SEV Biblia, Chapter 19:2
Esta es la ordenanza de la ley que el SEÑOR ha prescrito, diciendo: Di a los hijos de Israel que te traigan una vaca bermeja, perfecta, en la cual no haya falta, sobre la cual no se haya puesto yugo;
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Numbers 19:2
Verse 2. Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee, &c.] The ordinance of the red heifer was a sacrifice of general application. All the people were to have an interest in it, and therefore the people at large are to provide the sacrifice. This Jewish rite certainly had a reference to things done under the Gospel, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has remarked: "For if," says he, "the blood of bulls and of goats," alluding, probably, to the sin-offerings and the scape-goat, "and the ashes of a 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. ix. 13, 14. As the principal stress of the allusion here is to the ordinance of the red heifer, we may certainly conclude that it was designed to typify the sacrifice of our blessed Lord. We may remark several curious particulars in this ordinance.
1. A heifer was appointed for a sacrifice, probably, in opposition to the Egyptian superstition which held these sacred, and actually worshipped their great goddess Isis under this form; and this appears the more likely because males in general were preferred for sacrifice, yet here the female is chosen.
2. It was to be a red heifer, because red bulls were sacrificed to appease the evil demon Typhon, worshipped among the Egyptians. See Spencer.
3. The heifer was to be without spot-having no mixture of any other colour.
Plutarch remarks, Deuteronomy Iside et de Osiride, that if there was a single hair in the animal either white or black, it marred the sacrifice. See Calmet, and see the note on "chap. viii. 7".
4. Without blemish-having no kind of imperfection in her body; the other, probably, applying to the hair or colour.
5. On which never came yoke, because any animal which had been used for any common purpose was deemed improper to be offered in sacrifice to God. The heathens, who appear to have borrowed much from the Hebrews, were very scrupulous in this particular. Neither the Greeks nor Romans, nor indeed the Egyptians, would offer an animal in sacrifice that had been employed for agricultural purposes. Of this we have the most positive evidence from Homer, Porphyry, Virgil, and Macrobius.
Just such a sacrifice as that prescribed here, does Diomede vow to offer to Pallas. - Iliad, lib. x., ver. 291.
Æwv nun moi eqelousa paristaso, kai me fulasseù soi dÆ au egw rexw boun hnin eurumetwpon, admhthn, hn ovpw upo zugon hgagen anhrù thn toi egw rexw, cruson kerasin periceuav.
"So now be present, O celestial maid; So still continue to the race thine aid; A yearling heifer falls beneath the stroke, Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke, With ample forehead and with spreading horns, Whose tapering tops refulgent gold adorns." Altered from POPE.
In the very same words Nestor, Odyss., lib. iii., ver. 382, promises a similar sacrifice to Pallas.
The Romans had the same religion with the Greeks, and consequently the same kind of sacrifices; so Virgil, Georg. iv., ver. 550.
Quatuor eximios praestanti corpore tauros Ducit, et intacta totidem cervice juveneas.
"] From his herd he culls For slaughter four the fairest of his bulls; Four heifers from his female stock he took, All fair, and all unknowing of the yoke." - DRYDEN.
It is very likely that the Gentiles learnt their first sacrificial rites from the patriarchs; and on this account we need not wonder to find so many coincidences in the sacrificial system of the patriarchs and Jews, and all the neighbouring nations.
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 2. This [is] the ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded , etc.] By which it appears, that this law was not of the moral, but of the ceremonial kind, being called an ordinance, a statute, a decree of God, the King of kings; and which was founded not on any clear plain reason in the thing itself, but in the will of God, who intended it as a type and shadow of the blood and sacrifice of Christ, and of the efficacy of that to cleanse from sin; and it also appears by this, that it was not a new law now made, but which had been made already: “which the Lord hath commanded”: as is plain from what has been observed, (see Gill on “ Numbers 19:1”); and the Jews say, that the red heifer was slain by Eleazar the day after the tabernacle was erected, even on the second day of the first month of Israel’s coming out of Egypt; and it was now repeated both on account of the priests and people, because of the priest to whom it belonged, as Aben Ezra observes, Aaron being now established in the priesthood; and because of the people, who were afraid they should die if they came near the tabernacle; now hereby they are put in mind of a provision made for the purification of them, when under any uncleanness, which made them unfit for coming to it: saying, speak unto the children of Israel ; whom this law concerned, and for whose purification it was designed; and it was at the expense not of a private person, but of the whole congregation, that the water of purifying was made; and that, as the Jews say f252 , that the priests might have no personal profit from it: that they bring thee a red heifer ; or “young cow”, for so the word properly signifies; one of two years old, as the Targum of Jonathan, and so says the Misnah f253 ; though some of the Rabbins say one of three years, or of four years, or even one of five years old, would do. This instance, with others, where females are ordered to be slain, (see Leviticus 3:1); confutes the notion of such, who think the laws of Moses were made in conformity to the customs of the Egyptians, this being directly contrary to them; if they were the same in the times of Moses, they were in the times of Herodotus, who expressly says f254 , male oxen the Egyptians sacrifice; but it is not lawful for them to sacrifice females, for they are sacred to Isis. Indeed, according to Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus f256 , the Egyptians in their times sacrificed red bullocks to Typhon, who they supposed was of the same colour, and to whom they had an aversion, accounting him the god of evil; and because red oxen were odious to them, they offered them to him; as red-haired men also were slain by them for the same reason, at the tomb of Osiris, who they say was murdered by the red-haired Typhon; but these were superstitions that obtained among them after the times of Moses, and could not be retorted to by him; a better reason is to be given why this heifer or cow was to be of a red colour: without spot, wherein [is] no blemish ; the first of these, without spot, the Jews understand of colour, that it should have no spots in it of any other colour, black or white, nor indeed so much as an hair, at least not two of another colour; and so the Targum of Jonathan, in which there is no spot or mark of a white hair; and Jarchi more particularly, “which is perfect in redness; for if there were in it (he says) two black hairs, it was unfit;” and so Ben Gersom, with which agrees the Misnah f257 ; if there were in it two hairs, black or white, in one part, it was rejected; if there was one in the head, and another in the tail, it was rejected; if there were two hairs in it, the root or bottom of which were black, and the head or top red, and so on the contrary; all depended on the sight: and it must be owned, the same exactness was observed in the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians, as Plutarch relates f258 ; for if the ox had but one hair black or white, they reckoned it was not fit to be sacrificed; in which perhaps they imitated the Jews: it being without blemish was what was common to all sacrifices, such as are described in ( Leviticus 22:22-24); [and] upon which never came yoke ; and so among the Heathens in later times, very probably in imitation of this, they used to offer to their deities oxen that never had bore any yoke; as appears from Homer, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Seneca, out of whom instances are produced by Bochart f259 . Now, though this red cow was not properly a sacrifice for sin, yet it was analogous to one, and was a type of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all these characters meet, and are significant. It being a female may denote the infirmities of Christ’s human nature, to which it was subject, though sinless ones; he was encompassed with, and took on him, our infirmities; and may have some respect to the woman, by whom the transgression came, which brought impurity on all human nature, which made a purification for sin necessary; and the red colour of it may point at the flesh and blood of Christ he partook of, and the sins of his people, which were laid upon him, and were as crimson and as scarlet, and the bloody sufferings he endured to make satisfaction for them; and its being without spot and blemish may denote the perfection of Christ in his person, obedience, and sufferings, and the purity and holiness of his nature; and having never had any yoke upon it may signify, that though he was made under the law, and had commands enjoined him by his father as man, yet was free from the yoke of human traditions, and from the servitude of sin, and most willingly engaged, and not by force and compulsion, in the business of our redemption and salvation.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-10 - The heifer was to be wholly burned. This typified the painfu sufferings of our Lord Jesus, both in soul and body, as a sacrific made by fire, to satisfy God's justice for man's sin. These ashes ar said to be laid up as a purification for sin, because, though they wer only to purify from ceremonial uncleanness, yet they were a type of that purification for sin which our Lord Jesus made by his death. The blood of Christ is laid up for us in the word and sacraments, as fountain of merit, to which by faith we may have constant recourse, for cleansing our consciences.
Original Hebrew
זאת 2063 חקת 2708 התורה 8451 אשׁר 834 צוה 6680 יהוה 3068 לאמר 559 דבר 1696 אל 413 בני 1121 ישׂראל 3478 ויקחו 3947 אליך 413 פרה 6510 אדמה 122 תמימה 8549 אשׁר 834 אין 369 בה מום 3971 אשׁר 834 לא 3808 עלה 5927 עליה 5921 על׃ 5923
