N19-4: The SAME ASHES OF THE RED HEIFER that made the unclean clean also make the clean unclean!

“This is to be a permanent regulation for them.  The person who sprinkles the water for purification is to wash his clothes. Whoever touches the water for purification will be unclean until evening.  Anything the unclean person touches will be unclean, and anyone who touches him will be unclean until evening.”-Numbers 19:21-22

Pay special close attention to how Numbers Chapter 19 ends.

We’re told that the CLEAN person who sprinkles the ash and water mixture from the Red Heifer sacrifice onto the person who has been defiled by a corpse himself becomes UNCLEAN.

Thus, he must also wash his clothes, take a bath and he will remain ritually UNCLEAN until sun down.

Do you notice anything paradoxical about these verses?

So far in our study of Torah, we’ve learned that HOLINESS is contagious and can be transmitted from one person to another, from an object to a person (and vice versa) and from object to object.

And we’ve also learned that if a person or thing contracts HOLINESS when he shouldn’t have, that person or object WILL BE DESTROYED!

I remind you that as uncomfortable as you may be with this teaching, it comes straight from the Bible.

This isn’t my fleshly human subjective commentary gone hog wild here.

Nor is this Jewish theological tradition.

This is coming directly from the Scriptures and over the last couple of days, you have read the verses themselves.

We are obligated to deal with the words of the Bible as they are and not allegorize the plain meaning away as has been the gentile church’s way for centuries now.

Alright, let’s get back to what I was talking about.

I was talking about something quite paradoxical within the Red Heifer sacrificial procedures.

Did you catch it?

Well, here it is.

Did you notice that anybody who was involved with the Red Heifer rituals at any level was rendered UNCLEAN?

In other words, the people who began in a CLEAN state, after the Red Heifer sacrifice is completed end up becoming ritually defiled.

It’s as if HASHEM is deliberately forcing some HOLY or CLEAN folks to ritually defile themselves.

Or to put it another way, the VERY SAME ASHES OF THE RED HEIFER that made the unclean clean also make the clean unclean!

Holy Red Ruby Ping Pong Tables!

This is a complete reversal from what we’ve seen with all the other sacrifices!

All of the other sacrifices atone for and in a majority of the cases make one CLEAN or at least confer a degree of HOLINESS onto the participants.

Actually, the common citizen wasn’t even allowed to directly participate in any of the sacrifices. 

The common Hebrew had to give his sacrifice to the priest who would in turn put it on the Brazen Altar.

Why?

Because only a priest was HOLY enough to approach the altar.

Once the worshipper decided to offer a given animal as a sacrifice, the status of that animal transformed from merely CLEAN to HOLY.

If the animal had not transformed into being HOLY, there is no way it would be allowed to come near the Brazen Altar.

So how to deal with this paradox whereby CLEAN folks are rendered UNCLEAN by participating in the Red Heifer sacrificial rituals, but the defiled person who touched a corpse is rendered CLEAN from the very same ashes?

We’ll talk about that in my next post!