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Numbers 19 Bible study: The ashes of a heifer
Whoever touched the dead was unclean seven days (19:11) and was made clean by water with a red heifer's ashes, sprinkled on the third and seventh day (19:19); those who prepared the ashes, and whoever touched the water, were unclean until evening (19:7-10, 19:21). Hebrews sets these ashes, which cleansed "the flesh", beside the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:13-14).
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“The clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day. On the seventh day, he shall purify him. He shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening.”
Try it · Did you catch it?
“In Numbers 19, the man who gathers the heifer's ashes is himself unclean until the evening.”
Is that in Numbers 19, or not? Make your call.
What's really going on
Ashes that were kept
The first half of the chapter makes something to keep. The heifer is red, "without spot, in which is no defect, and which was never yoked" (19:2). She is killed "outside of the camp" (19:3), Eleazar sprinkles some of her blood "toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times" (19:4), and all of her is burned, "her skin, and her meat, and her blood, with her dung" (19:5), with cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet (19:6). Then a clean man gathers the ashes and lays them up "in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering" (19:9). The second half says when they are used: "For the unclean, they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering; and running water shall be poured on them in a vessel" (19:17).
Where it leads to Jesus
The ashes of a heifer
Numbers 19:9leads toHebrews 9:13
The heifer's ashes are kept "for use in water for cleansing impurity" (19:9), and the water is sprinkled on the one who touched the dead "on the third day, and on the seventh day" (19:19). Hebrews names these ashes: "the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh" (Hebrews 9:13). Then it asks, "how much more will the blood of Christ… cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:14). The comparison Hebrews makes is between what each cleanses: the heifer's ashes, "the flesh"; the blood of Christ, "your conscience".
Honest questions
Questions people ask about Numbers 19
That was a taste
The rest of Numbers 19 is waiting in Favor
- Seven days, for death
- The warning is for staying unclean
- Burned like the sin offerings of the Day of Atonement
- Cedar, hyssop and scarlet
- The water, used again
- Graves and bones, in Jesus' words
- 8 questions as you read
- 8 more Hebrew words
- A short check at the end
- Your notes, saved as you go
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The Hebrew word behind it
נִדָּהniddahsay nid-DAH
Brown-Driver-Briggs: "impurity", and "of ceremonial impurity". Strong's: "properly, rejection; by implication, impurity". Leviticus used it of a woman's period: "she shall be in her impurity seven days" (Leviticus 15:19). Here it names the water: the ashes are kept "for use in water for cleansing impurity" (19:9), and the one who refuses it stays unclean "because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him" (19:13). The WEB has "the water for impurity" once more, when the spoil of war is purified (Numbers 31:23). Numbers 19:9 puts this word in the same verse as chatta't, "sin offering", and Zechariah puts the two side by side: "In that day there will be a fountain opened to David’s house and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness" (Zechariah 13:1).
For your group
Numbers 19 Bible study questions
- 1Those who prepared the ashes were made unclean (19:7-10), whoever touched the water was unclean until evening (19:21), and the one they sprinkled was made clean (19:19). Who has taken on something costly so that you could be helped? How could you thank them this week?
- 2Everyone in the tent was affected when someone died there, whether they touched the body or not (19:14). Where has death or loss touched your life, and what has helped you bring it before God?
- 3The one who stayed unclean was the one on whom the water was not sprinkled (19:13, 19:20). Hebrews says the blood of Christ will "cleanse your conscience" (Hebrews 9:14). What does your conscience still hold on to that you could bring to him?
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Questions
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