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The Offering of the Red Heifer

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 16, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 20.

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The Offering of the Red Heifer

By S. N. HASKELL

S. N. HASKELL
The life of every sacrifice, from the first one offered at the gate of Eden down to the cross, was a type of Christ; but the offering of the red heifer is different in many respects from all others. It was an occasional sacrifice, offered to purify from ceremonial uncleanness those who for any reason had touched the dead.
The heifer was to be red, without one spot, thus in an especial manner typifying the blood of Christ. It was to be without blemish, thus representing him “who knew no sin.” It was to be one that had never been broken to bear the yoke; it must be a heifer that had always been free. This was symbolic of the Son of God, who came of his own free will to die for us. Christ knew no bondage; no yoke was upon him. While enduring the agony of Gethsemane, he could have wiped the bloody sweat from his brow and returned to his rightful place in heaven, and left the world to perish. There was no power, only that of supreme heavenly love, that forced Christ toward the cross of Calvary. He came a voluntary offering. He offered himself for the sins of the world, and the Father’s love for the fallen race was so great that much as he loved him, he accepted the offered life of his only Son. Angels were amenable to the law of God; their life could not atone for the broken law. Christ alone was free from the claims of the law, the only one who could redeem the lost race.
The offering of the red heifer was a very imposing ceremony. Numbers 19; Deut. 21: 1-9. The animal was not taken to the temple, as in most other offerings, but to a rough valley without the camp, which had never been cultivated nor sown. The priest, clothed in his pure white garments of the priesthood, led the heifer, accompanied by the elders of the city and the Levites. Cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet were also carried to the place of offering. When the procession reached the rough valley, the elderscame forward and killed the heifer. The priest then took the blood, and with his finger sprinkled it toward the temple seven times. If a person had been found dead in the field, and it was not known who had taken his life, then the elders of the city nearest the place where the slain man had been found came forward and washed their hands over the body of the heifer as they offered a prayer to God, requesting that the Lord would not lay innocent blood upon them. After this the heifer’s entire body, including the blood, was burned. As the flames mounted up, the priest stepped near and cast some of the cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet into the midst of the fire.
The red heifer was offered without the camp, typifying that Christ suffered not for the Hebrew race alone, but for the whole world. If every offering had been slain within the court of the sanctuary, some might have taught that Christ died only for his own peculiar people, the Hebrew race; but the red heifer was offered without the camp, symbolizing the fact that Christ died for all nations, tribes, and peoples. The condescension and love of the Lord are wonderful. Lest some poor, forlorn, discouraged soul should think he was not worthy to accept the offered sacrifice, the red heifer was taken not only without the camp, but to a rough valley so rocky and worthless that it had never even been plowed. Such was the place chosen to sprinkle the blood of that wonderful offering which typified Christ in an especial sense. Even though Satan has so marred the image of the Creator in man that no trace can be seen of anything but the attributes of Satan, yet Christ, with his mighty arm, can raise such a one up to sit with him on his throne. The whole life may be wasted, and be, like the rough valley, of no account; but if such a one will turn his eyes toward the heavenly sanctuary, and plead for mercy by confessing his sins, the precious blood of Christ, of which the blood of the red heifer was a symbol, will be sprinkled over his wasted life as verily as the blood of the heifer was sprinkled over the rough stones of the valley; and Christ will say to the repentant one, as he did to the thief on the cross, who had wasted his life, Thou shalt be with me in paradise. There are none so sunken in sin or in heathen darkness but that hope and salvation are held out to them through the typical offering of the red heifer. This sacrifice was but a shadow of heavenly things. Type has met antitype. Christ suffered without the camp for the sins of the whole world. There are none so sunken that he can not lift them up. It may look impossible to man, the customs and habits of the world may condemn a person, and say he is lost; but Christ can save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. Heb. 7: 25.
The cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet cast into the fire were typical of the purifying of vegetation and of the removal of every trace of sin from the earth by the blood of Christ.
After the body of the heifer was burned to ashes, a person who was not contaminated by touching the dead gathered up the ashes and placed them in a clean place, and they were kept to be used for purifying those that touched the dead. If a man died in a tent or house, the house and all who touched the dead body were counted unclean until purified. This was to impress the people with the terribleness of sin, with the fact that death came as the result of sin and was a representative of sin.
Some of the ashes were placed in pure running water, and a person who was ceremonially clean dipped a bunch of hyssop and cedar in the ashes and water and sprinkled the tent, the articles within the tent, and the people. This was repeated several times, until all were purified. In like manner, Christ, after he shed his blood for sinful man, entered the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary to present his blood before the Father, to cleanse man from defilement of sin.
The cedar and hyssop used to sprinkle the purifying water denoted that the person would be cleansed from all moral defilement. The thoroughness of the work was typified by its being repeated several times. David evidently had this ceremony in mind when he prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Ps. 51: 7. Paul’s mind was led from type to antitype when he wrote to his Hebrew brethren: “If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Heb. 9: 13, 14.
Many read their Bibles and pass over these beautiful types as meaningless ceremonies, peculiar to the Jews, but without significance to Christians. They consider the Old Testament of little value. The Lord through Moses gave that wonderful system of types and symbols contained in the sanctuary service and Levitical laws, and Moses was so fearful lest the people might think he had given them the service that more than two hundred times we find him assuring them that God himself was the author, by such expressions as, “The Lord said,” or, “The Lord commanded.” Moses desired all to know that God had given that wonderful system of types and shadows, not only throwing light from Eden to the cross, but revealing to sinful man the work of Christ from the cross to the end of time. These typical ceremonies, like a great reflector, throw light upon the ministry of Christ that can not be obtained from any other portion of the Scriptures. The Saviour taught that a study of the writings of Moses strengthened faith in him. He said: “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”
Type Antitype
Num. 19: 2. A red heifer without spot. Heb. 9: 13, 14. Christ offered himself without spot to God.
Num. 19: 2. There was to be no blemish in the animal. John 15: 10. Christ never disobeyed the law of God. He “knew no sin.”
Num. 19: 2. One that had never borne the yoke. John 10: 15. “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
Num. 19: 3; Deut. 21: 4. Slain without the camp in a rough valley. Heb. 13: 12; John 10: 16. “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”
Num. 19: 5, 6. Heifer and cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet, burned in the fire. 2 Peter 3: 7. The earth is “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
Num. 19: 17-19. Those ceremonially unclean cleansed by being sprinkled with the ashes. 1 Cor. 6: 11. “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Portland, Maine.