i. Tlie preparation of the ashes of the red heifer. li. The purpose and manner of their ap]>licatioil. iii. The orisrin and significance of the rite. iv. The red heifer as a type of Christ.
i. The procedure to be fulloiocd in the preparation of tlie a.slies is laid down in outline in vv.'"">. De- tailed instructions — a few of the more important of whicli are noted in the sequel — will be found in the .special treatise of the Mishna devoted to the sub- ject (see Literature at end of art.). The ashes are to be those of a victim with special qu.tlitications of sex, colour, and condition, the ultimate grounds for whieli have formed the subject of endless de- bate among Jewish and Christian scholars. The sacrilicial victims were predominantly males, in the case of the sin-offerings for the congregation, a he-goat (Lv 9^) or a young bullock (4-^) ; here, as in the ancient and allied rite by which the land was p\irilied from the defilement of an untraced murder (Dt 21"^-), a heifer or young cow «as pre- scribed. According to a widely supported view (Bahr, Kurtz, Keil, Edersheim, etc.), the female se.\, as the immediate source of new life, was chosen in onler to furnish a more suggestive contrast in a rite associated with death. This and similar ex- ]>lanations, however, seem to us to introduce a train of thought much too advanced for ceremonies bearing such evident marks of a great antiquity (see iii. below) as do those of Nu 19 and Dt 21. We ought rather, in these eases, to see in the choice of the female sex the desire to offer the most [irecious and therefore the most efficacious victim, the females, as the breeders of the herd, being the more valuable in the estimation of a pastoral people — a view retlected in the composition of Jacob's pre- sent to Esau (Gn 32'*^ ; cf. Dillm.-Ryssel, £z.-i».' 429).*
The age, by Rabbinic prescription, might range from two to live years (Farah i. 1); the colour must be red (■?"!<, cf. Zee 1* of horses), or rather reildisli brown. t The heifer, further, had to be without spot or blemish of any kind, ' upon which never came yoke' (v.-), rightly paraphrased by Josephus as ' a heifer that had never been used to the plough or to husbandry' (Ant. IV. iv. 6 ; cf. Dt 2P, and the epithets i^yyet, in^uges, applied to sacrilicial victims by classical writers). The cost was defrayed from the half -shekel temple tax (Shekal. iv. 2).
Not the high priest, who dared not risk the con- tagion of uncle.anness, but his rejiresentative, Eleazar, had to bring the victim forth 'without the camp' (v.')— that is, in actual practice, from the teini)le bill, by the so-called Red Heifer bridge, across the Kidron to the Mount of Olives. A rite so sacrosaiK't, and therefore entailing ceremonial (ielilemenl on the place and persons concerned, had to lie performed at a distance from the sanctuary (cf. the barren valley of Dt 21'). At a spot secure troni possible contamination by graves, the heifer was slain by a second person in the presence of the priest, who, dipping bis finger in the warm blood, sprinkled thereof seven times in the direction of
—hence the si;,;natiire P' — codified independently of the main stock of P (Psj. See op. cit. ii. 218f., and cf. L 162 f., and art.
Ki'MISKltS.
• Foi- other explanations of the comparative sacrednesa of the cow, a.e W U .Smith. liS^ 281), » 287, and rcff. there.
f The later .lewish authorities by a false exegesis, which took tPm\wah , ' physically perfect,' as a qualification of the preceding ftdjectixe 'perfectly red," considered the presence of even two hairs of another colour as disqualifying {Parah ii. 6 ; c(. Rasbi and other commeutators. in lor..\
the sanctuary, i.e. the temple. A pyre having been previously constructed of various fragrant woods,* the complete carcass of the heifer— 'her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung' (v.") — was burned thereon. At a cert;iin stage (sea Piinih iii. 10) an interesting p.art of the ceremony took place. This was the ctisting, by the directing priest, of 'cedar wood (iiy), and hyssop, and scarlet' into the midst of the burning ma.ss. Ac- cording to later authorities, these items consisted of a thin piece of so-called 'cedar' — in reality a piece of the fragrant wood of the Juniperus Phan- uea (see CEDAR) or J. Oxi/cedrus (Low, Araiti, PJlanzennamen, p. 57) — a cubit in length, a bunch of aromatic hyssop or wild marjoram, and a strip of woollen cloth dyed scarlet, which bound the juniper and hyssop together [Parah iii. 10. 11, with commentaries ; Maimonides, de Vacca Rufa).
When the whole pyre was reduced to ashes, these were collected by a third clean person — the two previous participants having been rendered unclean, in modern phrase ' taboo ' (see below, iii.), by contact with the sacrosanct victim, and de- posited by him 'without the camp in a clean place' (V.*). The ashes (not of the red heifer alone, be it noted, but these mixed with the ashes of the frag- rant woods) were now ready to be used as the law prescribed. All the three participants in the cere- mony were unclean (or taboo) till sundown, after which time, having bathed their persons and washed their clothes, they were again ceremonially clean (vv.'- *• '") — that is, they were again admitted to the society of their fellows, and to participation in the cultus.