RED HEIFER. - A particular rite ordained by God during the Israelites’ journey from Sinai to Cades.
A “red heifer, without defect, without any blemish, which had never borne the yoke” (Num. 19, 2) was to be brought to Aronne and, in the presence of Eleazaro, son of Aronne (in which fact one may see an ancient precedent for the existence, attested later [II Reg. 23, 4; 25, 18], of a substitute for the high priest), was to be slaughtered outside the camp. With its blood seven sprinklings were to be made in the direction of the “tent of meeting”; then the animal was to be burned whole, adding cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool threads to the pyre (to bind the bundles). The ashes, once gathered and deposited in an appointed place in the camp, were to be available to the people “for making the lustral water” (Num. 19, 2-10), naturally by mixing the ashes with water.
The principal details of the rite allude to a gift of life in opposition to death: the female sex of the animal, a giver of life; its freedom from the yoke, a symbol of freshness of strength (cf. Deut. 31,3; I Sam. 6, 7); the red colour of the animal and of the cords, an allusion to the blood in which life circulates. Similar symbolism is found among other Eastern peoples in sacrificial and apotropaic rites; likewise, the “lustral” use of ashes. The archaic features of the whole are evident. There is no record of the continuity of the rite, but the reference made to it by the Epistle to the Hebrews in a most beautiful application to the Blood of Christ (Hebr. 9, 13-14), as to a practice rather than to a text, supports the affirmative.