Numbers 19:3

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ²"This is the statute of the law that the LORD has commanded: Instruct the Israelites to bring you an unblemished red heifer that has no defect and has never been placed under a yoke. ³Give it to Eleazar the priest, and he will have it brought outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.⁴Eleazar the priest is to take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. ⁵Then the heifer must be burned in his sight. Its hide, its flesh, and its blood are to be burned, along with its dung. ⁶The priest is to take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool and throw them onto the burning heifer. ⁷Then the priest must wash his clothes and bathe his body in water; after that he may enter the camp, but he will be ceremonially unclean until evening. ⁸The one who burned the heifer must also wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and he too will be unclean until evening. ⁹Then a man who is clean is to gather up the ashes of the heifer and store them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They must be kept by the congregation of Israel for preparing the water of purification; this is for purification from sin. ¹⁰The man who has gathered up the ashes of the heifer must also wash his clothes, and he will be unclean until evening. This is a permanent statute for the Israelites and for the foreigner residing among them.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

without the camp: Numbers 5:2, Numbers 15:36, Leviticus 4:12, Leviticus 4:21, Leviticus 13:45, Leviticus 13:46, Leviticus 16:27, Leviticus 24:14, Hebrews 13:11-13

Cross-References

Genesis 19:6
Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him.

Genesis 19:8
Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them to you, and you can do to them whatever you want. But do not do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."

Genesis 19:28
He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw the smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace.

Genesis 19:29
So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.

Genesis 21:8
So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.

Exodus 12:15
For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the yeast from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.

Exodus 12:39
Since their dough had no yeast, the people baked what they had brought out of Egypt into unleavened loaves. For when they had been driven out of Egypt, they could not delay and had not prepared any provisions for themselves.

Judges 6:19
So Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread and an ephah of flour. He placed the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot and brought them out to present to Him under the oak.

1 Samuel 28:24
The woman had a fattened calf at her house, and she quickly slaughtered it. She also took flour, kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread.

2 Kings 4:8
One day Elisha went to Shunem, and a prominent woman who lived there persuaded him to have a meal. So whenever he would pass by, he would stop there to eat.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest,.... The son of Aaron; the Sagan of the priests, as the Targum of Jonathan calls him, the second or deputy priest; it was not to be given to Aaron, that he might not be defiled, though but for a small time, that so he might not be hindered in his office at all; but to Eleazar, to inure him to his office, and to confirm him in it:

that he may bring her forth without the camp; without the camp of Israel; Jarchi says, without the three camps, as afterwards without Jerusalem; it used in later times to be burnt on the mount of Olives; it was brought forth as impure, and was a type of Christ, having the sins of his people on him, and who in conformity to this type suffered without the gates of Jerusalem, see Hebrews 13:11;

and [one] shall slay her before his face; the Targum of Jonathan says, another priest; but it was not necessary that it should be slain by a priest, any man might do it. Jarchi says, a stranger slew, and Eleazar looked on; though it was not slain by him, yet it was slain before him, that it might look like a sacrifice, though not offered on the altar; and slaying of it denotes the putting of Christ to death, which was done in the presence, and with the approbation, of the priests and elders of the people.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The work would necessarily require a priest; yet as it rendered him unclean for the day Numbers 19:22, the high priest was relieved from performing it.

Without the camp - The defilement was viewed as transferred to the victim that was to be offered for its removal. Under these circumstances the victim, like the defiled persons themselves, would be removed outside the camp. The particular pollution to be remedied by this ordinance was the indirect one resulting from contact with tokens and manifestations of sin, not the direct and personal one arising from actual commission of sin. So too the sinless antitype had to bear the reproach of associating with sinners Luke 5:30; Luke 15:2. And as the red heifer was expelled from the precincts of the camp, so was the Saviour cut off in no small measure during His Life from the fellowship of the chief representatives of the theocracy, and put to death outside Jerusalem between two thieves. Compare Hebrews 13:11-12.