2 "This is the statute of the law which Yahweh has commanded: Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without spot, in which is no blemish, (and) on which never came yoke.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
This is the ordinance of the law. Because it could not but occur that, whilst the faithful were engaged in the world, they should often contract some pollution by their contact with its many impurities, the composition of the water is here described, by the sprinkling of which they might wash away, and expiate their uncleanness: and then certain kinds of pollution are specified, whereof the purification is required. God commands that a red heifer should be slain, which had never been subjected to the yoke; and that it should be burnt without the camp, together with its skin and dung; that the ashes should be gathered by a man that was clean, and laid up without the camp for the common use of the people. But, in order that the water, which was mixed with these ashes, should have the power of reconciliation, God at the same time commands that the blood should be sprinkled seven times before the altar by the finger of the priest. The object of this ceremony was twofold: for God would awaken the attention of the people to reflect more closely upon their impurity; and, although they might be pure within, still would have them carefully look around them, lest they should be polluted from without; and also taught them that, as often as they were infected by any pollution, expiation was to be sought for from elsewhere, viz., from sacrifice and sprinkling; and thus admonish them that men inquire in vain in themselves for the remedies demanded for their purification, because purity can only proceed from the sanctuary. Those, who speculate subtilty on the details, advance some questionable matters. I leave them, therefore, to the enjoyment of their conceits; let it suffice for us to consider generally what God referred to in this ceremony, and what advantage accrued from it to the people. By the red color, they suppose that sin is signified. Meanwhile, lest they should run into a manifest contradiction, they are obliged absurdly to interpret what follows, that He required a heifer perfect and without blemish, as if it were said that there should be no difference of color in her hair; whereas God demands the same thing as in the other sacrifices, which were rejected as faulty if any mark of deformity existed in them. And in this sense it is added that she should never have borne a yoke. Therefore I make no doubt but that God enjoined that a pure heifer, neither mutilated nor lame, should be chosen; and, that her perfectness might be more apparent, as yet unbroken to the yoke. What, then, is the meaning of the red color? First of all, I prefer confessing my ignorance to advancing anything doubtful; but it may be conjectured that a common and ordinary color was rather chosen, lest it should be too conspicuous, as it would have been, if either white or black. But this should be deemed sure, that a perfect heifer, and one free from every blemish, was to be offered, and one too, which had not been broken to bear the yoke by the hands of men, that the purification might have nothing of humanity about it.: But the command to offer her was given to the whole people; because, in order that we may be partakers of ablution, it is necessary that each of us should offer Christ to the Father. For, although He only, and that but once, has offered Himself, still a daily offering of Him, which is effected by faith and prayers, is enjoined to us, not such as [1] the Papists have invented, by whom in their impiety and perverseness, the Lord's Supper has been mistakenly turned into a sacrifice, because they imagined that Christ must be daily slain, in order that His death might profit us. The offering, however, of faith and prayers, of which I speak, is very different, and by it alone we apply to ourselves the virtue and fruit of Christ's death.
1 - See the dogmatical statement of this notion in the Creed of Pius iv. Art: V. -- "I profess, likewise, that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ," etc.
A red heifer - Red, in order to shadow forth man's earthly body, even as the name Adam bears allusion to the red earth of which man's body was fashioned.
Without spot, wherein is no blemish - As with sin-offerings generally Leviticus 4:3.
Upon which never came yoke - So here and elsewhere (see the marginal references), in the case of female victims.
Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee, etc. - The ordinance of the red heifer was a sacrifice of general application. All the people were to have an interest in it, and therefore the people at large are to provide the sacrifice. This Jewish rite certainly had a reference to things done under the Gospel, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has remarked: "For if," says he, "the blood of bulls and of goats," alluding, probably, to the sin-offerings and the scape-goat, "and the ashes of a 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!" Hebrews 9:13, Hebrews 9:14. As the principal stress of the allusion here is to the ordinance of the red heifer, we may certainly conclude that it was designed to typify the sacrifice of our blessed Lord.
We may remark several curious particulars in this ordinance.
1. A heifer was appointed for a sacrifice, probably, in opposition to the Egyptian superstition which held these sacred, and actually worshipped their great goddess Isis under this form; and this appears the more likely because males in general were preferred for sacrifice, yet here the female is chosen.
2. It was to be a red heifer, because red bulls were sacrificed to appease the evil demon Typhon, worshipped among the Egyptians. See Spencer.
3. The heifer was to be without spot - having no mixture of any other color. Plutarch remarks, De Iside et de Osiride, that if there was a single hair in the animal either white or black, it marred the sacrifice. See Calmet, and see the note on Numbers 8:7.
4. Without blemish - having no kind of imperfection in her body; the other, probably, applying to the hair or color.
5. On which never came yoke, because any animal which had been used for any common purpose was deemed improper to be offered in sacrifice to God. The heathens, who appear to have borrowed much from the Hebrews, were very scrupulous in this particular. Neither the Greeks nor Romans, nor indeed the Egyptians, would offer an animal in sacrifice that had been employed for agricultural purposes. Of this we have the most positive evidence from Homer, Porphyry, Virgil, and Macrobius.
Just such a sacrifice as that prescribed here, does Diomede vow to offer to Pallas - Iliad, lib. x., ver. 291.
Ὡς νυν μοι εθελουσα παριστασο, και με φυλασσε·
Σοι δ' αυ εγω ῥεξω βουν ηνιν ευρυμετωπον,
Αδμητην, ἡν ουπω ὑπο ζυγον ηγαγεν ανηρ·
Την τοι εγω ῥεξω, χρυσον κερασιν περιχευας.
"So now be present, O celestial maid;
So still continue to the race thine aid;
A yearling heifer falls beneath the stroke,
Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke,
With ample forehead and with spreading horns,
Whose tapering tops refulgent gold adorns."
Altered from Pope.
In the very same words Nestor, Odyss., lib. iii., ver. 382, promises a similar sacrifice to Pallas.
The Romans had the same religion with the Greeks, and consequently the same kind of sacrifices; so Virgil, Georg. iv., ver. 550.
Quatuor eximios praestanti corpore tauros
Ducit, et intacta totidem cervice juveneas.
" - From his herd he culls
For slaughter four the fairest of his bulls;
Four heifers from his female stock he took,
All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke."
Dryden.
It is very likely that the Gentiles learnt their first sacrificial rites from the patriarchs; and on this account we need not wonder to find so many coincidences in the sacrificial system of the patriarchs and Jews, and all the neighboring nations.
(a) 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:
(a) According to this law and ceremony you shall sacrifice the red cow.
This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded,.... By which it appears, that this law was not of the moral, but of the ceremonial kind, being called an ordinance, a statute, a decree of God, the King of kings; and which was founded not on any clear plain reason in the thing itself, but in the will of God, who intended it as a type and shadow of the blood and sacrifice of Christ, and of the efficacy of that to cleanse from sin; and it also appears by this, that it was not a new law now made, but which had been made already: "which the Lord hath commanded": as is plain from what has been observed; see Gill on Numbers 19:1; and the Jews (q) say, that the red heifer was slain by Eleazar the day after the tabernacle was erected, even on the second day of the first month of Israel's coming out of Egypt; and it was now repeated both on account of the priests and people, because of the priest to whom it belonged, as Aben Ezra observes, Aaron being now established in the priesthood; and because of the people, who were afraid they should die if they came near the tabernacle; now hereby they are put in mind of a provision made for the purification of them, when under any uncleanness, which made them unfit for coming to it:
saying, speak unto the children of Israel; whom this law concerned, and for whose purification it was designed; and it was at the expense not of a private person, but of the whole congregation, that the water of purifying was made; and that, as the Jews say (r), that the priests might have no personal profit from it:
that they bring thee a red heifer; or "young cow", for so the word properly signifies; one of two years old, as the Targum of Jonathan, and so says the Misnah (s); though some of the Rabbins say one of three years, or of four years, or even one of five years old, would do. This instance, with others, where females are ordered to be slain, see Leviticus 3:1; confutes the notion of such, who think the laws of Moses were made in conformity to the customs of the Egyptians, this being directly contrary to them; if they were the same in the times of Moses, they were in the times of Herodotus, who expressly says (t), male oxen the Egyptians sacrifice; but it is not lawful for them to sacrifice females, for they are sacred to Isis. Indeed, according to Plutarch (u) and Diodorus Siculus (w), the Egyptians in their times sacrificed red bullocks to Typhon, who they supposed was of the same colour, and to whom they had an aversion, accounting him the god of evil; and because red oxen were odious to them, they offered them to him; as red-haired men also were slain by them for the same reason, at the tomb of Osiris, who they say was murdered by the red-haired Typhon; but these were superstitions that obtained among them after the times of Moses, and could not be retorted to by him; a better reason is to be given why this heifer or cow was to be of a red colour:
without spot, wherein is no blemish; the first of these, without spot, the Jews understand of colour, that it should have no spots in it of any other colour, black or white, nor indeed so much as an hair, at least not two of another colour; and so the Targum of Jonathan, in which there is no spot or mark of a white hair; and Jarchi more particularly,"which is perfect in redness; for if there were in it (he says) two black hairs, it was unfit;''and so Ben Gersom, with which agrees the Misnah (x); if there were in it two hairs, black or white, in one part, it was rejected; if there was one in the head, and another in the tail, it was rejected; if there were two hairs in it, the root or bottom of which were black, and the head or top red, and so on the contrary; all depended on the sight: and it must be owned, the same exactness was observed in the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians, as Plutarch relates (y); for if the ox had but one hair black or white, they reckoned it was not fit to be sacrificed; in which perhaps they imitated the Jews: it being without blemish was what was common to all sacrifices, such as are described in Leviticus 22:22,
and upon which never came yoke; and so among the Heathens in later times, very probably in imitation of this, they used to offer to their deities oxen that never had bore any yoke; as appears from Homer, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Seneca, out of whom instances are produced by Bochart (z). Now, though this red cow was not properly a sacrifice for sin, yet it was analogous to one, and was a type of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all these characters meet, and are significant. It being a female may denote the infirmities of Christ's human nature, to which it was subject, though sinless ones; he was encompassed with, and took on him, our infirmities; and may have some respect to the woman, by whom the transgression came, which brought impurity on all human nature, which made a purification for sin necessary; and the red colour of it may point at the flesh and blood of Christ he partook of, and the sins of his people, which were laid upon him, and were as crimson and as scarlet, and the bloody sufferings he endured to make satisfaction for them; and its being without spot and blemish may denote the perfection of Christ in his person, obedience, and sufferings, and the purity and holiness of his nature; and having never had any yoke upon it may signify, that though he was made under the law, and had commands enjoined him by his father as man, yet was free from the yoke of human traditions, and from the servitude of sin, and most willingly engaged, and not by force and compulsion, in the business of our redemption and salvation.
(q) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 7. p. 22. (r) Misn. Shekalim, c. 7. sect. 7. & Maimon, in ib. (s) Misn. Parah, c. 1. sect. 1. (t) Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 41. (u) De lside. (w) Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 79. (x) Parah, c. 2. sect. 5. (y) Ut supra. (Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 79.) (z) Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 33. vol. 322.
THE WATER OF SEPARATION. (Numbers. 19:1-22)
This is the ordinance of the law--an institution of a peculiar nature ordained by law for the purification of sin, and provided at the public expense because it was for the good of the whole community.
Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, &c.--This is the only case in which the color of the victim is specified. It has been supposed the ordinance was designed in opposition to the superstitious notions of the Egyptians. That people never offered a vow but they sacrificed a red bull, the greatest care being taken by their priests in examining whether it possessed the requisite characteristics, and it was an annual offering to Typhon, their evil being. By the choice, both of the sex and the color, provision was made for eradicating from the minds of the Israelites a favorite Egyptian superstition regarding two objects of their animal worship.
Preparation of the Purifying Water. - As water is the ordinary means by which all kinds of uncleanness are removed, it was also to be employed in the removal of the uncleanness of death. But as this uncleanness was the strongest of all religious defilements, fresh water alone was not sufficient to remove it; and consequently a certain kind of sprinkling-water was appointed, which was strengthened by the ashes of a sin-offering, and thus formed into a holy alkali. The main point in the law which follows, therefore, was the preparation of the ashes, and these had to be obtained by the sacrifice of a red heifer.
(Note: On this sacrifice, which is so rich in symbolical allusions, but the details of which are so difficult to explain, compare the rabbinical statutes in the talmudical tractate Para (Mishnah, v. Surenh. vi. pp. 269ff.); Maimonides de vacca rufa; and Lundius jd. Heiligth. pp. 680ff. Among modern treatises on this subject, are Bhr's Symbolik, ii. pp. 493ff.; Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses, pp. 173ff.; Leyrer in Herzog's Cycl.; Kurtz in the Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1846, pp. 629ff. (also Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, pp. 422ff., Eng. transl., Tr.); and my Archologie, i. p. 58.)
The sons of Israel were to bring to Moses a red heifer, entirely without blemish, and to give it to Eleazar the priest, that he might have it slaughtered in his presence outside the camp. פּרה is not a cow generally, but a young cow, a heifer, הב́לבכיע (lxx), juvenca, between the calf and the full-grown cow. אדמּה, of a red colour, 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 (see Leviticus 22:19-20). The slaying of this heifer is called חטּאת, a sin-offering, in Numbers 19:9 and Numbers 19:17. To remind the congregation that death was the wages of sin, the antidote to the defilement of death was to be taken from a sin-offering. But as the object was not to remove and wipe away sin as such, but simply to cleanse the congregation from the uncleanness which proceeded from death, the curse of sin, it was necessary that the sin-offering should be modified in a peculiar manner to accord with this special design. The sacrificial animal was not to be a bullock, as in the case of the ordinary sin-offerings of the congregation (Leviticus 4:14), but a female, because the female sex is the bearer of life (Genesis 3:20), a פּרה, i.e., lit., the fruit-bringing; and of a red colour, not because the blood-red colour points to sin (as Hengstenberg follows the Rabbins and earlier theologians in supposing), 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 reagent 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.
Red - A fit colour to shadow forth the bloody nature of sin, and the blood of Christ, from which this water and all other rites had their purifying virtue. No blemish - A fit type of Christ. 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 put himself under the law; or that Christ was not forced to undertake our burden and cross, but did voluntarily chuse it. He was bound and held with no other cords but those of his own love.
*More commentary available at chapter level.