Original Meaning

CLEANSING FROM THE IMPURITY of death. Needless to say, the primary source of corpse contamination was the dead body itself. Because the person was dead, the body could only convey ritual impurity to other persons or objects within the enclosed space where it was located or if someone touched it out in the open (19:14–16, 18).1 Even though ritual impurity contracted from a corpse by a live person was secondary, it was serious.2 This makes sense in light of the rationale underlying the ancient Israelite system of physical ritual impurities: Mortality involved in the birth-death cycle of human beings is opposed to divine holiness, which is characterized by life (see comments on Lev. 12). What could represent mortality more than a corpse?

At first glance it is peculiar that the full prescription for remedying the prominent impurity of corpse contamination does not appear until Numbers 19, after several passages have referred or alluded to the problem of this kind of impurity (Lev. 10:4–5; 21:1–4, 11; Num. 6:6–7, 9–12; 8:5–21) and Numbers 8:7 has even mentioned the “water of purification.” However, aside from the fact that the theme of ritually impure death in chapter 19 balances the same theme in chapter 12 (Miriam’s deathly “scaly skin disease”; esp. 12:12) within the overall structure of the book of Numbers, placement of the remedy for corpse contamination in chapter 19 is appropriate in view of the expanding prominence of death in the narrative. By now thousands of Israelites have perished by divine judgments, and the entire adult generation of non-Levites is doomed to die in the desert, except for Caleb and Joshua.3 “Eleazar” and “burning” (śaerepah) provide verbal links between the ritual for corpse impurity in 19:4–6 and the aftermath of revolt in 16:37.

The fact that corpse contamination was considered such a powerful impurity posed a problem for remedying it: The impure person could not come to the sanctuary in order to sacrifice a purification offering, so ritual decontamination had to take place outside the sacred precincts.4 Also, because priests were to avoid corpse contamination (Lev. 21:1–4, 11), the purification rite needed to be administered by a layperson.5

To remedy corpse contamination subject to these constraints, Numbers 19 prescribes a unique procedure consisting of two parts. (1) An unusual ritual outside the camp, labeled “a purification offering” (NRSV; 19:9; cf. v. 17)6 and officiated by a priest, involved burning a reddish cow, thereby producing a supply of ashes to be stored for future use (19:1–10a).

(2) When an Israelite needed cleansing, a few of the ashes were mixed with water as a “ready-made, instant” purification offering,7 and a layperson sprinkled them on the affected individual (19:10b–22). This economical approach had the additional advantage that it spared grieving Israelites the burden of expensive sacrifices after they had just buried their dead.8

Red cow purification offering. Verses 1–10a provide instructions for acquiring sacrificial ashes. The victim supplied by the community is to be female, like other purification offerings for the benefit of individual commoners (e.g. Lev. 4:27–35). It must be a cow, the largest female sacrificeable animal, so that it will supply a maximum quantity of ashes. It must be reddish to evoke the color of blood (see below). Like other sacrificial victims, it must be unblemished. Additionally, even though the ritual is outside the camp, the cow must not have been used as a work animal (19:2; cf. Deut. 21:3).9

The son of the high priest is to supervise the sacrificial slaughter (Qal of šḥṭ—slit the throat) of the cow (Num. 19:3)10 and then “take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting” (19:4). Since the ritual is performed outside the sacred precincts, this gesture establishes symbolic interaction with the sanctuary in order to make the procedure a sacrificial one.11

Next the priest must supervise incineration of the entire cow (19:5), which is burned more completely than any other Israelite sacrifice, including the burnt offering, of which the hide was saved for the priest (Lev. 7:8). The verb for “incinerate” here is śrp (Qal), which appears elsewhere in purification offering contexts as the method by which to dispose of unused animal parts outside the camp (Lev. 4:12, 21; 6:30; 8:17; 9:11; 10:16; 16:27).

Into the midst of the fire where the cow is burning, the priest must toss cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson yarn (Num. 19:6). The reddish hide of the cow, cedar wood, and crimson yarn emphasizes the color red. This is in keeping with the fact that the ashes contain blood, and when they are later mixed with water, the liquid will function like blood.12

Not only is hyssop an ingredient of the ashes (19:6), but laypersons are to mix the ashes with “living”/fresh water and use hyssop to sprinkle it (19:18; cf. v. 17). Compare the Passover ritual, in which hyssop was a kind of “paintbrush” for applying blood to the entrance of a house (Ex. 12:22). Similarities are striking between cleansing from corpse contamination and the first-day ritual to treat a person or house for the ritual impurity of “scaly skin disease,” in which hyssop, along with cedar wood and crimson yarn, was dipped into a mixture of blood and “living” water, which was then sprinkled on the person/house undergoing purification (Lev. 14:4–7, 49–52). “Scaly skin” disease, like corpse contamination, was closely connected with death (see comments on Num. 12).

After incinerating the cow, a ritually pure lay assistant must gather the sacrificial ashes and deposit them in a pure place outside the camp, to be kept for use in the “water of lustration/ sprinkling” (19:9; cf. vv. 13, 20–21; 31:23). The word for “lustration” here is niddah (cf. 31:23), which elsewhere usually refers to menstrual impurity (Lev. 12:2, 5; 15:19–20, 24–26, 33; 18:19) but can also be used as a metaphor for moral impurity (20:21). Apparently the connection between menstruation and sprinkling for corpse contamination is the idea of spattering blood or its equivalent.13 Earlier in connection with decontaminating the Levite work force we encountered the same sprinkled mixture as “water of purification” (ḥaṭṭaʾt; Num. 8:7).

Applying ash water. Numbers 19:10b–22 outlines the procedure and rules for applying the “water of lustration” to individual corpse-contaminated persons, whether Israelites or resident aliens, and explains how this form of impurity is contracted. Anyone who touches the dead body of a human being incurs a seven-day impurity (19:11), from which the polluted individual is obligated to have himself or herself purified (Hithpael of ḥṭʾ,) to a state of ritual purity (Qal of ṭhr) by means of the ash water on the third and seventh days (19:12). After the sprinkling on day 7, cleansing also requires laundering clothes, bathing, and waiting until evening (19:19).

Remaining in a state of impurity by neglecting the ritual will have the grave consequence of (automatically) defiling (Piel of ṭmʾ ) the Lord’s tabernacle, for which the culprit will suffer the divine penalty of being “cut off” (19:13, 20; cf. Lev. 20:3). The ashes are available at no charge and the procedure is quick and easy, so there is no excuse for noncompliance.

Corpse contamination is so virulent that if a dead body is located in a tent, that is, in an enclosed dwelling space, any person or lidless vessel is defiled simply by being in the same space (19:14–15). Out in the open the effect is less intense: Pollution requires actually touching a corpse, human bone, or grave (19:16).

Purification of contaminated persons and spaces involves first mixing some ashes of the red cow with “living water,” that is, fresh water (19:17). “Living water” is appropriate, given that the ritual is to remedy association with death. Next, a ritually pure person will apply the “water of lustration” by dipping hyssop in it and sprinkling whatever dwellings, their contents, and/or persons need purification (19:18).

Bridging Contexts

LEAPS IN SPACE AND TIME. Among Israelite sacrifices, the ritual for corpse contamination that consists of the red cow ritual and application of its ashes is unique in several important ways, of which we list and discuss four at the outset and two more later on. (1) Burning the cow and gathering its ashes outside the camp makes the priest and his lay assistants ritually impure, so that they are required to undergo ablutions and be impure until evening (19:7–8, 10). Apparently priests were immune to defilements removed by other purification offerings, which were performed within the sacred compound.

(2) Whereas the “water of lustration” purifies an impure person, it defiles a pure person (19:21–22).

(3) The purification offering of the red cow is performed before any part of the cow (i.e., ashes) comes in contact with impure persons.

(4) In other purification offerings, the blood is never directly applied to persons. However, the “water of lustration,” which contains and functions like purification offering blood, is directly sprinkled on a corpse-contaminated individual.

The combination of factors (3) and (4) helps us to understand (2)—why a pure person who sprinkles the cleansing liquid on an impure person becomes impure. In Leviticus 6:27, we found that there was a mitigated sense in which the blood of a purification offering contaminated because it carried defilement removed from the offerer. The blood was already carrying the pollution from the moment of slaughter because it came from the offerer’s animal. This at least partly explains why the blood was not sprinkled on the offerer: It was already carrying his or her defilement.

The difference in Numbers 19 is that the corpse-contaminated individual has no contact with the red cow before the ash water is sprinkled, so it can be directly applied to the person as a ritual “sponge” to absorb impurity. However, because the water carries contamination from the person being purified, it makes other people impure.

The person who sprinkles the ash water most likely does not contact any of it after it lands on the person receiving purification. So how does the sprinkling activity pollute the former?14 Related to this, “anyone who touches the water of cleansing will be unclean till evening” (19:21) does not restrict such contact to water that has already contacted the hitherto corpse-contaminated individual. So the “water of lustration” can pollute a ritually pure person even before it is sprinkled on an impure person (1) as if the sprinkling had already occurred and (2) as if “absorption” of defilement by some of the water affected all of it, “part for all.”

Elsewhere in Israelite ritual, we have seen ritual disregard for physical constraints of space through the “part for all” principle.15 What sets the procedures for corpse contamination apart is the fact that they ignore relative chronology in order to economically use one purification offering for many later applications. Paradoxically, the cleansing water acts on everyone but the corpse-contaminated person as if it were already carrying defilement from that person. This time warp explains why the burning of the red cow defiles ritual participants “prospectively, before actual use in purification.”16 The cow is regarded as if parts of it in the form of rehydrated ashes have already contacted contaminated individuals so that the whole cow has absorbed their impurity.17

It is as though the pollution is transmitted back through time and space to the cow’s incineration, where the evil is destroyed. As with disposal of the purification offering carcasses on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:27–28), incineration of the cow takes place outside the camp. It destroys a ritual “sponge” that is polluted because part of the same animal is applied in liquid form (blood/ash water) to something/someone in order to remove contamination, and one or more persons who participate in the burning are rendered impure.

Rather than trying to contort our brains around the paradox of the red cow ritual in terms of Newtonian or even Einsteinian physics, we should simply remember that we are dealing with the conceptual, symbolic world of ritual, which is not bound by mundane material constraints.18 The red cow ritual is a unique instance of the “part for all” principle in that the victim’s unity transcends not only a gap in space but also in time. G. André explains: “Clearly the uncleanness that the ashes are meant to remove is associated with them proleptically.”19 The bottom line is that the impurity affecting those who burn the red cow comes from the individuals on whom the “water of lustration” will later be sprinkled; the impurity does not represent excessive holiness.20

Here are two more ways in which the red cow ritual remedy for corpse contamination is unique. (5) Because it is the only Israelite expiatory sacrifice that is performed outside the camp,21 it is the only purification offering in which blood manipulation consists of a gesture (sevenfold sprinkling) toward the sanctuary from a distance (19:4) rather than direct application of blood to part(s) of the sanctuary itself.

(6) Decontamination from corpse impurity that includes applying the “water of lustration” is the only ritual cleansing that clearly prevents defilement of the sanctuary from a distance (19:3, 20).

The uniqueness of these factors involving distance supports the argument that “automatic” pollution of the sanctuary from a distance is limited to some extreme cases (see comments on Lev. 20): wanton neglect to be purified from corpse contamination (here in Num. 19:13, 20) and sacrificing one’s child to the god Molech (Lev. 20:3). Both of these are punishable by the terminal penalty of being “cut off,” with no opportunity for subsequent sacrificial expiation prerequisite to forgiveness. So there is no warrant for importing the automatic/aerial dynamic of defilement to cases of sin that could be remedied by outer altar or outer sanctum purification offerings for the benefit of the offenders (see comments on Lev. 4).22

Even the red cow ritual did not purge the sanctuary or its sancta from corpse impurity that had already defiled it from a distance.23 Such defilement of the sanctuary occurred only if sprinkling the ash water was not performed, in which case illegally prolonged impurity was compounded by wanton moral fault.

Contemporary Significance

PAST DEATH, PRESENT ASSURANCE. In the summer of 1999, an Iron Age Ammonite cistern was excavated by archaeologists from Andrews University at Tell Jalul, near Amman, Jordan. Interest mounted as one skeleton after another was found, eventually totaling fourteen in number. They were in all sorts of positions and obviously had been simply tossed in the cistern because of some kind of tragic circumstances.

Matthew, a college student, was the volunteer doing most of the work in the cistern. Partway down, a beautifully preserved skull was found upside down, and was temporarily left in the dirt for photographs. Then Matthew and Dave, another volunteer working in an adjacent area, had a bright idea: They would spend the night in the cistern in order to enjoy the macabre ambiance. So when the digging part of the day came to an end, they secretly stayed behind rather than getting on the bus.

To optimize the experience, Dave had brought his didgeridoo, a six-foot long hollow wooden pipe used by Australian aborigines as a musical instrument. Dave plays it well, producing a continuously sepulchral sound that resonates with particularly impressive mournfulness in enclosed spaces, such as rock tombs at Petra—and cisterns.

Now Matthew and Dave had not troubled the director (Randy Younker) or area supervisor (my wife) by asking permission, so nobody knew they were there. However, they were not alone at the site. There was a Jordanian guard armed with a pistol and an M16 assault rifle, whose job it was to ensure that none of our equipment was stolen.

When the guard detected sounds coming from the cistern, he left his canvas tent with weapons in hand. Approaching in the starlight, ready to shoot, his ears picked up the strangely muffled tones of the didgeridoo. Knowing that there were skeletons down there and assuming that he was hearing the spirits of the ancient dead, he was seized by unearthly dread and fled in terror. An M16 was no match for a didgeridoo! Death in the past provided Matthew and Dave with a safe night in the present.

Death of a red cow in the past gave Israelites ongoing assurance that they could be freed from their corpse contamination.24 The cow provided an ongoing supply of ashes to be mixed with “living water” and sprinkled on many impure persons whenever burial or other contact with the dead occurred. There was no need to bring an animal to the sanctuary and sacrifice it as a purification offering. The sacrifice had already taken place; all that was needed was to apply its benefit.

Hebrews 9:13–14 speaks of another death that provides assurance:

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 that we may serve the living God!

Here “the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean” refers to application of ash water, functioning like blood, from the red cow/heifer. If this procedure could effect cleansing from ritual impurity, which was associated with mortality, how much more does the once-for-all death of the Son of God make abundant ongoing provision for cleansing us morally, spiritually, and ultimately from mortality itself (cf. 1 Cor. 15:51–54), by his blood?

How can a Galilean carpenter die in Jerusalem two millennia ago for the past and future sins and mortality of billions of people all over the world, many of whom have not even been born, let alone sinned? This quantum leap sounds strikingly similar to the space-time paradox of the red cow sacrifice, which was affected by future and distant impurities. To borrow the logical structure of Hebrews 9, we can say: A red cow bore ritual impurity from future application of its ashes to corpse-contaminated persons. How much more, then, did Christ bear sin and mortality from future application of his blood to faulty people who are “nothing but dust and ashes” (cf. Gen. 18:27)? If a red cow could do it, Christ can accomplish this on a vastly grander scale.

Even if an Israelite contracted corpse contamination years after a red cow was burned, he or she could count on purification because the effect of the sacrifice was continuously available. In fact, applying the ashes resumed and continued the ritual process that began with burning the cow. The process was a unit of constant efficacy, no matter how long or short the time that interrupted it. The ashes were not like a medication that gradually grows weaker until it expires.

Similarly, the cleansing effect of Christ’s sacrifice, which “brings life for all men” (Rom. 5:18), is continuously available today with no less potency than it had many centuries ago. In a vision, the apostle John saw in God’s heavenly sanctuary “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). This metaphorical depiction makes the point that the benefits of his sacrifice are always fresh, as if he were dying right now.

It was not enough for the Israelites to have the sacred ashes available in a jar outside the camp any more than medicine in a bottle in a modern cabinet can achieve the purpose for which it is intended if it only sits there. The remedy had to be applied to the problem. Similarly, Christ’s sacrifice is intended to “cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14). This can only take place if we allow the life-giving benefit of his sacrifice to be applied to us (cf. v. 13) whenever we need it. If we choose to forego this application, his provision will still help many others who accept it, but not us; we will continue to bear the consequences of our evil (cf. Lev. 5:1b; John 3:18).

When the Israelites sinned or incurred impurity, God gave them adequate opportunity to avail themselves of his remedies. In the meantime, they were covered by corporate sacrifices on their behalf, including daily burnt offerings and additional burnt and purification offerings performed on Sabbaths, new moons, and annual festivals (Num. 28–29). Having this opportunity available was no substitute for personally taking it. Similarly, Christ’s sacrifice has provided the only way out of our dilemma (Acts 4:12), with daily opportunities for restoration. His sacrifice is our only assurance, but it is “abundant provision” (Rom. 5:17) to give us life “to the full” (John 10:10). “He who has the Son has life” (1 John 5:12).