Today we are gonna explore one of the richest portions in the Torah — Parashat Shavua Chukkat (the reading for the last Shabbat).

The First Sacrifice ’Red Heifer’: Between Life And Death

Chukat marks the beginning of Israel’s true journey to the Promised Land after 38 years in the wilderness. What does God want of His people as they prepare to enter the Promised Land? He mentions the Red Heifer! Why?

Without a doubt, the Red Heifer Law is one of the least understood sacrifice laws in the Old Testament.
This law was given to the children of Israel to purify those who become ritually unclean via contact with a corpse—the most severe kind of ritual impurity.
Thus, the purpose of this law was to remove the defilement of death. This is the first commandment that God gives His people when they begin their journey to the Land.
This commandment reflects the extremely obvious distinction between life and death that we later discover in Deuteronomy’s famous words: “See, I have placed before you today life and good, death and evil.”

God always wanted Israel to choose life, and this verse taught them how: “those who were impure before are made pure, while those who were pure before (the priest and the attendants) become impure by participating in the ritual.”
The priest becomes unclean in order for the people to be purified; he takes on the ritual impurities of man and thus becomes unclean himself: “the priest shall remain unclean until evening”;

The priest touches death in order for those touched by death to be purified and live – and in doing so, he may be seen as a type of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, who, being pure and sinless, took on himself the impurity and sins of people in order for people to become clean; who experienced death in order for those touched by death to be purified and live.

The Rock That Followed Them 

You’ve probably heard Paul’s perplexing words in First Corinthians: “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”
It is evident that Paul understands the rock in a spiritual rather than physical sense; however, why does Paul talk of a traveling rock?

Paul draws on a rich Jewish exegetical tradition in this passage.
Only two events in the Torah’s description of Israel’s wandering in the desert illustrate the miraculous provision of water – at the very beginning of the wilderness wandering period (Ex. 17), and at the end of the wandering period – the same rock that we read about today:
”The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water.”

Naturally, the question arises: how did the Israelites receive water in the years between these events, in fact, throughout all of these years?

An interpretative tradition was developed in order to explain this gap and to give a supernatural answer to this natural question. According to this tradition, the rock of Numbers 20, is the same rock that we saw in Exodus 17, at the beginning of the journey; therefore, this rock must have followed the Israelites during their entire journey. 

Likely, the concept of the rock accompanying the Israelites had already been established in Judaism by Paul’s time, and Paul just draws here on this traditional interpretation. This is only one example of how understanding Jewish tradition enhances and deepens our understanding of the New Testament.

Interpretation Of The Bronze Snake

The beginning of this story is very traditional. Even when the Israelites were getting close to the Land and the journey was almost complete, they rebelled against God and Moses once again, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” 

As a result, God sent deadly snakes among the people, and many perished as a result of their bites. Then people came to Moses and said: “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

The Lord did deliver them from the snakes, but He did it in an unexpected way. He gave Moses an extremely strange order: “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten when he looks at it, shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole.”

Why? Why all the labor on bronze instead of simply removing the snakes?
However, this narrative illustrates one of the most fundamental elements of spiritual life in the most visual way possible: when we sin, when we choose to rebel against God, our choice always has very real, inescapable consequences.

It alters and distorts reality, either inside or outside of us (often both), but the effects are not always as evident as they are here. When the repercussions of our wrongdoing begin to ‘bite us,’ we begin to cry out to the Lord, pleading with Him to save us—to take away the snakes, to take away the consequences.

If we read our text in Hebrew, we would be astounded by the profusion of hushing, hissing sounds: Nashach (biting), Nechash (snake), Nechoshet (bronze). As though the hissing of snakes had filled these verses.
The presence of snakes in this account is not coincidental: the first sin entered the world through the snake—the serpent—and what else, if not sin—crawling, hissing, and biting—is symbolized by these snakes in our Torah Portion.

Yes, it is not enough to just remove the snakes; the poison is already at work, and hence God must provide a solution so that all who have been bitten may survive!

What is this remedy?

This is the most incredible aspect of the story. To heal actual snake bites, you’d need an “actual” remedy: some medicine, treatment, or action. Instead, the children of Israel are urged to merely stare at the bronze snake—just look, in order to survive and live! “And so it was if a serpent had bitten anyone when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”

I’m sure many of them questioned, even muttered, ‘What good can it do if I only gaze at this serpent?’
But that is precisely the point of this story: it matters not whether His remedy meets our expectations. Do you remember Naaman, a commander of the Syrian army, who was a leper?

I’m sure many of them questioned, even muttered, ‘What good can it do if I only gaze at this serpent?’
But that is precisely the point of this story: it makes no difference if His solution fulfills our expectations.

Do you recall Naaman, the Syrian army leader who was a leper? He went to Elisha to be healed, but as Elisha failed to satisfy his expectations, he became angry and almost left. He stated, “Behold, I thought…” and almost missed his own healing because he felt it should be performed in a different way!

How often do we overlook something God is doing because we believe it should be done differently: Behold, I thought…

God gave healing to everyone in the desert.
It may have looked bizarre and absurd to them, but it was the only way to survive—to be saved.
Those who decided to stare at the bronze snake lived, while everyone else died.
Most likely, none of them understood – but this is precisely what faith is all about: following the Lord even when we don’t understand…
And this, I feel, is the fundamental point of this great Torah portion!