Numbers 19:10

Use of the Water of Purification. - The words in Num 19:10, "And it shall be to the children of Israel, and to the stranger in the midst of them, for an everlasting statute," relate to the preparation and application of the sprinkling water, and connect the foregoing instructions with those which follow. - Num 19:1-13 contain the general rules for the use of the water; Num 19:14-22 a more detailed description of the execution of those rules. Num 19:11-13 Whoever touched a corpse, "with regard to all the souls of men," i.e., the corpse of a person, of whatever age or sex, was unclean for seven days, and on the third and seventh day he was to cleanse himself (התחטּא, as in Num 8:21) with the water (בּו refers, so far as the sense is concerned, to the water of purification). If he neglected this cleansing, he did not become clean, and he defiled the dwelling of Jehovah (see at Lev 15:31). Such a man was to be cut off from Israel (vid., at Gen 17:14). Num 19:14-16 Special instructions concerning the defilement. If a man died in a tent, every one who entered it, or who was there at the time, became unclean for seven days. So also did every "open vessel upon which there was not a covering, a string," i.e., that had not a covering fastened by a string, to prevent the smell of the corpse from penetrating it. פּתיל, a string, is in apposition to צמיד, a band, or binding (see Ges. 113; Ewald, 287, e.). This also applied to any one in the open field, who touched a man who had either been slain by the sword or had died a natural death, or even a bone (skeleton), or a grave. Num 19:17-20 Ceremony of purification. They were to take for the unclean person some of the dust of the burning of the cow, i.e., some of the ashes obtained by burning the cow, and put living, i.e., fresh water…

This chapter is only concerning the preparing and using of the ashes which were to impregnate the water of purification. The people had complained of the strictness of the law, which forbade their near approach to the tabernacle, Num 17:13. In answer to this complaint, they are here directed to purify themselves, so as that they might come as far as they had occasion without fear. Here is, I. The method of preparing these ashes, by the burning of a red heifer, with a great deal of ceremony (Num 19:1-10). II. The way of using them. 1. They were designed to purify persons from the pollution contracted by a dead body (Num 19:11-16). 2. They were to be put into running water (a small quantity of them), with which the person to be cleansed must be purified (Num 19:17-22). And that this ceremonial purification was a type and figure of the cleansing of the consciences of believers from the pollutions of sin appears by the apostle's discourse, Heb 9:13, Heb 9:14, where he compares the efficacy of the blood of Christ with the sanctifying virtue that was in "the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean."