Numbers 19

Numbers 19:1

19:1-10 Chapter 19 deals with one of the strongest symbols of cleansing in the OT, the use of the ashes of a red heifer. This offering had to do particularly with removing defilement caused by coming in contact with a dead person. The children of Israel had just rebelled against the Lord at Kadesh. They were now being sent out into the wilderness to die because of their unbelief. Over 600,000 people would die in a thirty-eight year period, or over forty people a day. One can see the need for the ashes of the red heifer, for who could avoid contact with death on such a journey? The heifer was taken outside the camp and slaughtered (v. 3). Eleazar the priest sprinkled its blood seven times before the tabernacle, and then the heifer was burned, skin and all, together with cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet. These same materials were used in the cleansing of lepers (Lev_14:4, Lev_14:6). The priest and the man who burned the heifer were unclean until evening. Then a man who was clean carefully gathered up the ashes and stored them outside the camp for future use (v. 9); then he was unclean until evening. 19:11-19 This paragraph tells how the ashes were to be used. If a person had become ceremonially unclean through touching a dead body or through being in a tent where someone had died, a clean person took some of the ashes and mixed them with running water. The clean person sprinkled the water with hyssop . . . on the unclean person or thing on the third day and on the seventh day. On the seventh day the unclean man washed his clothes, bathed himself, and was clean that evening (v. 19). Williams suggests that the red heifer symbolized Christ: spotless externally and without blemish internally; free from any bondage to sin; and robed with the red earth of manhood. But we must be careful not to press the type too far. The one historical record of the use of the ashes of a heifer is in Numbers 31. Mantle says that: . . . the ashes were regarded as a concentration of the essential properties of the sin offering, and could be resorted to at all times with comparatively little trouble and no loss of time. One red heifer availed for centuries. Only six are said to have been required during the whole of Jewish history; for the smallest quantity of the ashes availed to impart the cleansing virtue of the pure spring water. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews argues that whereas the ashes of a red heifer could do no more than set a person apart from outward, ceremonial defilement, the blood of Christ has infinite power to produce an inward cleansing of the conscience from dead works (Heb_9:13-14). An unknown author comments: The red heifer is God’s provision for inevitable, unavoidable contact with the spiritual death that is around us. It probably has special reference to Israel’s bloodguiltiness in connection with the Messiah. It resembles the trespass offering but does not displace it. Old Testament regulations concerning washing with water, sometimes with running water (Lev_15:13), are now an accepted medical technique for disinfection. 19:20-22 Punishment was inevitable for an unclean person who did not use the water of purification. Also, God decreed that anyone who touched or sprinkled the water was unclean until evening, and anyone he touched was also unclean for the remainder of the day.