1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,For Christ-knows-what reason, we're getting another helping of details about animal sacrifices, with more specifics about unblemished animals and who is officially unclean at various stages of the rituals.
2 This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke:
3 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:
4 And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times:
5 And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
6 And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even.
8 And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even.
9 And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin.
10 And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: and it shall be unto the children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them, for a statute for ever.
11 He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.
12 He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.
13 Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.
14 This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
15 And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.
16 And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
17 And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:
18 And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave:
19 And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even.
20 But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the LORD: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.
21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even.
22 And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.
The phrase "the water of separation" is introduced, pertaining to a purification process.
"Separation" was previously used to describe the Nazarites, who separate themselves from the general population via particular grooming regimens, and such.
Not sure exactly what sort of separation is implied here. Separating the living from the dead, perhaps?
Anyway, let's leave the red heifers to their fates and pick up the narrative in Numbers 20....
3 comments:
First - dude - immense thank yous for this gargantuan bible study undertaking. Just discovered you tonight - wish I could have been here since Genesis . . .
So one ingredient of the 'water of separation' has the ashes (verse 9) of a flawless skinned, red-headed virgin bovine who never had to work (verse 1). Could this be the OT inspiration for 'holy water'?
As to "what sort of separation is implied" - would it be: the pure from the impure, the righteous rule followers from the freethinkers, the obsesssive-compulsive handwashers from the slackers?
At any rate, 7 is definitely the lucky number here. Hmmm wonder if there's a casino in Vegas called 'Water of Separation'.
This is a rather interesting, if strange, chapter, by a later priestly writer. You asked previously whether Jews carry out the sacrifices mentioned in previous chapters; the answer is no, because priests can only be consecrated when they are ritually pure, and this chapter is interpreted as saying that the only way to be certain of ritual purity is to carry out the ritual of the red heifer.
The reason the ritual isn't carried out is because a red heifer is comparatively rare; the Talmud adds further stringent requirements on exactly how perfect the red heifer must be. This makes it even harder to find one - essentially there are currently 0 candidates in the world meeting all the requirements.
There are Jewish fundamentalist nutcases who want to demolish the dome of the rock, and "re"build the Jewish temple; they have cast replacement gold artefacts for the temple rituals (the spoons/lampstand/altar/etc.) and the only thing stopping them attempting an act that would, as a by product, create all-out war in the middle east, is the fact that they can't find a red heifer.
The Talmud acknowledges the rarity by claiming that the ritual was only carried out 7 times, once by Moses, once by Ezra, and five times after Ezra. To phrase that another way, the Talmud (the main "this is what it means" dogma of Judaism) claims that it was only carried out once before Ezra (500s BC) - by Moses, who if any aspect is real, must be heavily fictionalised. In other words, even according to fundamentalist Judaism, it wasn't really carried out at all until Ezra (which is just a little suspicious...)
Of course, all the biblical text actually says is "red cow" - 'heifer' is an inaccurate translation biased by the Talmud's requirements. Red, as before in the holiness code, is just the colour which symbolically represents ritual impurity; ie. the whole ritual is primitive "magic". The Romans did something similar - kill red puppies and scatter their ashes on the threshing floor - for similar reasons.
As before, the cedarwood is a healing herb (it has healing properties), oregano/marjoram (mistranslated as "hyssop", for reasons I've given before) is good for sprinkling with, and the scarlet thread is for binding this together, and is scarlet because red is the colour of ritual impurity. The ritual was clearly long established before the priestly writer wrote it down here, as these objects have clearly become mere tradition, since they are burnt instead of used.
The ritual is curious in that anything coming into contact with it becomes IMpure, except for people sprinkled with water containing the ash. This is why it has to be killed and burnt outside the temple - it is inherently impure [symbolically it represents impurity itself] and would tarnish the temple itself if killed there. The ashes, on the other hand, represent the complete destruction of impurity, and hence when mixed with water so that they could be sprinkled, were seen as making people pure.
The water is called "water FOR [removal of] separation", but some translations mistranslate this as "water for impurity" (the KJV has the slightly misleading "water OF separation". The ritual is clearly and unambiguously described by the text as a "sin offering", but most translations deliberately avoid this, since the cow is not sacrificed at the altar, and instead deliberately mistranslate it as "for the removal of sin" (or variations).
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The rules for contact with the dead are extreme. Basically death was considered ritually impure (like the fluid symptoms of disease). Touching a dead body was ritually impure, but in the same way that other forms of ritual impurity can be spread by inanimate objects, touching something which touched a dead body is also ritually impure - hence contact with the house of the dead, with graves, etc.
It was considered so impure that, in addition to the usual 7 day delay, you had to be sprinkled with the waters made from the ash of the red heifer.
As a consequence, the Jews used to paint graves white, so that passers-by wouldn't accidentally touch them.
A.,
I wonder if anyone's written a good story about such mayhem occurring on the occasion of an unblemished red heifer being discovered.
I recall in Tom Robbins's "Skinny Legs and All" someone wanted to blow up the Dome of the Rock, but I don't recall if a heifer is involved. He does mention the heifer business here, in any case:
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=robbins
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