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:
This is the ordinance of the law (Leviticus 4:14: cf. Hebrews 9:13) - an institution of a special nature ordained by law for the purification of sin, and provided at the public expense, because it was for the good of the whole community.
Red heifer ... This is the only case in which the colour of the victim is specified; and it has been supposed the ordinance was designed in opposition to the superstitious notions of the Egyptians (Maimonides, 'De Vacca rufa;' Hengstenberg, 'Egypt and Books of Moses,' pp. 173-180; Carpenter, 'Scripture Natural History,' p. 845; Spencer, 'De Vitula rufa'). That people never offered a vow but they sacrificed a red bull, the greatest care being taken by their priests in examining whether it possessed the requisite characteristics; and it was an annual offering to Typhon, their evil being. By the choice, both of the sex and the colour, provision was made for eradicating from the minds of the Israelites a favourite Egyptian superstition regarding two objects of their animal worship. 'The truth probably is,' says Hardwick ('Christ and other Masters,' vol. 2:, p. 338), 'that the adoption of the red colour in both cases corresponded only because of its inherent fitness to express the thought which it was made to symbolize in each community. It was the colour of blood; and while in Egypt the idea was readily connected with the deadly, scathing, sanguinary powers of Typhon, it became in the more ethical system of the Hebrews a remembrancer of moral evil flowing out into its penal consequences, or an image of unpardoned sin (cf. Isaiah 1:15; Isaiah 1:18).