The Scarlet Thread – Blood on the Red Heifer
The Scarlet Thread – Blood on the Red Heifer.
“Glory be to Jesus, Who in bitter pains, poured for me the life-blood, from His sacred veins.
Grace and life eternal, in that blood I find, blest be His compassion, infinitely kind.
Blest through endless ages, be the precious steam, which from endless torments, did the world redeem.
Lift ye then your voices, swell the mighty flood; louder still and louder, praise the precious blood.” (Friedrich Filitz).
Glory Be to Jesus – Christian Song with Lyrics (youtube.com)
The scarlet thread that is sewn into Holy Scripture from beginning to end is unmistakable. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Bible is blood-centric, that there is an overriding theme of blood wherever we look. We don’t need to be super-detectives to discover blood patterns in the Word. The Scripture seems practically preoccupied with blood, and one could be excused for observing that God seems to be out for blood. We find out why this is the case in Leviticus 17:11 and 13… “The life of all flesh is in its blood. The life is in the blood.” The Word of God seems preoccupied with blood only because God is preoccupied with life. God is out for blood only in the sense that He is out for Life. The Bible is blood-centric only because God is life-centric. In fact, the term “scarlet thread” is not strong enough. Instead, the Bible has a powerful crimson tsunami flowing through its pages from Genesis through Revelation, from before creation to the New Creation.
In this Bible study we will take a good look at the blood-stories in Scripture, from the divine sacrifice before the foundation of the world, to the animal sacrifice in the Garden of Eden; from the bloodshed in the first family, to the blood-themed covenant between God and Noah; from the Nile River, to the Passover in Egypt; from the bloody mess in the Tabernacle, to the Scarlet Worm that hinted at Jesus. Yes, there seem to be blood-splatters all over the floors and walls of Scripture. Through it all, the precious blood of Jesus is the centerpiece.
“According to the law of Moses, nearly everything was purified with blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:22).
What is this ritual? At first glance, God’s peculiar instructions to Moses and Aaron were puzzling and mysterious. There appeared to be no logical reason for parts of this ritual as God explained it (Numbers 19). A perfect, unblemished red heifer, one who hasn’t been yoked, was to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered. This heifer has to be completely red, and it had to be a young female cow that had not borne a calf. After the butchering of the heifer, the attending priest was required to sprinkle some of the cow’s blood seven times directly in front of the Tabernacle. The dead heifer was then to be completely burned, including its hide, its flesh, everything. Into this fire the priest was to place some cedar wood, a branch of hyssop, and a scarlet woolen thread. Both the man who burned the heifer and the eye-witness priest were then required to clean their clothes, take a bath, and be considered unclean till the evening. The priest was then instructed to gather the ashes and make a thin paste as they mixed the ashes with clean “living” water from a nearby stream. This mixture is called the “water of purification” by the Lord. “It is for purifying from sin,” says Yahweh (Nu. 19:9). If someone is deemed unclean, then a branch of hyssop is dipped into the watered down paste and is applied to the person’s tent, his vessels, and his body. The mixture of ash and water will purify the unclean person in the sight of God.
Why? The apparent reason for this ritual is made clear in Numbers 19. Anyone who has touched a dead body, or made any contact with a dead person, is considered unclean and expelled from the community, unable to worship or offer sacrifices at the Tabernacle. Such a person must undergo this ritual of purification before allowed back into the camp, whether to simply reside or to worship God. God is serious about this, and is making it abundantly clear that death is the ultimate indignity for those born in His image. Death is the supreme source of impurity and defilement, because it is the final result of sin. Death defiles the world, while God is about life. God is a life-giver and the author of life. Death is unacceptable in a spiritual sense, and is an extreme impurity that has to be dealt with. Death is a stark reminder of human mortality, while God is divinely immortal. This ritual was the way of God’s choosing to keep those boundaries of the mortal and the immortal, to maintain the divine order that separates death from life.
Death wish. Rabbi Jonathon Sacks added that there seems to be built into the human personality a deep-seated death wish, and this ritual is connected to that. “This ritual is directed against one of the most powerful and dangerous of all human drives: the death instinct.” (Covenant and Conversation: Numbers). Rabbi Sacks goes on to say that this death instinct, this inner impulse for self-destruction, overrides our pleasure instinct. This red heifer ritual then is to make it clear that death is not God’s will, it is not something to surrender to, it is not be entertained as an acceptable way to look at life. And isn’t it interesting that the Mosaic law did not give in to this death wish. Judaism revealed a unique attitude toward death, distinct from the surrounding nations that worshiped death or obsessed over death, like Egypt. And the Israelites did not approve of trying to contact or speak with dead ancestors, which was very common. The Mosaic tradition established a religion based on life, not death. Death was profoundly unclean, and God made a way to purify oneself from that uncleanness. There must be an atonement for anything associated with death.
Why red? There have been a couple of explanations as to why the heifer had to be red, as opposed to brown or yellow or black and white. Some have said that red is a symbol of blood. Blood is seen as a life principle. Creatures can’t live without blood, and so red signifies that life which protects against death. Others believe that the color of red is associated with sin. “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18). The death of the heifer symbolizes the destruction of sin, then. Sins are red, and of course ashes become white. Maybe, as in a few other details of this ritual, God only knows. After all, God can mean both red as in blood and red as in sin.
Golden Calf or Red Calf? There is a rabbinic tradition in the Red Heifer ritual that it in some ways was established by God to rectify the horrendous sin of the Golden Calf. For one thing, Aaron was not allowed to manage the Red Heifer ritual. That role was reserved for an associate priest. Perhaps Aaron’s exclusion was due to his guilt in his complicity in the Golden Calf incident. Perhaps God also wanted to undo the effects of the Golden Calf on the people’s memory, and so a heifer, a young calf, was chosen as the centerpiece of this ritual. In the sinful case the calf was worshipped as a god. In the Red Heifer case, the calf was a means of purification from sin. Also, Moses’ reaction to the Golden Calf is strikingly similar to the ritual with the Red Heifer. He burned the Golden Calf in a great fire, he ground it into powdered ashes, and then mixed those ashes with water. So far, those actions are exactly the same as the Red heifer ritual. Amazingly, Moses made the Israelites drink this mixture, so they’d never forget or repeat this great sin. In the Red Heifer, the watered down ashes were not taken internally like that, but instead externally. Still it’s easy to see the many parallels between the sin of the Golden Calf and the redemption with the Red Heifer. Perhaps this is God’s way of undoing that major act of sinfulness.
Jesus is the Red Heifer. Blood is sacred, says the Lord. Blood is holy, set apart from other aspects of creation. In the eyes of God, blood represents life. Life itself depends on blood. In fact, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” (Lev. 17:11). Blood is a life principle flowing into the very structure of created life. Since the Fall in the Garden, the world has had a disastrous problem: sin. The result of sin is death. And the result of blood is life. So it naturally follows that blood is somehow the remedy for sin. Blood has to be involved if forgiveness is to happen, if life proves victorious over death. In God’s plan of redemption, His universal solvent is blood, it dissolves the presence and authority of sin.