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The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 18:25
And the Lord spake unto Moses. This part of the instruction alone is addressed to Moses, probably because it determined a question as between priests and Levites to the advantage of the former, and therefore would not h…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 18:26
Ye shall offer up an heave offering of it for the Lord, even a tenth part of the tithe. Thus the principle of giving a tenth part of all to God was carried out consistently throughout the whole of his people.
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 18:28
Ye shall give thereof the Lord's heave offering to Aaron the priest. The Levites tithed the people, the priests tithed the Levites. At this time the other Israelites were nearly fifty times as numerous as the Levites, a…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 18:30
Thou shalt say unto them, i.e; to the Levites. When they had dedicated their tithe of the best part, the rest was theirs exactly as if they had grown it and gathered it themselves.
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 18:32
Ye shall bear no sin. עָלָיו לֹא־תִשְׂאוּ. They would not incur any guilty responsibility by enjoying it as and where they pleased. Neither shall ye pollute the holy things of the children of Israel, lest ye die. This s…
Matthew Henry on Numbers 19:1-10
The heifer was to be wholly burned. This typified the painful sufferings of our Lord Jesus, both in soul and body, as a sacrifice made by fire, to satisfy God's justice for man's sin. These ashes are said to be laid up…
The Ashes of Purification. (b. c. 1471.)
THE ASHES OF PURIFICATION. (B. C. 1471.) We have here the divine appointment concerning the solemn burning of a red heifer to ashes, and the preserving of the ashes, that of them might be made, not a beautifying, but a…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:1-22
DEFILEMENT FROM THE DEAD In the laws given to the Israelites there is much said concerning uncleanness. The ceremonial difference between the unclean and the clean sets forth the real difference between the sinful and t…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:1-22
EXPOSITION THE ASHES OF AN HEIFER SPRINKLING THE UNCLEAN (Numbers 19:1-22).
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:1
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron. On the addition of the second name see on Numbers 18:1. There is no note of time in connection with this chapter, but internal evidence points strongly to the supposition th…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:1-22
THE REMEDY OF DEATH We have in this chapter, spiritually, death, and the remedy for death. Death is treated of not as the mere physical change which is the end of life, nor as the social and domestic loss which breaks s…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:1-22
THE WATER OF PURIFICATION, AND ITS LESSONS The extreme difficulty of applying the details of this chapter to the spiritual truths of which they were a shadow forbids us attempting more than a general application of the…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:2
This is the ordinance of the law. חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה. Law-statute: an unusual combination only found elsewhere in Numbers 31:21, which also concerns legal purifications. A red heifer. This offering was obviously intended,…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:3
Unto Eleazar the priest. Possibly in order that Aaron himself might not be associated with dearly, even in this indirect way (see Numbers 19:6). In after times, however, it was usually the high priest who officiated on…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:4
And Eleazar … shall … sprinkle of her blood directly before ( אֵל־נֹכַח פְּנֵי) the tabernacle. By this act the death of the heifer became a sacrificial offering. The sprinkling in the direction of the sanctuary intimat…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:5
One shall burn the heifer. See on Exodus 29:14. And her blood. In all other cases the blood was poured away beside the altar, because in the blood was the life, and the life was given to God in exchange for the life of…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:6
Cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. See on Le Numbers 14:4-6 for the significance of these things. The antiseptic and medicinal qualities of the cedar (Juniperus oxycedrus) and hyssop (probably Capparis spinosa) make t…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:7
The priest shall be unclean until the even, i.e; the priest who superintended the sacrifice, and dipped his finger in the blood. Every one of these details was devised in order to express the intensely infectious charac…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:9
For a water of separation, i.e; a water which should remedy the state of legal separation due to the defilement of death, just as in Numbers 8:1-26 the water of purification from sin is called the water of sin.
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:10
It shall be unto the children of Israel … a statute for ever. This may refer only to the former part of the verse, according to the analogy of Numbers 19:21, or it may refer to the whole ordinance of the red heifer.
Matthew Henry on Numbers 19:11-22
Why did the law make a corpse a defiling thing? Because death is the wages of sin, which entered into the world by it, and reigns by the power of it. The law could not conquer death, nor abolish it, as the gospel does,…
Matthew Henry on Numbers 19:11-22
Directions are here given concerning the use and application of the ashes which were prepared for purification. they were laid up to be laid out; and therefore, though now one place would serve to keep them in, while al…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:11
Shall be unclean seven days. The fact of defilement by contact with the dead had been mentioned before (Le Numbers 21:1; Numbers 5:2; Numbers 6:6; Numbers 9:6), and had no doubt been recognized as a religious pollution…
The Pulpit Commentary on Numbers 19:11
DEFILEMENT BY CONTACT WITH THE DEAD The law of Moses was a yoke which neither the fathers of the nation nor their descendants were able to bear. It would be difficult to name any part of the law in regard to which Peter…