Numberschapter 19
22 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
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:
Introduction
Moses, by tradition, The Law, Numbers Overview.
Numbers 19 is a law of cleansing, placed among chapters full of death. The camp had just buried thousands and would bury a whole generation over the years ahead. Contact with a body shut a person out of the worship of the tent for a week. The first hearers lived with that uncleanness in every family. This chapter gives them a remedy close at hand and within reach of every household. Listen for the one detail that seems to run backward, since the people who prepare the cleansing are themselves made unclean. The New Testament returns to this rite when it speaks of Christ.
Context
- Who
- A camp that was going to meet death constantly for forty years
- What
- Ritual law for the ashes of a red heifer mixed with water, used to cleanse anyone made unclean by a death.
- Where
- Outside the camp in the wilderness, where the heifer was burned and its ashes were kept.
- When
- During the years of wandering, the date unstated, between about 1445 and 1407 BC on the traditional dating.
- Why
- To keep a camp that lived among the dead from being cut off from the sanctuary, and to keep the dwelling of the LORD from being defiled.
Historical context
The law is given to Moses and Aaron together, which is the form the book uses for the priestly statutes. Aaron was high priest at the time, and the chapter hands the work to his son Eleazar rather than to him.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
No date is attached. The chapter stands after Korah and before the return to Kadesh, and John Gill reports Abraham ibn Ezra placing the instruction back at Sinai beside the law of Numbers 5:2. The place in the book is certain and the year is not.
The setting is the camp in the wilderness of Paran and the open ground outside it. Everything in the rite happens outside the camp, from the killing of the cow to the store of ash.
The occasion is the arithmetic of the sentence passed at Kadesh. A camp of that size, condemned to bury an entire generation, needed a remedy for corpse defilement that was cheap, portable and always in stock.
A first hearer knew what corpse uncleanness cost him. Seven days outside the life of the camp, a tent and everything open in it made unclean along with him, and a priest or Levite barred from service for the week. He also knew that a sacrificial animal was normally male and that its blood normally went to the altar, so a red female burned whole outside the camp was a departure he would have noticed.
He knew what the three things thrown into the fire were for, since cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool are the same three used at the cleansing of a leper in Leviticus 14. And he knew that graves were marked, because unmarked ground was how a man picked up defilement without knowing it.
Significance
For a nation walking toward its own graves this was the mercy that kept grief from becoming permanent exclusion. A man could bury his father and be back at the tent of meeting inside a week.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
It also left them with a picture they could not put down. Something had to be taken outside the camp and burned so that the people inside could be clean, and whoever handled that cleansing carried the uncleanness himself.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The rite of this chapter belonged to the Temple, and Rashi records how it was carried out. The command was given to the deputy of the high priest rather than to the high priest himself (Rashi on Numbers 19:3:1). The heifer was taken outside all three camps (Rashi on Numbers 19:3:2). The priest stood at the east of Jerusalem and had to "direct his gaze straight towards the entrance of the Hechal at the time of sprinkling the blood" (Rashi on Numbers 19:4:1). Rashi then records where the ashes were kept. They were divided into three. One portion lay on the Mount of Olives, one was shared among the priestly divisions, and one was kept in the space around the Temple court (Rashi on Numbers 19:9:1). The portion held by the divisions was the one an ordinary Israelite came to for cleansing. The portion in the Temple space was kept for the congregation by the command of Scripture. The portion on the Mount of Olives was used by the high priests to purify themselves for preparing further red cows. That the rite cannot be carried out while no Temple stands is the writer's reading of Rashi's account, and is not a citation from the corpus.
How it is read
Rashi opens the chapter on the word Scripture uses for a statute, and he opens it on an objection. He records that "Satan and the nations of the world taunt Israel", asking what this command is and what reason there is for it (Rashi on Numbers 19:2:1). The word for a statute is the answer in his reading. It carries the sense, "It is an enactment from before Me; you have no right to criticize it" (Rashi on Numbers 19:2:1, citing Yoma 67b and Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 7). Rashi also holds that the rite keeps the name of Moses. He writes that "It will always be called by thy name: people will speak of the cow which Moses prepared in the wilderness" (Rashi on Numbers 19:2:2).
The law itself is worked out clause by clause. Rashi holds that the corpse in question is a human body, and that the wording excludes the carcass of an animal, whose uncleanness needs no sprinkling (Rashi on Numbers 19:13:1, citing Chullin 72a). He takes the open vessel of the fifteenth verse as an earthen one. An earthen vessel takes uncleanness from within rather than from outside, while a metal vessel takes it either way (Rashi on Numbers 19:15:1, citing Chullin 25a). He reports the Rabbis reading the open field of the sixteenth verse as taking in the upper board and the side board of a coffin (Rashi on Numbers 19:16:1).
The hardest point of the chapter is the one Rashi lets stand. He records that "Our Rabbis said that the one who sprinkles remains clean" (Rashi on Numbers 19:21:1). The man who carries the water of purification becomes unclean by it, and he makes his garments unclean as well (Rashi on Numbers 19:21:1, citing Yoma 14a). He adds the limit the Rabbis put on it. The waters defile the man who bears them only where they are of a quantity fit for sprinkling.
Ibn Ezra comments at six places in this chapter and the corpus carries none of his text, because the licence Sefaria reports for it does not permit keeping it here. He stands cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Numbers 19:5:1, 19:6:1, 19:10:1, 19:11:1, 19:17:1 and 19:18:1. Malbim comments at the first and the eighth verses, and Sefaria holds no English version of either, so he stands cited at Malbim on Numbers 19:1:1 and 19:8:1.
A Christian reader should see where the readings part. The classical reading takes the rite as an ordinance whose reason is withheld, and it cleanses the body of a man who has touched the dead. Christian teaching reads the ashes as a lesser cleansing and argues from them to the blood of Christ. That argument rests on Hebrews 9:13 and 9:14, and this site sets it out at /featured/the-red-heifer. The commentators in the corpus carry no word of that, and they are reported here in their own terms.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. Thirty of them are Talmudic and ten are midrashic. Two tractates carry the heaviest run. Avodah Zarah stands at 23a:6, 23a:9, 37b:5, 37b:7 and 37b:9, and Chullin at 11a:15, 29b:10, 62b:2, 72a:7 and 72a:8. Arakhin stands at 3a:6, 3a:7 and 3a:14, and Chagigah at 18b:1, 22a:18 and 22a:19. Kiddushin stands at 36b:2 and 62a:4, Menachot at 7b:20, and Bava Metzia at 114b:2. Avot DeRabbi Natan stands at 1:2 and 35:2, with Recension B at 1:3. The Jerusalem Talmud is cited five times, at Megillah 3:4:1 and 2:5:6, Shekalim 4:1:4, Bava Metzia 7:6:2, Yoma 6:6:10, Nazir 7:3:1 and Demai 3:4:7.
The midrashic locators run alongside them. Bamidbar Rabbah stands at 9:36, 19:2, 19:4 and 20:19. Midrash Lekach Tov stands at Numbers 19:8:1 and 19:10:1, and Midrash Aggadah at Numbers 19:10:1 and Leviticus 22:27:9. Midrash Tanchuma Buber stands at Chukat 27:5, and Sifra at Metzora, Section 2 4. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text, because the corpus holds these locators without it.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Numbers 19:2:1 to 19:22:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary translated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Numbers 19:5:1, 19:6:1, 19:10:1, 19:11:1, 19:17:1 and 19:18:1, cited by ref because the licence the corpus reports does not permit keeping the text; Malbim, Malbim on Numbers 19:1:1 and 19:8:1, cited by ref because Sefaria holds no English version; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/numbers/19.json, the 30 Talmud and 10 Midrash locators of this chapter, fetched 2026-09-19; MannaFest, src/app/featured/the-red-heifer/page.tsx, for the Hebrews 9:13 and 9:14 argument named at the point of contact.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A red heifer burned outside the camp
Numbers 19:1-2
The victim is an unblemished red heifer never placed under a yoke, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that this is the only sacrifice in the law whose colour is prescribed. Clarke notes that the people bring her, since the rite serves the whole community. Verse 2 calls it the statute of the law and gives no reason for any detail, which Rashi reads as a decree without its ground.
Numbers 19:1
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, and unto Aaron,.... Not at this time, after the business of the spies, and the affair of Korah, but before the children of Israel departed from Sinai; and so Aben Ezra observes, that this was spoken in the wilderness of Sinai, when the Lord commanded to put unclean persons out of the camp, and when some were defiled with a dead body, and unfit for the passover, Num 5:2; and mention is made of the "water of purifying", Num 8:7, saying; as follows.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Numbers 19:1
“The principle that death and all pertaining to it, as being the manifestation and result of sin Gen 2:17, are defiling, and so lead to interruption of the living relationship between God and His people, is not now introduced for the first time, nor is it at all peculiar to the Mosaic law.”
Matthew Henry reads the heifer that never bore a yoke as a figure of the voluntary offering of Jesus, held only by the cords of his own love. Deuteronomy 21:3 sets the same condition on a heifer killed for an unsolved murder. The cows of 1 Samuel 6:7 had never been yoked either.
Numbers 19:2
“This is the ordinance of the law--an institution of a peculiar 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. Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, &c.--This is the only case in which the color of the victim is specified.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:2
“And it must be one on which never came yoke, which was not insisted on in other sacrifices, but thus was typified the voluntary offer of the Lord Jesus, when he said, Lo, I come, He was bound and held with no other cords than those of his own love.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Numbers 19:3-4
The heifer goes to Eleazar the priest, not Aaron, and Barnes gives the reason that the work defiles the man who does it. She is slaughtered outside the camp, and Hebrews 13:12 takes up the pattern: Jesus also suffered outside the city gate. Her blood never reaches the altar, and Henry reads its sevenfold sprinkling toward the front of the Tent of Meeting as what gives the rite its standing.
Numbers 19:3
“The work would necessarily require a priest; yet as it rendered him unclean for the day Num 19:22, the high priest was relieved from performing it. Without the camp - The defilement was viewed as transferred to the victim that was to be offered for its removal. Under these circumstances the victim, like the defiled persons themselves, would be removed outside the camp. The particular pollution to be remedied by this ordinance was the indirect one resulting from contact with tokens and manifestations of sin, not the direct and personal one arising from actual commission of sin.”
Seven sprinklings of blood mark the most solemn sin offerings, before the veil at Leviticus 4:6 and before the mercy seat at Leviticus 16:14. John Wesley places Eleazar outside the camp for this, turned toward the tent at a distance. Verse 9 names the rite a purification from sin.
Numbers 19:4
“Before the tabernacle - Or, towards the tabernacle, standing at a good distance from it, even without the camp, yet turning and looking towards it. For here is no intimation that he went into the camp before this work was done, but rather the contrary is implied, ver.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:4
“This made it in some sort an expiation; for the sprinkling of the blood before the Lord was the chief solemnity in all the sacrifices of atonement; therefore, though this was not done at the altar, yet, being done towards the sanctuary, it was intimated that the virtue and validity of it depended upon the sanctuary, and were derived from it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Numbers 19:5-6
She is burned whole, her hide, her flesh and her blood with her dung, and Leviticus 4:11-12 does not add the blood for the sin offering burned outside the camp. The priest throws cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool into the fire, the three used to cleanse a leper at Leviticus 14:4-6. So one animal becomes an ash that keeps and travels.
Numbers 19:5
“This typified the extreme sufferings of our Lord Jesus, both in soul and body, as a sacrifice made by fire. The priest was to cast into the fire, while it was burning, cedarwood, hyssop, and scarlet, which were used in the cleansing of lepers ( Lev. xiv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hebrews 9:19 names the scarlet wool and hyssop again at Sinai, where Moses sprinkled the book and all the people with blood and water. Matthew Henry reads the whole ceremony of these ashes through that chapter of Hebrews. Hyssop returns at verse 18 as the sprinkler.
ConnectionsLeviticus 14:4
Numbers 19:7-8
The priest who has just made the means of cleansing must wash his clothes and bathe, and stays unclean until evening, as does the man who burned her. Henry states the reversal plainly, and Wesley reads it of the imperfection of the Levitical priesthood, the priest defiled by his own work. The chapter gives no account of why the clean are made unclean in making a cleansing.
Numbers 19:7
“Shall be unclean - Partly to teach us the imperfection of the Levitical priesthood, in which the priest himself was defiled by some parts of his work, and partly to shew that Christ himself, though he had no sin of his own, yet was reputed by men, and judged by God, as a sinful person, by reason of our sins which were laid upon him.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Matthew Henry carries the uncleanness of these workers over to Jesus, made sin for His people at 2 Corinthians 5:21 and a curse for them at Galatians 3:13. The man who burned her washes and bathes exactly as the priest did. Each hand that serves the rite loses a day.
Numbers 19:9-10
gather up the ashes of the heifer: A clean man stores the ashes outside the camp for the water of purification, so one animal supplies a nation for years. Hebrews 9:13 names the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on the unclean, putting the link to Christ in the New Testament's own words. The Mishnah tractate Parah, compiled about AD 200, records a dispute over whether seven or nine heifers were ever burned.
Numbers 19:9
“For a water - Or, to the water, that is, to be put to the water, or mixed with it. Of separation - Appointed for the cleansing of them that are in a state of separation, who for their uncleanness are separated from the congregation. It is a purification for sin - Hebrew. a sin, that is, an offering for sin, or rather a mean for expiation or cleansing of sin.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Numbers 19:9
Water of separation - In Num 8:7, the water of purification from sin is the “water of purifying.” So that which was to remedy a state of legal separation is here called “water of separation.”
Numbers 19:9
“And again: "The water of sprinkling is a purification." Whence it appears that the sprinkling also of water prevails equally with the washing of salvation; and that when this is done in the Church, where the faith both of receiver and giver is sound, all things hold and may be consummated and perfected by the majesty of the Lord and by the truth of faith.”
Cyprian · written before 258 · Epistle LXXV.12patristic
Albert Barnes explains the gatherer's uncleanness by the people's defilement, laid first on the heifer and then gathered into her ashes. Matthew Henry quotes Bishop Patrick that every sin offering was counted impure because sins were laid on it. Leviticus 16:28 treats the burner of the atonement offerings alike.
Numbers 19:10
“He that gathered the ashes became equally unclean with the others. For the defilement of the people, previously transferred to the heifer, was regarded as concentrated in the ashes.”
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:10
“But (says bishop Patrick) it is not strange to those who consider that all the sacrifices which were offered for sin were therefore looked upon as impure, because the sins of men were laid upon them, as all our sins were upon Christ, who therefore is said to be made sin for us, 2 Cor. v. 21 .”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Whoever touches a dead body
Numbers 19:11-12
Whoever touches any dead body is unclean for seven days, and Barnes notes one practical effect, that bodies were buried early. The remedy runs on a clock, on the third day and on the seventh day, and the man who misses the third is not clean on the seventh. Clarke works the Hebrew of purify himself as he shall sin himself with it, since the verb also means removing sin.
Numbers 19:11
“One practical effect of attaching defilement to a dead body, and to all that touched it, etc., would be to insure early burial, and to correct a practice not uncommon in the East, of leaving the deal to be devoured by the wild beasts.”
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:11
“To afford the necessary supply of the cleansing mixture, the Jewish writers say that a red heifer was sacrificed every year, and that the ashes, mingled with the sprinkling ingredients, were distributed through all the cities and towns of Israel.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
on the third day, and on the seventh day: Numbers 31:19 applies this same rule to the soldiers who killed in the Midianite war, who stayed outside the camp and purified themselves on the third and seventh days. Adam Clarke compares the Hebrew idiom to English verbs like skin and fleece, which name a removal. Battle carried the same defilement.
Numbers 19:12
“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.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Numbers 19:13-14
The man who leaves himself unpurified defiles the tabernacle of the LORD without going near it, and must be cut off from Israel for the omission alone. Verse 14 widens the defilement to a whole tent where someone dies. A priest who touched a corpse was barred from service, which is why readers of Luke 10:31-32 set this law beside the two men who pass by.
Numbers 19:13
“Whosoever toucheth - If this transgression be done presumptuously; for if it was done ignorantly, he was only to offer sacrifice. Defiled -By approaching to it in his uncleanness: for holy things or places were ceremonially defiled with the touch of any unclean person or thing.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:13
“Every one knowingly and presumptuously neglecting to have himself sprinkled with this water was guilty of an offense which was punished by excommunication.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ashes, running water, and a sprig of hyssop
Here uncleanness passes by sharing a roof with the dead. The Mishnah gives a whole tractate, Oholot or Tents, to working out this verse. Albert Barnes grounds the law in Genesis 2:17, where death enters as the result of sin and so breaks the living bond between God and his people.
Numbers 19:15-16
Any open container without a lid is unclean, and Gill records the Jewish reading, in the Targum of Jonathan, Rashi and Maimonides, that this means earthen vessels, broken rather than scoured at Leviticus 11:33. Verse 16 carries the law into the open field, to a human bone or a grave. Graves were marked for this reason, and Luke 11:44 turns the practice into a charge: you are like unmarked graves.
Numbers 19:15
“And every open vessel,.... An earthen one, as the Targum of Jonathan; and so Jarchi interprets it; and Maimonides (r) observes, that this is only to be understood of an earthen vessel: which hath no covering bound upon it; a linen or a woollen cloth wrapped and tied about it: is unclean; the air of the house getting into it by its being uncovered. (r) In Misn. Cholin, c. 1. sect. 6.”
A bone or a grave carries the same seven days as a corpse, so the smallest remnant of death defiles in full. Josiah used this law at 2 Kings 23:16, burning bones from the tombs on the altar at Bethel to defile it. Ezekiel 39:15 has a marker set beside every bone found.
Numbers 19:17-18
Some of the ashes go in a jar with fresh water poured over them, which Keil and Delitzsch read as living water from a spring. A clean man sprinkles it with hyssop, the plant of the blood at Exodus 12:22 and of Psalm 51:7. He sprinkles the tent, all the furnishings, and the people, so the house is treated with the man.
Numbers 19:17
“And that this ceremonial purification was a type and figure of the cleansing of the consciences of believers from the pollutions of sin appears by the apostle's discourse, Heb. ix. 13, 14 , where he compares the efficacy of the blood of Christ with the sanctifying virtue that was in "the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean." The Ashes of Purification.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Matthew Henry hears this sprinkling behind the blood of sprinkling at Hebrews 12:24 and the hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience at Hebrews 10:22. Ezekiel 36:25 promises Israel clean water sprinkled on them.
Numbers 19:18
“In allusion to this application of the water of separation by sprinkling, the blood of Christ is said to be the blood of sprinkling ( Heb. xii. 24 ), and with it were are said to be sprinkled from an evil conscience ( Heb. x. 22 ), that is, we are freed from the uneasiness that arises from a sense of our guilt.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Numbers 19:19-20
No priest appears in this half of the rite. Any clean man sprinkles on the third and seventh days, and the unclean man is clean that evening. The one who refuses is cut off for the neglect rather than the contact, and Henry finds the fault in the contempt of the remedy.
The sentence of verse 13 is given a second time, cut off now from the assembly. John Wesley limits it to the man who refuses the water presumptuously, since a man who erred in ignorance offered a sacrifice. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the cutting off as excommunication.
Numbers 19:20
“But the man that shall be unclean,.... By touching any dead body, bone, or grave: and shall not purify himself; with the water of purification: that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation: See Gill on Num 19:13. because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: by going into it in his uncleanness: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him, he is unclean; and will remain so, for nothing else could purify him, see Num 19:13.”
1 more voice on this verse
Numbers 19:20
“A slight wound, if neglected, may prove fatal; a sin we call little, if not repented of, will be our ruin, when great sinners that repent shall find mercy. Our uncleanness separates us from God, but it is our being unclean and not purifying ourselves that will separate us for ever from him: it is not the wound that is fatal, so much as the contempt of the remedy.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Numbers 19:21-22
The permanent statute keeps the reversal, since the one who sprinkles the water of purification must wash his clothes. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown place the power in the divine appointment, not the mixture. Verse 22 moves defilement one way, and Haggai 2:11-13 puts the question to the priests and gets the same answer.
Numbers 19:21
“One important lesson, however, was thus taught, that its purifying efficacy was not inherent in itself, but arose from the divine appointment, as in other ordinances of religion, which are effectual means of salvation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that administers them, but solely through the grace of God communicated thereby.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
John Wesley reads the unclean person here as the man defiled for seven days by the dead, distinct from the one who touched the water in verse 21. What he touches passes on a lesser uncleanness. It lasts until evening.
Numbers 19:22
“The unclean person - Not he who is so only by touching the water of separation, ver. 21, but he who is so by the greater sort of uncleanness, which lasted seven days, and which was not removed without the use of this water of purification.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Ritual law, given as a permanent statute and called the ordinance of the law, as Jamieson, Fausset and Brown classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Unclean until evening, said five times | The priest, the man who burns the heifer, the man who gathers the ash, the man who sprinkles the water and the man who touches it all end the same way, unclean until evening. The clause returns at each stage and keeps the reversal in front of the reader. | Numbers 19:7, Numbers 19:8, Numbers 19:10, Numbers 19:21, Numbers 19:22 |
| The roll of what defiles | Verses 11 to 16 walk the cases in order. A dead body, a tent where someone died, everyone who enters it and everyone already inside. Then an open container with no lid fastened on, a man killed in the open field, a human bone and a grave. The law is written as a list so that a household can work through it. | Numbers 19:11, Numbers 19:14, Numbers 19:15, Numbers 19:16 |
| He shall sin himself with it | Adam Clarke works the Hebrew of purify himself at verse 12, yithchatta bo, which reads literally he shall sin himself with it. The verb behind sin also carries the sense of removing sin and of making a sin offering, so one word holds the defilement and the remedy.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on Numbers 19:12. | Numbers 19:12 |
| The third day and the seventh | The clock is stated twice in the same words, once in the law at verse 12 and once in the practice at verse 19. A man who misses the third day is still unclean on the seventh, so the two days are given as a pair and never as alternatives. | Numbers 19:12, Numbers 19:19 |
The chapter is built around a fact it never explains. The ashes cleanse the unclean. The priest who prepares them, the man who burns the animal, the man who gathers the ash and the man who sprinkles the water are each made unclean in the doing of it. Matthew Henry states the reversal plainly, that they were themselves unclean, as if the pollution laid upon them continued to cleave to them. John Wesley reads it of the imperfection of the Levitical priesthood, where the priest is defiled by his own work.
10 more paragraphs on the patterns
The traffic of defilement runs one way. Verse 22 says that anything the unclean person touches becomes unclean. Haggai 2:11 to 13 puts that very question to the priests and gets the same answer. Holy flesh does not spread its holiness by contact, and a man defiled by a dead body makes what he touches unclean.
The chapter also works by economy. One animal is reduced to a substance that keeps and travels, stored outside the camp in a clean place. A nation burying its dead for forty years then has a remedy on hand at every tent.
The New Testament's use
Hebrews 9:13 names this chapter when it speaks of the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who are ceremonially unclean. The New Testament states the link to Christ itself, and a reader does not have to lay it on the text. Hebrews 13:11 to 13 takes up the other half of the pattern, since the bodies burned outside the camp answer to Jesus suffering outside the gate. The heifer is killed and burned outside the camp at verse 3.
Luke 11:44 turns the practice that grew out of verse 16 into a charge. Graves were marked so that no one picked up defilement unawares, and Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees unmarked graves that men walk over without knowing. A man who touched a corpse was barred from service for a week. Readers of Luke 10:31 to 32 have long set that beside the priest and the Levite who pass by on the far side.
The debated point
How often the heifer was burned is reported rather than settled. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown pass on the report of Jewish writers that one was burned yearly. The Mishnah tractate Parah, compiled about AD 200, preserves a dispute over whether seven or nine were ever burned from Moses onward. The chapter itself gives no interval at all, and the two reports stand as they are written.
The second dispute is what verse 15 covers. John Gill records the older Jewish reading, carried in the Targum of Jonathan, in Rashi and in Maimonides, that the rule about an open vessel holds of earthen vessels. Leviticus 11:33 orders such a vessel broken, because it soaks up what touches it.
Where to go deeper
The ordinance itself is set out at the red heifer. What it means for a thing to be taken outside the camp is set out at outside the camp, and the office of the man who handles it at the priest. The generation this law was given to is set out at the wilderness generation and the country they carried it through at the wilderness.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Abraham ibn Ezra, reported by John Gill, John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on Numbers 19:1; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871, on Numbers 19:2 and Rashi, Commentary on the Torah, on Numbers 19:2, as the exposition of this chapter reports it.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.