Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Hebrews 9:13

"For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh:" — Hebrews 9:13 (ASV)

The author turns again to the Levitical sacrifices. In them he finds the power to effect an external purification, a cleansing from ritual defilement. He refers to the blood “of goats and bulls,” which means much the same as that of “goats and calves” in v.12. “The ashes of a heifer” point to the ceremony for purification described in Nu 19:1–10. A red heifer was killed, the carcass was burned, and the ashes used “in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin.” When anyone was ceremonially unclean because of contact with a dead body or even by entering a tent where a dead body lay (Numbers 19:14), he was made clean by the use of these ashes. The verb “sanctify” (GK 39), often used of the moral and spiritual process of “sanctification,” here refers to a ritual matter. The Levitical system is not dismissed as useless. It had its values and was effective within its limits. But those limits were concerned with what is outward.