(2) This is the law of Torah that the LORD has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. (3) You shall give it to Eleazar the priest. It shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence.

(7) The priest shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; after that the priest may reenter the camp, but he shall be tamei until evening. (8) He who performed the burning shall also wash his garments in water, bathe his body in water, and be tamei until evening. (9) A man who is tahor shall gather up the ashes of the cow and deposit them outside the camp in a tahor place, to be kept for water of lustration for the Israelite community. It is for tahorsing. (10) He who gathers up the ashes of the cow shall also wash his clothes and be tamei until evening. This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and for the strangers who reside among you.

(11) He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be tamei for seven days. (12) He shall purify himself with it on the third day and on the seventh day, and then be tahor; if he fails to purify himself on the third and seventh days, he shall not be tahor. (13) Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the LORD’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he remains tamei; his spiritual impurity is still upon him.

(14) This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be tamei seven days; (15) and every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be tamei. (16) And in the open, anyone who touches a person who was killed or who died naturally, or human bone, or a grave, shall be tamei seven days. (17) Some of the ashes from the fire of tahorsing shall be taken for the tamei person, and fresh water shall be added to them in a vessel. (18) A person who is tahor shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle on the tent and on all the vessels and people who were there, or on him who touched the bones or the person who was killed or died naturally or the grave. (19) The tahor person shall sprinkle it upon the tamei person on the third day and on the seventh day, thus purifying him by the seventh day. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe in water, and at nightfall he shall be tahor.

And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

In the Torah of Rabbi Meir they found written, and behold, it was very good-this means," and behold, death is very good"

(1) A good name is better than good oil, and the day of death than the day of birth.

(8) A gentile asked Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, "These rituals you do, they seem like witchcraft! You bring a heifer, burn it, crush it up, and take its ashes. [If] one of you is impure by the dead [the highest type impurity], 2 or 3 drops are sprinkled on him, and you declare him pure?!" He said to him, "Has a restless spirit ever entered you?" He said to him, "No!" "Have you ever seen a man where a restless spirit entered him?" He said to him, "Yes!" [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to him, "And what did you do for him?" He sad to him, "We brought roots and made them smoke beneath him, and pour water and it flees." He said to him, "Your ears should hear what leaves from your mouth! The same thing is true for this spirit, the spirit of impurity, as it is written, (Zachariah 13:2) "Even the prophets and the spirit of impurity will I remove from the land." They sprinkle upon him purifying waters, and it [the spirit of impurity] flees." After he left, our rabbi's students said, "You pushed him off with a reed. What will you say to us?" He said to them, "By your lives, a dead person doesn't make things impure, and the water doesn't make things pure. Rather, God said, 'I have engraved a rule, I have decreed a decree (chukah chakakti, gezeira gazarti), and you have no permission to transgress what I decreed, as it says "This is a chok (rule) of the Torah." Rabbi Ayivu offered this parable: A maid's child once dirtied the royal palace. Said the king: "Let his mother come and clean up her child's filth." So too the King of Kings says to bring a heifer and atone for the Golden Calf.

Let us return to the statement of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, that it is not the dead body that confers impurity. What he meant was that the impurity is not caused by the physical body that we come in contact with, but impurity is rooted in the very concept of death. The fact that the body is inhabited by Samael (The Angel of Death) enables a body to become impure at some stage. The same is true of the purifying powers of waters sprinkled with the ash of the red heifer. Though, technically speaking, these waters remove impurity from the person they are sprinkled on, the reason why they have such power is something that is inscrutable for us, and is known only in those domains which are beyond our powers of investigation. It is true then that what confers purity is not the waters we see but their metaphysical dimension in the regions beyond our powers of perception. The Midrash imputed this to G–d when it said "Chuka Chukat, I have engraved a rule." This law must not be violated.

(43) The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: This is the Chukat HaPasach/law of the passover offering: No foreigner shall eat of it.

(21) Moses then summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, pick out lambs for your families, and slaughter the passover offering. (22) Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. (23) For when the LORD goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and the LORD will pass over the door and not let the Angel of Death enter and smite your home. (24) “You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants. (25) And when you enter the land that the LORD will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite. (26) And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’ (27) you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the LORD, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses.’” The people then bowed low in homage. (28) And the Israelites went and did so; just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.