Nu. 19: Rinse Death Off

We have a new ritual to concern ourselves with in Numbers chapter 19. The way to purification after becoming ceremonially unclean is fairly similar to a typical burnt offering. You take a red heifer, or female cow, that has no blemish and has never been under yoke, slaughter it outside the camp. Then it has to be brought back to the Tabernacle, where Eleazar will sprinkle some blood toward the front of it. The whole lot of it needs to be burned. In addition, he needs to toss on some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool and throw it all on the burning heifer. Eleazar and the burner are both ceremonially unclean. A third, clean guy has to take the ashes somewhere ceremonially clean outside the camp.

What's with this back-and-forth, outside the camp, inside the camp, outside the camp business?

Essentially, a Heifer Ash Tea is to be made to make the water of cleansing.

Who/what does it purify?

Anyone who touches a dead body, a human bone, a grave, someone who has been killed.
Anything in a tent that was there when the above were.

Unclean things have to be sprinkled with this Heifer Ash Tea in order to be made clean again.

It's interesting in Numbers 19:20-21 that even the person who sprinkles this cleansing water on someone who is unclean becomes unclean himself by this very act. It's as though the clean person needs to identify himself with the unclean person. He had to give up his own cleanliness, and purify himself through the way that everyone else had to.