Gather ’round kids, because this week’s sedrah is Chukat. And harking back to last week’s mention of the Documentary Hypothesis*, this one clearly shows the Frankenstein stitches of an editing portmanteau. Basically, it’s an incredibly tedious Priestly document which suddenly lurches to fragments of Jahwist and Elohist. That said, we can divide this into two parts: pointless ritual, followed by the usual Pissed Off Yahweh.
Trigger Warning: Tedium Ahead
Chukat is mostly concerned with the Law of the Red Cow. The Law of the Red Cow is the recipe for creating the Water of Lustration. Aren’t you glad I told you? Now down to specifics.
Step One is “get a red cow.” But not just any Red Cow, because Yahweh is picky. This has to be a perfect cow, a virgin (basically), never yoked, without blemish. There is of course extensive rabbinical debate over what “unblemished” means (which raises tedium to a new level). Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Rabbi Eliezer ruled that… the Red Cow (פָרָה, parah) prescribed in Numbers 19:2 had to be two years old. But the Sages ruled that… the Red Cow could be three or four years old. Rabbi Meir ruled that the Red Cow could be even five years old, but they did not wait with an older cow, as it might in the meantime grow some black hairs and thus become invalid.
Rabbi Eliezer ruled that a Red Cow that was pregnant was nonetheless valid, but the Sages ruled it invalid. Rabbi Eliezer ruled that the Red Cow could not be purchased from Gentiles, but the Sages ruled that such cow could be valid. If the horns or the hoofs of the Red Cow were black, they were chopped off, and the Red Cow was then valid. The cow’s eye, teeth, and tongue could cause no invalidity. And a dwarf-like cow was nonetheless valid. If the Red Cow had a sebaceous cyst and they cut it off, Rabbi Judah ruled the cow invalid, but Rabbi Simeon ruled it invalid only if no red hair grew in its place.
A Red Cow born by a caesarean section, the hire of a harlot, or the price of a dog was invalid. Rabbi Eliezer ruled it valid, for Deuteronomy 23:19 states, “You shall not bring the hire of a harlot or the price of a dog into the house of the Lord your God,” and the Red Cow was not brought into the Temple. The Mishnah taught that all blemishes that caused consecrated animals to be invalid as sacrifices also caused the Red Cow to be invalid. If one had ridden on the cow, leaned on it, hung on its tail, crossed a river with its help, doubled up its leading rope, or put one’s cloak on it, the cow was invalid. But if one had only fastened it by its leading rope or made for it a sandal to prevent it from slipping, or spread one’s cloak on it because of flies, it remained valid. The general rule was that wherever one did something for its own sake, the cow remained valid; but if one did something for the sake of another purpose, it invalidated the cow. If a bird rested on the cow, it remained valid. If a bull mounted it, it became invalid; but Rabbi Judah ruled that if people brought the bull to mate with the cow, the cow became invalid, but if the bull did so on its own, the cow remained valid.
If a cow had two black or white hairs growing within one follicle, it was invalid. Rabbi Judah said even within one hollow. If the hairs grew within two adjacent follicles, the cow was invalid. Rabbi Akiva ruled that even if there were four or even five non-red hairs, if they were dispersed, they could be plucked out. Rabbi Eliezer ruled that even as many as 50 such hairs could be plucked. But Rabbi Joshua ben Bathyra ruled that even if it had only one non-red hair on its head and one on its tail, it was invalid. If the cow had two hairs in one follicle with their roots black and their tips red or with their roots red and their tips black, Rabbi Meir taught that what was visible determined validity; but the Sages ruled that validity followed the root.
Rav Judah reported in Samuel’s name an account of the rarity of completely Red Cows: When they asked Rabbi Eliezer how far the honor due parents extended, Rabbi Eliezer told of a non-Jew from Ashkelon named Dama son of Nethinah. The Sages offered Dama a profit of 600,000 gold denarii (or Rav Kahana said 800,000 denarii) in exchange for jewels that he had that the Sages could use in the ephod, but as the key to the jewels lay under Dama’s father’s pillow, Dama declined the offer so as not to trouble his father. The next year, God rewarded Dama by causing a Red Cow to be born in his herd. When the Sages went to buy it, Dama told them that he knew that he could ask for all the money in the world and they would pay it, but he asked for only the money that he had lost in honoring his father.
This is the shit rabbis do to pass the time.
Step Two is “kill the cow.” But of course, it has to be done a certain way by a certain person in a certain place. Because Yahweh is really, really picky. The priest must take the cow outside of the camp (for desert folk) or the city (for city folk), slit its throat with the right hand, catch some blood with the left hand, then sprinkle it seven times in the direction of the Tabernacle.
Step Three is “burn the cow.” But that doesn’t mean barbecue. Oh no, the cow has to be burned thoroughly, in a fire that also burns hyssop, cedar, and crimson wool. If you don’t get all that in with the cow, Yahweh is going to get a rage-boner and there’s going to be some divine fireworks of the unpleasant sort.
Step Four is to mix the ashes with some water to form Water of Lustration. And WoL is handy shit, useful for all sorts of ritual purifications starting with…
Step Five, wherein the guy who killed the cow and the guy who burned the cow now have to be purified. This involves washing their clothes, dipping hyssop into the WoL and sprinkling it around, waiting until sunset, waving a dead chicken over their heads, and having them don fezzes and drive around in tiny cars. Or something like that.
Once you have WoL on hand, you’ll find that all sorts of ritual purifications become easier. Touch a dead guy, WoL will clean you (it takes a week, but that beats being impure forever). Someone dies in a tent, yep, WoL will make that tent useful again. Each time, the key is to dip hyssop into the WoL and start sprinkling it around. I’m sure you’ll need a Prop 65 
warning and an MSDS to make this legal, but a resourceful Jew is a blessed Jew. The whole corpse-contamination thing is incredibly complex, but WoL is in the middle of all of it. By the way, here’s a rather recherche passage from the Talmud regarding corpse taboos:
Ulla said: According to the law of the Torah the skin of a man is clean, but for what reason did they say it was unclean? As a precautionary measure lest a man make rugs out of the skin of his father and mother.
Insert lampshade joke here.
OK, I could go on in great detail about corpses and purification, but frankly, this shit’s putting me to sleep. I hope you get the point which is that there IS no point.
From here, the story lurches to desert-wandering action. Mostly, it’s Jews running into other tribes and killing them, which seems to have pleased Yahweh. The sedrah is just a tribe-by-tribe account of how they got killed and basic stats. But there is one significant story in there as well, and naturally, it’s all about Yahweh being a major asshole yet again, and the Jews being whiny bitches.
The whiny bitches were getting thirsty. “Mommy, bring me a drink of water!” or something like that. Moses and Aaron, both being mindful of the necessity of distributing goodies to remain in power in Middle Eastern cultures, went to Yahweh and said, “We gotta come up with some water or these Jews are going to be a major painus in the anus.”
Yahweh responded, “See that rock over yonder? The big gray one? Yeah that one. Grab your walking stick, go over to it, and tell it to give you water. And make sure the Jews are watching so they know that it’s Another Yahweh Miracle.”
So with the restive Jews following them, Moses and Aaron walked over to the rock. Moses hollered, “OK, y’all want water?”
The Jews responded, “Yes!”
Moses yelled, “I CAN’T HEAR YOOOOUUU!”
The Jews screamed, “YESSSSSSS!”
Then Moses and Aaron turned to the rock at hit it with the walking stick. Water gushed forth in impressive quantities. Yay, a miracle! Except… this pissed off Yahweh because he hadn’t said anything about using a stick, he had just mentioned the yelling part. Like I said Yahweh is picky. And when a picky asshole isn’t satisfied, assholery is inevitable. The first thing Yahweh did was tell Moses and Aaron, “Forget entering The Promised Land, you disobeyed me.” Then he said to Aaron, “OK, you’re through as High Priest. Turn over your robes, breastplates, and employee ID to Eleazer, your son. Maybe HE won’t be such a useless fuck-up.” So Aaron gave them to Moses to pass along, then died. When Yahweh fires you, your severance is death, and he will not wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Moses was looking a bit nervous at this point, but Yahweh said, “No worries. I’m going to kill you, just not quite yet. I have a few jobs for you to do first.” As you might expect, the “jobs” involved killing a bunch of other tribes. And as usual, Yahweh decided to plague the Jews, this time with serpents. And not just ordinary serpents- these were Fire Serpents. The verses are unclear on how many Jews he offed that way, but I would not be surprised if it were 12,900. And again as usual, he instructed Moses on how to do the extermination, by putting a Nehushtan on the top of his stick (the stick that started all this trouble) and having anyone bitten by a Fire Serpent be cured by looking at the bronze. I guess if you were blind, you were shit out of luck.
I’ll leave this as a cliffhanger. You know Moses is going to die, the question will be where and how…
*I am still not yet convinced of the Fragmentary Hypothesis, not that it really matters.
