The Parah Adumah Paradox

The Parah Adumah (red heifer) is often cited as the archetype of enigmatic Torah commandments.¹ The procedure, which purifies a person, or an object defiled by contact with a corpse (Num. 19: 1-12) is replete with puzzling characteristics. To begin with, the inherent strangeness of the sundry ingredients added to the mixture produces an aura of mystery. Furthermore, the mandate to sprinkle only a small portion of the blood in the direction of the Tabernacle, and to burn the rest of it together with the heifer, is highly anomalous. In light of the fact that the Torah labels the Parah Adumah as a hatat, sin offering, this is an especially blatant and confounding aberration from all other hatat offerings.² The surprising inclusion of dung in the burning of the heifer adds to the air of peculiarity. Moreover, in sharp distinction from other offerings,³ the red heifer was not burnt on the altar. Finally, and perhaps most notably, the Parah Adumah had the inexplicable quality of rendering both the impure pure, and the pure impure.⁴ The Midrash relates that it was this quality which stymied King Solomon’s attempt to explain the commandment’s rationale.⁵ Even Moshe himself, according to the Midrash, was astonished by this oxymoronic mechanism.⁶ The Parah Adumah’s paradoxical ability to affect opposite results underlies its categorization as one of the four most inexplicable Torah commandments.⁷

We may add another enigmatic feature to the list. Ritual purification often entails two steps, immersion and sunset. A person who immersed retains a vestige of impurity. This mitigated status of impurity is referred to as tvul yom. The Sages ruled that a tvul yom was fit to prepare and sprinkle the ashes and water of the Parah Adumah. By contrast, the Sadducees deemed a tvul yom unfit for this ritual. Strikingly, the Rabbis went so far as to mandate the deliberate defilement of the person designated to prepare and sprinkle the ashes and water of the Parah Adumah so that he would be a tvul yom, in defiance of the Sadducees. In an astounding case recounted in the Tosefta, the Rabbis went so far as to rule that the precious Parah Adumah mixture that had been prepared by someone who was not a tvul yom be discarded.⁸ The ruling of the Sages on this issue is highly counterintuitive⁹ based on the exceedingly strict purity requirements that were applied to all other aspects associated with the preparation of the Parah Adumah.¹⁰ While the suggestion that this was part of a broader agenda to undermine the Sadducees is certainly valid, the unique peculiarities of this case suggest that there is more here than meets the eye. Perhaps it even goes to the very heart of the idea that underlies the Parah Adumah, namely, the destruction of death and the triumph of life through resurrection.

Our roadmap for approaching this obscure Torah commandment begins with a reflection on its centrality in core Torah theology. After establishing its deep significance, we will examine the Parah Adumah in light of its commonalities with the purification of the leper.

The Centrality of the Parah Adumah

The Torah introduces the Parah Adumah with a highly unusual appellation; hukat hatorah, the law of the Torah, drawing attention to its fundamental significance: This is the ritual law (hukat hatorah), that the LORD has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid (Num. 19:2).

We find this formulation in the Torah only once more, a few chapters away, in a closely connected context, in the narration of the war against Midian. There, the Torah instructs those who encountered a corpse during battle: This is the ritual law (hukat hatorah), that the LORD has enjoined upon Moses (Num. 31:21). The commentators explain the repetition of this unusual phraseology to refer to the Parah Adumah.¹¹

The deep relevance of the Parah Adumah to the Torah hinted at in these texts is expounded upon in the Midrash which observes that the verses concerning the Parah Adumah repeat seven key words, seven times each.¹² The Midrash articulates the significance of this phenomenon, stating: “Just as the Torah itself is interpreted in forty nine ways, so too does this contain forty nine facets, which are considered equal to the Torah in its entirety.”¹³

Yet the same Midrash suggests that the ritual impurity for which the Parah Adumah provides an antidote is nothing more than an elaborate fiction: “Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakai said to [his students]: ’As you live, it is not the corpse that renders impure, and it is not the water that purifies. Rather, the Holy One blessed be He said: I instituted a statute, issued a decree; you are not permitted to violate My decree, as it is written: This is the statute of the Torah (hukat hatorah)” (Bamidbar Rabbah, Hukat, 19)

These statements highlight the obscurity of the Parah Adumah commandment, drawing attention to its inexplicable mechanism for obtaining ritual purification. An examination of the purification of the leper, which shares many characteristics with the Parah Adumah, will begin to shed light on the strange purification mechanism of the Parah Adumah.

The Purification of the Leper

The recovery from tzaraat (commonly translated as leprosy) involves a purification ritual that strongly evokes the Parah Adumah. There is the commonality of cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson wool immersed in a mixture containing water and blood that is used for sprinkling.¹⁴ Perhaps the most notable correlation between the two rituals is their striking deviation from the standard Temple service, as the presiding priest collects and sprinkles the blood outside of the Temple confines.¹⁵ The Sages cite the link between these two rituals when teaching that they both feature the unusual requirement of left handed blood collection.¹⁶ The Sifrei adduces the purification of the leper as the source for aspects of the blood collection ritual of the Parah Adumah.¹⁷ These examples demonstrate the correlation between the Parah Adumah and the purification from tzaraat.¹⁸

The conceptual connection between these two procedures rests on the Torah’s perspective on leprosy as living death.¹⁹ This attitude is evident in Aaron’s reaction to Miriam’s sudden leprosy affliction: Let her not be like a corpse which emerges from its mother’s womb with half its flesh eaten away! (Num. 12:12). Similarly, leprosy is equated with death in an episode involving King Yehoshaphat. The king of Aram sent a letter to King Yehoshaphat, requesting that he arrange for his general, Naaman, to be cured of leprosy. When the king of Israel read the letter, he rent his clothes and cried, ‘Am I God, to deal death or give life, that this fellow writes to me to cure a man of leprosy? Just see for yourselves that he is seeking a pretext against me!’ (II Kgs. 5:7). Furthermore, Naaman’s miraculous cure through Elisha’s intervention is related to by the Sages as a case of resurrection.²⁰

The idea that the purification of the leper is a form of resurrection is supported by the text. The Torah mandates regarding the leper, As for the person with a leprous affliction: the clothes shall be rent, the head shall be left bare, and the upper lip shall be covered over; and that person shall call out, ‘Impure! Impure!’ (Lev. 13:45). These are all actions associated with mourning. In the aftermath of the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, Aaron and his surviving sons were prohibited from rending their garments or bearing their heads as signs of mourning (Lev. 10:6). Similarly, we learn that the high priest may neither bare his head nor rend his garment in a show of mourning (Lev. 21:10). Furthermore, in Ezekiel we read that when Ezekiel’s wife died, he was prohibited from mourning her death. Among the mourning practices listed in Ezekiel is the covering of the upper lip:²¹ The word of the LORD came to me: “O mortal, I am about to take away the delight of your eyes from you through pestilence; but you shall not lament or weep or let your tears flow. Moan softly; observe no mourning for the dead: Put on your turban and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover over your upper lip, and do not eat the bread of comforters.” In the evening my wife died, and in the morning, I did as I had been commanded (Ezek. 24:15-18). Finally, the leper is commanded to warn others to distance themselves to avoid contamination. This too is in line with standard convention when one is in the vicinity of a corpse.²²

We may infer from all of the above that the leper is instructed to mourn their own death. Thus, the purification of the leper signifies the inverse, a return to life. The leper’s purification culminates with the death of one bird and the setting free of another. This ritual may be understood as a powerful metaphor for the reversal of death, or resurrection. The association with resurrection is supported by a series of mysterious steps in the purification process:²³ the shaving of all body hair including the eyebrows; the immersion in a reservoir of fresh water; the sprinkling with the purifying water mixture; and the placing first of blood from the sacrificial offering and then of oil on the right earlobe, on the thumb of the right hand, and on the big toe of the right foot. Rav Amnon Bazak suggests that placing oil and blood on the extremities of the body evokes a newborn,²⁴ covered in blood and rubbed with oil.²⁵ Similarly, emerging from a pool of water evokes birth. Rav Bazak also calls attention to the installation of Aaron and his sons as Temple priests, who are similarly inaugurated with sacrificial blood, in expression of their new status.²⁶ Along similar lines, he explains that “the shaving of the hair is the outward expression of the change that the process of purification and atonement brings about inside the metzora. His healing is a sort of rebirth, and he emerges from the process like a newborn infant, with no hair on his body.” The analogy to resurrection is further supported through the juxtaposition of the purification of the leper with the postpartum woman, who likewise experiences a period of ritual impurity coinciding with new life. The emphasis on the eighth day, a theme around which these texts revolve, adds support to the commonality of life renewal.²⁷

The close relationship between the purification of the leper and the Parah Adumah implies the relevance of the resurrection theme as well. The centrality of the resurrection theme to the Parah Adumah procedure will now be explored.

The Parah Adumah and Resurrection

Many of the characteristics and minutia of the Parah Adumah evoke the idea of death. To begin with, there is the afar and efer (dust and ashes, Num. 19:10,17) of the heifer – afar and efer being synonymous with mortality.²⁸ The inclusion of excrement in the mixture, the embodiment of decomposition, further points to the concept of death. The addition of hyssop develops this theme. Hyssop appears twice more in the Torah: in the purification of the leper, who suffers from a state of living death, and in connection with the Paschal sacrifice in Egypt, where hyssop was used to apply sacrificial blood onto the lintel and doorposts to ward off death, so that no plague will destroy you (Ex. 12: 22). The cedar wood which is added to the ablution moves the theme of death forward as follows. The word pair, hyssop and cedar wood, appears in the Tanakh as a merism representing an entire set.²⁹ Together, hyssop and cedar wood represent plant-life in its entirety; from the low-lying meek hyssop to the giant and mighty cedar. This understanding may be understood to have been implied by Rashi who attributes opposing characteristics to each, with hyssop representing humility and cedar representing arrogance.³⁰

Finally, there is the striking red hue of the heifer, and the crimson fiber added to the mixture. The color of blood which takes on such a prominent role in the Parah Adumah, evokes the notion of permanence. This point is driven home by the crimson dye, renowned for its permanence, as we read in Isaiah: Come, let us reach an understanding, says Hashem. Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow-white; Be they red as dyed wool, they can become like fleece (Isa. 1:18).

The incredible durability of the ancient crimson dye has indeed stood the test of time, as demonstrated by the recent incredible discovery of a 4,000-year-old strip of crimson cloth in Israel’s Cave of Skulls, with the red color still intact.³¹

These ingredients representing death are destroyed. The Mishna describes the pulverization of the fragments with rods and the straining of the ashes until any and all traces of the original heifer were utterly obliterated.³² All of the death-connoting components mentioned above are consumed in the conflagration of the Parah Adumah. The purification affected by this procedure emerges as an obliteration of death itself.

There is a corollary to this concept – namely the eradication of idolatry by means of the Parah Adumah. Idolatry is equated with death by the Tanakh.³³ One clear example of this is the labeling of the sacrifices offered to Baal Peor as offerings of the dead (Ps. 106:28).

The Stamping Out of Idolatry

The Sages suggest that the Parah Adumah atones for Israel’s cardinal sin; the sin of the golden calf:³⁴ Why are all the other offerings male and this is female? Rabbi Aivu said: This is analogous to the son of a maidservant who defecated in a king’s palace. The king said: Let his mother come and wipe away the excrement. So, the Holy One blessed be He said: Let the heifer come and atone for the act of the calf. (Bamidbar Rabbah, Hukat, 19)

The Parah Adumah was instrumental in stamping out the cult of the calf in more ways than one. Hathor, the sacred cow goddess of ancient Egypt was revered as the mother of nature and associated with the sun and the annual rise of the Nile. She was invoked during the mummification ceremony, called upon to bestow eternal life to the deceased.³⁵ Similarly, Apis, the sacred bull and son of Hathor, was linked to fertility and associated with resurrection.³⁶ The pulverization of the Parah Adumah to dust suggests the stamping out of the cult of the sacred cow, and its perceived role in the restoration of life.

Another enigmatic feature of the Parah Adumah that may be further explicated in a similar vein is the inclusion of the cow’s dung in the purifying mixture. The cult of Apis was also associated with the rising sun, whose life affirming qualities were represented by the scarab. Egyptian scarabs were dung beetle images, often depicted beneath a ball of cow dung, signifying the rising sun, and rebirth.³⁷ Practically speaking, cow dung was a critical energy source and an extremely effective fertilizer, due to its role in the production of methane³⁸ and ammonia.³⁹ More to the point, the 18th Dynasty promotion of the god Amun to chief deity of the Egyptian pantheon,⁴⁰ correlated with the mass production of ammonia procured from dung,⁴¹ which was integral to the Amun cult.⁴² The centrality of ammonia producing excrement in the cult of Amun has been preserved by the word ammonia itself.⁴³ The venerated role of cow dung in the Egyptian cult of Hathor-Apis and Amun is negated by its incineration together with the Parah Adumah.

Resurrection

Stamping out the cult of the calf (Golden Calf), cow (Hathor), and bull (Apis), involved transforming the death cult into a pile of desiccated ash. This very same ash, when mixed with water, was transformed into a purifying, life affirming elixir, mayim hayim.⁴⁴ Life emerging from conflagration brings to mind the phoenix, the immortal bird of Greek mythology that rises from its own ashes. Fascinatingly, the lore of the phoenix has a parallel in Jewish tradition. Job speaks of a phoenix-like creature, also ostensibly a bird, that enjoys an exceedingly long lifespan, referred to as the Hol.⁴⁵ The Midrash explains the bird’s thousand-year life cycles to be its reward for having abstained from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.⁴⁶ The Hol-Garden of Eden tradition suggests a relationship between the Parah Adumah, Man’s sin at the Garden of Eden, and the sin of the golden calf as pointed out by the Midrash,⁴⁷ and expounded upon by Nachmanides, who suggests the Parah Adumah to be a rectification of both sins.⁴⁸

The Resurrection Controversy

Belief in resurrection was famously rejected by the Sadducees and became a major point of contention with the rabbis.⁴⁹ It would seem that it was this very challenge to the idea of resurrection which was behind the rabbinic insistence on deliberately rendering impure the one designated to prepare and sprinkle the ashes and water of the Parah Adumah.⁵⁰

The Parah Adumah symbolizes the systematic stamping out of death itself, conferring life affirming purity, evoking the resurrection, a fundamental tenet of the Torah.⁵¹ Allowing the Sadducees, who vigorously denied the idea of resurrection, to exercise control over the Parah Adumah, which represents that very principle, would have undermined far more than Rabbinic hegemony over the Temple service. It would have been an affront to the integrity of the commandment and its theological underpinnings. This explains the otherwise baffling practice of deliberately rendering the one who would sprinkle the purifying water of the Parah Adumah a tvul yom, thereby effectively excluding the Sadducees from the process.⁵²

Finally, the Parah Adumah-resurrection connection is alluded to by the ceremony’s unusual location. We have already noted the perplexing deviation from the standard rule that sacrificial sprinkling of blood normally was confined to the Temple. The deep relevance of the resurrection to the Parah Adumah, however, explains the significance of this anomaly. The sprinkling of the blood of the Parah Adumah towards the Mount of Olives,⁵³ marked that location as the epicenter of the future resurrection.⁵⁴

The Parah Adumah’s most inexplicable quality, of rendering both the impure pure, and the pure impure, may now be put into perspective. By means of this dichotomy, the Parah Adumah comes to represent both dying and being brought back to life, or resurrection. By countering the pagan ideologies and ascribing the power of resurrection exclusively to God, the Torah’s most fundamental truth emerges: God is the sole master of life and death. See, then, that I, I am the One; There is no god beside Me. I deal death and give life; I wounded and I will heal: None can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39).