A man that is clean— i.e. free from any legal defilement—shall gather up the ashes; which, being taken up, were pounded and sifted, as the Jews tell us:—and it shall be kept; i.e. according to some, not for the use of that generation only, but for posterity also: for ashes, being the remainder of bodies perfectly dissolved or corrupted, are not capable of a second corruption, and so, being preserved through ages for the purposes of legal purification, till the whole stock of them was exhausted, they became a proper emblem of the everlasting efficacy of Christ's blood to purify the conscience from dead works; (Hebrews 9:13-14.); for the Jews tell us, that the ashes of one heifer was kept so long, that only nine in all were killed for this purpose while their state lasted: but this tradition of theirs, like most others, has little countenance from reason. St. Jerome and others, on the contrary, are of opinion, that the red heifer was slain every year; and indeed it is hardly conceivable, that fewer, at least, than one every year, should suffice to furnish ashes to expiate the ordinary defilements of the whole body of the people. These ashes were to be kept for a water of separation; i.e. as appears from Numbers 19:17 to be put into water, and so applied to the cleansing of those who were separated from the congregation for legal pollutions; and thus it was to be a purification for sin, or, according to the Hebrew, a sin-offering; an expiation for sin; see ch. Numbers 8:7.
Some of the Jews ascribed a purifying virtue to this consecrated water; but those who understood the true intention of Moses' law considered this in no other light, than as an instituted means to absolve them from legal or ceremonial defilement, which, like the rest of their washings, purifications, and sacrifices, served to represent moral purity, and the necessity of being cleansed by repentance from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, in order to a participation of the divine favor and forgiveness. This moral purpose is much more fully enforced upon Christians, by the death of Christ: For if (says the Apostle) the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an 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?
REFLECTIONS.—The intention of this ceremony was, to purify from ceremonial uncleanness, and to be typical of that sprinkling of the blood of Jesus which really purges the conscience from dead works. The whole was a shadow of Him that was to come. The spotless purity of our divine Lord, when he offered himself a sacrifice for us, is here prefigured. He was red in his apparel, when he trod the wine-press alone, and when he died weltering in his blood. No yoke bound him to the dreadful service; freely he offered himself to bear the sins of many. At once the priest and sacrifice, he offered up his body on the tree, like to an unclean thing, because the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all; he suffered without the camp, and from the cross looked up to heaven, sprinkling his blood as it were before the door of the heavenly sanctuary. The fierceness of the fire, and the bitter hyssop, shadow forth the fierceness of the wrath of God, and the bitterness of his soul under it; whilst cedar's sweet perfume shews how acceptable the smell of the sacrifice was to God; and the ashes referred for common use, intimates his rich salvation, obtained and offered freely to sinners of every class