the record, be graciously pleased to expound and apply it to our souls!
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"And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, Saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke." Verses 1, 2.
When, with the eye of Faith, we gaze upon the Lord Jesus, we not only see Him to be the spotless One, in His own holy Person, but also One who never bore the yoke of sin. The Holy Ghost is ever the jealous guardian of the person of Christ, and He delights to present Him to the soul in all His excellency and preciousness. Hence it is that every type and every shadow, designed to set Him forth, exhibits the same careful guardianship. Thus, in the red heifer, we are taught that, not only was our blessed Saviour, as to His human nature, intrinsically and inherently pure and spotless, but that, as to His birth and relationships, He stood perfectly clear from every mark and trace of sin. No yoke of sin ever came upon His sacred neck. When He speaks of "my yoke" (Matt. 11: 29), it was the yoke of implicit subjection to the Father’s will, in all things. This was the only yoke He ever wore; and this yoke was never off, for one moment, during the entire of His spotless and perfect career - from the manger, where He lay a helpless babe, to the cross, where He expired as a victim.
But He wore no yoke of sin. Let this be distinctly understood. He went to the cross to expiate our sins, to lay the groundwork of our perfect purification from all sin; but He did this as One who had never, at any time during His blessed life, worn the yoke of sin. He was "without sin;" and, as such, was perfectly fitted to do the great and glorious work of expiation. To think of him as bearing the yoke of sin in His life, would be to think of him as unfit to atone for it in His death. "wherein is no blemish, and whereon never came yoke." It is quite as needful to remember and weigh the force of the word "whereon," as of the word "wherein." Both expressions are designed by the holy Ghost to get forth the perfection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was not only internally spotless, but also externally free from every trace of sin. Neither in His Person, nor yet in His relationships, was He, in anywise, obnoxious to the claims of sin or death. He - adored for ever be His name! - entered into all the reality of our circumstances and condition; but in Him was no sin, and on Him no yoke of sin.
"Touched with a Sympathy within,
He knows our feeble frame;
He knows what sore temptations mean,
For He has felt the same.
"But spotless, undefiled, and pure,
The great Redeemer stood,
while Satan’s fiery darts He bore,
And did resist to blood."
"And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face." Verse 3.
The thoughtful reader of scripture will not pass over any expression, how trivial soever it may seem to be. Such an one will ever bear in mind that the book which lies open before him is from God, and therefore perfect - perfect as a whole - perfect in all its parts. Every little word is pregnant with meaning. Each little point, feature, and circumstance contains some spiritual teaching for the soul. No doubt, infidels and rationalists altogether fail in seizing this weighty fact, and, as a consequence, when they approach the divine volume, they make the saddest havoc. They see flaws where the spiritual student sees only gems. They see incongruities and contradictions where the devout, self distrusting, Spirit-taught disciple beholds divine harmonies and moral glories.
This is only what we might expect; and it is well to remember it now-a-days. "God is His own interpreter," in scripture, as well as in providence; and if we wait on Him, He will assuredly make it plain. But, as in providence, "Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His ways in vain," so in scripture, it is sure to err, and scan His lines in vain. And the devout poet might have gone farther; for, most surely, unbelief will not only scan God’s ways and God’s word in vain, but turn both the one and the other into an occasion of making a blasphemous attack upon God Himself, upon His nature, and upon His character, as well as upon the revelation which He has been pleased to give us. The infidel would rudely smash the lamp of inspiration, quench its heavenly light, and involve us all in the deep gloom and moral darkness which entrap His own misguided mind.
We have been led into the foregoing train of thought while meditating upon the third verse of our chapter. We are exceedingly desirous to cultivate the habit of profound and careful study of holy scripture. It is of immense importance. To say or to think that there is so much as a single clause, or a single expression, from cover to cover of the inspired volume, unworthy of our prayerful meditation, is to imply that God the Holy Ghost has thought it worth His while to write what we do not think it worth our while to study. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God." (2 Tim. 3: 16) This commands our reverence. "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning." (Rom 15: 4) This awakens our personal interest. the former of these quotations proves that scripture comes from God; the latter proves that it comes to us. That and this, taken together, bind us to God by the divine link of holy scripture - a link which the devil, in this our day, is doing his very utmost to snap; and that, too, by means of agents of acknowledged moral worth and intellectual power. The devil does not select an ignorant or immoral man to make his grand and special attacks upon the Bible, for he knows full well that the former could not speak, and the latter would not get a hearing. But he craftily takes up some amiable, benevolent, and popular person - some one of blameless morals - a laborious student, a profound scholar, a deep and original thinker. Thus he throws dust in the eyes of the simple, the unlearned, and the unwary.
Christian reader, we pray you to remember this. If we can deepen in your soul the sense of the unspeakable value of your Bible; if we can warn you off from the dangerous rocks and quicksands of rationalism and infidelity; if we are made the means of stablishing and strengthening you in the assurance that when you are hanging over the sacred page of scripture, you are drinking at a fountain every drop of which has flowed into it From the very bosom of God Himself; if we can reach all or any of these results, we shall not regret the digression from our chapter, to which we now return.
"And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face." We have, in the priest and the victim, a joint type of the Person of Christ. He was, at once, the Victim and the Priest. But He did not enter upon His priestly functions until His work as a victim was accomplished. This will explain the expression in the last clause of the third verse, one shall slay her before his face." The death of Christ was accomplished on earth, and could not, therefore, be represented as the act of priesthood. Heaven, not earth, is the sphere of His priestly service. The apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, expressly declares, as the sum of a most elaborate and amazing piece of argument, that "we have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man. For every High priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law." (Heb. 8: 1-4) "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." "For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, the figures of the true But into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Heb. 9: 11, 12, 24) "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God" Heb. 10: 12.
From all these passages, taken in connection with Numbers 19: 3, we learn two things, namely, that the death of Christ is not presented as the proper, ordinary act of priesthood; and, further, that heaven, not earth, is the sphere of His priestly ministry. There is nothing new in these statements; others have advanced them repeatedly; But it is important to notice everything tending to illustrate the divine perfection and precision of Holy scripture. It is deeply interesting to find a truth, which shines brightly in the pages of the New Testament, wrapped up in some ordinance or ceremony of Old Testament times. Such discoveries are ever welcome to the intelligent reader of the word. The truth, no doubt, is the same wherever it is found; but when it bursts upon us, with meridian brightness in the New Testament scriptures, and is divinely shadowed forth in the Old, we not only have the truth established, but the unity of the volume illustrated and enforced.
But we must not pass over, unnoticed, the place where the death of the victim was accomplished. "That he may bring her forth without the camp." As has already been remarked, the priest and the victim are identified, and form a joint type of Christ; But it is added, "one shall slay her before his face," simply because the death of Christ could not be represented as the act of priesthood. What marvellous accuracy! And yet it is not marvellous, for what else should we look for in a book every line of which is from God Himself? Had it been said, "He shall slay her," then Numbers 19 would be at variance with the Epistle to the Hebrews. But no; the harmonies of the volume shine forth among its brightest glories. May we have grace to discern and appreciate them!
Jesus, then, suffered without the gate. "wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate." (Heb. 13: 12) He took the outside place, and His voice falls on the ear from thence. Do we listen to it? Do we understand it? Should we not consider more seriously the place where Jesus died? Are we to rest satisfied with reaping the benefits of Christ’s death, without seeking fellowship with Him in His rejection? God forbid! "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach* There is immense power in these words. They should rouse our whole moral being to seek more complete identification with a rejected Saviour. Shall we see Him die outside, while we reap the benefits of His death and remain within? Shall we seek a home, and a place, and a name, and a portion, in that world from which our Lord and Master is an outcast? shall we aim at getting on in a world which could not tolerate that blessed One to whom we owe our present and everlasting felicity Shall we aspire after honour, position, and wealth, where our Master found only a manger, a cross, a borrowed grave? May the language of our hearts be, "Far be the thought! and may the language of our lives be, "Far be the thing!" May we, by the grace of God, yield a more hearty response to the Spirit’s call to "Go forth"
{*The camp, in the above passage. refers primarily to Judaism; but it has a very pointed moral application to every system of religion set up by man, and governed by the spirit and principles of this present evil world.]
Christian reader, let us never forget that, when we look at the death of Christ, we see two things, namely, the death of a victim, and the death of a martyr - a victim for sin, a martyr for righteousness - a victim, under the hand of God, a martyr, under the hand of man. He suffered for sin, that we might never suffer. Blessed be His name for evermore! But then, His martyr sufferings, His sufferings for righteousness under the hand of man, these we may know. "For unto you it is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." (Phil. 1: 29) It is a positive gift to be allowed to suffer with Christ. Do we esteem it?
In contemplating the death of Christ, as typified by the ordinance of the red heifer, we see not only the complete putting away of sin, but also the judgement of this present evil world. "He gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." (Gal 1: 4) Here the two things are put together by God; and, most surely, they should never be separated by us. We have the judgement of sin, root and branch; and the judgement of this world. The former should give perfect repose to the exercised conscience; while the latter should deliver the heart from the ensnaring influence of the world, in all its multiplied forms. That purges the conscience from all sense of guilt; this snaps the link which binds the heart and the world together.
Now, it is most needful for the reader to understand and enter experimentally into the connection existing between these two things. It is quite possible to miss this grand link, even while holding and contending for a vast amount of evangelical truth and it may be confidently affirmed that where this link is missing, there must be a very serious defect in the Christian character. We frequently meet with earnest souls who have been brought under the convicting and awakening power of the Holy Spirit, But who have not yet known, for the ease of their troubled consciences, the full value of the atoning death of Christ, as putting away, for ever, all their sins, and bringing them nigh to God, without a stain upon the soul, or a sting in the conscience. If this be the present actual condition of the reader, he would need to consider the first clause of the verse just quoted. "He gave himself for our sins." This is a most blessed statement for a troubled soul. It settles the whole question of sin. If it be true that Christ gave Himself for my sins, what remains for me but to rejoice in the precious fact that my sins are all gone The One who took my place, who stood charged with my sins, who suffered in my room and stead, is now at the right hand of God, crowned with glory and honour. This is enough. My sins are all gone for ever. If they were not, He could not be where He now is. The crown of glory which wreathes His blessed brow is the proof that my sins are perfectly atoned for, and therefore perfect peace is my portion - a peace as perfect as the work of Christ can make it.
But then, let us never forget that the very same work that has for ever put away our sins has delivered us from this present evil world. The two things go together. Christ has not only delivered me from the consequences of my sins, but also from the present power of sin, and from the claims and influences of that thing which scripture calls "the world." All this, however, will come more fully out as we proceed with our chapter.
"And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with His finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times." Here we have the solid groundwork of all real purification. we know that, in the type before us, it is only, as the inspired apostle tells us, a question of "sanctifying to me purifying of the flesh." (Heb. 9: 13) But we have to look beyond the type to the antitype - beyond the shadow to the substance. In the sevenfold sprinkling of the blood of the red heifer, before the tabernacle of the congregation, we have a figure of the perfect presentation of the blood of Christ to God, as the only ground of the meeting-place between God and the conscience. The number "seven," as has frequently been observed, is expressive of perfection; and, in the figure before us, we see the perfection attaching to the death of Christ, as an atonement for sin, presented to, and accepted by God. All rests upon this divine ground. The blood has been shed, and presented to a holy God, as a perfect atonement for sin. This, when simply received by faith, must relieve the conscience from all sense of guilt and all fear of condemnation. There is nothing before God save the perfection of the atoning work of Christ. Sin has been judged and our sins put away. They have been completely obliterated by the precious blood of Christ. To believe this is to enter into perfect repose of conscience.
And here let the reader carefully note that there is no further allusion to the sprinkling of blood throughout the entire of this singularly interesting chapter. This is precisely in keeping with the doctrine of Hebrews 9, 10. It is but another illustration of the divine harmony of the Volume. The sacrifice of Christ, being divinely perfect, needs not to be repeated. Its efficacy is divine and eternal. "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Heb. 9: 11-14.) Observe the force of these two words, "once" and "eternal." See how they set forth the completeness and divine efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ. The blood was shed once and for ever. To think of a repetition of that great work would be to deny its everlasting and all-sufficient value, and reduce it to the level of the blood of bulls and goats.
But, further," It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now, once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Sin therefore, has been put away. It cannot be put away, and, at the same time, be on the believer’s conscience. This is plain. It must either be admitted that the believer’s sins are blotted out, and his conscience perfectly purged, or that Christ must die over again. But this latter is not only needless, but wholly out of the question; for, as the apostle goes on to say, "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation."
There is something most marvellous in the patient elaborateness with which the Holy Ghost argues out this entire subject. He expounds, illustrates, and enforces the great doctrine of the completeness of the sacrifice in such a way, as to carry conviction to the soul, and relieve the conscience of its heavy burden. Such is the exceeding grace of God that He can not only accomplished the work of eternal redemption for us, But, in the most patient and painstaking manner, has argued and reasoned, and proved the whole point in question, so as not to leave one hair’s breadth of ground on which to base an objection. Let us hearken to His further powerful reasonings, and may the Spirit apply them in power to the heart of the anxious reader.
"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in these sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." But that which the blood of bulls could never do, the blood of Jesus has for ever done. This makes all the difference. All the blood that ever flowed around Israel’s altars - the millions of sacrifices, offered according to the requirements of the Mosaic ritual - could not blot out one stain from the conscience, or justify a sin-hating God in receiving a sinner to Himself. "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." "Wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God . . .. . By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." Mark the contrast. God had no pleasure in the endless round of sacrifices under the law. They did not please Him. They left wholly unaccomplished that which He had in His loving heart to do for His people, namely, to rid them completely of sin’s heavy load, and bring them unto Himself, in perfect peace of conscience and liberty of heart. This, Jesus, by the one offering of His blessed body, did. He did the will of God; and, blessed for ever be His name, He has not to do His work over again. We may refuse to believe that the work is done - refuse to commit our souls to its efficacy - to enter into the rest which it is calculated to impart - to enjoy the holy liberty of spirit which it is fitted to yield; but there stands the work in its own imperishable virtue; and there, too, stand the Spirit’s arguments respecting that work, in their own unanswerable force and clearness; and neither Satan’s dark suggestions, nor our own unbelieving reasonings can ever touch either the one or the other. They may, and alas! they do, most sadly interfere with our soul’s enjoyment of the truth; but the truth itself remains ever the same.
"And every priest standeth daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." It is due to the blood of Christ that it should impart eternal perfection; and, we may surely add, it is due to it likewise that our souls should taste that perfection. No one need ever imagine that he is doing honour to the work of Christ, or to the Spirit’s testimony respecting that work, when he refuses to accept that perfect remission of sins which is proclaimed to him through the blood of the cross. It is no sign of true piety, or of pure religion, to deny what the grace of God has done for us in Christ, and what the record of the eternal Spirit has presented to our souls on the page of inspiration.
Christian reader, anxious inquirer, does it not seem strange that, when the word of God presents to our view Christ seated at the right hand of God, in virtue of accomplished redemption, we should be, virtually, in no wise better off than those who had merely a human priest standing daily ministering, and offering the same round of sacrifices? We have a divine Priest who has sat down for ever. They had a merely human priest, who could never, in his official capacity, sit down at all; and yet are we, in the state of the mind, in the apprehension of the soul, in the actual condition of the conscience, in no respect better off than they? Can it Be possible that, with a perfect work to rest upon, our souls should never know perfect rest? The Holy Ghost, as we have seen in these various quotations taken from the epistle to the Hebrews, has left nothing unsaid to satisfy our souls as to the question of the complete putting away of sin by the precious blood of Christ. Why then should you not, this moment, enjoy full, settled peace of conscience? Has the blood of Jesus done nothing more for you than the blood of a bullock did for a Jewish worshipper?
It may be, however, that the reader is ready to say, in reply to all that we have been seeking to urge upon him," I do not, in the least, doubt the efficacy of the blood of Jesus. I believe it cleanseth from all sin. I believe, most thoroughly, that all who simply put their trust in that blood are perfectly safe, and will be eternally happy. My difficulty does not lie here at all. What troubles me is, not the efficacy of the blood, in which I fully believe, but my own personal interest in that blood, of which I have no satisfactory evidence. This is the secret of all my trouble. The doctrine of the blood is as clear as a sunbeam; but the question of my interest therein is involved in hopeless obscurity."
Now if this be at all the embodiment of the reader’s feelings on this momentous subject, it only proves the necessity of his deeply pondering the fourth verse of the nineteenth of Numbers. There he will see that the true basis of all purification is found in this, that the blood of atonement has been presented to God, and accepted by Him. This is a most precious truth, but one little understood. It is of all importance that the really anxious soul should have a clear view of the subject of atonement. It is so natural to us all to be occupied with our thoughts and feelings about the blood of Christ, rather than with the blood itself, and with God’s thoughts respecting it. If the blood has been perfectly presented to God, if He has accepted it, if He has glorified Himself in the putting away of sin, then what remains for the divinely exercised conscience but to find perfect repose in that which has met all the claims of God, harmonised His attributes, and laid the foundations of that marvellous platform whereon a sin-hating God and a poor sin-destroyed sinner can meet? Why introduce the question of my interest in the blood of Christ, as though that work were not complete without anything of mine, call it what you will, my interest, my feelings, my experience, my appreciation, my appropriation, my anything? Why not rest in Christ alone? This would be really having an interest in Him. But the very moment the heart gets occupied with the question of its own interest - the moment the eye is withdrawn from that divine object which the word of God and the Holy Ghost present - then spiritual darkness and perplexity must ensue; and the soul, instead of rejoicing in the perfection of the work of Christ, is tormented by looking at its own poor, imperfect feelings.
"The atoning work is done,
The Victim’s blood is shed;
And Jesus now is gone,
His people’s cause to plead.
He stands in heaven their Great High Priest,
And bears their names upon His breast."
Here, blessed be God, we have the stable groundwork of "purification for sin," and of perfect peace for the conscience. "The atoning work is done." All is finished. the great Antitype of the red heifer has been slain. He gave himself up to death, under the wrath and judgement of a righteous God, that all who simply put their trust in Him might know, in the deep secret of their own souls, divine purification and perfect Peace. We are purified as to the conscience, not by our thoughts about the blood, but by the blood itself. We must insist upon this. God Himself has made out our title for us, and that title is found in the blood alone. Oh! that most precious blood of Jesus that speaks profound peace to every troubled soul that will simply lean upon its eternal efficacy. Why, we may ask, is it that the blessed doctrine of the blood is so little understood and appreciated? Why will people persist in looking to anything else, or in mingling anything else with it? May the Holy Ghost lead the anxious reader, as he reads these lines, to stay his heart and conscience upon the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
Having thus endeavoured to present to the reader the precious truth unfolded to us in the death of the red heifer, we shall now ask him to meditate, for a few moments, upon the burning of the heifer. We have looked at the blood, let us now gaze upon the ashes. In the former, we have the sacrificial death of Christ, as the only purification for sin. In the latter, we have the remembrance of that death applied to the heart by the Spirit, through the word, in order to remove any defilement contracted in our walk from day to day. This gives great completeness and beauty to this most interesting type. God has not only made provision for past sins, but also for present defilement, so that we may be ever before him in all the value and merit of the perfect work of Christ. He would have us treading the courts of His sanctuary, the holy precincts of His presence," Clean every whit.’ And not only does He Himself see as thus; But, blessed for ever be His name, He would have us thus in our own inward self-consciousness. He would give us, by His Spirit, through the word, the deep inward sense of cleanness in His sight, so that the current of our communion with Him may flow on without a ripple and without a curve. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1) But if we fail to walk in the light - if we forget, and, in our forgetfulness, touch the unclean thing, how is our communion to be restored? Only by the removal of the defilement. But how is this to be effected? By the application to Our hearts and consciences of the precious truth of the death of Christ. The Holy Ghost produces self-judgement, and brings to our remembrance the precious truth that Christ suffered death for that defilement which we so lightly and indifferently contract. It is not a fresh sprinkling of the blood of Christ - a thing unknown in scripture; but the remembrance of His death brought home, in fresh power, to the contrite heart, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost.
"And one shall burn the heifer in his sight...... And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer......And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin."
It is the purpose of God that His children should be purified from all iniquity, and that they should walk in separation from this present evil world, where all is death and defilement. this separation is effected by the action of the word on the heart, by the power of the Holy Ghost. "Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that he might deliver as from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." (Gal. 1: 4) And again, "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Titus 2: 13, 14.
It is remarkable how constantly the Spirit of God presents, in intimate connection, the full relief of the conscience from all sense of guilt, and the deliverance of the heart from the moral influence of this present evil world. Now, it should be our care, beloved Christian reader, to maintain the integrity of this connection. Of course, it is only by the gracious energy of the Holy Ghost that we can do so; but we ought to seek earnestly to understand and practically carry out the blessed link of connection between the death of Christ as an atonement for sin, and as the moral power of separation from this world. Many of the people of God never get beyond the former, if they even get that length. Many seem to be quite satisfied with the Knowledge of the forgiveness of sins through the atoning work of Christ, while, at the same time, they fail to realise deadness to the world in virtue of the death of Christ, and their identification with Him therein.
Now, when we stand and gaze upon the burning of the red heifer, in Numbers 19 - when we examine that mystic heap of ashes, what do we find? It may be said, in reply, "We find our sins there." True, thanks be to God, and to the Son of His love, we do indeed find our sins, our iniquities, our trespasses, our deep crimson guilt, all reduced to ashes. But is there nothing more? Can we not, by a careful analysis, discover more? Unquestionably. We find nature there, in every stage of its existence - from the highest to the lowest point in its history. Moreover, we find all the glory of this world there. the cedar and the hyssop represent nature in its widest extremes; and, in giving its extremes, they take in all that lies between. "Solomon spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."
"Scarlet" is viewed, by those who have carefully examined scripture on the point, as the type or expression of human splendour, worldly grandeur, the glory of this world, the glory of man. Hence, therefore, we see in the burning of the heifer, the end of all worldly greatness, human glory, and the complete setting aside of the flesh, with all its belongings. This renders the burning of the heifer deeply significant. It shadows forth a truth too little known, and, when known, too readily forgotten - a truth embodied in these memorable words of the apostle, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, Whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."
We are all far too prone to accept the cross as the ground of escape from all the consequences of our sins, and of full acceptance with God, and, at the same time, refuse it as the ground of our complete separation from the world. True it is, thanks and praise be to our God, the solid ground of our deliverance from guilt and consequent condemnation; but it is more than this. It has severed us, for ever, from all that pertains to this world, through which we are passing. Are my sins put away Yes; blessed be the God of all grace! according to what? According to the perfection of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as estimated by God Himself. Well then, such, precisely, is the measure of our deliverance from this present evil world - from its fashions, its maxims, its habits, its principles. The believer has absolutely nothing in common with this world, in so far as he enters into the spirit and power of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. That cross has dislodged him from everything here below, and made him a pilgrim and a stranger in this world. The truly devoted heart sees the dark shadow of the cross looming over all the glitter and glare, the pomp and fashion of this world. Paul saw this, and the sight of it caused him to esteem the world, in its very highest aspect, in its most attractive forms, in its brightest glories, as dross.
Such was the estimate formed of this world by one who had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. "The world is crucified unto me," said he, "and I unto the world." Such was Paul, and such should every Christian be - a stranger on earth, a citizen of heaven, and this, not merely in sentiment or theory, but in downright fact and reality; for, as surely as our deliverance from hell is more than a mere sentiment or theory, so surely is our separation from this present evil age. The one is as positive and as real as the other.
But here let us ask, Why is not this great practical truth more pressed home upon the hearts of evangelical Christians at the present moment? Why are we so slow to urge upon one another the separating power of the cross of Christ? If my heart loves Jesus, I shall not seek a place, a portion, or a name where He found only a malefactor’s cross. This, dear reader, is the simple way to look at the matter. Do you really love Christ? Has your heart been touched and attracted by His wondrous love to you? If so, remember that He was cast out by this world. Yes, Jesus was, and still is, an outcast from this world. There is no change. The world is the world still; and be it remembered, that one of Satan’s special devices is to lead people to accept salvation from Christ, while, at the same time, they refuse to be identified with Him in His rejection - to avail themselves of the atoning work of the cross, while abiding comfortably in the world that is stained with the guilt of nailing Christ thereto. In other words, he leads people to think and to say that the offence of the cross has ceased; that the world of the nineteenth century is totally different from the world of the first; that if the Lord Jesus were on earth now He would meet with very different treatment from that which He received then; that it is not now a pagan world, but a Christian one, and this makes a material and a fundamental difference; that now it is quite right for a Christian to accept of citizenship in this world, to have a name, a place, and a portion here, seeing it is not the same world at all, as that which nailed the Son of God to Calvary’s cursed tree.
Now we feel it incumbent on us to press upon all who read these lines that this is, in very deed, a lie of the arch-enemy of souls. The world is not changed. It may have changed its dress, But it has not changed its nature, its spirit, its principles. It hates Jesus as cordially as when the cry went forth," Away with him! Crucify him!" There is really no change. If only we try the world by the same grand test, we shall find it to be the same evil, God-hating, Christ-rejecting world as ever. And what is that test? Christ crucified. May this solemn truth be engraved on our hearts! May we realise and manifest its formative power! May it detach us more completely from all that belongs to the world! May we be enabled to understand more fully the truth presented in the ashes of the red heifer! Then shall our separation from the world, and our dedication to Christ, be more intense and real. The Lord, in His exceeding goodness, grant that thus it may be, with all His people, in this day of hollow, worldly, half-and-half profession!
Let us now consider, for a moment, how the ashes were to be applied.
"He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify Himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him."
It is a solemn thing to have to do with God - to walk with Him, from day to day, in the midst of a defiled and defiling scene. He cannot tolerate any uncleanness upon those with whom He deigns to walk, and in whom He dwells. He can pardon and blot out; He can heal, cleanse, and restore; but He cannot sanction unjudged evil, or suffer it upon His people. It would be a denial of His very name and nature were He to do so. This, while deeply solemn, is truly blessed. It is our joy to have to do with One whose presence demands and secures holiness. We are passing through a world in which we are surrounded with defiling influences. True, defilement is not now contracted by touching "a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave." These things were, as we know, types of things moral and spiritual with which we are in danger of coming in contact every day and every hour. We doubt not but those who have much to do with the things of this world are most painfully sensible of the immense difficulty of escaping with unsoiled hands. Hence the need of holy diligence in all our habits and associations, lest we contract defilement, and interrupt our communion with God. He must have us in a condition worthy of Himself. "Be ye holy, for I am holy."
But the anxious reader, whose whole soul breathes after holiness, may eagerly inquire, "What, then, are we to do, if it be true that we are thus surrounded, on all hands, with defiling influences, and if we are so prone to contract that defilement? Furthermore, if it is impossible to have fellowship with God, with unclean hands and a condemning conscience, What are we to do?" First of all, then, we should say, be watchful. Wait much and earnestly on God. He is faithful and gracious - a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God - a liberal and an unupbraiding Giver. "He giveth more grace." This is, positively, a blank cheque which faith can fill up to any amount. Is it the real purpose of your soul to get on, to advance in the divine life, to grow in personal holiness? Then beware how you continue, for a single hour, in contact with what soils your hands and wounds your conscience, grieves the Holy Ghost, and mars your communion. Be decided. Be whole-hearted. Give up, at once, the unclean thing, whatever it be, habit, or association, or anything else. Cost what it may, give it up. Entail what loss it may, abandon it. No worldly gain, no earthly advantage, could compensate for the loss of a pure conscience, an uncondemning heart, and the light of your Father’s countenance. Are you not convinced of this? If so, seek grace to carry out your conviction.
But it may be further asked, "What is to be done when defilement is actually contracted? How is the defilement to be removed?" Hear the reply in the figurative language of Numbers 19. "And for an unclean person, they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel. And a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave. And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe Himself in water, and shall be clean at even."
The reader will remark that, in the twelfth and eighteenth verses, there is a double action set forth. There is the action of the third day, and the action of the seventh day. Both were essentially necessary to remove the ceremonial defilement caused by contact with the varied forms of death above specified. Now, what did this double action typify? What is it that, in our spiritual history, answers thereto? we believe it to be this. When we, through lack of watchfulness and spiritual energy, touch the unclean thing and get defiled, we may be ignorant of it; but God knows all about it. He cares for us, and is looking after us; not, blessed be His name, as an angry judge, or stern censor, but as a loving father, who will never impute anything to us, because it was all, long ago, imputed to the One who died in our stead. But, though He will never impute it to us, He will make us feel it deeply and keenly. He will be a faithful reprover of the unclean thing; and He can reprove all the more powerfully simply because He will never reckon it against us. The holy Spirit brings our sin to remembrance, and this causes unutterable anguish of heart. This anguish may continue for some time. It may be moments, days, months, or years. We once met with a young Christian, who was rendered miserable, for three years, by having gone with some worldly friends on an excursion. This convicting operation of the holy Ghost we believe to be shadowed forth by the action of the third day. He first brings our sin to remembrance; and then He graciously brings to our remembrance, and applies to our souls, through the written word, the value of the death of Christ as that which has already met the defilement which we so easily contract. This answers to the action of the seventh day - removes the defilement and restores our communion.
And, be it carefully remembered, that we can never get rid of defilement in any other way. We may seek to forget, to slur over, to heal the wound slightly, to make little of the matter, to let time obliterate it from the tablet of memory. It will never do. Nay, it is most dangerous work. There are few things more disastrous than trifling with conscience or the claims of holiness. And it is as foolish as it is dangerous; for God has, in His grace, made full provision for the removal of the uncleanness which His holiness detects and condemns. But the uncleanness must be removed, else communion is impossible. "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." the suspension of a believers communion is what answers to the cutting off of a member from the congregation of Israel. The Christian can never be cut off from Christ; but his communion can be interrupted by a single sinful thought, and that sinful thought must be judged and confessed, and the soil of it removed, ere the communion can be restored. It is well to remember this. It is a serious thing to trifle with sin. We may rest assured we cannot possibly have fellowship with God and walk in defilement. To think so, is to blaspheme the very name, the very nature, the very throne and majesty of God. No, dear reader, we must keep a clean conscience, and maintain the holiness of God, else we shall, very soon, make shipwreck of faith and break down altogether. May the Lord keep us walking softly and tenderly, watchfully and prayerfully, until we have laid aside our bodies of sin and death, and entered upon that bright and blessed world above, where sin, death, and defilement are unknown.
In studying the ordinances and ceremonies of the Levitical economy, nothing is more striking than the jealous care with which the God of Israel watched over His people, in order that they might be preserved from every defiling influence. By day and by night, awake and asleep, at home and abroad, in the bosom of the family and in the solitary walk, His eyes were upon them. He looked after their food, their raiment, their domestic habits and arrangements. He carefully instructed them as to what they might and what they might not eat; what they might and what they might not wear. He even set forth, distinctly, His mind as to the very touching and handling of things. In short, He surrounded them with barriers amply sufficient, had they only attended to them, to resist the whole tide of defilement to which they were exposed on every side.
In all this, we read, in unmistakable characters, the holiness of God; but we read also, as distinctly, the grace of God. If divine holiness could not suffer defilement upon the people, divine grace made ample provision for the removal thereof. This provision is set forth in our chapter under two forms, namely, the blood of atonement, and the water of separation. Precious provision! a provision illustrating, at once, the holiness and the grace of God. Did we not know the ample provisions of divine grace, the lofty claims of divine holiness would be perfectly overwhelming; but being assured of the former, we can heartily rejoice in the latter. Could we desire to see the standard of divine holiness lowered a single hair’s breadth? Far be the thought. How could we, or why should we, seeing that divine grace has fully provided what divine holiness demands? An Israelite of old might shudder as he hearkened to such words as these, "He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days." and again, "Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel." Such words might indeed terrify his heart. He might feel led to exclaim, "What am I to do? How can I ever get on? It seems perfectly impossible for me to escape defilement." But, then, what of the ashes of the burnt heifer? What of the water of separation? What could these mean? They set forth the memorial of the sacrificial death of Christ, applied to the heart by the power of the Spirit of God. "He shall purify himself with it the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean." If we contract defilement, even though it be through negligence, that defilement must be removed, ere our communion can be restored. But we cannot get rid of the soil by any effort of our own. It can only be by the use of God’s gracious provision, even the water of purification. An Israelite could no more remove by his own efforts the defilement caused by the touch of a dead body, than he could have broken Pharaoh’s yoke, or delivered himself from the lash of Pharaoh’s taskmasters.
And let the reader observe that it was not a question of offering a fresh sacrifice, nor yet of a fresh application of the blood. It is of special importance that this should be distinctly seen and understood. The death of Christ cannot be repeated. "Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him, For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, He liveth unto God." We stand, by the grace of God, in the full credit and value of the death of Christ; But, inasmuch as we are surrounded, on all sides, by temptations and snares; and as we have, within us, such capabilities and tendencies; and, further, seeing we have a powerful adversary who is ever on the watch to ensnare us, and lead us off the path of truth and purity, we could not get on for a single moment, were it not for the gracious way in which our God has provided for all our exigencies, in the precious death and all-prevailing advocacy of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not merely that the blood of Jesus Christ has washed away all our sins, and reconciled us to a Holy God, but "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." "He ever liveth to make intercession for us," and "He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." He is ever in the presence of God for us. He represents us there, and maintains us in the divine integrity of the place and relationship in which His atoning death has set us. Our case can never, by any possibility, fall through, in the hands of such an Advocate. He must cease to live, ere the very feeblest of His saints can perish. We are identified with Him and He with us.
Now, then, Christian reader, what should be the practical effect of all this grace upon our hearts and lives? when we think of the death, and of the burning - of the blood, and of the ashes - of the atoning sacrifice, and the interceding Priest and Advocate, what influence should it exert upon our souls? How should it act upon our consciences? Should it lead us to think little of sin! Should it cause us to walk carelessly and indifferently? Should it have the effect of making as light and frivolous in our ways? Alas! for the heart that can think so. We may rest assured of this, that the man who can draw a plea, from the rich provisions of divine grace, for lightness of conduct or levity of spirit, knows very little, if indeed he knows anything at all, of the true nature or proper influence of grace and its provisions. Could we imagine, for a moment, that the ashes of the heifer or the water of separation would have had the effect of making an Israelite careless as to his walk? Assuredly not. On the contrary, the very fact of such careful provision being made, by the goodness of God, against defilement, would make him feel what a serious thing it was to contract it. Such, at least, would be the proper effect of the provisions of divine grace. The heap of ashes, laid up in a clean place, gave forth a double testimony; it testified of the goodness of God; and it testified of the hatefulness of sin. It declared that God could not suffer uncleanness upon His people; but it declared also that He had provided the means of removing it. It is utterly impossible that the blessed doctrine of the sprinkled blood, of the ashes, and of the water of separation, can be understood and enjoyed, without its producing a holy horror of sin in all its defiling forms. And we may further assert that no one who has ever felt the anguish of a defiled conscience could lightly contract defilement. A pure conscience is Far too precious a treasure to be lightly parted with; and a defiled conscience is far too heavy a burden to be lightly taken up. But, blessed be the God of all grace, He has met all our need, in His own perfect way; and, He has met it, too, not to make us careless, but to make us watchful. "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not." But then he adds, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but for the whole world." 1 John.
But we must draw this section to a close, and shall merely add a word on the closing verses of our chapter. "And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even. and whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean, and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even." (Num. 19: 21, 22) In verse 18, we are taught that it needed a clean person to sprinkle the unclean; and in verse 21, we are taught that the act of sprinkling another defiled oneself.
Putting both these together, we learn, as another has said, "That any one who has to do with the sin of another, though it be in the way of duty, to cleanse it, is defiled; not as the guilty person, it is true, but we cannot touch sin without being defiled." And we learn also that, in order to lead another into the enjoyment of the cleansing virtue of Christ’s work, I must be in the enjoyment of that cleansing work myself. It is well to remember this. Those who applied the water of separation to others had to use that water for themselves. May our souls enter into this! May we ever abide in the sense of the perfect cleanness into which the death of Christ introduces us, and in which His priestly work maintains us! And oh! let us never forget that contact with evil defiles. It was so under the Mosaic economy, and it is so now.
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 THE ASHES OF A HEIFER SPRINKLING THE UNCLEAN (vs…
THE ASHES OF A HEIFER SPRINKLING THE UNCLEAN (vs Num_18:1. There is no note of time in connection with this chapter, but internal evidence points strongly to the supposition that it belongs to the early days of wandering after the ban. It belongs to a period when death had resumed his normal, and more than his normal, power over the children of Israel; when, having been for a short time expelled, (except in a limited number of cases see above on Num_10:28) he had come back with frightful rigour to reign over a doomed generation. It belongs also, as it would seem, to a time when the daily, monthly, and even annual routine of sacrifice and purgation was suspended through poverty, distress, and disfavour with God. It tells of the mercy and condescension which did not leave even the rebellious and excommunicate without some simple remedy, some easily-obtainable solace, for the one religious distress which must of necessity press upon them daily and hourly, not only as Israelites, but as children of the East, sharing the ordinary superstitions of the age. Through the valley of the shadow of death they were doomed at Kadesh to walk, while their fellows fell beside them one by one, until the reek and taint of death passed upon the whole congregation. Almost all nations have had, as is well known, an instinctive horror of death, which has every. where demanded separation and purification on the part of those who have come in contact with it (Bahr, "Symbolik," 2, page 466 sq. ). And this religious horror had not been combated, but, on the contrary, fostered and deepened by the Mosaic legislation. The law everywhere encouraged the idea that sin and death were essentially connected, and that disease and death spread their infection in the spiritual as well as in the natural order of things. Life and death were the two opposite poles under the law, as under the gospel; but the eye of faith was fixed upon natural life and natural death, and was not trained to look beyond. It could never have occurred to a Jew to say, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. To die, however nobly, was not only to be cut off from God oneself, but to become a curse and a danger and a cause of religious defilement to those around. There is, therefore, a beautiful consistency between this enactment and the circumstances of the time on the one hand, between this enactment and the revealed character of God on the other hand. Although they were his covenant people no more, since they were under sentence of death, yet, like others, and more than others, they had religious horrors and religious fears not very spiritual, perhaps, but very real to them; these horrors and fears cried to him piteously for relief, and that relief he was careful to give. They must die, but they need not suffer daily torment of death; they must not worship him in the splendid and perfect order of his appointed ritual, but they should at least have the rites which should make life tolerable to them. It appears to be a mistake to connect this ordinance especially with the plague which occurred after the rebellion of Korah. It was not an exceptional calamity, the effects of which might indeed be widespread, but would be soon over, which the people had to dread exceedingly; it was the daily mortality always going on in every camp under all circumstances. If only the elder generation died off in the wilderness, this alone would yield nearly 100 victims every day, and by each of these a considerable number of the survivors must have been defiled. Thus, in the absence of special provision, one of two things must have happened: either the unhappy people would have grown callous and indifferent to the awful presence of death; or, more probably, a dark cloud of religious horror and depression would have permanently enveloped them.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 A red heifer without spot.
Num_19:1-22
A red heifer without spot.
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The red heifer
I. It is undoubtedly true that even the true Israelite, the true believer in Christ, is the subject of daily defilement.
1. Some of our defilement arises from the fact that we do actually come into contact with sin, here imaged in the corruption of death. The best of men are men at the best, and while they are only men they will still sin. We are in close connection with sin, because sin is in ourselves. It has dyed us through and through, staining the very warp and woof of our nature, and until we lay aside these bodies and are admitted to the Church of the first-born above, we shall never cease very intimate connection with sin.
2. Moreover, we get defilement from companionship with sinners. This dusty world must leave some mark upon our white garments let us travel as carefully as we may. I am black because the sun hath looked upon me, must ever be the confession of the bride of Christ. This world is full of the spiritually dead, and since we live we must be often rendered unclean among the sinful, and hence we need a daily cleansing to fit us for daily fellowship with a holy God.
3. One reason why we are so constantly defiled is our want of watchfulness. You will observe that everything in the tent of a dead man was defiled except vessels that were covered over. Any vessel which was left open was at once unclean. You and I ought to cover up our hearts from the contamination of sin. It were well for us if we kept our heart with all diligence, since out of it are the issues of life.
4. Sin is so desperately evil that the very slightest sin defiles it. He who touched a bone was unclean. It was not necessary to put your hand upon the clay-cold corpse to be defiled; the accidently touching with the foot a bone carelessly thrown up by the grave-digger; even the touching it by the ploughman as he turned up his furrow, even this was sufficient to make him unclean. Sin is such an immeasurably vile thing that the slightest iniquity makes the Christian foul--a thought, an imagination, the glancing of an eye.
5. Sin, even when it is not seen, defiles, for a man was defiled who touched a grave. Oh, how many graves there are of sin--things that are fair to look upon, externally admirable and internally abominable!
6. The Jew was not only in danger of defilement in his tent and when he walked the roads, but he was in danger m the open fields; for you will observe, it says, that if he touched a body that had been slain in the open fields, or a bone, he should be unclean. Wherever you go you find sin!
II. A purification has been provided. The ransomed Church of God need daily to be washed in the fountain, and the mercy is that the precious blood shall never lose its power, but its constant efficacy shall abide till they are, every one of them, Saved to sin no more.
1. There is a propitiation provided for daily defilement, for first of all, if it were not so, how melancholy were your case and mine!
2. The Lord must have provided a daily cleansing for our daily defilement, for if not, where were His wisdom, where His love? He has provided for everything else.
3. The work of our Lord Jesus Christ assures us of this. What is there opened for the house of David, for sin, and for uncleanness? A cistern? A cistern that might be emptied, a waterpot, such as that which stood at Canas marriage feast, and might be drained? No; there is a fountain open for sin and uncleanness. We wash, the fountain flows; we wash again, the fountain flows still. From the great depths of the deity of Christ, the eternal merit of His passion comes everlastingly welling up. Wash! wash! It is inexhaustible, for it is fountain-fulness.
4. The work of the Holy Spirit also meets the case, for what is His business but constantly to take of the things of Christ and reveal them unto us; constantly to quicken, to enlighten, and to comfort? Why all this but because we are constantly in need, perpetually being defiled, and therefore wanting perpetually to have the purification applied?
5. Facts show that there is a purification for present guilt. The saints of old fell into sin, but they did not remain there.
III. The red heifer sets forth in a most admirable manner the daily purification for daily sin.
1. It was a heifer--an unusual thing for a sacrifice to be a female; and we scarcely know why it should be in this case, unless indeed, to make the substitution more evident. This red heifer stood for all the house of Israel--for the whole Church of God; and the Church is always looked upon and considered in Scripture as being the spouse--the bride--always feminine. Perhaps, to make the substitution obvious and complete, to show that this heifer stood in the stead and place of the whole seed of Israel, it was chosen rather than the customary bullock.
2. It was a red heifer--bringing to the mind of the Israelites the idea of blood, which was always associated with atonement and putting away of sin. Surely when we think of Christ, we always associate Him with the streaming gore when we are under a sense of sin.
3. It was a heifer without spot--denoting the perfection of Christs character.
4. Observe that the red heifer was one whereon never came yoke. Perhaps this sets forth how willingly Christ came to die for us; not forced from heaven, but freely delivering Himself for us all. An interesting circumstance about this red heifer is that it was not provided by the priests; it was not provided out of the usual funds of the sanctuary, nor yet by the princes, nor by any one person.
5. The children of Israel provided it. What for? Why, that as they came out of their tents in the desert, or their houses in Jerusalem, and saw the priests leading the red heifer, every man, and every woman, and every child might say, I have a share in that heifer, I have a share in that victim which is being led out of the city to be consumed. I wish--oh! I would to God I dare hope, that every man and every woman here could say, I have a share in Jesus Christ, for that is the meaning of this national provision, to let us see how Christ shed His blood for all His people, and they have all a part and all an interest in Him.
6. As we noted what this victim was, there is yet to be observed what was done with it. Again, let me beg you to refer to your Bibles to see what became of this red heifer.
(1) It was taken out of the camp. Herein it was a picture of Christ. That He might sanctify His people with His own blood, He suffered without the camp. Without the camp was the place of uncleanness. There the lepers dwelt; there every defiled person was put in quarantine. Jesus Christ must be numbered with the transgressors, and must suffer upon Mount Calvary, outside the city gates, upon that general Tyburn of criminals, the place of a skull. The people of God are to be a separate people from all the rest of the world; they are not to be numbered with the dwellers in this worlds city; they are to be strangers, and pilgrims, and sojourners, as all their fathers were. Therefore, Christ, to set them an example of separation, suffers Himself without the camp.
(2) When taken without the camp, the red cow was slain. A dying Saviour that takes away our sin. We love Christ the risen one, we bless Christ the living, pleading intercessor, but after all the purification to your conscience and to mine comes from the bleeding sacrifice. See Him slain before our eyes.
(3) When the heifer was slain, Eleazer dipped his finger in the blood as it flowed gurgling forth. He dipped his finger in the warm blood, and sprinkled it seven times before the door of the tabernacle. Seven is the number of perfection--to show that there was a perfect offering made by the sprinkling of the blood; even so, Jesus has perfectly presented His bloody sacrifice, Now mark, all this does not purify. I am not yet come to that point. Atonement precedes purification: Christ must die and offer Himself a victim, or else He cannot be the purifier.
(4) When the whole was fully burnt, or while burning, we find the priest threw in cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet. What was this? According to Maimonides the cedar wood was taken in logs and bound round with hyssop, and then afterwards the whole enveloped in scarlet; so what was seen by the people was the scarlet which was at once the emblem of sin and its punishment--Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Everything you see still continues of the red colour, to set forth atonement for sin. Inside this scarlet there is the hyssop of faith, which gives efficacy to the offering in each individual, and still within this is the cedar wood that sent forth a sweet and fragrant smell, a perfect righteousness, giving acceptance to the whole. One delights to think of this in connection with Christ, that, as there is a daily witness of our defilement, so there is a daily imputation of His perfect righteousness to us, so that we stand every day accepted in the beloved by a daily imputation, by which not only is daily sin covered, but daily righteousness given to us.
(5) The pith of the matter lies in the last act, with the remains of the red cow. The cinders of the wood, the ashes of the bones, and dung, and flesh of the heifer, were all gathered together, and carried away and laid by in a clean place. According to the Jews there was not another heifer killed for this purpose for a thousand years. They say, but then we have no reason to believe them, that there have never been but nine red heifers offered at all; One in the days of Moses, the next in Ezras time, and the other seven afterwards, and that when Messiah comes He is to offer the tenth, by which they let out the secret that they do look upon the Messiah as coming in His own time to complete the type. Our own belief is that a red heifer was always found when ashes were wanted, and as there were hundreds and thousands of persons defiling themselves, the place where the ashes were kept was much frequented, and much of the purifying matter required. The ashes were to be put into a vessel with running water, and the water was sprinkled over the unclean person who touched a body or a bone. By this process the ashes would require to be renewed much oftener than once in a thousand years, in order that every one might have his portion. Does not thin storing up suggest that there is a store of merit in Christ Jesus? There was not only enough to make us free from sin by justification, but there is a store of merit laid up that daily defilement may be removed as often as it comes. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The law of the red heifer applied
The record of the law of the red heifer unfolds some traces of the manner, times, and substance of Gods teaching in those days when the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end.
1. His method was largely to use symbols, but not to the withholding of words. As objects lying in darkness cannot be presented but must be represented, so the truths suited to the manhood of our race were taught in that method to earlier generations.
2. The symbols of the Jewish worship were instituted at special times. God did not put it forth as a system. He did not place it as a full-grown tree in a wood. It is like a house to which have been added rooms and offices and hall as the growth of the family has demanded more scope in which to maintain new and higher thoughts. Wider views of what they need towards God cause Him to send out the beams of a light which is to dispel every doubt and fear.
I. Liability for social evil. What was there in the fact that a virulent disease had deprived so many of life, to produce a conviction that God cannot be approached for worship? Why should contact with a corpse, or entrance into a tent in which human life had ebbed away, or even a bone, or a grave trod upon, be as a barrier blocking up the way of the people to the sanctuary? Might the survivors not reason thus: If those who have died did wrong we have been equally wrong; if we are not erased from the roll of the living there is, notwithstanding, an evil chargeable to us; partakers in a like offence we are worthy of a like condemnation; the evil has not exhausted itself on them, and we are liable in some form for their calamities; we cannot in this state of pollution go into the presence of God--is there not needed a purification from those social ills whose last and most affecting sign is death?
II. The ignominy of death. The law recited in this chapter distinctly informs us that the presence of, or contact with, the signs of the death of mankind, separated from communion with God in His sanctuary. Would not thought be excited of some such form as this--It is clear that there is no moral defilement in mere closeness to the signs of death, not to come into contact with them might be a sinful act--and yet we are treated, as to our standing before God, just as if we had been guilty of gross crimes. If God-appointed duties and circumstances render it unbecoming, and even impossible, that we should keep free from those relations to the dead mentioned by this law, why should we incur such a fearful result? Surely there must be some virulent spreading poison rankling in mens death. If by its presence or touch an impassable gulf at once sinks between God and us, what an offensive attitude against Him must death assume I Much more than mere sensational shrinking should creep over us before it. How can we avoid engraving deeply on our hearts the thought that it is dishonourable to die! What is in death to make it so? This: that death is the seal of a Divine curse on man.
III. Freedom from the consequences of sin is by application of a prepared remedy. The several parts in the process of preparing the water of cleansing bear emblems to show what God requires for freeing from sin. The slaying of the heifer and the sprinkling of its blood laid bare the foundation principles, that it is the blood which maketh atonement for the soul--that without shedding of blood is no remission of sins. Everything that blocked up the way to the favour of the Lord is removed by the appointed sacrifices. He is reconcileable, and ready to count the evils of the congregation satisfied for. Were the Israelites, then, entitled to say, The offerings of atonement are made; sins are taken away; we are free from all further hindrances to acceptance ; we need to care nothing more about what happens to us? No. If acceptable offerings have been made for the people, yet events come to pass from which defilement will be caused to individuals, and, if this personal unfitness be not removed, perilous consequences must follow. Uncleanness incurred from the dead--the great sign of moral pollution--prevents approach to the holy Lord God. Separated from His presence on earth is a forecasting of an eternal separation--that soul shall be cut off from Israel. But He has a remedy for this too. He provides means of purification, and thus of renewed access to Himself. Not only is the blood of bulls and of goats shed, but the ashes of a heifer is also to sprinkle the unclean, in order to sanctify to the purifying of the flesh, and render fit for all the privileges of acceptable worship.
IV. To be without fitness for standing before God acceptably is inexcusable and irretrievable. Once purified did not do away with the necessity of being purified again, when another defilement had been incurred. The new impurity must be removed by a new application, and the cleansing remedy was constantly available (Num_19:9-10). God keeps in store that odour which can counteract the poisoning air of death; that which will restore to health at all times and never lose its efficacy; that which can be applied for with the fullest confidence that it is provided against the renewed impediments to serving God acceptably, and warrants boldness to enter into the holiest. What could justify neglect of this remedy? What evasion was possible when the uncleanness was so manifestly chargeable, and the provision for removing it so easily procurable? Must not every trifler, delayer, or neglecter be held guilty, without any palliation, of despising his Lords grace and might? (D. G. Watt, M. A.)
The ordinance of the red heifer; a parable of the pollution of sin and the Divine method of cleansing therefrom
I. The defiling nature of sin.
1. Sin is defiling in its nature.
2. The defiling power of sin is of great virulence.
3. The defiling power of sin is widespread.
II. The necessity of cleansing from sin.
III. The provision of cleansing from sin.
1. It is Divine in its origin.
2. It involves the sacrifice of the most perfect life.
3. It is invariable in its efficacy.
IV. The application of the provision for cleansing from sin. (W. Jones.)
The red heifer an analogue of the Christ
I. In its characteristics.
1. Fulness of life.
2. Perfection of life.
II. In the treatment to which it was subjected.
1. The heifer was sacrificed.
2. The heifer was sacrificed without the camp.
III. In the purpose for which it was designed.
1. The red heifer was intended to cleanse from ceremonial defilement.
2. The ashes of the heifer were efficacious for this purpose: How much more shall the blood of Christ, &c. (W. Jones.)
The ordinance of the red heifer
The special feature of the new ordinance is in the means taken to make one sacrifice available for an indefinite number of cases. This was done by the concentration, so to speak, of all the elements of the sacrifice in the ashes which were to be preserved. Here we have the explanation of the casting into the midst of the burning of the heifer of cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet (Num_19:6). These represent the appliances for sprinkling: the hyssop stalk with scarlet wool wrapped round it, fastened on a piece of cedar wood, which was held in the hand. By the casting of these into the burning the idea of sprinkling was, as it were, perpetuated in the ashes which were the residuum of the whole. These ashes could of course be preserved and used for an indefinite time; and each time they were used, the ideas which had, so to speak, been burnt into them, would be impressed upon the minds and hearts of the devout. The ashes then represented the power of a past sacrifice; even in its ashes live its former fires. The use of the running water with the ashes (Num_19:17) has the same significance as in the ritual for the cleansing of the leper in Lev_14:1-57. In making application of the ordinance of the red heifer to ourselves, we find it specially instructive in regard to the restoration of that communion with God which ought to be the chief joy of the Christian, and which is too often broken by the contracting of stains, so difficult to avoid, with sin reigning unto death all around us. There are those who, under these circumstances, feel peculiarly discouraged. They have the impression that it must be exceedingly difficult to get back to their former position. They remember how long it took them at first to be reconciled to God; and they think how much more difficult it must be now that the evil has been allowed after the experience of Gods saving grace. It seems a long and hard way back; and they have not courage to begin again. It is a mistake The way back again is not long and hand. There are the ashes of the heifer and the running water close at hand. There need be no delay, as if a new animal must be obtained, and brought to the priest, and killed at the altar, and so forth. There is a shorter way. Look back to the Sacrifice offered long ago once for all. There is the running water of the Word, which has in it, as it were in solution, the strong ashes of the Sacrifice. There for evermore is stored the virtue of that blood which cleanseth from all sin. There need be no delay. For the ashes and the water, we have the Cross and the Word; and all that is wanted is the immediate use of Gods perpetual statute for purifying the unclean (Heb_9:13-14). (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
The red heifer a wilderness type
A thoughtful student of Scripture would naturally feel disposed to inquire why it is that we get this type in Numbers and not in Leviticus. In the first seven chapters of the latter book we have a very elaborate statement of the doctrine of sacrifice; and yet we have no allusion whatever to the red heifer. Why is this? We believe it furnishes another striking illustration of the distinctive character of our book. The red heifer is, pre-eminently, a wilderness type. It was Gods provision for defilements by the way, and it prefigures the death of Christ as a purification for sin, to meet our need in passing through a defiling world, home to our eternal rest above. When, with the eye of faith, we gaze upon the Lord Jesus, we not only see Him to be the spotless One, in His own holy Person, but also One who never bore the yoke of sin. He speaks of My yoke (Mat_11:29); it was the yoke of implicit subjection to the Fathers will in all things. This was the only yoke He ever wore; and this yoke was never off, for one moment, during the entire of His spotless and perfect career--from the manger, where He lay a helpless babe, to the Cross, where He expired as a victim. But He wore no yoke of sin. Let this be distinctly understood. He went to the Cross to expiate our sins, to lay the groundwork of our perfect purification from all sin; but He did this as One who had never, at any time during His blessed life, worn the yoke of sin. He was without sin; and, as such, was perfectly fitted to the great and glorious work of expiation. Wherein is no blemish, and whereon never came yoke. It is quite as needful to remember and weigh the force of the word whereon, as of the word wherein. Both expressions are designed by the Holy Ghost to set forth the perfection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was not only internally spotless, but also externally free from every trace of sin. Neither in His Person, nor yet in His relationships, was He in any wise obnoxious to the claims of sin or death. He--adored for ever be His name!--entered into all the reality of our circumstances and condition, but in Him was no sin, and on Him no yoke of sin. (C. H. Mackintosh.)
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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 “Ordinances respecting purification from the uncleanness of death.”
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
“Ordinances respecting purification from the uncleanness of death.”
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The association of death with sin (Gen_2:17) sufficiently explains the ideas on which these ordinances are based. The principle that death and all pertaining to it, as being the manifestation and result of sin, are defiling, and so lead to interruption of the living relationship between God and His people, is not now introduced for the first time, nor is it at all peculiar to the Mosaic law. It was, on the contrary, traditional amongst the Israelites from the earliest times, is assumed in various enactments made already (cf. Num_5:2; Num_9:6, sqq.; Lev_10:1; Lev_10:7; Lev_11:8; Lev_11:11; Lev_11:24; Lev_21:1, sqq.), and is traceable in various forms amongst many nations of antiquity.…
The rites of purifying prescribed amongst these various nations have points of similarity to those laid down in this chapter; and indeed sprinklings and washings would naturally form a part in them all (cf. ch. Num_8:7) Moses then adopted here, as elsewhere, existing and ancient customs, with significant additions, as helps in the spiritual education of his people.
The ordinance was probably given at this time because the plague, which happened (Num_16:46-50) about the matter of Korah, had spread the defilement of death so widely through the camp as to seem to require some special measures of purification, more particularly as the deaths through it were in an extraordinary manner the penalty of sin. Occasion is accordingly taken to introduce a new ordinance on the whole subject, which might serve to re-assure the affrighted people at the time, supply a ready means of relief from this sort of uncleanness for the future, and by the typical character of its new elements, provide a vehicle for important instruction as to a more real Atonement afterwards to be revealed.”—Speaker’s Comm.
Num_19:2. The ordinance of the law. Keil and Del.: “A ‘statute of instruction,’ or law-statute. This combination of the two words commonly used for law and statute, which is only met with again in Num_31:21, and there, as here, in connection with a rule relating to purification from the uncleanness of death, is probably intended to give emphasis to the design of the law about to be given, to point it out as one of great importance.”
Red heifer “פָּרָה is not a cow generally, but a young cow, a heifer, δάμαλις (LXX), juvenca, between the calf and the full-grown cow.… The sacrificial animal was not to be a bullock, as in the case of the ordinary sin-offering of the congregation (Lev_4:14), but a female, because the female sex is the bearer of life (Gen_3:20), a פָּרָה, i.e., lit., the fruit-bringing; and of a red colour, not because the blood-red colour points to sin, but as the colour of the most ‘intensive life,’ which has its seat in the blood, and shows itself in the red colour of the face (the cheeks and lips); and one ‘upon which no yoke had ever come,’ i.e., whose vital energy had not yet been crippled by labour under the yoke. Lastly, like all the sacrificial animals, it was to be uninjured and free from faults, inasmuch as the idea of representation, which lay at the foundation of all the sacrifices, but more especially of the sin-offerings, demanded natural sinlessness and original purity, quite as much as imputed sin and transferred uncleanness. Whilst the last-mentioned prerequisite showed that the victim was well fitted for bearing sin, the other attributes indicated the fulness of life and power in their highest forms, and qualified it to form a powerful antidote to death As thus appointed to furnish a re-agent against death and mortal corruption, the sacrificial animal was to possess throughout, viz., in colour, in sex, and in the character of its body, the fulness of life in its greatest freshness and vigour.”—Keil and Del.
Num_19:3. Unto Eleazar. Not unto Aaron, the high priest, because the ordinance was closely connected with death and the uncleanness arising therefrom, and such uncleanness the high priest was commanded to avoid (Lev_21:11).
Without the camp, because the defilement was regarded as transferred to the sacrificial animal.
Slay her. It was not the business of the priest to slay her, but she was to be slain “before his face.”
Num_19:4. Sprinkle of her blood directly, &c. The priest was to sprinkle the blood in the direction of the front of the tabernacle.
Seven times. Seven indicating perfection. Comp. Lev_4:6; Lev_4:17.
Num_19:5. Burn the heifer, &c. “The defilement, being external, extended to the whole body of the animal: hence the propriety of burning the victim entire and everything connected with it.”—Speaker’s Comm.
Num_19:6. Cedar-wood and hyssop, &c. “In this sacrifice, the blood, which was generally poured out at the foot of the altar, was burned along with the rest, and the ashes to be obtained were impregnated with the substance thereof. But in order still further to increase the strength of these ashes, which were already well fitted to serve as a powerful antidote to the corruption of death, as being the incorruptible residuum of the sin-offering which had not been destroyed by the fire, cedar-wood was thrown into the fire, as the symbol of the incorruptible continuance of life; and hyssop, as the symbol of purification from the corruption of death; and scarlet-wool, the deep red of which shadowed forth the strongest vital energy—(see Lev_14:6)—so that the ashes might be regarded as the quintessence of all that purified and strengthened life, refined and sublimated by the fire.” (Leyrer.)—Keil and Del.
Num_19:7-10. All who had to do with the heifer or her ashes became unclean until the evening, because of the defilement of sin and death which had been transferred to her. Comp. Lev_16:21-22; Lev_16:26.
Num_19:11. Unclean seven days. “How low does this lay man! He who touched a dead beast was only unclean for one day (Lev_11:24; Lev_11:27; Lev_11:39); but he who touches a dead man is unclean for seven days. This was certainly designed to mark the peculiar impurity of man, and to show his sinfulness—seven times worse than the vilest animal! O thou son of the morning, how art thou fallen!”—Adam Clarke, LL.D.
Num_19:17. Running water shall be put, &c. Heb. as in margin: “Living waters shall be given.” “The waters of wells and fountains are called living waters, and are very much esteemed” (Lev_14:5; Lev_14:50; Num_19:17).—John Jahn, D.D.
Num_19:19. On the third day and on the seventh day. The double purification indicates the depth of the defilement which was to be removed.
Num_19:20. That soul shall be cut off, &c. This is repeated here from Num_19:13, to render the warning more impressive. Some interpret the phrase as meaning cut off by death; others, cut off by exclusion from the political and religious privileges of the nation. “In Exo_31:14-15, death is prescribed as the manner of cutting off from among the people the Sabbath-breaker; see also Num_35:2. In Lev_17:4, cutting off from among the people is the penalty of killing a clean beast and not bringing it as an offering; but in Num_24:17, ‘He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.’ (See also Exo_21:12; Num_35:31.) In Lev_18:29, cutting of is the punishment for unnatural crime; in Exo_22:19, death. So that it would appear as if cutting off generally, but not always, implied death at man’s hand.”—H. Alford, D.D., on Gen_17:14.
THE ORDINANCE OF THE RED HEIFER; A PARABLE OF THE POLLUTION OF SIN AND THE DIVINE METHOD OF CLEANSING THEREFROM.
(Whole Chapter.)
Let us consider—
I. The defiling nature of sin.
On this point the chapter suggests—
1. Sin is defiling in its nature. A dead body and everything pertaining thereto are represented as polluting those who came near to them. Death, and the corruption arising from it, are set forth as a Parable of sin and its influence. Most of the deaths which occurred in the wilderness were literally the punishment of sin. Thousands died by the plague on account of their rebellion (Num_16:49). The whole of one generation, with very few exceptions, was doomed to die in the desert because of unbelief (Num_14:28-30). Thus death would speak to them of the sin which caused it. Sin is a polluting thing. It defiles the soul even in its purest affections; it corrupts its principles; it poisons its motives, &c. No one can have anything to do with sin without incurring contamination.
2. The defiling power of sin is of great virulence. “The extreme virulence of the uncleanness is taught by the regulations that the victim should be wholly consumed outside the camp, whereas generally certain parts were consumed on the altar, and the offal only outside the camp (comp. Lev_4:11-12); that the blood was sprinkled towards and not before the sanctuary; that the officiating minister should be neither the high-priest, nor yet simply a priest, but the presumptive high priest, the office being too impure for the first, and too important for the second; that even the priest and the person that burnt the heifer were rendered unclean by reason of their contact with the victim; and, lastly, that the purification should be effected, not simply by the use of water, but of water mixed with ashes, which served as a lye, and would therefore have peculiarly cleansing properties.” The virulence of the uncleanness is also manifest in the ways in which it was incurred. If a person entered a tent, wherein anyone had died, before it was purified (Num_19:14), or touched the bone of a dead man, or a grave (Num_19:16), he became unclean; and if he, before his purification, touched anyone, the person so touched also became unclean (Num_19:22). We have in this a striking parable of the virulence of the contagion of sin. Association with sinners is perilous. Man’s safety is in loathing sin and shunning it in all its forms. (a).
3. The defiling power of sin is wide-spread. Death was present in the tent, and in the open field. The Israelite that would avoid its contamination had need to exercise constant watchfulness. Sin surrounds us. In this world the moral atmosphere is infected with it. The danger of contamination is great and constant. In our amusements, in literature, in society, in business, in politics, in every department of life, sin is present and active.
II. The necessity of cleansing from sin.
The legislation of this chapter was based upon that necessity. If any person failed to cleanse himself from the pollution of death, he was “cut off from among the congregation,” he was excluded from the society, and deprived of the privileges of his nation. If sin be not cleansed from the soul, it will prove its ruin. The presence and blessing of God are indispensable to our spiritual well being. But sin separates the soul from God (comp. Isa_59:2; Col_1:21), and so cuts it off from the great Source of life and light. Sin excludes from the fellowship of the people of God. Generally and as a rule it does so in this world; the Church of Christ should be pure, and striving for perfect purity. Sin invariably and infallibly excludes from Heaven (Rev_21:27). We must get rid of sin or be utterly undone.
III. The provision for cleansing from sin.
Regarding this as illustrated by the arrangements for cleansing those who were defiled by death, we notice—
1. It is Divine in its origin. God instituted this cleansing ordinance of the Red Heifer; “the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance,” &c. The provision for spiritual cleansing is of God. The idea of getting rid of sin came from Him. The sacrifice by which it is put away He bestowed. The agencies which are used in the work He instituted. He gave His Son, His Spirit, Gospel ministries, &c. Human salvation is of Divine origin.
2. It involves the sacrifice of the most perfect life. The directions concerning the sacrificial victim, given in Num_19:2, as to its sex, its colour, and its non-acquaintance with the yoke, all point to intensity and fulness of life and power (see Explanatory Notes on Num_19:2). Further, it was to be perfect: “wherein is no blemish.” Moreover the “cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet,” which were burnt with the heifer, indicated strength and continuance of life, and purifying power (see Explanatory Notes on Num_19:6). All this clearly points to the perfect sacrifice of the perfect life of Jesus Christ. His was the pre-eminent life. “In Him was life.” “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” His was the perfect life. “He offered Himself without spot to God.” He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” (b). “By His self-sacrifice, which exhibits the most perfect obedience and utter devotion to the will of God, and the fullest, sublimest expression of the love of God, Christ cleanseth the souls of men from sin. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Here is the all sufficient and the only true provision for purifying the soul of man from moral defilement. (c)
3. It is invariable in its efficacy. “He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean” (Num_19:12). “And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day,” &c. “If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Who shall say “how much more”? The blood of Christ cleanseth completely from all sin all who seek Him in faith.
IV. The application of the provision for cleansing from sin.
The Israelite who was defiled by the dead must purify himself with the “water of separation.” “A clean person must take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day,” in order that he may be purified. If this were not done, the existence of the provision for cleansing, so far from profiting him, would rather be the occasion of condemnation; he refuses the means of cleansing provided for him, and he “shall be cut off from among the congregation” (Num_19:20). And if Christ be not received by faith He will profit us nothing. “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” “Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.” If we believe not on Him, we shall not only not be cleansed and saved from sin, but shall be condemned for unbelief (comp. Joh_3:18; Joh_3:36). On Him let us believe; for He alone can cleanse and save us. (d)
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) The impious lives of the wicked are as contagious as the most fearful plague that infects the air. When the doves of Christ lie among such pots, their yellow feathers are stilled. You may observe that in the oven the fine bread frequently hangs upon the coarse; but the coarse very seldom adheres to the fine. If you mix an equal portion of sour vinegar and sweet wine together, you will find that the vinegar will sooner sour the wine, than the wine sweeten the vinegar. That is a sound body that continues healthy in a pest-house. It is a far greater wonder to see a saint maintain his purity among sinners, than it is to behold a sinner becoming pure among saints. Christians are not always like fish, which retain their freshness in a salt sea; or like the rose, which preserves its sweetness among the most noisome weeds; or like the fire, which burns the hottest when the season is coldest. A good man was once heard to lament, “that as often as he went into the company of the wicked, be returned less a man from them than he was before he joined with them.” The Lord’s people, by keeping evil company, are like persons who are much exposed to the sun, insensibly tanned.—William Seeker.
(b) When you contemplate the Saviour, you find all the virtues enshrined in Him; other men are stars, but He is a constellation, nay, He is the whole universe of stars gathered into one galaxy of splendour; other men are gems and jewels, but He is the crown imperial where every jewel glitters; other men furnish but a part of the picture, and the background is left, or else there is something in the foreground that is but roughly touched, but He furnishes the whole; not the minutest portion is neglected; the character is perfect and matchless. If I look at Peter, I admire his courage; if I look at Paul, I wonder at his industry and devotedness to the cause of God; if I look at John, I see the loveliness and gentleness of his bearing; but when I look to the Saviour, I am not so much attracted by any one particular virtue as by the singular combination of the whole. There are all the spices—the stacte, the onycha, and the galbanum, and the pure frankincense; the varied perfumes combine to make up one perfect confection.—C. H. Spurgeon.
For an illustration on the perfection of Christ’s sacrifice, see p. 141.
(c) It is not because God is indifferent to moral qualities that He loves sinners. His love is medicinal. His life is a world-nursing life. He cleanses whom He loves, that He may love yet more. God’s nature is infinitely healing and cleansing. They that are brought in contact with the Divine heart feel it by the growth that instantly begins in them. And His being is so capacious that all the wants of all sinful creatures, through endless ages, neither exhaust nor weary Him. Ten thousand armies might bathe in the ocean, and neither sully its purity, nor exhaust its cleansing power. But the ocean is but a cup by the side of God’s heart. Realms and orbs may bathe and rise into purity; no words will ever hint or dimly paint the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of Christ. It is love that pours, endless and spontaneous, just as sunlight does—simply because God is love. By the side of Christ, a mother’s love—that on earth shines high above all other, as a star above night candles—is in comparison like those glimmering, expiring stars when the sun shines them into radiant eclipse. In the bosom of such a God there is salvation for every one that will trust Him. And what chances of safety or purity are there for those who reject Him; who light their own candle, and walk in its pale glimmer, rather than in the noonday glory of God in Christ?—H. W. Beecher.
(d) Man tries to act as a bleacher to his sin, and he dips the stained garment into the strong liquid which is to make it white, hoping that some spots will be removed; but when he takes it out again, if his eye be clear, he says, “Alas! it seems as spotted as ever. I laid it to soak in that which I thought full surely would take out the stain, but so far as I can see, there is another stain added to the rest. I find myself worse instead of better; I must add a more pungent salt, I must use a stronger lye. I must make my tears more briny, I must fetch them up from the deep salt wells of my heart.” He lays his vesture again to soak, but each time as he takes it out his own eyes become more keen, and he sees more foulness in the garment than he had observed before. Then goeth he and taketh unto himself nitre and much soap, but when be has used it all, when he has gone to his church, when he has gone to his chapel, when he has repeated his prayers, attended to ceremonies, done I know not what to prove the genuineness of his repentance, ah! the iniquity is still there, and will be there, and must be, let him do what he may. Yet what your repentings cannot do in thousands of years God can do for von sinner, and that in one single day.—C. H. Spurgeon.
For illustrations on the appropriation of the provision see pp. 142, 190.
THE LAW OF THE RED HEIFER APPLIED
(Whole Chapter.)
The symbols of the Jewish worship were instituted at special times. God did not put it forth as a system. It is like a house to which have been added rooms and offices and hall as the growth of the family has demanded more scope in which to maintain new and higher thoughts. One of such additions is found in the ordinance promulgated in this chapter. It had its origin in the wish to assuage the vivid fears of the people that they were not able to go near to the tabernacle and live. They had seen a terrible punishment over take the men who had attempted to interfere with the positions held by Moses and Aaron: they had been awed when a sudden destruction was smiting down thousands in the camp: and they had been made conscious that their sins rendered them utterly unfitted to be near the Holy One of Israel. But mercy has exhaustless remedies for human defilement. Aaron and the Levites are appointed to bear the sins of the holy things; a red unspotted heifer is commanded to be slain and burned, and its ashes to be used as a means of purifying the flesh from the uncleanness which hindered approach to the Lord of glory. Thus the new symbol is instituted when the people have become conscious that social impurity, impurity shared through and with others, as well as personal transgression, dooms to death. Wider views of what they need towards God cause Him to send out the beams of a light which is to dispel every doubt and fear.
In what ways did this ceremony lead into such confidence? What were the letters by which the people could spell out God’s thoughts of peace?
The chief lessons taught by the ordinance of the Red Heifer seem to be embraced in four propositions:—
I. Liability for social evil.
“All the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron” (Num_16:41, sqq.). Might not the survivors reason thus: “If those who have died did wrong we have been equally wrong; if we are not erased from the roll of the living, there is, notwithstanding, an evil chargeable to us; partakers in a like offence we are worthy of a like condemnation; the evil has not exhausted itself on them, and we are liable in some form for their calamities; we cannot in this state of pollution go into the presence of God—is there not needed a purification for those social ills whose last and most affecting sign is death?” A very similar feeling of liability might be impressed on the men of our own generation. There are houses in narrow streets, badly ventilated, and steaming with the odours of dirt-heaps and cesspools. Warnings have been given, that such a position is laid open to dangerous attacks on health and life; but the warnings are trifled with or disbelieved. Then comes the “noisome pestilence.” Young and old, strong and feeble, degraded and decent, are swept into the abyss of the dead.… Viewing those painful scenes, could just men, who had neglected to do as was advised, escape from self-censure and condemnation?
II. The ignominy of death.
The presence of, or contact with, the signs of the death of mankind, separated from communion with God in His sanctuary. Consciously or unconsciously no one could always avoid these. The human body becomes a loathsome thing by the stroke of death, and we are fain to bury it out of our sight. There is reason for believing that death is the openest sign of ignominy in our nature.… Only without us and above us, in the death of Christ Jesus, and in His rising from the dead, is that which shows, along with the fearfulness of sin, the means of its removal.
III. Freedom from the consequences of sin is by application of a prepared remedy.
The several parts in the process of preparing the water of cleansing bear emblems to show what God requires for freeing from sin. The slaying of the Heifer, and the sprinkling of its blood, laid bare the foundation principles that “it is the blood which maketh atonement for the soul,” that “without shedding of blood is no remission of sins.”.… Uncleanness incurred from the dead prevents approach to the holy Lord God. Separated from His presence on earth is a forecasting of an eternal separation—“that soul shall be cut off from Israel” (Num_19:13). But He has a remedy for this too. He provides means of purification, and thus of renewed access to Himself. Not only is the blood of bulls and goats shed, but the ashes of a heifer is also to “sprinkle the unclean, in order to sanctify to the purifying of the flesh,” and render fit for all the privileges of acceptable worship. “He shall purify himself,” &c. (Num_19:12). It is not enough that there are ashes, and water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop at hand; the persons needing the removal of the dangerous uncleanness must get those materials applied in the prescribed manner.
The remedy was not dependent for its efficacy upon its earthly aspects. Human hands made it ready and conveyed it to the recipients; but the sole power to take away the defilement lay in that of God which was in it. It signified to the people that there wag another sphere than that in which they moved, and in which they were rendered unworthy to dwell in the Lord’s presence; that they must stand, by faith amid the workings of God. Did the eyes of any amongst them catch a glimpse of another manifestation of the love of God, in which ONE should be made righteousness and sanctification as well as redemption—a coming sacrifice whose blood should be shed, not only to be a “propitiation for sins,” but also to be “sprinkled on the conscience to purge it from dead works to serve the living God?”.… Jesus has died, &c. The ransom price for our lives has not to be paid—it is paid, &c. “The gift of God is eternal life,” &c.
IV. To be without fitness for standing before God acceptably is inexcusable and irretrievable.
Once purified did not do away with the necessity of being purified again when another defilement had been incurred. The new impurity must be removed by a new application, and the cleansing remedy was constantly available (Num_19:9-10).
What could justify neglect of this remedy?—D. G. Watt, M.A.
THE RED HEIFER AN ANALOGUE OF THE CHRIST
(Num_19:1-10)
Much has been written on the Red Heifer as a type of Christ which appears to us to be frivolous, and in no sense worthy of regard as an exposition of this portion of Scripture, because of the absence of Scriptural evidence that such things were intended in the ordinance. But we are warranted in looking for an analogy between the Red Heifer and the Christ by the comparison between them instituted in Heb_9:13-14. It appears to us that the Red Heifer is an analogue of the Christ—
I. In its characteristics.
These may be classified thus:
1. Fulness of life. “A Red Heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, upon which never came yoke.” “The sex of the victim (female, and hence life-giving); its red colour (the colour of blood, the seat of life); its unimpaired vigour (never having borne the yoke); its youth; all these symbolised life in its fulness and freshness as the antidote of death.” What Divine fulness of life there was in Jesus Christ! “In Him was life.” “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” “I am He that liveth,” or “the living One.” He is the great antagonist of death and giver of life. See Act_2:24; Heb_2:14-15; 1Co_15:22; Joh_10:10; Col_3:3-4.
2. Perfection of life. “A Red Heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish.” “Christ offered Himself without spot to God.” He was “the Holy One and the Just;” “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin;” “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners;” “Christ.… a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (a)
II. In the treatment to which it was subjected.
1. The heifer was sacrificed. “One shall slay her before” the face of the priest. She was regarded as bearing the uncleanness of the people, and was slain as “a sin-offering” (חַטָּאת, A. V., “a purification for sin,” Num_19:9; Num_19:17) for the people. Christ “bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (comp. Isa_53:5-9; Joh_6:51; Rom_5:6; 1Co_15:3; 2Co_5:14-15; 1Th_5:10; Heb_10:10). (b)
2. The heifer was sacrificed “without the camp.” It was taken outside the camp because it was regarded as bearing the uncleanness for which it was to be sacrificed. Our Lord was crucified “without the gate” of Jerusalem, between two thieves, as if He were the vilest of men (comp. Joh_19:17-18; Heb_13:11-12).
3. The heifer was completely consumed. “One shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn.” The sacrifice of Christ was unreserved. He was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” He offered Himself wholly, body, soul, and spirit, to God, for the redemption of man from sin.
III. In the purpose for which it was designed.
1. The red heifer was intended to cleanse from ceremonial defilement. The ashes of the heifer were to be put in spring water; this water was to be sprinkled upon the unclean for their purification (comp. Heb_9:13-14). Christ “appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
2. The ashes of the heifer were efficacious for this purpose (Num_19:12; Num_19:19). The efficacy was not in the ashes themselves, but in the appointment of God, and the faith and obedience of His people. “How much more shall the blood of Christ?” &c. He can cleanse from sins of deepest dye, and make the soul radiant in purity (comp. 1Jn_1:7; Rev_1:5; Rev_7:14; Eph_5:26-27). (c)
3. The ashes of the heifer were amply sufficient for this purpose.
(1) As to number. They were intended for all the congregation of Israel and for the stranger sojourning among them (Num_19:10), and were enough for all. Christ “died for all,” and His salvation is sufficient for all, free for all, offered to all (1Jn_2:2).
(2) As to time. The Jews say that the ashes of this heifer served till the captivity, or nearly a thousand years. This statement is very questionable; but they would certainly last for a long time, as it was necessary to use very little at a time. Moreover, ashes are very incorruptible; so they symbolise the abiding efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ. “He offered one sacrifice for sins for ever … For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”
“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till the whole ransomed Church of God
Be saved to sin no more.”—Cowper. (d)
4. The ashes of the heifer had to be personally applied to be efficacious. The unclean person must be sprinkled with “the water of separation” on the third day and on the seventh day for his cleansing. Without this, the cleansing element was of no avail to him. So Christ must be accepted by faith, or His sacrificial life and death will profit us nothing.
Conclusion.
We are all defiled by sin: let us seek by faith to be cleansed by “the precious blood of Christ.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) In Jesus Christ there was no sin. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” His humanity was without stain or flaw, pure and perfect as on the day when “God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good.” In Him there were no rebellious insurgences of appetite and passion, no disorderly conflict between the lower nature and the higher, but the flesh was in absolute subjection to the spirit, and His whole mind and heart in entire and strictest harmony with the mind and heart of God. So that there He stood, the very “beauty of holiness,” the living human image of God; the perfect embodiment of the Divine ideal of humanity; of all mankind the only genuine Man. The Man on whom all eyes and hearts were to best and fasten.—J. H. Smith, M.A.
(b) As the Son of Man, he took our place under the law, and stood representatively in our stead, that He might satisfy the law in our behalf; that he might render it perfect obedience, and offer Himself a public substitutionary victim to its offended majesty, redeeming us from its curse by “being made a curse for us. “He thus “suffered for us,” “the fast for the unjust,” suffered for us, not merely beneficially, as a nursing-mother may suffer for her child, or a soldier for his country’s good, but substitutionally and penally, in our place and stead. His person was substituted for our persons, His sufferings for our sufferings. “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He, the sinless, consented to be treated as a sinner, that we sinners might be treated as sinless. In this great, this public capacity, then, He, the Man, officially suffered, and officially died. There on the cross He hung, spotlessly pure and perfect, agonising under the imputation of the world’s guilt, the sinless substitute for man’s sinful race, the substitutionary Man, the representative sinner! There He hung, a voluntary victim to the violated majesty of the law, and in Him mankind representatively died. “For we thus judge,” says St. Paul, “that if one died for all, then all died.”—Ibid.
(c) “We have some little difficulty,” said a scientific lecturer, “with the iron dyes; but the most troublesome of all are Turkey red rags. You see I have dipped this into my solution, its red is paler, but it is still strong. If I steep it long enough to efface the colour entirely, the fibre will be destroyed; it will be useless for our manufacture. How, then, are we to dispose of our red rags? We leave their indelible dye as it is, and make them into blotting paper. Perhaps you wonder why your writing-pad is red. Now you know the reason.”
What a striking illustration of the power of “the precious blood of Christ” to change and cleanse is furnished by the above explanation. The Spirit of God led the prophet Isaiah to write, not “though your sins be as blue as the sky, or as green as the olive leaf, or as black as night.” He chose the very colour which modern science, with all its appliances, finds to be indestructible. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”—Sunday Teacher’s Treasury.
(d) I have found it an interesting thing to stand on the edge of a noble rolling river, and to think, that although it has been flowing on for six thousand years, watering the fields, and slaking the thirst of a hundred generations, it shows no sign of waste or want. And when I have watched the rise of the sun as he shot above the crest of the mountain, or, in a sky draped with golden curtains, sprang up from his ocean-bed, I have wondered to think that he has melted the snows of so many winters, and renewed the verdure of so many springs, and planted the flowers of so many summers, and ripened the golden harvest of so many autumns, and yet shines as brilliantly as ever; his eye not dim, nor his natural strength abated, nor his natural floods of light less full, for centuries of boundless profusion. Yet what are these but images of the fulness that is in Christ? Let that feed your hopes, and cheer your hearts, and brighten your faith, and send you away this day happy and rejoicing! For when judgment flames have licked up that flowing stream, and the light of that glorious sun shall be quenched in darkness, or veiled in the smoke of a burning world, the fulness of Christ shall flow on throughout eternity, in the bliss of the redeemed.—Thomas Guthrie, D.D.
Have we outlived the efficacy of the blood of Christ, and is the tale of His Cross a sound from which all the music has gone for ever? We need the sun to-day as we have ever needed it; the wind is still the breath of health to our dying bodies; still we find in the earth the bread without which we cannot live; these are our friends of whom we never tire; can it be that the only thing of which we are weary is God’s answer to our souls deepest need? Shall we keep everything but the blood of Christ? Shall the Cross go, and the sun be left? Verily as the sun withdrew at sight of that Cross and for the moment fled away, he would shine never more were that sacred tree hewn down by furious man. The blood of Christ, it is the fountain of immortality! The blood of Christ, it makes the soul’s summer warm and beauteous! The blood of Christ, it binds all heaven, with its many mansions and throngs without number, in holy and indissoluble security! My soul, seek no other stream in which to drown thy leprosy! My lips, seek no other song with which to charge your music! My hands, seek no other task with which to prove your energy! I would be swallowed up in Christ. I would be nailed to His Cross. I would be baptized with His baptism. I would quail under the agony of His pain that I might triumph with Him in the glory of His resurrection. O my Jesus! My Saviour! Thine heart did burst for me, and all its sacred blood flowed for the cleansing of my sin. I need it all. I need it every day. I need it more and more. O search out the inmost recesses of my poor wild heart, and let Thy blood remove every stain of evil.
“E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.”
Mighty Saviour! repeat all Thy miracles by taking away the guilt and torment of my infinite sin.—Joseph Parker, D.D.
THE RED HEIFER
(Num_19:2-3)
The particular point to which the red heifer referred, concerning Christ and His work, is just this—the provision which is made in Christ Jesus for the daily sins and failings of believers. In order to bring out our point clearly, we shall remark—
I. That even the true Israelite, the true believer in Christ, is the subject of daily defilemen.
We who have believed in Christ are free from sin before the Divine judgment seat. But in the matter of sanctification we are not, as yet, delivered from evil.
Some of our defilement arises from the fact that we do actually come into contact with sin, here imaged in the corruption of death (Num_19:11). We actually touch that dead thing, sin, by overt acts of transgression. We are in close connection with sin, because sin is in ourselves. Hence we need to be constantly cleansed.
Moreover, we get defilement from companionship with sinners (Num_19:14). The Great Physician could walk the lazar house of this world untainted by contagion, but this is not possible with us. It may be absolutely necessary for you in your calling, and more especially in your desire to bless others, to mingle with the ungodly, but you might as well attempt to carry fire in your bosom and not be burnt, or handle pitch and not be blackened therewith, as to dwell in the tents of Kedar without receiving uncleanness. Hence we need daily cleansing, &c.
One reason why we are so constantly defiled is our want of watchfulness (Num_19:15). You and I ought to cover up our hearts from the contamination of sin. I believe that a man might go into the most sinful places under heaven without receiving defilement, if he exercised a sufficient degree of watchfulness; but it is because we do not watch that the poisoned arrow wounds us.
Sin is so desperately evil, that the very slightest sin defiles us. He who touched a bone was unclean (Num_19:16). Sin is such an immeasurably vile and pestilent a thing, that the slightest iniquity makes the Christian foul—a thought, an imagination, the glancing of an eye. We have heard of some perfumes of which it is said, that a thousandth part of a grain would leave a scent for ages in the place where it had been. And certainly it is so with sin, &c.
Sin even when it is not seen, defiles, … a man was defiled who touched a grave. Oh, how many graves there are of sin—things that are fair to look upon, externally admirable, and internally abominable! Many of our customs are but the graves of sin, &c.
The Jew was in danger in the open fields (Num_19:16). You may go where you will, but you cannot escape from sin. We are in daily danger of defilement
II. That a purification has been provided.
If it were not so, how melancholy were your case and mine. The unclean person had no right to go up to the house of the Lord, &c. You and I would have no right to Christ, no adoption, no justification, no sanctification, for the unclean person had no right to any of these. The ultimate result in the Israelites’ case would have been death. And certainly if you and I, though believers, could live for a season without being purified, carrying about with us still the daily defilement of sin, ere long it must end in spiritual death.
The Lord must have provided a daily cleansing for our daily defilement, for if not, where were His wisdom, where His love? He has provided for everything else. But if this soul-destroying need had not been provided for, a failure would have occurred in a most important point. The love, the wisdom of God demands that there should be such a purification supplied.
The work of our Lord Jesus Christ assures us of this. There is a fountain open for sin and for uncleanness. It is inexhaustible. “If any man sin, we have an advocate.” He is constantly an intercessor.
The work of the Holy Spirit also meets the case, for what is His business but constantly to take of the things of Christ and reveal them unto us; constantly to quicken, to enlighten, and to comfort?
Facts show that there is purification for present guilt. The saints of old fell into sin, but they did not remain there. David. Peter. We have tried it ourselves, &c.
III. The red heifer sets forth, in a most admirable manner, the daily purification for daily sin.
It was a heifer. This red heifer stood for all the house of Israel—for the whole Church of God; and the Church is always looked upon in Scripture as being the spouse—the bride—always feminine. It was a red heifer. Probably the red was chosen from its bringing to the mind of the Israelites the idea of blood, which was always associated with atonement, and putting away of sin. When we think of Christ we always associate Him with the streaming gore, when we are under a sense of sin. It was a heifer without spot. Our Christ had no spot of original sin, no blemish of actual sin. This red heifer was one whereon never came yoke. Perhaps this sets forth how willingly Christ came to die for us. “Lo, I come,” &c. The children of Israel provided it. What for? That every man, and every woman, and every child might say, “I have a share in that heifer,” &c. Christ shed His blood for all His people, and they have all a part and all an interest in Him.
There is yet to be observed what was done with it. First, it was taken out of the camp. Christ suffered without the camp. The red cow was slain. A dying Saviour that takes away our sin. Eleazar dipped his finger in the warm blood, and sprinkled it seven times before the door of the tabernacle. Seven is the number of perfection. Jesus has perfectly presented His bloody sacrifice. All this does not purify. Atonement precedes purification. They then took the body of the slain heifer.… they consumed it utterly, &c. This sets forth the pangs of the Saviour, how God accounted Him unclean; how He was compelled to say, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” When the whole was fully burnt, or while burning, the priest threw in cedar-wood, hyssop, and scarlet. According to Maimonides, the cedar-wood was taken in logs and bound round with hyssop, and then afterwards the whole enveloped in scarlet; so what was seen by the people was the scarlet, which was at once the emblem of sin and its punishment—“Though your sins be as scarlet,” &c. Everything still continues of the red colour, to set forth atonement for sin. Inside this scarlet there is the hyssop of faith, which gives efficacy to the offering in each individual, and still within this is the cedar-wood that sent forth a sweet and fragrant smell, a perfect righteousness giving acceptance to the whole.
The pith of the matter lies in the last act, with the remains of the red cow. The cinders of the wood, the ashes of the bones, and dung, and flesh of the heifer, were all gathered together, and carried away, and laid by in a clean place. Does not this storing up suggest that there is a store of merit in Christ Jesus? There is a store of merit laid up that daily defilement may be removed as often as it comes.
The ashes were to be put with running water,—the sweet picture of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must take of the things of Christ and reveal them unto us.
It was applied by hyssop. Hyssop is always a type of faith. “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.”
Here are ashes for every day, cleansing for every hour, for every moment.—C. H. Spurgeon.
RUINOUS NEGLECT
(Num_19:20)
“The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation.”
The text suggests the following observations:—
I. Man is polluted by sin.
“We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” And, as Origen said, “Every sin sets a blot upon the soul.”
II. God has provided a cleansing element for man’s sin.
“There is a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.” “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.”
III. To be efficacious this cleansing element must be applied to man.
The unclean person had to “purify himself” by being sprinkled with “the water of separation.” There was no cleansing without the sprinkling. If we would be clean we must repent of the sin which defiles us, confess the sin to the great Cleanser, and pray to Him for pardon and purity. But especially, we must believe in the cleansing efficacy of the blood of Christ. “Purifying their hearts by faith.” “The heart,” says Dr. Dykes, “which sets out with a hunger after righteousness; which finds that, to be worth having, righteousness must be from the heart outwards; which strives against inward defilement, and, under such a sense of sin as makes it a gentle censor of other men, carries each fresh stain to the blood of sprinkling at the mercy seat: that heart does by effort and degrees attain to purity.”
IV. Man may neglect to avail himself of this cleansing element.
This neglect may arise from—
1. Self-righteousness. There are those who do not feel their need of the cleansing of the blood of Christ. (a)
2. Unbelief. Under deep conviction of sin, man sometimes feels that the defilement of his heart is so deep as to defy the efficacy of “the precious blood of Christ:” he does not believe that it has power to cleanse to the uttermost.
3. Procrastination. Some purpose to seek to be cleansed from sin at some future time; they defer the great duty until they “have a convenient season.”
Such persons often “resolve and re-resolve, and die the same.” How great is the folly! and how tremendous the peril of this neglect!
V. Neglecting to avail himself of this cleansing element, man excludes himself from the highest and richest privileges.
“The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation.” The man who is guilty of this great neglect excludes himself—
1. From the Church on earth. Its privileges are for those only who are “purifying their hearts by faith,” and “washing their robes and making them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
2. From the blessedness of heaven. No impurity can enter heaven. The redeemed there constitute “a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but holy and without blemish.” Only “the pure in heart shall see God.” “Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (comp. Psa_24:3-4; Rev_1:5; Rev_7:14; Rev_21:27). (b)
Let us not be guilty of this ruinous neglect; but let us by faith hasten to the fountain of the Saviour’s blood, and there wash and be clean.
ILLUSTRATIONS
(a) But we cannot realise the blood until we have realised the sin. Where there is no conviction of sin—conviction amounting to the very anguish of the lost in hell—there can be no felt need of so extreme a remedy as is offered by the outpouring of the blood of Christ. A self-palliating iniquity may be cleansed by water. The light duet which bespots the outer garments may be removed by gentle means. When a man feels that he has not sinned deeply, he is in no mood to receive what be considers the tragic appeals of the gospel; they exceed the case; they destroy themselves by exaggeration; they speak with self-defeating violence. But let another kind of action be set up in the heart; let the man be brought to talk thus with himself—“I have sinned until my very soul is thrust down into hell; my sins have clouded out the mercy of God, so that I see it no longer; I have wounded the Almighty, I have out myself off from the fountain of life, I have blown out every light that was meant to help me upward, I am undone, lost, damned,” and then he needs no painted cross, no typical sacrament, no ceremonial attitude no priestly enchantment, he can be met by nothing but the sacrificial blood, the personal blood, the living blood, the precious blood of Christ.—Joseph Parker, D D.
(b) If a man without religion (supposing it possible) were admitted into heaven, doubtless he would sustain a great disappointment. Before, indeed, be fancied that he could be happy there; but when he arrived there he could find no discourse but that which he had shunned on earth; no pursuits but those he had disliked or despised; nothing which bound him to aught else in the universe, that made him feel at home; nothing which he could enter into and rest upon. He would perceive himself to be an isolated being, cut away by Supreme Power from those objects which were still entwined about his heart. Nay, he would be in the presence of that Supreme Power whom he never on earth could bring himself steadily to think upon, and whom now he regarded only as the destroyer of all that was precious and dear to him. Ah! he could not bear the face of the Living God; the Holy God would be no object of joy to him. “Let us alone! what have we to do with Thee?” is the sole thought and desire of unclean souls, even while they acknowledge His majesty. None but the holy can look upon the Holy One: without holiness no man can endure to see the Lord.
Holiness, or inward separation from the world, is necessary to our admission into heaven, because heaven is not heaven, is not a place of happiness, except to the holy. There are bodily indispositions which affect the taste, so that the sweetest flavours become ungrateful to the palate; and indispositions which impair the sight, tinging the fair face of nature with some sickly hue. In like manner there is a moral malady which disorders the inward sight and taste, and no man labouring under it is in a condition to enjoy what Scripture calls “the fulness of joy in God’s presence, and pleasures at His right hand for evermore.”
Nay, I will venture to say more than this—it is fearful, but it is right to say it—that if we wished to imagine a punishment for an unholy, reprobate soul, we perhaps could not fancy a greater than to summon it to heaven. Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man. We know how unhappy we are apt to feel at present, when alone in the midst of strangers, or of men of different tastes and habits to ourselves. How miserable, for example, would it be to have to live in a foreign land, among a people whose faces we never saw before, and whose language we could not learn. And this is but a faint illustration of the loneliness of a man of earthly dispositions and tastes thrown into the society of saints and angels. How forlorn would he wander through the courts of heaven! He would find no one like himself, he would see in every direction the marks of God’s holiness, and these would make him shudder. He would feel himself always in His presence. He could no longer turn his thoughts another way, as he does now, when conscience reproaches him. He would know that the eternal eye was ever upon him; and that eye of holiness, which is joy and life to holy creatures, would seem to him an eye of wrath and punishment. God cannot change His nature. Holy He must ever be. But while He is holy no unholy soul can be happy in heaven. Fire does not inflame iron, but it inflames straw. It would cease to be fire if it did not. And so heaven itself would be fire to those who would fain escape across the great gulf from the torments of hell. The finger of Lazarus would but increase their thirst. The very “heaven that is over their heads” will be “brass” to them.—J. H. Newman, D.D.
Have we a hope that “when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is?” Then must “every man that hath this hope in Him purify himself, even as He is pure.” For in at the gates of that City—so unlike the cities of this world—“there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth.” That City’s streets are of gold that is pure; the river which waters it is a pure river; and the fine linen in which its sainted citizens do walk is clean and white. Even the elder Church could answer its own question,
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place?” by saying,
“He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”
Sin-stained and evil-hearted men as we are, it is here, and now, that this purification must be wrought. What need have we to have often upon our lips the prayer,
“O God, make clean our hearts within us!” Yet let us not be dismayed. Some little purity of heart he must have began to possess who ever looked at all into the face of Jesus Christ as the image of His Father’s grace and truth. Now, therefore, let us continue to gaze on Him, with whatever openness of eye we have to see His glory; for it is the pure-heartedness of Jesus which maketh the disciple’s heart pure; and we all, if “with open face” we do but “behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” shall be “changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” So may God change us like the pure-hearted Son, and bring us one day where with all His servants we shall “see His face” in the endless beatific vision of the Celestial City.—J. O. Dykes, M.A., D.D.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Sacrifice of the red Heifer
The Sacrifice of the red Heifer
In order to provide a special means of purification for those who are defiled by contact with a dead body, a preparation called the 'water of separation' is made from the ashes of a red heifer and other ingredients. The origin of this rite may have been connected with the large number of deaths recorded in Num_16:49. Josephus, however, connects it with the death of Miriam (Num_20:1).
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1-10. A red heifer is slaughtered outside the camp and its blood sprinkled in the direction of the sanctuary seven times (Num_19:1-4). The entire carcase is burnt in the same place along with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool, and the ashes are collected and preserved for use in purifying (Num_19:5-6, Num_19:9). Those who take part in the ceremony contract defilement (Num_19:7-8, Num_19:10).
2. Sacrificial animals are usually males. The use of a female in this case may be intended to symbolise the imparting of new life to those who have been defiled by contact with death. The same thought may underlie the regulation as to colour, red being the colour of blood which is the token of life: cp. Lev_17:11. The words without spot probably mean 'without blemish.'
4. Directly before] RV 'Toward the front of'; i.e. in the direction of the sanctuary.
6. See on Lev_14:4.
9. Water of separation] RV 'water of impurity,' i.e. water for the removal of (ceremonial) impurity: see on Num_8:7.
11-16. The persons for whom this 'water of impurity' is provided are those who have touched a dead body or anything connected with it.
11. Owing to the mystery connected with death a dead body is regarded, not only among the Jews but among other nations of antiquity, as eminently dangerous and communicating defilement in the highest degree. Moreover, such ceremonial defilement is easily associated with the idea of sin, as death is the wages of sin.
12. With it] i.e. with the 'water of impurity.'
17-22. The method of purification. The ashes of the heifer are mixed with water from a running stream or spring, and sprinkled upon the unclean person or thing. This is done on the third day after the defilement has been contracted. On the seventh day the unclean person washes his clothes, bathes, and resumes his place in society at even. The penalty of neglect is excommunication. The various parts of the expiatory rite lend themselves easily to symbolical interpretation. The connexion of sin and death, the need of cleansing, and the ever-ready means of purification, are all exemplified. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews draws a parallel between the heifer, whose ashes were sanctified to the purifying of the flesh from the defilement arising from contact with dead bodies, and Christ who, also without spot, offered Himself without the camp to God to purge the conscience of believers from dead works, i.e. from works which cause death. See Heb_9:13-14; Heb_13:11, Heb_13:12.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv2, 17 red heifer
red heifer
The red heifer: Type of the sacrifice of Christ as the ground of the cleansing of the believer from the defilement contracted in his pilgrim walk through this world, and illustration of the method of his cleansing. The order is:
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(1) the slaying of the sacrifice;
(2) the sevenfold sprinkling of the blood, typical public testimony before the eyes of all of the complete and never-to-be-repeated putting away of all the believer’s sin as before God. Heb 9:12-14; Heb 10:10-12.
(3) the reduction of the sacrifice to ashes which are preserved and become a memorial of the sacrifice;
(4) the cleansing from defilement (sin has two aspects--guilt and uncleanness) by sprinkling with the ashes mingled with water. Water is a type of both the Spirit and the Word. Joh 7:37-39. Eph 5:26. The operation typified is this: the Holy Spirit used the Word to convict the believer of some evil allowed in his life to the hindering of his joy, growth, and service. Thus convicted, he remembers that the guilt of his sin has been met by the sacrifice of Christ 1Jn 1:7. Instead, therefore, of despairing, the convicted believer judges and confesses the defiling thing as unworthy a saint, and is forgiven and cleansed; Joh 13:3-10; 1Jn 1:7-10.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 9. The Red Heifer and the Water of Purification
9. The Red Heifer and the Water of Purification
CHAPTER 19
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1. The provision appointed: The red heifer and the ashes (Num 19:1-10)
2. The use of the water of purification (Num 19:11-22)
This is a most interesting chapter. The ordinance of the red heifer and the water of purification is nowhere mentioned in Leviticus. The day of atonement, so prominent in Leviticus, is not referred to in Numbers at all. The provision of the water of purification is characteristic of the wilderness book. The people were dying by the thousands, and means had to be provided for the cleansing of those who became defiled by contact with the dead. The ashes of the red heifer used in the way as described in this chapter were for the cleansing of the defiled. Without following the details of this new ordinance in the wilderness we point out briefly its typical meaning. That the red heifer is a type of Christ no one can fail to see. “For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb 9:13-14) This fully warrants the typical application. The red heifer was to be without spot, wherein is no blemish is the type of Christ, without spot and blemish. It had to be an heifer upon which never came a yoke. A yoke is put on an animal to restrain the wild nature, to bring it to subjection. Our blessed Lord needed no yoke, for He came willingly. “Lo, I come to do Thy will.” Nowhere is the color of a sacrificial animal mentioned but here. Red is the color of blood. It is the type of His obedience unto death. The heifer was slain without the camp. So Christ suffered without the camp (Heb 13:12). The sprinkling of the blood seven times toward the tabernacle is the type of the blood of atonement. Everything of the red heifer was consumed by fire and into the fire was cast cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet. These things typify the world. (See cleansing of the leper in Lev. 14). The world and all its glory is judged in the judgment of the cross.
Here is the essential difference between this and all other offerings: it is an offering once offered which (ideally, at least) never needs to be renewed. In all other cases, if any man sinned, fresh blood had to be shed, a fresh sacrifice to be made; but in this, the virtue remained of what had already been offered: the ashes were the memorial of an already accepted work. (F.W Grant)
The ashes of the red heifer were gathered up by a clean man and put outside of the camp in a clean place. Water was used with the ashes and was sprinkled upon the defiled persons, upon the tent and all the vessels. This was the mode of their purification. It is all so full and rich that it would take many pages to explain all the blessed lessons connected with it. We need constant cleansing because we pass through the wilderness, the world, and death is stamped upon everything. The death of Christ has made provision for our cleansing, as it has provided for the removal of our guilt. The living water is the type of the Holy Spirit. Defilement with the world interrupts communion with God. The death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word cleanse us from that defilement. See 1 John 1.
“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1). But if we fail to walk in the light--if we forget, and, in our forgetfulness touch the unclean thing, how is our communion to be restored? Only by the removal of the defilement. And how is this to be effected? By the application to our hearts and consciences of the precious truth of the death of Christ. The Holy Ghost produces self-judgment, and brings to our remembrance the truth that Christ suffered death for that defilement which we so lightly and indifferently contract. It is not a fresh sprinkling of the blood of Christ--a thing unknown in Scripture--but the remembrance of His death brought home, in fresh power, to the contrite heart, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 11 The Preparation of the Water
The Preparation of the Water
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
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v. 2. This is the ordinance of the Law, the most important statute of instruction dealing with Levitical purification, which the Lord hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, of a solid color, wherein is no blemish, no disease or defect of any kind, and upon which never came yoke, all these points being traits of the freshest life, of the fullness of strength;
v. 3. and ye shall give her unto Eleazar, the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, since the entire rite was connected most closely with the defilement of death and could therefore not take place in the court of the Tabernacle, and one shall slay her before his face;
v. 4. and Eleazar, the priest, as the presumptive successor of his father in the office of high priest, shall take of her blood with his finger, after it had been brought to the Sanctuary and kept from coagulating by constant stirring, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the Tabernacle of the Congregation seven times. By this rite the slain animal became a sacrifice, a sin-offering. In order to remind the congregation that death is the wages of sin, this antidote against the uncleanness of death was taken from a sin-offering. The life of the slain beast, sacrificed for the sin of the congregation, was thus delivered to the Lord, to signify that death itself was rendered powerless by the death of this most perfect blooming life.
v. 5. And one shall burn the heifer in his sight, Eleazar, as before, being responsible for the proper execution of everything connected with the sacrifice: her skin and her flesh and her blood with her dung shall he burn;
v. 6. and the priest shall take cedar-wood, which was a symbol of inexhaustible strength of life, and hyssop, to which were ascribed purifying properties, and scarlet, which typified the intensive power of life, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer, in order to make the ashes represent everything that was full of the highest life and strength, the very essence of indestructive power.
v. 7. Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even, as having handled, symbolically at least, the uncleanness of death.
v. 8. And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even, for the same reason as the priest.
v. 9. And a man that is clean, Levitically pure, shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, for they were now a most precious treasure, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, store them up most carefully, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation, to prepare a water intended to remove certain defilements.
v. 10. And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even, for he also became Levitically defiled by the performance of this task; and it shall be unto the children of Israel and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them for a statute forever; the special rites connected with the water of purification as prepared with the ashes were to be observed as long as the Levitical priesthood and its ordinances would endure. The Lord at all times wants pure and holy people as His servants.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 20 a statute, a law
a statute, a law
These two words share similar meanings. AT: "a statute of the law" or "a legal statute" (See: Doublet)
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bring to you
Here "you" is singular and refers to Moses.
flaw or blemish
These two words mean basically the same thing and emphasize that this animal is to have no imperfections. (See: Doublet)
translationWords
Yahweh
Moses
Aaron
statute
law, laws
command
people group
Israel
cow
blemish
yoke
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17 19:1-22 This account considers the procedure by which ordinary…
19:1-22 This account considers the procedure by which ordinary Israelites defiled by contact with a corpse (see 9:4-12; Lev 17:15; 21:1-4, 11-12) could regain ceremonial purity and keep from defiling the Tabernacle. God’s holiness requires that the place where his presence dwells be kept pure and set apart from pollution (cp. 1 Cor 6:9-11, 18-20).
19:1-10 The water for the purification ceremony (19:9), prepared with ashes of the red heifer, may have been the same as the water of purification in 8:7; see also 31:19-24. This ceremony required the ashes of a red heifer; the color probably represented blood (cp. Heb 9:13-14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.