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Ceremony of the Red Heifer

The L ord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: ²This is a statute of the law that the L ord has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish and on which no yoke has been laid. ³You shall give it to the priest Eleazar, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. ⁴The priest Eleazar shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times towards the front of the tent of meeting. ⁵Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned. ⁶The priest shall take cedarwood, hyssop, and crimson material, and throw them into the fire in which the heifer is burning. ⁷Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp; but the priest shall remain unclean until evening. ⁸The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water; he shall remain unclean until evening. ⁹Then someone who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the Israelites for the water for cleansing. It is a purification offering. ¹⁰The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.

This shall be a perpetual statute for the Israelites and for the alien residing among them. ¹¹Those who touch the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days. ¹²They shall purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean; but if they do not purify themselves on the third day and on the seventh day, they will not become clean. ¹³All who touch a corpse, the body of a human being who has died, and do not purify themselves, defile the tabernacle of the L ord; such persons shall be cut off from Israel. Since water for cleansing was not dashed on them, they remain unclean; their uncleanness is still on them.

¹⁴ This is the law when someone dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. ¹⁵And every open vessel with no cover fastened on it is unclean. ¹⁶Whoever in the open field touches one who has been killed by a sword, or who has died naturally, or a human bone, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. ¹⁷For the unclean they shall take some ashes of the burnt purification offering, and running water shall be added in a vessel; ¹⁸then a clean person shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the furnishings, on the persons who were there, and on whoever touched the bone, the slain, the corpse, or the grave. ¹⁹The clean person shall sprinkle the unclean ones on the third day and on the seventh day, thus purifying them on the seventh day. Then they shall wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water, and at evening they shall be clean. ²⁰Any who are unclean but do not purify themselves, those persons shall be cut off from the assembly, for they have defiled the sanctuary of the L ord. Since the water for cleansing has not been dashed on them, they are unclean.

²¹ It shall be a perpetual statute for them. The one who sprinkles the water for cleansing shall wash his clothes, and whoever touches the water for cleansing shall be unclean until evening. ²²Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean, and anyone who touches it shall be unclean until evening.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes. At first sight there seems to be a discrepancy in the facts, that the heifer was sacred to God, and pure, and still that the priest was polluted by touching it; yet they accord very well with each other. But that both the priest as well as the minister who made the burning, were unclean until the evening, ought to have forcibly struck the people, and taught them the more to abominate sin. And, since it was not permitted to any but a man that was clean to gather the ashes, not that they should be laid anywhere but in a clean place, it was manifested by this sign that there was no impurity in the sacrifice itself, but that from an extraneous and adventitious pollution; because it was destined to purge away uncleanness, it was accounted in a certain sense unclean. Whence too the water, into which the ashes were thrown, was called the water of separation, as well as the expiation ²³²³ “Nam expiatio est.” — Lat, v. 9. “It is a purification for sin.” — A.V. For this translation which I have given is the right one; and others improperly render it “for waters of separation, and for expiation.” The old interpreter has not given the sense amiss, as far as regards this word, “because the heifer is burnt for sin.” But since in Hebrew the word,חטאה chateah ²⁴²⁴ למי נדה חטאת הוא ́̔Υδωρ ῥαντισμᾶ ἅγνισμά ἐστι· — LXX. In aqua aspersionis; quia pro peccato vacca combusta est. — V. This last is what C. means by “the old interpreter.” The translation which he condemns he had seen in S.M. — W. means not only wickedness or sin, but also the sacrifice on which the curse is imposed; what Moses intended to convey is better expressed by the word “expiation.” But the expression “separation” has reference to the men, whose personal uncleanness excluded them from the holy congregation. But the question arises, why this ordinance is pronounced to be common to the strangers who sojourned in the land of Israel, as well as to the natives; because it was by no means reasonable that the uncircumcised should be purified. The reply is easy, that such strangers are not adverted to as were altogether aliens from the people, but those who, although born of heathen parentage, had embraced the Law. These God equalizes with the children of Abraham in the sacrifices and other religious services; for if their condition were different, the-church, into the body of which they were ingrafted, would be rent asunder.

²³ “Nam expiatio est.” — Lat, v. 9. “It is a purification for sin.” — A.V.

²⁴ למי נדה חטאת הוא ́̔Υδωρ ῥαντισμᾶ ἅγνισμά ἐστι· — LXX. In aqua aspersionis; quia pro peccato vacca combusta est. — V. This last is what C. means by “the old interpreter.” The translation which he condemns he had seen in S.M. — W.