Red heifer (Hastings' Dictionary)

Of the numerous forms of cere- monial uncleaiiness which occupy so important a place in the priestly legislation, that arisin;; from contact with, and even proximity to, a dead body was regarded as the most grievous, requiring a specially efficacious medium of lustration for its removal. To provide such a medium is the object of the unique enactment of Nu 19 — unique in its title (see below), in its provisions, and, one is templed to add, in the amount of discussion to which it has given rise. The prrcisc relation to each other of the two sectionfl of thi8 chanter ih not easy to detennine. According to Wellh. {Voinp. d. llex.^ 176, approved by Kucnen, Ut-x. IHi) vv.i-^ fomi an appendix to vv.ils, giving more precise instruction regarding tlie application to particular cases o( the general Torah cnibodiea in tlie latter. The more elaborate and peculiar title of the tirst Bert ion. however — viz. .T]inn npn 'the statute of the law (7'riru/i),' Nu 102 sia only— and other indications rather suggest tliat this section, w.'-", U the younger of the two, and be- • According to the authors of the Oxford Hexateuch (WOO), yy.ita, arc derived from a corpus of priestly lirAth or decisioni :os RED HEIFER RED HEIFER long's to the secondary strata of P (P«). Neither section, it flhonld he noted, presents that historical setting which is churacteristic of the Iej;al ordinances of tiie main stock of P. Such a setting, liowever, was supplied by later Jewish tradition. Tlie rite of the red iieifer, accor<iing to Josephus. was instituted by Moses on the death of Miriam (see Nu "201, the cliapter im- Diediately /o^/ou'im/ its itislitulion in the Hebrew text), and the asbes of the first victim were used to purify tlie people at the expiry of the thirty days of mourning (,tln(."iv. iv. (5). 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. iL TXm ])urpose of the ashes prepared as above la expressly dec-lared to be ' for (the preparation of) a water of separation' (.i-i -c^ v.'; R\ m 'a water of impurity '). The meaning of these words was early misunderstood. The LXX, followed by aU the chief ancient versions, connecting rni nidddh with the Aramaic form of the Heb. nu ' to sprinkle,' rendered the phrase by ioup jiavnafiov ' water of sprinkling,' Jerome's aqua aspersionis, Luther'a Sprenqwasser. In reality the verb n^j (see Is 66°) denoted in the technical language of the priests ' to exclude from the cultus,' in post-biblical Hebrew ' to excommunicate ' ; hence the substantive nidddh denotes 'that which excludes from the cultus,' t viz. ceremonial uncletmness or impurity. Mi niddCih (lit. 'water of exclusion') accordingly signifies water for removinij the uncleanness whicIi is the cause of this exclusion ; In other words, as suggested by RVm, ' water [for the removal] of impurity.' The mode of preparation was of the sim[)Iest : 'for the unclean they sh.all take of the ashes of the burning of the sin -offering, and running water shall Ije put thereto in a vessel' (v." RV). This simple procedure was later elaborated with the most ingenious detail, if we are to believe the statements of the Mishna, to which the student is referred (Prtrn/t iii. 2-5). A clean person — accord- ing to Parah xii. 10, an adult male, not a female, though the latter might hold the vessel — took a bunch of hysso]), dipped it in the ' water of im- purity,'and s]irinkled the house in which a death had taken place, and all the persons and utensils therein, except such of the latter as were provided with lids, or were otherwise closed against the contagion of uncleanness (v."). The same lustra- tion was required in the case of uncleanness con- " Four are named in Parah iii. 8 : fJN and pit (Aagyr. Irinrt, ' cedar '), two species of Juniper (probably), Cii3 ' cypress,' and fig- t Ibn Ezra appears to be the first to grasp the true connexion Iwtween the verb and the substantive. See his conim. in toe. Rashi kept to the traditional view .T'1.1 "cS 'for water ol sprinkling.' The commentaries of both exegetea ore found in the ordinary Rabbinic Bibles. RED HEIFER RED HEIFER 209 tracted by every one who had occasion to toucli a dead body, whether the person had died a natural or a violent death, and by every one who liad tonchcd even a bone of the linnian bodj- or a grave (v.'»). By a separate enactment (Nu 31""*; note esp. .■r;i,-!n r-n v.''), which likewise bears every indica- tion of belonging to the latest stratum of the priestly legislation, the 'water of impurity' had to be employed on the return from a campaign for the cleansing of the soldiers and their captives (31"), including their clothes and impedimenta (v.). The spoil, also, of precious and useful metals taken from the enemy, after a preliminary purilieation by being passed through the lire, had to be finally purified by the application of the ' water of impurity ' (v.^). In the case of unclean persons the sprinkling Ras performed on the third and seventh days following that on which the uncleanness had been «3ntracted. On the seventh day 'at even' or sundown, after having bathed their persons and washed their clothes, they were once more clean. The ban of exclusion from tlie cultus was finally removed, and the persons all'ected resumed their place in the holy community of J". iii. Origin and significance of the rite. — Although the chapter before us may, or ratlier must, have assumed its present form at a comparatively late period, the essential part of the ceremony of lus- tration may be conlidently affirmed to be of extreme antiquity, for the mystery attaching to the beginning and the end of life, and to tlio blood aa the vehicle of life, has impressed mankind from the earliest days. In all forms of primitive religious thought a dead body is conceived as a TOurce of real, if undefined, danger to nil in |ii<)xiniity to it. Itself in the highest degree unclean, in modem phrase taboo, it becomes an active source of uncleanness, and renders taboo everyone and evcrj-thing about it. These death taboos, as they may be called, were in full force among the ancient Hebrews, as among the other nations of antiquity, and the means used to remove the taboo were to a large extent identical. Primarily, as Kobertson Smith has pointed out, 'purification means the application to the person ot some medium which removes a taboo, and enables a person to mingle freely in the onlinary life of his fellows' (RS^ 405). The most widely distributed medium is, of course, water, but for aggravated ca-ses of uncleanness this medium was supposed to acquire increa.sed potency through the addition of ashes (see the rett'. to ancient writers quoted by Bahr, Symbolik, ii. 495, and Knobel in Dillmann's commentary, in loc). Here, then, ue have the origin of the essential part of the Hebrew rite. Closely connected with this circle of ideas is the nniveisal belief of primitive man that sickness and death are caused by harmful and malevolent spirits whose anger be has incurred (cf. Demon, vol. i. p. 590). An interesting survival of this primitive mode of thought may, we venture to think, be found in the ritual of the red heifer. Much laboured ingenuity has been exjiended in finding suitable symbolical meanings for each of the 'cedar wood, liyssop, and scarlet' which were a«lded to the burning pyre. According to some, cedar, hastily assumed to be the majestic cedar of Lebnniin, is the symbol of pride, aa hyssop of humility ; according to others, cedar, the incor- ruptible wood, was chosen ' aa tyjiical of eternity of life, hyssop of purification from the power of death, and scarlet thread to show the intensity of life in the red heifer.' The true explanation, it seems to us, is to be found in the primitive concep- tion referred to above. We have here a meaning- vou iv._i4 less survival, of which innumerable parallels will occur to students of comparative religion, from the time when the fragrant woods, such as junijier and cyi)re.'<s ami the aromatic plants of the mint family, were supposed to act as a protection against the harmful unseen powers that were the cause of death and hovered about the dead. The scarlet cloth is to be explained either by the fact that a special healing virtue was assigned in antiquity to the scarlet dye (11elitzsch,t art. ' Sprengwasser ' in Kiehm's //lI'/J d. bihl. Altcrthums-), or by the universally prevalent idea of red, the colour of the sacred blood, as the taboo colour par excellence (Jevons, Introd. to Hist, of Religion, 67 ff. ; Trum- bull, The Blood Covenant, 23(5f.).t The line of thought along which we have sought to explain this confessedly difficult part of the ritual, to the exclusion of the adv.anced symbolical interpreta- tion hitherto current, finds further justification in the use of a sprinkler, consisting of a bunch of hyssop, tied to a handle of juniper wood by a similar strip of scarlet cloth, in sprinkling a house, as well as a person, that was to be declared free from the plague of leprosy (Lv 14°"'^'). While we have thus endeavoured to trace the origin of the ritual of the red heifer to its source in an atmosphere of primitive religious thought common to the Hebrews of the pre-Mosaic age with other r.aces on a similar plane of develop- ment, it must not be forgotten that the rite received a higher and fuller interpretation in being admitted Into the circle of the priestly legislation of the post-exilic age. Uncleanness and sin, sin and death, are now associated ideiis (for the whole subject, see art. Uncleanness). The red heifer has become a sin-od'ering ( vv.'- ") of a unique kind ; part of the blood is sprinkled towards the dwelling- place of J", from whose worship those 'unclean from the de.id ' are temporarily excluded, the rest is burned with the victim to heighten the expiatory efficacy of the ashes. The rite in all its details becomes a powerful object-lesson, teachin" the eternal truth that a holy God can be servea only by a holy people. It is no longer possible to ascertain the extent to which the ' water of impurity ' was actually used as a medium of lustration by the mass of tiie Jewish people. Even such sober investi- gators as llelitzuch and L^illmann have pointed out the ditti- cullies in the way of an extended application of the ritual of Nu 10 in a thickly peopled country. Again, what are we to make of the statement {i'arah iii. 5) that only seven or nine red heifers were slain in all— the first by Moses, the second by Ezra, and the rest later? The jirobability is that, like many other of the more stringent rec|uiremenC« of the LeviLical code, the observance was confined to the more ardent le;,'alist8 in Jerusalem. Jewish tradition represents this and other rites regarding uncleanness as ceasing to be observed about fifty yeara after the destruction of the temple (Hamburger, Heal- eucycl. d. JudetUhuiiw, i. 874). The red heifer, it may be remarked finally, has given her name to the second cliapter of the Koran, ' the snrah of tlie heifer, in which, however, Mohannned in his usual fashion has confused the two heifera of Nu 10 and Lit il (see »ur. ii. to ff.). iv. The red heifer as a t>ipe of Chriit. — It was natural that the early Church should si^c in the expiatory rite of Nu 19 a prefiguring of the atoning work of our Lord. The first to give literary ex- pression to this idea, which has received such detailed elaboration at the hands of successive generations of typologists, is the author of the • In comparatively recent times In our own country, a Juniper tree planted before a house was regarded as a preventive of the plague. I l)clit7.sch is apparently the only writer who has sought to assign other than a purely symbolical significance to these three element. See, bc.sides ihc above article, his commcDtary OD Ho lil^, and cf. Nowack, Arch. ii. '280, note 1. ! If we could l>e sure that the red colour ot the heifer was M old ojt the practice of burning for the sake of the ashes, the choice would probably have t^ l>e exniainefl by the same associa- tion of ideas. The oxen sacrificed by the ancient Egyptians ha<I also to be red, a single black or white hair disqualifyuig ao animal for the sacrifice Q'lutnrch, Iti tt Oirirw, SI ; Herod. U. 3S, cited hv Frazcr, Ouldm Boti'ih, i. 300, 2nil ed., 1000, il. 812). 210 RED HORSE REDEEMEK, REDEMPTION Epistle to tlie Hebrews in the familiar passage 9'"-. In the Kpistle of Barnabas we find a whole chapter (ch. 8) devoted to this subject, in the course of which the writer shows an intimate acquaintance with contemporary Jewish practice as reflected in the Mishna (see esp. Parah iii. 2, 3). ' The calf is Jesus,' the juniper wood is His cross, while the scarlet wool, the hyssop, and other details receive a more or less appropriate iuterpretation. LiTERATURB. — The comm, on Nu 19, esp. Dillmann ; the treatise Parah (Lat. tr. with commentaries in Surenhu'jius' Mishna, vol. vi., English in Barclay's Talmud, p. SOOff.), which fcnns the basis of Maimonides' treatise ms noVn, edited with Lat. tr. and notes by A. C. Zeller, de Vaoca Rufa, 17H ; Spencer, de legg. Heb. ril. ii. 15, ' de vitula rufa,' etc. ; Bahr, SvmboUk des ilosaUchen Cultus, 1839, i. 493-612 ; Kurtz in SK, 1846, p, 629 9. ; Edersheim, The Temple, etc. p. 304 £f. ; works on Biblical archaeology-, esp. Haneberg, Keil (i. 385 ff.), and Nowack (ii. 2S3 ff.) ; art. Sprengwasser by Delitzsch in Riehm's HWB d, bibl. AUerthuilui-, and Reinigungen ' by KbmginPJ;i.=. A. R. S. KENNEDY.