Numbers 19:9 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

A man shall gather up the ashes The ashes of the heifer were separated as well as they could be from the ashes of the wood wherewith it was burned, were pounded and sifted, and laid up for the use of the congregation as there was occasion, not only for that generation, but for posterity; for the ashes of this one heifer, the Jews tell us, were sufficient to season as many vessels of water as the people of Israel would need for many ages. Nay, they say this one served till the captivity, near one thousand years, and that there never was another heifer burned fill the time of Ezra. But to this tradition of theirs, grounded probably on the silence of ancient records, there seems to be no good reason to give credit, since, in the latter ages of their church, when they had more full records, they find an account of eight burned between Ezra's time and the destruction of the second temple, which was only a space of about five hundred years. In the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, however, offered only once for all, we have an inexhaustible fund of merit, to which, by faith, his church may have recourse from generation to generation, for the purification of their consciences from dead works.