Numbers 19:1-22
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
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:
3 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:
4 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:
5 And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
6 And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
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.
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.
9 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.
10 And 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.
11 He that toucheth the dead body of any mana shall be unclean seven days.
12 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.
13 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.
14 This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
15 And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.
16 And whosoever 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.
17 And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashesb of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:
18 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:
19 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.
20 But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.
21 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.
22 And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.
The Purification of the unclean through Contact with the Dead. This was effected by sprinkling the unclean person twice within seven days (Numbers 19:12 mg., Numbers 19:19) with running water, the virtue of which had been intensified by various ingredients, viz. the ashes of a red cow, cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet thread. The use of running water in such lustrations was doubtless based on the belief that springs and wells (pp. 100, 216) were the abodes of superhuman powers, and that a Divine quality pertained to water drawn from them, which was capable of neutralising impurity. Amongst the Greeks a vessel of spring water was placed at the door of a house where a death had occurred, for the purification of those who might become contaminated (cf. Eurip. Alc. 98- 100). But in the rite here prescribed the water was not regarded as having in itself sufficient purifying virtue, but was fortified by other things which were likewise believed to possess potent qualities. The admixture with it of the ashes of an animal finds a parallel in the use by the Romans of the ashes of unborn calves mixed with the blood of a horse, at the purificatory festival of the Parilia (Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 71, 83); and the original idea behind it probably goes back to a totemistic stage of religious thought. The requirement that the cow should be red in colour is more difficult to explain. The selection of red-haired puppies for sacrifice at the Roman festival of the Robigalia to promote the ripening of the crops is not an illuminating parallel, for the choice of animals of such a colour for such a purpose was obviously due to their resembling the ruddiness of ripe corn, the sacrifice of them being a piece of sympathetic magic. Some have thought that the redness of the cow here required was associated with the idea of blood (Genesis 9:4 *), wherein was the life (the antithesis of death)* Possibly this is the right explanation of the scarlet thread; but with regard to the red cow, another suggestion may be hazarded, viz. that the colour was chosen as being that of the red earth beneath which the dead dwelt, and that the cow was originally a sacrifice to the spirits of the dead. (Among the Romans, victims of a black colour were offered to chthonic deities.) The cedar and the hyssop (the last the caper, or else a species of marjoram) were doubtless credited with magical virtue; for trees were considered to be sacred, and the myrtle, laurel, and olive have been used for religious purposes by various peoples. That the whole rite originally involved contact with holy powers is implied in the circumstances that the cow had to be burnt outside the camp (cf. Hebrews 13:11 f.), and that everyone concerned with the preparation of its ashes, or with the water with which they were mingled, was rendered unclean until the evening; for uncleanness, in this and some other instances, was equivalent to sanctity, which incapacitated for secular occupations all who became infected with it.
Numbers 19:2. heifer: better, cow, since the Hebrew word is used of cows in 1 Samuel 6:7. The choice of a female animal occurs also in the sin offering and in the sacrifice offered in atonement for a murder by an unknown person (Leviticus 4:27 f., Deuteronomy 21:3). wherein. blemish: cf. Leviticus 22:20; it was thought that the potency of the sacred animal would be reduced by any physical imperfection. upon which. yoke: this was a condition generally observed in the case of animals intended for religious purposes (cf. Hom. Il. x. 293, Od. iii. 383, Verg. Æ n. vi. 38), for it was felt that use in the field generally impaired the virtue or acceptability of the victim.
Numbers 19:9. water of separation: strictly water (for the separation) of impurity, a sin offering: better (as suggested by LXX), a means of purification from sin (and so in Numbers 19:17); the slaughtered cow was not a sacrifice but a physical agent for removing impurity.
Numbers 19:12. Render (with LXX) as in mg.; cf. Numbers 19:19.
Numbers 19:13. sprinkled upon him: strictly, poured (or dashed) over him (cf. Numbers 18:17), the verb differing here and in Numbers 19:20 from that used in Numbers 19:4; Numbers 19:18.
Numbers 19:18. hyssop: cf. Psalms 51:7. Amongst the Romans branches of olive and of laurel were similarly used as sprinklers in lustrations (Verg. Æ n. vi. 230, Juv. ii. 158).
Numbers 19:21. unto them: read (with LXX), unto you. unclean: this consequence was due to the holiness of the water, just as in later times the Jews held that the Holy Scriptures defiled the hands (pp. 39, 202).