Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Meaning of the Red Heifer (Death)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Meaning of the Red Heifer (Death)

Genre:

Track: 37

Dictation Name: RR181U37

Location/Venue:

Year:

Strange theories are advanced to explain and exploit this right, and it has been the subject of encyclopedia articles which tell you nothing, but while the term red heifer is used, in modern terms it is better called a red, or reddish-brown cow. Our use of heifer today means an unbred cow. In scripture, it’s a general term which means a younger cow.

It had to be without blemish and never yoked. The red heifer was burned outside the camp. The ashes were carefully kept and then used, mixed with water to purify those who had been in contact with the dead. When the red heifer had been sacrificed and was burning, cedarwood, hyssop, and scarlet, probably scarlet wool, were cast into the first. This took place outside the camp which was holy, because God’s sanctuary was in the center. God, being holy and the creator of life, death could not be associated with His presence. Death was and is the penalty for sin, so that even the death of a godly man was a reminder of the fact of a fallen creation and fallen man.

The ashes of the red heifer were mixed with spring water, called running water in the King James or Authorized Version. This was dipped into and sprinkled those needing purification on the third and seventh day after their defilement by contact with death. Touching the dead or a bone, or being under the same roof as the dead required this rite. No man, and we come here to the meaning of this, no man was permitted to regard death as a normal or a natural fact. Sin and death are defamations of God’s creation, and this rite’s purpose was to remind one and all of this fact. Life is normal, death abnormal, in scripture and in God’s sight and purpose. For Lord Canes{?}, the key fact of life was, as he said, that in the long run, we are all dead, both as individuals, civil governments, and states. His economic theory rests on this fact. Death.

As against this, the red heifer rite is a reminder that death is a perversion of God’s creation, which shall finally be destroyed. Paul tells us the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. The reddish-brown color of the heifer has, from ancient times to the present, suggested or typified blood or death. It has been common in the church to see the red heifer as typifying Christ’s atonement. The apocryphal epistle of Barnabas gives much attention to this rite, and in the scriptures, in Hebrews 9:13-14, we are told, “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctified to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Purge your conscience from dead works, but serve the living God.” Here, dead works are contrasted to living works, and the living works are a result of Christ’s atonement, far more efficacious we are told, than the ashes of a red heifer.

In verse 17, the ashes of the burnt heifer are described as being for purification for sin. This can be better rendered for unsinment, for unsinment. The goal of God’s redemptive history is the unsinment of all things. Rite ended when the person was bathed and put on freshly washed clothing. Any man rejecting this ritual was excommunicated and regarded as thenceforth unclean, as comparable to a leper.

All this tells us a very, very important fact. God takes very seriously His requirement that we reject the normality of sin and evil. God takes very seriously His requirement that we reject the normality of sin and evil. This rule would render most modern churchmen excommunicate, because they expect the world to go from bad to worse, instead of being God’s warriors for the unsinment of all things, they have too often become believers in the triumph of sin. Their faith then becomes a form of escapism, of leaving this world of unsinning it, instead of unsinning{?}. This is what amillenialism and premillennialism are about, and this is why they are impotent. This was a religious rite, but it was not an act of worship. It was an affirmation of faith in God’s purpose in the world’s future under God, its unsinment.

The church today is very much in need of some form, rite, or act, thereby the defeat of sin, evil, and death is celebrated and the saving power of God and eternal life in him are celebrated. Now aspects of this celebration remain in some traditional funeral services, calling the attention of all at a time of entombment to the inevitable triumph of Christ, of justice, and of life. The curious fact is that scholars have seen no relationship between this chapter and Number 18 which precedes it. It is seen as alien and out of place, and in book after book, it is routinely said, “This is some survival of a primitive act.” But the relationship with what we dealt with last week and the past few weeks is an essential one. In Numbers 18, God requires the support of His clergy and clerisy of worship, education, and scholarship. Without this, there can be no advance against the powers of darkness, of evil, of sin.

Now we are told what must characterize God’s faithful people, especially pastors and scholars. They cannot be oriented to failure nor to defeat. They must be radically dedicated to life under God and His law. Men render themselves excommunicates and outlaws before God by denying His inevitable victory. This does not mean the affirmation of our nation’s victory or our sanctuary’s infallibility, but God’s total victory over all His enemies. God’s pastors and scholars have a duty to proclaim a victorious God in Christ, or else pay the price of faithlessness. In other words, neither clergy nor scholars can be {?} hangers. They have to tell the world the course it is taking, and they have to point the way to life because life shall totally triumph over death.

The water of cleansing is called in the Hebrew, the water of impurity, and the word impurity, is in the Hebrew, a word which refers to the woman’s menstrual discharge. The meaning is thus, that the water is for the removal of impurity. Everything in this text speaks of the restoration of life. We must not forget that the world of Antiquity, and especially Israel, had a sufficient memory of Eden to regard death as abnormal and unclean. Everywhere it was so regarded.

We now see it as normal, because of the triumph of Darwinism. In fact, in one scientific periodical, one of the high priests of science said that death is a necessary form of nature in order to get rid of the past, and the past must constantly be eliminated in order for their to be progress. This we see, not only in the ideas of scientists, but in the ideas of political theorists, who, as George Orwell pointed out, want a memory hole to destroy the past, but as a Scottish scholar said of this chapter, “What is clear is that the symbols are design to combat death,” and that certainly is true, to combat death. This sets forth a calling of God’s people, and especially pastors and scholars. We fight more than men and ideas. We are at war against sin, evil, and death.

Central to that warfare is the death of Christ whose death destroys death. Our charter of freedom is thus the atonement and the resurrection, whereby we are cleansed from the pollution of sin, which is death, and are made a new creation in Christ.

It is a sad fact that rabbis and Christian commentators have not seen this rite as important or as having any meaning that is discernable. For example, the late chief rabbi of the British Empire wrote, “This ordinance is the most mysterious rite in scripture. The strange features of which are duly enumerated by the rabbis.” Neither he nor the rabbis could see any meaning in it. There is a reference perhaps to this rite in David’s Psalm of repentance. In Psalm 5:7, David prays, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Use the hyssop to sprinkle the purifying water upon me.” Hyssop ash was also a part of the red heifer formula.

This chapter tells us that sin must be abolished to destroy death. In the words of R. Winterbotham more than a century ago, “We have in this chapter spiritual death and the remedy for death. Death is treated of naught as a mere physical change which is the end of life, nor as the social and domestic loss which breaks so many hearts and causes so many tears to flow, but as the inseparable companion as it were, alter-ego of sin, whose dark shadow does not merely blight but pollutes, that shuts out not so much the light of God as the light of life.”

Now in verse 2, there is an unusual phrase. It reads, “This is the ordinance to the law.” This is comparable to saying, “This is the law of the law.” Strong attention is therefore, by this phrase, called to everything in this chapter. Again, we see its relationship to Numbers 18, to tithing and the work of the clergy and the clerisy. The Levitical tithe has, as its purpose, to make us future-oriented. The work of the Christian scholar, the clerisy, the Levites, is to call attention to the meaning of the past in terms of God’s future and the certainly of God’s victory. Numbers 19 tells us therefore, that we must be oriented to life and victory because death is abnormal. That is our starting point as Christians, and as scholars of Christ. True Christian scholarship must therefore be life affirming, because it is Christian.

There is a reference to this ritual again in Numbers 31:19-24. The Bible repeatedly speaks of man’s frailty. Abraham, in speaking to God, says, “Behold I have taken it upon me to speak to the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.” Ethan, the Ezrahite, in Psalm 89:48 observes, “What man is he that liveth and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?” David contrasts our frailty with God’s mercy in Psalm 103:13-18, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.” These all describe the consequences of the fall, and also the mercy of the Lord which gives us righteousness and everlasting life.

Life is God’s creation. Death is a product of man’s sin. Therefore, scripture is clear, death did not originally belong to man’s nature. Man was crated to live and to serve God. This is again his calling in Christ, to work for Christ’s triumph, and the unsinment of the world and its peoples. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, make us mindful of our duty not to resign ourselves to the prevalence of sin and evil, but to know that we are the people of the resurrection, of eternal life, given the duty the unsinment of all things in Christ. Bless and prosper us in this service. Grant, oh Lord, that our work be mighty and effectual to the destruction of things which are, the triumph of thy justice and the unsinment of all things in Christ. In His name we pray. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}in the public school system, fifteen, twenty years ago they would never mention anything about death because they didn’t want to {?} children, and then all of a sudden in the past ten years or so they suddenly decided, they’ve gotten bolder, and decided that death is normal and that kids should be taught that death is normal, and they have these counseling sessions as part of their regular classroom material.

[Rushdoony] That’s a tremendous point. Death education is the logical conclusion of our world, of our educational system. We no longer see life as normal, but death, and very few people, other than Sam Blumenfeld, have called attention to the fact that the growing, the very high suicide rate in our public schools among the children is due to the death education. After all, if life is abnormal and an accident in the universe, which is Darwinism’s essential point, it all began with an accident, then death is universal. Death is normal. So the schools educate with death, and our whole culture is death-oriented, our music is death-oriented. Rock and Roll, hard rock, acid rock, very, very emphatically emphasize death, because they are anti-Christian to the core, and what else are they going to stress, but death?

[Audience] {?} the book on suicide kind of a big seller.

[Rushdoony] There is a book on the bestseller list now on how to commit suicide. The interesting thing is that this has hit the bestseller list. There have been, I understand, a whole series of books, a shelf-ful of them in recent years on suicide, and it is not merely suicide the old “we’re in pain,” but suicide as the logic of life. I think their more logical than Jean Paul Sartre, who was asked many, many years ago, why, since so many of his followers were committing suicide, college students all over Europe, because in terms of existentialism, life had no meaning, nor purpose, nor value. Why then didn’t he also commit suicide? And he answered by saying, “I see no meaning to living and I see no meaning to dying.” Well, the whole perspective is pursuing a logical course, and those who are educating for death are saying that death is the truth about the universe. It is the God of the universe. Therefore, let us die. Yes?

[Audience] I’ve never seen a comparable study though, on suicide rates in different countries and different cultures.

[Rushdoony] Well, one was made, to my knowledge, shortly after the war, by Thomas G. Masaryk, president then of Czechoslovakia, and although he was not a Christian, he did see there was a connection of Christian faith and the rejection of suicide, and I believe there was a follow-up by one of the prominent sociologists. The name Dirkheim comes to mind, but I’m not sure I’m right there. It was interesting that, at the time, the lowest suicide rate anywhere was in Ireland, because at that time, Ireland was still very devoutly Catholic, and suicide was abhorred. Yes?

[Audience] Am I correct in saying that God is perfect?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] And God was perfect yesterday, today, and tomorrow?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Well, I’m really confused with Paul in Hebrews on chapter 9:6, 7, and 8 verses, where he says that {?} a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant which will establish upon better promises. {?} he goes through that whole chapter, the first testament, the first ministry had faults. That’s why we needed the second one with Christ as the {?}. There had to be a debt testament{?}

[Rushdoony] He does not say the first covenant was sinful.

[Audience] He didn’t say sinful. He said they had fault. He said, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second,” and that’s confusing.

[Rushdoony] Well, our word “fault” tends to imply some kind of moral failure, and no such thing is inferred here. In other words, in terms of the biblical sense, it could be said that when you were five years old, you were faulty because you were not a fully mature man. That would not mean that there was something wrong with you. So, the first covenant, there was nothing wrong with it. It was not fully matured as it was to be when Christ came, so it’s a different implication of the word “fault.”

[Audience] Does that take away from perfection?

[Rushdoony] It doesn’t have reference to imperfection. Incompleteness. In other words, the fullness was not yet manifest. It’s like taking let say one of the history books of the Bible, and starting it, and saying, “It’s faulty,” if you only have the first five chapters, because you don’t have the whole story. If you take the book of Esther and you only have the first six chapters, you wind up wondering what’s going to happen. So, the implication is that it is not fully manifested. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, thy word is truth, and we come before thee confessing that too often, we are death oriented. We see the prevalence of death and evil all around us, and we forget that these things are abnormalities, that in thy sovereign and unchangeable purpose,

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