For the first time in many (many) years, I taught the book of Numbers this January. I often get asked what my favourite book of the Bible is. My answer has never been: “Numbers!” But I must say, as I spent time reflecting on this book, it grew on me. Or perhaps more accurately, it did something to me. Our pastor recently compared Scripture with laundry detergent: we only have to give it sufficient time, then it will do its work. It did. The book pulled me closer to God.
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And this although so much in the book (and indeed so much of the Torah) is utterly foreign to my world and our way of thinking and believing. What’s more, we don’t practice much it. All the rules and regulations regarding ritual purity and all the different kinds of sacrifice have no place in our practice. We may study them, but we do not do them. And when we do study them, they give us a hard time, because they are part of a way of thinking and of looking at the world that is, to repeat the phrase, utterly foreign to us. If you want a taste of this strangeness, go read Numbers 19. It describes in detail how to manufacture and apply the water for impurity. For this, one is to use the ashes of a red heifer burned in a specific manner – one of the stranger rituals in the law. I will come back to the heifer but would first like to propose an explanation.
Why Is This Stuff in the Bible? We Don’t Do Any of It!
So how can this be? God spent significant time instructing the Israelites on how to handle sacrifice and purity. By all appearances, Jesus and the NT made a sharp cut. Suddenly, these regulations were obsolete. How could God order rather emphatically what he now no longer demands?
If you touch a corpse or a dead animal, it is no hindrance to appearing before God in prayer or worship, whether private or communal. The same applies if you are a woman having her period. If it is not an issue today, why would it have been an issue back then?
Of course, Jesus fulfilled the sacrifices or dealt with issues like impurity through his death on the cross, but this is only a partial answer. An important partial answer, I admit. Jesus certainly fulfilled the sin offering through making atonement and he provided purification.
But not all the sacrifices are meant to atone for sin. What about those that express worship, fellowship, and celebration? And is touching a corpse or having your period an issue or not? After all, it certainly isn’t sin. You weren’t morally in the wrong if you were unclean in these ways.
A Proposal
I would like to propose a hypothesis. God did not come up with the idea of sacrifice. People were already doing this, and God adopted their practice, although he did change the meaning somewhat. And God did not come up with the idea of ritual purity either. Somehow, this framework for dividing the world in pure and impure was likewise already in place. Leviticus (and to a lesser extent, Numbers) did not introduce a whole new conceptual system to the Israelites, previously unknown to them. It built on what they already believed and did.
People have been bringing sacrifices from very early on, and they have done so all over the world. They did not need God or gods to tell them this. In the Bible, the first sacrifice is performed in Genesis 4. It appears to be a sacrifice of thanksgiving. God did not ask for it. It seems both Cain and Abel came up with the idea themselves.
Somehow, people have always felt that some sort of gift was needed if they wanted to approach the gods. In part, such gifts were meant to win the favour of a god, often enough descending into overt manipulation. It was not unusual in the ancient world to understand sacrifice as some sort of food for the gods. In a famous scene in the Gilgamesh Epos (XI: 161-3), when the first sacrifice is brought after the Flood, the starving gods gather around the sacrifice like flies – not a flattering portrayal, but clearly reflecting the belief that the gods needed food, which sacrifice provided.
God adopts this practice but changes its meaning. He does not need food:
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats? (Ps. 50:10-13 ESV)
In addition, he is beyond manipulation. But he does appreciate gifts that come with the right motivation. Most important is a real innovation: God gives certain sacrifices the purpose of dealing with human sin. For the time being. Because one thing the sacrificial system makes crystal clear: humans cannot provide a sacrifice good enough to deal with the problem of sin. They need a cleansing that goes much deeper than any water of purification can accomplish, as David acknowledges after his adultery with Bathsheba:
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Ps. 51:7 ESV)
The Purpose of Sacrifice
It seems that sacrifices in the OT have at least four important functions, depending on the type of sacrifice involved:
- Some provide a way to deal with sin and guilt, even if
only in a symbolic and preliminary manner. - Others are a way to bless God by providing “a pleasing
aroma to the LORD” (e.g. Nu. 15:3). But surely God does not enjoy the smell of
burning meat. So what is pleasing? It can only be the heart of the one bringing
the offering, the intention behind the gift. - Peace, freewill, and vow offerings enable fellowship
with God. Interestingly, these sacrifices and the sacrifices offered during
Israel’s festivals were accompanied by a grain offering and drink offering, as
detailed in Numbers 15:1-16. This almost makes it look as if this is food for
God after all. The symbolism of a meal is certainly there: meat, some form of
bread, and wine to drink. However, the meal is an experience that is shared
between God and the worshippers. It does not serve to feed God. It provides a
format for fellowship. - Numerous sacrifices express commitment, surrender, and
devotion.
It is easy to see how the first purpose points forward and finds its fulfilment in Christ. After all, only God can provide the gift that is needed (cf. Gen. 22:8).
The other three purposes exemplify the lifestyle that God desires. It includes gratitude, thanksgiving, worship, and intimate fellowship with him. For Israel in the OT, the sacrificial system served as a way to live these qualities. The NT looks beyond the outward form to the essence and is therefore able to disregard the form. As Paul puts it:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom. 12:1 ESV)
Our entire lives are to become the sacrifice – a living one, not a carcass to be burned – that truly pleases God: lives surrendered and devoted to him and enjoying intimate fellowship with him.
In laws on sacrifice and purity, therefore, God regulates what in essence was already there, adopting common practice and the underlying way of thinking, but making adjustments to put it to his use. God uses a symbolic language the people of Israel already knew and understood. Ultimately, all of this functions to illustrate and explain the work of Christ on the cross (the first purpose listed above) and the lifestyle that should be its result (the remaining three purposes of sacrifice listed above and Paul’s point in Romans 12:1).
Numbers 19
In the ritual involving the red heifer, the conceptual worlds of sacrifice and of ritual purity (cleansing) come together. The red heifer is a sacrifice, and its ashes are used for purification. Looking at this example will help us to understand both the underlying framework and the way God uses it to convey deeper issues and solutions.
I dealt with the purity framework more extensively in Issue 16 of Create a Learning Site, which looked at the book of Leviticus. In summary:
- Only a ritually pure or clean person could approach
the sphere of the holy, which included everything that was closely associated
with God. - Since God was pure life, everything associated with
death (including, for instance, menstrual blood) made one unclean, that is,
unfit to enter God’s presence. - The blood of a sacrifice served to carry sin and
impurity from the one bringing the sacrifice to the altar, thus making
atonement or purgation.
Impurity came in gradations. For the weaker form, it was sufficient to take a bath, wash one’s clothes, and wait until evening. A corpse and various skin conditions (usually mistakenly referred to as leprosy; Lev. 13) counted as particularly strong sources of impurity and called for much more elaborate rituals. Leviticus 14 describes the remedy for the case of a skin disease that had healed. Numbers 19 deals with the person who had touched a corpse.
Some of the symbolism is not hard to understand. A heifer is a young cow that has not yet given birth to a calf; she is a virgin. She had to be perfect (Nu. 19:2). In other words, she is pure. The colour red suggests blood, the actual agent in transferring impurity. Cedarwood and scarlet yarn imply the same symbolism (Nu. 19:6).
Interestingly, this is the only sacrifice that was made outside of the tent of meeting. The reason is that the person unclean through contact with a corpse could not come to the sanctuary (so Gane 2004: 659). There is nevertheless a connection made to the sanctuary by sprinkling blood toward it seven times (Nu. 19:4), thus transferring the impurity to the altar.
Surprisingly, it does this before the impure person has been identified with the sacrifice and presumably even before he has contracted the impurity. The heifer already carries the impurity. This explains why everyone who handles the cow or its ashes becomes unclean (Nu. 19:8-10, 21), except of course the person to be cleansed, because his impurity is transferred away from him to the cow. But only after the fact of the sacrifice!
The ashes were stored in a clean place (Nu. 19:9), so they were available whenever needed. The ashes provided a sort of instant purification sacrifice; they only had to be mixed with living water (Nu. 19: 17; think Nescafé). They provided a cheap solution (so Gane 2004: 660). Not everyone who touched a corpse had to take on the expense of a sacrifice. They had to be sprinkled with the water for impurity on the third and on the seventh day (Nu. 19:12). Presumably, through this act, the impurity was transferred from the person to the sacrifice retroactively (think Star Trek and time warp), and through the sacrifice to the altar, from where it would be removed on the Day of Atonement (or Purgation; see Lev. 16 and CALS 16). As Roy Gane puts it:
Paradoxically, the cleansing water acts on everyone but the corpse-contaminated person as if it were already carrying defilement from that person. This time warp explains why the burning of the red cow defiles ritual participants [quoting D. P. Wright, “Heifer, Red,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3: 116:] “prospectively, before actual use in purification.” The cow is regarded as if parts of it in the form of rehydrated ashes have already contacted contaminated individuals so that the whole cow has absorbed their impurity. It is as though the pollution is transmitted back through time and space to the cow’s incineration, where the evil is destroyed.” (Gane 2004: 663)
The red heifer ritual, then, follows a clear logic within its conceptual framework of ritual purity. It also shows how God used this framework to enable a deepening understanding of what had to be accomplished in redemption:
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Heb. 9:13f ESV)
Attribution
Black Angus Girl. 20 August 2006 <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Angus_Heifer.jpg> [Accessed 14 February 2020] Public domain
Getty Research Institute. 2 March 2017 <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Temple_of_Baalshamin,_Louis_Vignes,_1864._Albumen_print._8.8_x_11.4_in._(22.5_x_29_cm)._The_Getty_Research_Institute,_2015.R.15.jpg> [Accessed 30 March 2020] CC BY 4.0
._The_Getty_Research_Institute,_2015.R.15.jpg){kind=link}
Johnny_Tal <https://pixabay.com/photos/coffee-spoon-cafe-transparent-3249484/> [Accessed 14 February 2020] CC0
References
All Bible quotations from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles)
Gane, Roy. 2004. Leviticus, Numbers: From Biblical Text … to Contemporary Life, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan)
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