Numbers 19 - Introduction

XIX.

(2) This is the ordinance of the law... — This combination of the two words denoting “law” and “statute or ordinance” is peculiar. It occurs once more in Numbers 31:21, and seems to imply the importance of the law which was about to be given. The extraordinary mortality which the Israelites had sustained (Numbers 16:49) may have called for some special rites of purification from the defilement caused by contact with the dead. There is no distinct intimation, however, of the time at which this law was first promulgated, which Ibn Ezra and others suppose to have been previously to the departure from Sinai. The words “which the Lord hath (or had) commanded” are consistent with the fact of the previous existence of the ordinance, though not necessarily suggestive of it. This institution was one which admitted of observance in the wilderness under circumstances in which other requirements of the Levitical law could not be observed.

Without spot. — The word so translated may be taken in connection with that which precedes it, and may denote that the heifer was to be entirely red; or it may, more probably, be taken in connection with the words which follow, and may be understood as defining more precisely the freedom of the animal from every defect. (Comp. Leviticus 22:19.)