Introduction
After the rejection of adult Israel at Kadesh on account of unbelief, Jehovah’s covenant with them may be called the covenant of death. They were doomed to fall in the wilderness. Death must be a more frequent visitor in the camp. But death is a ceremonial pollution. “So long as the mortality within the congregation did not exceed the natural limits, the traditional modes of purification would be quite sufficient. But when it prevailed to a hitherto unheard-of extent, in consequence of the sentence pronounced by God, the defilements would necessarily be so crowded together that the whole congregation would be in danger of being infected with the defilement of death and of forfeiting its vocation to be the holy nation of Jehovah, unless God provided it with the means of cleansing itself from this uncleanness.” Keil. Hence the water of separation provided for in this chapter has reference chiefly to the defilement from the presence of dead bodies. This chapter is occupied with directions for preparing this water, and with the modes and occasions of its use. From the apparently arbitrary requirements of this statute, the rabbins seem to have good grounds for styling it decretum absque ulla ratione, a decree without any reason. A better statement would be, that while the law is grounded on reasons in the mind of Jehovah, these reasons are not disclosed to us, but are left to be conjectured.
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