Notes on Torah reading for July 13

Hukkat  (Numbers: Chapters 19-21, v.1)

By Irv Jacobs, M.D.

Irv Jacobs

LA JOLLA, California —Commentators loved to comment on and justify the laws in the Torah.  In most  cases, they reasonably understood the logic of individual laws, as they made sense.  However there are some laws that defy logic. Though the rabbis attempted explanations, they eventually threw up their hands and simply labeled them as HOK, i.e. commandment without reason.  This week’s Torah reading contains the most overt example, in Numbers: Chapter 19, vv. 2-21.  It is the law of the red heifer.

 

In summary, this law commands that the Israelites bring forth a red cow without blemish, which has never been worked.  The priest is to have it slaughtered outside the camp.  A small sample of its blood is to be sprinkled toward the Tent of Meeting.  Otherwise the entire carcass, including the dung, is to be burned completely, along with cedar wood, hyssop, and a red thread.  The ashes are to be retained, and stored.  Subsequently anytime a person has occasion to touch or visit a corpse or a grave, thus deemed ‘contaminated,’ he and the visitation site must be purified.

 

Purification in this instance is accomplished as follows:  A sample of the above ashes is placed in a vessel and diluted with clean running water.  A branch of hyssop is dipped into this ‘water of lustration,’ from which the person and the involved environs are sprinkled twice, i.e. on the second and seventh days after the report.  It thus serves as a cleansing detergent. 

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Today’s scholars, with access to a trove of ancient writings, are better able to solve some HOK mysteries.
As reported by Jacob Milgrom (1923-2010, professor of New Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley) in his volume on the Book of Numbers, 1989, for the Jewish Publishing Society, here is the answer.
Multiple ‘ancients’ believed a bad spirit was on one who contacted a corpse, and needed to be exorcised.  In the Israelite example, the  burnt blood in the ashes is the cleansing agent, complemented by the cedar, hyssop, and red yarn.  Of interest, red is determinative, i.e. blood, red cow, cedar (a reddish wood), and the yarn.  Even the hyssop, which had medicinal properties, can have a pink flower.  This is because the redness, especially of blood, was considered the par excellence cleansing agent.  

In ancient Mesopotamia, a victim of such exposure had an obsessive fear that he was infected with a lethal impurity.  He felt, in addition to a cleansing agent, he required an exorcist incantation from a priest.

In Hittite law, following the cleansing, the remnants of the process were disposed of at the site of burning, a distance from the victim’s property.  Violation of this provision was considered sorcery, for which a perpetrator was brought to the court of the king.

 

In the Babylonian exorcism, called Shurpu, the subject was rubbed (kuppuru) with the detergent, following which that substance (called kupiratu) was removed ‘to the open country.’  The lexical congruence with the Hebrew ‘kipper,’ meaning purge, is obvious.

 

The Hebrews persisted with versions of the superstition through Second Temple days.  King Herod, who rebuilt Tiberius, had to use force to get people to settle there, as the construction was over a graveyard.  The scapegoat ritual on Yom Kippur retained similar elements.

 

Furthermore for Israelites, the animal had to be a cow, since male cattle were reserved for Priestly sacrifices.  The ashes had to last for some time, so were used sparingly.  After all, red cows were/are not plentiful.

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Dr. Jacobs often delivers a weekly drosh at Congregation Beth El or at his Torah study group.