What about that Red Heifer?

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: 'This is a requirement of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. Give it to Eleazer the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence....' 

The priest is to take some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool and throw onto the burning heifer....a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonial clean place outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin... Numbers 19

This requirement about the 'red cow' has puzzled me for a long time. It is not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament.


One Bible scholar writes that there is evidence that this ceremony has been performed 7 times in the history of the Jews - maybe 9 - but no other evidence that is was performed regularly. He is talking about the period of time between the building of the Temple under King Solomon through 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans - a span of almost 1000 years.

I looked for information from the ancient rabbis in the Chumash:

     The law of the Red Cow as described by the Sages is the quintessential decree of the Torah. It was to be performed outside the camp during the wilderness days, and later...In the Land, it was to be performed outside the walls of Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives....

...The Midrash to this chapter focuses primarily on one paradox in the law of the Red Cow: Its ashes purify people who had become contaminated, yet those who engage in its preparation become contaminated themselves...

         One should not try to explain this precept (the Red Cow
         Commandment)  because God gave us His best and most
         sacred commands in the form of a "divine kiss," as it were,
         like the intimacy of a lover to his beloved....



The notes continue:

The quintessence....

The underlying message of all of the above, as well as the many other mysteries of the Torah, is that the Supreme Intelligence has granted man a huge treasury  of spiritual and intellectual gifts, but none is more precious that the knowledge that God is infinite, both in existence and in wisdom, while man is as limited in his ability to comprehend as he is in his physical existence.....

Our most precious gift is the awareness that God is infinite!

Red cows were rare. And they had to be perfect, without blemish, and very few, or no, black or white hairs. Just red. They would have been very expensive. They would have had to be bred specifically for the purpose of this 'Red Cow' law.

As Christians - "completed Jews" -- it brings us back to Hebrews 9:

The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.

How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so they we may serve the living God.

So many insights in this ceremony...outside the camp...Mount of Olives...
preparing the sacrifice contaminates the one performing it....I'm going to revisit this again and glean some more...



Note: I looked up quintessence.  It means: (1) In ancient and medieval philosophy, the fifth essence, or ultimate substance, of which the heavenly bodies were thought to be composed: distinguished from the four elements--
air, fire, water, earth, (2) the pure, consecrated essence of anything, (3) the most perfect manifestation of a quality or thing.....


So it looks like the ancient rabbis are saying that the most pure and most perfect manifestation of God is the knowledge He has given us that He is infinite.....