Numbers 19 - Clarke's commentary and critical notes on the Bible

And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,

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: Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee, etc. - The ordinance of the red heifer was a sacrifice of general application. All the people were to have an interest in it, and therefore the people at large are to provide the sacrifice. This Jewish rite certainly had a reference to things done under the Gospel, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has remarked: "For if," says he, "the blood of bulls and of goats," alluding, probably, to the sin-offerings and the scape-goat, "and the ashes of a 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!" Hebrews 9:13, Hebrews 9:14. As the principal stress of the allusion here is to the ordinance of the red heifer, we may certainly conclude that it was designed to typify the sacrifice of our blessed Lord.

We may remark several curious particulars in this ordinance.

1. A heifer was appointed for a sacrifice, probably, in opposition to the Egyptian superstition which held these sacred, and actually worshipped their great goddess Isis under this form; and this appears the more likely because males in general were preferred for sacrifice, yet here the female is chosen.

2. It was to be a red heifer, because red bulls were sacrificed to appease the evil demon Typhon, worshipped among the Egyptians. See Spencer.

3. The heifer was to be without spot - having no mixture of any other color. Plutarch remarks, De Iside et de Osiride, that if there was a single hair in the animal either white or black, it marred the sacrifice. See Calmet, and see the note on Numbers 8:7.

4. Without blemish - having no kind of imperfection in her body; the other, probably, applying to the hair or color.

5. On which never came yoke, because any animal which had been used for any common purpose was deemed improper to be offered in sacrifice to God. The heathens, who appear to have borrowed much from the Hebrews, were very scrupulous in this particular. Neither the Greeks nor Romans, nor indeed the Egyptians, would offer an animal in sacrifice that had been employed for agricultural purposes. Of this we have the most positive evidence from Homer, Porphyry, Virgil, and Macrobius.

Just such a sacrifice as that prescribed here, does Diomede vow to offer to Pallas - Iliad, lib. x., ver. 291.

Ὡς νυν μοι εθελουσα παριστασο, και με φυλασσε·

Σοι δ' αυ εγω ῥεξω βουν ηνιν ευρυμετωπον,

Αδμητην, ἡν ουπω ὑπο ζυγον ηγαγεν ανηρ·

Την τοι εγω ῥεξω, χρυσον κερασιν περιχευας.

"So now be present, O celestial maid;

So still continue to the race thine aid;

A yearling heifer falls beneath the stroke,

Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke,

With ample forehead and with spreading horns,

Whose tapering tops refulgent gold adorns."

Altered from Pope.

In the very same words Nestor, Odyss., lib. iii., ver. 382, promises a similar sacrifice to Pallas.

The Romans had the same religion with the Greeks, and consequently the same kind of sacrifices; so Virgil, Georg. iv., ver. 550.

Quatuor eximios praestanti corpore tauros

Ducit, et intacta totidem cervice juveneas.

" - From his herd he culls

For slaughter four the fairest of his bulls;

Four heifers from his female stock he took,

All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke."

Dryden.

It is very likely that the Gentiles learnt their first sacrificial rites from the patriarchs; and on this account we need not wonder to find so many coincidences in the sacrificial system of the patriarchs and Jews, and all the neighboring nations.

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:

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:

And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:

And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.

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.

And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even.

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. For a water of separation - That is, the ashes were to be kept, in order to be mixed with water, Numbers 19:17, and sprinkled on those who had contracted any legal defilement.

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.

He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days - How low does this lay man! He who touched a dead beast was only unclean for one day, Leviticus 11:24, Leviticus 11:27, Leviticus 11:39; but he who touches a dead man is unclean for seven days. This was certainly designed to mark the peculiar impurity of man, and to show his sinfulness - seven times worse than the vilest animal! O thou son of the morning, how art thou fallen!

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. He shall purify himself with it - יתחטא בו yithchatta bo, literally, he shall sin himself with it. This Hebrew form of speech is common enough among us in other matters. Thus to fleece, to bark, and to skin, do not signify to add a fleece, another bark, or a skin, but to take one away; therefore, to sin himself, in the Hebrew idiom, is not to add sin, but to take it away, to purify. The verb חטא chata signifies to miss the mark, to sin, to purify from sin, and to make a sin-offering. See the note on Genesis 13:13.

The Hebrews generally sacrificed males, no matter of what color; but here a heifer, and a heifer of a red color, is ordered. The reason of these circumstances is not very well known.

"The rabbins, with all their boldness," says Calmet, "who stick at nothing when it is necessary to explain what they do not understand, declare that the cause of this law is entirely unknown; and that Solomon, with all his wisdom, could not find it out."

Several fathers, as well modern as ancient, profess to understand the whole clearly.

1. The red heifer with them signifies the flesh of our Lord, formed out of an earthly substance.

2. Being without spot, etc., the infinite holiness of Christ.

3. The sex of the animal, the infirmity of our flesh, with which he clothed himself.

4. The red color, his passion.

5. Being unyoked, his being righteous in all his conduct, and never under the yoke of sin.

6. Eleazar's sacrificing the heifer instead of Aaron, Genesis 13:3, signifies the change of the priesthood from the family of Aaron, in order that a new and more perfect priesthood might take place.

7. The red heifer being taken without the camp (Genesis 13:3) to be slain, points out the crucifixion of our Lord without the city.

8. The complete consuming of the heifer by fire, the complete offering of the whole body and soul of Christ as a sacrifice to God for the sin of man: for as the heifer was without blemish, the whole might be offered to God; and as Christ was immaculate, his whole body and soul were made a sacrifice for sin.

9. As the fire of this sacrifice ascended up to God, so it points out the resurrection and ascension of our blessed Lord.

10. And as the ashes of this victim communicated a legal purity to those who were defiled, so true repentance, signified by those ashes, is necessary for the expiation of the offenses committed after baptism.

A great part of this is true in itself; but how little evidence is there that all these things were intended in the ordinance of the red heifer? See on Numbers 8:7 (note).

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.

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.

And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.

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.

And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:

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:

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.

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.

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.

And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even. Commentary on the Bible, by Adam Clarke [1831].