The Ashes of the Red Heifer

While some have manufactured eschatological mystery over this esoteric teaching about the ashes of the red heifer, simply put, this ritual required a ceremonially clean person to sprinkle a ceremonially unclean person—one who had touched a dead body—with water mixed with the heifer’s ashes, sprinkling them with a hyssop branch. But while this unusual ritual had meaning in the context of ancient Israel, more importantly, it was a powerful prophetic photograph of a better way that God had in mind to purify us once and for all through the cleansing power of Christ’s blood — thank God, the real and permanent answer to our defilement.

The Journey // Focus: Numbers 19:9-13

The ashes of the red heifer will be kept there for the community of Israel to use in the water for the purification ceremony. This ceremony is performed for the removal of sin. …This is a permanent law for the people of Israel and any foreigners who live among them. All those who touch a dead human body will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. They must purify themselves on the third and seventh days with the water of purification; then they will be purified. But if they do not do this on the third and seventh days, they will continue to be unclean even after the seventh day. All those who touch a dead body and do not purify themselves in the proper way defile the Lord’s Tabernacle, and they will be cut off from the community of Israel. Since the water of purification was not sprinkled on them, their defilement continues.

Holy Cow, this is a strange one! Right up there with the lost Ark of the Covenant, there is much mystery surrounding the Ashes of the Red Heifer among those who traffic in the apocalyptic. In a nutshell, the cultic belief concerning this one is that the original ashes of the red heifer have been preserved since Old Testament days, and the reappearance of these ashes is needed to institute the sacrifices of the rebuilt temple—the third temple that many believe will be physically rebuilt at the time of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

As I said, holy cow! Indeed, this is a strange belief that has absolutely nothing to do with how the end times will play out. But apocalyptic authors, whose tribe have certainly increased in modern times, are certain to get a lot of miles out of this manufactured mystery as they fabricate their junk eschatology and sell a few books, to boot.

Nevertheless, what are we to make about this teaching on the ashes of the red heifer? Allow me to offer a few observations. First, among the many unusual rituals God established for his people, this one is arguably one of the strangest. Unlike any other sacrificial animal, this animal was to be slaughtered, not sacrificed, and burned in its entirety. The Asbury Bible Commentary on this chapter summarizes it as follows:

Then the heifer was totally incinerated while the priest watched (Numbers 19:5). The red hide of the heifer symbolically added to the quantity of blood, as did the red cedar wood and scarlet wool (Numbers 19:6). Thereafter the ashes of the heifer were stored outside the city (Numbers 19:9), ready to be mixed with water and sprinkled on anyone who had become ritually impure due to corpse contamination (Numbers 19:17-19). The whole ritual is described as a purification from sin (Numbers 19:9).

Now think about this in a practical way before we consider the theological implication: Israel was a new nation in an ancient, war-scarred, barbaric world, fighting their way through the wilderness and into the Promised Land. There was a lot of death. Many Hebrews died, and of course, a whole lot more of their enemies died. There was also a great deal of death among the community of Israel from natural causes, and likewise, as punishment for their rebellion, upwards of two-million Israelites would die off during their forty years of wandering.

In a very practical sense, death was a reality of life. A a consequence, there was contamination from the bodies of the dead. And since God is a God of life, death and handling of the dead brought spiritual defilement that required separation from the holiness of God. While it may seem a strange way to deal with the dead, God ordered his people to handle corpses through this ritual practice as a way to keep his people distinctly his, set apart as holy unto himself. In this, God graciously gave the Israelites a way to deal with their dead, as every culture in every era must do, in a way that satisfied the needs of a community to grieve their loss and initiate the process of closure while at the same time recognizing the requirements of a holy God who cared enough about their loss to provide a process for their grief.

Yet theologically, this ceremony for dealing with the dead pointed to a more powerful death—the death of Jesus Christ. While in the situation described in Numbers required a ceremonially clean person to sprinkle the ceremonially unclean person or thing with the water of cleansing (water mixed with the ashes, sprinkled with a hyssop branch), the cleansing power of the blood of Christ is specifically contrasted as a much more effective and permanent answer to our defilement:

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! (Hebrews 9:13-14)

Indeed, how much better is Jesus’ death as a cleansing agent that arguing over some manufactured mystery about the ashes of a red heifer. 1 John 1:7-9 reminds us, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

I’ll take the blood of Jesus Christ any day.