Shabbat Parah: The Red Heifer

Speak to the Israelites that they take for you a completely red cow on which there is no blemish and on which no yoke has ever come…The cow shall thereafter be burned…A man who is ritually pure shall then gather up the ashes of the cow and lay them down outside the camp in a pure place. The one who gathers the ashes of the cow shall rinse his garments and shall remain unclean until the evening…One who touches the corpse of any human soul becomes unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with it (the ashes) on the third day and on the seventh day so that he may become pure…

Parshat Parah/Numbers 19:1 - 12

Thus spoke (king) Solomon: I succeeded in understanding the whole Torah, but, as soon as I reach this chapter about the Red Heifer, I searched, probed and questioned, “I said I will get wisdom but it was far from me.”

Yalkut Shimoni 759

The crux of the mystery is its property of contaminating the pure and purifying the contaminated…One of the fundamental requirements is that the heifer had to be completely red. The prophet has explained that sin is described as red; “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow”…Thus though this precept is a statute which has not to be questioned…it contains an allusion to the way of repentance to be followed by every sinner – that he should tend to the other extreme in order to regain the middle path and be purified. But while this corrective measure is beneficial and purifying for the sinner, it is wrong and defiling for every pure heart.

Sforno

A certain heathen asked R. Yochanan ben Zakkai: the rites you perform in connectin with the Red Heifer smell of witchcraft! You bring a heifer, burn it, gring it and take its ashes. You sprinkle two or three drops on one of you who is contaminated with corpse defilement and say to him, “You are clean.”

Ben Zakkai said to him: Have you never been possessed by a demon? He answered: No. Ben Zakkai said Have you never seen a man possessed by a demon? He answered: Yes. What did you do for him? We bring herbs and make them smoke beneath him, and throw water on him and the demon is exorcised.

Ben Zakkai answered: Let your ears hear what your mouth has spoken. The spirit of defilement is the same as your demon. We sprinkle on it the waters of purification and it is exorcised.

After the heathen had left, R. Yochanan’s disciples said to him: Him you have put off with a straw, but what answer will you give us? He replied to them, “By your life, neither does the dead defile nor the water purify, but the Holy One blessed is He said: It is a statute I have laid down, a decree that I have decreed and you are not authorized to violate my decree.

Pesikta Derav Kahana

When you say that I deny to God the acts of seeing, of hearing, of attending and of willing, etc. and their occurrence in him in an eminent degree, then you do not know what kind of God I have. I suspect therefore that you believe that there is no perfection greater than that which is unfolded in the said attributes.

I do not wonder at this, since I believe that a triangle, if only it had the power of speech, would say in like manner that God is eminently triangular, and a circle would say that the Divine Nature is eminently circular, and in this way each thing would ascribe itw own attributes to God, and make itself like unto God, while all else would appear to it deformed…

To your question whether I have as clear idea of God as I have of a triangle, I answer in the affirmative. But if you ask me whether I have as clear a mental image of God as I have of a triangle I shall answer, “no.” For we cannot imagine God, be we can, indeed conceive him.

Spinoza

God fills all things; He contains but is not contained…To be everywhere and nowhere is His property and His alone. He is nowhere, because He Himself created space and place coincidentally with material things, and it is against all right principle to say that the Maker is contained in anything that He has made…

Philo