Weekly Torah Study: Vayakhel - Shabbat Parah 2025/5784

And Bezalel made the ark of acacia-wood. Did Bezalel do all the work by himself, that Scripture should repeat each time And Bezalel made? Indeed not. But since he devoted himself so zealously to the work of the Tabernacle, the Holy One, blessed be He, would not deprive him of his reward, and so He mentioned him each time, as is written: And Bezalel made.(Vayakhel 10, Tanchuma)

The Five Books of Moses, by Everett Fox, Numbers, Part II; The Rebellion Narratives, Death and the Red Cow 2-4

Apparently to close out the Korah story, the text turns to a mysterious and powerful ritual, one designed to remove the contaminating pollution of death. It is important to note that the revolt in Chap. 16 led, not only to the deaths of the rebels and their households, but also to the perishing of 14,700 people in the subsequent plague (17:12–14). So despite the fact that priests and Levites now have their tasks straight, thanks to Chap. 18, there remains the serious matter of purification.

Levine notes the typical priestly pattern at work: first the remedy is prescribed, and then the actual circumstances that call for it are enumerated. He also sees the chapter as essentially a protest against the widespread cult of the dead in the ancient Near East, from which the Israelites notably separated themselves.

Milgrom has illuminated a number of aspects of the Red Cow ritual, notably by characterizing it as a sort of hattat ceremony. That ritual, it may be recalled, enabled the priests to decontaminate the sanctuary of ritual pollution, chiefly through the sprinkling of blood against the altar. Milgrom points to the unusual nature of the ritual here, in that the purifying agent (in this case, water that has been mixed with the special cow’s ashes, which came partly from burned blood) is sprinkled on persons, not objects.

“This is the decree of the Torah, etc.” According to Rashi the reason that this legislation is preceded by the word חוק, decree, statute, is that what follows defies reason in the eyes of the nations of the world and they ridiculed the Jewish Torah. [The Torah, by prefacing the legislation in such a manner reminds us that the Creator does not need to justify Himself all the time. Ed.] Nachmanides adds that there is a reason that the nations of the world zero in with their criticism on the red heifer legislation more than on the other animal sacrifices some of which also achieve ritual purity for the person bringing the sacrifice, such as people suffering from zav, seminal discharge of a certain type, or the sacrifice brought by a mother who recently gave birth which resulted in her becoming ritually impure is purified as a result of her sacrifice. They argue: how could the ashes of a heifer that had not even been a sacrifice and was slaughtered outside consecrated grounds, confer ritual purity for someone stricken with the most severe kind of impurity? Actually, this paragraph was revealed to the people at the end of the legislation in the Book of Leviticus, concluding the legislation pertaining to sacrificial offerings. The reason why it had not been inserted in the written Torah until this point is that after having heard about the gifts the Israelite has to give to the priests, this concludes a further stage in how the average Israelite obtains his atonement. With the laws about purification from impurity incurred through contact with the dead, especially when burying one’s near and dear ones, the entire subject of ritual impurity is concluded.(Tur Ha'Aroch)

The commandments of the Torah are subdivided into three groups. They are known as 1) מצות מקובלות, 2) מצות מושכלות, and 3) מצות שאין טעמם נגלה ומבואר 1) Commandments which are based on historical precedents; 2) commandments which appeal to our minds and which are easy to understand and appreciate. 3) Commandments the reason for which and the usefulness of which are completely outside our ability to comprehend. The first group which includes such laws as making and wearing phylacteries or putting fringes on our four-cornered garments as well as the commandment to circumcise our male babies, etc., have a common denominator in that they are associated with the history of our people and our special protection by the Almighty.

The second group of commandments, even if not always in their details, are the ones which the human mind would have had to invent and legislate if the Torah had not done so; this is why they are called מושכלות, “rational” in essence. Examples are how we are to deal with the crimes of theft, robbery, murder, unfair business practices, etc., etc. The term applied to these kinds of commandments in the Torah is משפטים.

The third group of commandments, the ones which completely baffle us, are the legislation not to mix certain seeds, wear clothes combining wool and linen, mixing of meat and milk (though they are part of the same animal), the dispatch of the scape-goat to the Azazel, and the laws involving the red heifer. The Torah’s appellation for all of these types of laws is חקים, “statutes.” This is also one of the groups of laws referred to as the subject of the inquiry by second generation Israelites (and later generations) in Deut. 6,20-21. The answer suggested by the Torah to such inquiries is prefaced with the words: “we used to be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt who maltreated us in a cruel manner until the Lord our G’d redeemed us from there ad brought us to this land of Israel.” The Torah emphasises “the Lord our G’d did all this,” i.e. that as of that point in time the reputation of the Lord as our national G’d was greatly enhanced. It is therefore appropriate that we loyally accept all three groups of commandments.(Bahya)