Out of Impure, Pure

The Red Heifer, Decree of the Torah

Mar 25, 2024

The Decree of the Torah:

A curious ritual purifies from death’s powerful contamination. A red cow is burnt to ash, cedar wood and hyssop tied with crimson thread are added to the fire, and the ash is mixed with “living water” – spring water; the water is then sprinkled on whatever came into contact with a corpse, and the impurity lifts.

As is written:

This is the decree of the Torah… tell the Children of Yisrael to bring you a red cow, a perfect one… Give it to Elazar the priest. It is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in front of him. Elazar the priest shall take some of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of her blood toward the front of the Tent of Meeting seven times. The cow shall be burned while he watches… The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop and crimson thread, and throw them into the fire… A person who is clean shall gather the ashes of the cow… This is the law: when a person dies in a tent… For the unclean, they shall take some of the dust… and put living water over it… It will be an eternal decree for them. He who sprinkles the waters of impurity must wash his clothes, and he who touches the waters of impurity will be unclean until the evening.1

What is the meaning of this bizarre rite? How do these materials remove death’s impurity? And why is this particular law termed “The Decree of the Torah”?

In order to understand the process of purification, we must first turn our focus to death, the problem that it rectifies. Mortality troubles our souls greatly, the anguish it induces subject of much lamentation. A pathos-filled lament said by Iyov in which mortal, bounded man is contrasted with eternal tree will supply us with the key to unlock the red cow’s mystery: the mystery of how impure is made pure.

Of Trees and Men:

The great sufferer, Iyov, bemoaned man’s dismal state:

Man, woman-born,
Is few of days and full of trouble.
Like a flower he comes forth and is cut down;
He flees like a shadow…
Who can bring a pure thing out of an impure thing? Not one.
If his days are determined,
The number of his months is set by You;
You have set him limits he cannot exceed…
For a tree there is always hope;
Even if it be cut down, it will yet sprout again,
And its tender branch will not cease.
Though its root grows old in the ground,
And its trunk dies in the dust;
At the scent of water it will sprout,
And put out branches like a seedling.
But man dies and is powerless;
A human expires – and where is he?
As the waters vanish from the sea,
As the river is drained dry,
So man lies down and rises not again;
Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake,
Nor be roused out of their sleep...
If a man dies, can he live again?2

Man, asserted Iyov, is decidedly un-treelike. A tree has hope; man does not. A tree, even if felled, its trunk dead in the ground, can be resuscitated, the mere smell of water making it sprout and give forth branches once again. But man – he dies, forever; sleeps, never to awaken.

By likening man to short-lived grass, Iyov denied the possibility of resurrection of the dead.3 In opposition to this pessimistic stance, many passages in Tanach express that man is, in fact, like a tree, abiding and ever-fruitful:

… like a tree planted by streams of water
That gives forth its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither.4
The righteous will flourish like the palm tree,
And grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon;
Planted in the house of Hashem,
They will flourish in the courtyards of our God.5
He is like a tree planted by the water,
Which spreads out its roots by the river…
It does not cease to bear fruit.6
As the days of a tree shall be the days of my people.7

These passages reject Iyov’s bleak view. Iyov contemplated man’s short, strife-filled life and naturally concluded that frail man is but an ephemeral being; these passages assert that things are not necessarily as they appear, that indeed even man is eternal like a tree, immortal.

Using these ideas, we can decipher the symbolism of the red cow ritual.

A cow the color of life – red, like lifeblood, is killed and reduced to dust and ashes, the same as man decreed to die: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”8 The red cow and the crimson thread, burnt to ash, symbolize man’s life ended, seemingly forever. Along with these ingredients, cedar wood and hyssop are also burnt; these materials symbolize life and, when combined with living waters, the possibility of resurrection. As the tallest and shortest tree, respectively, cedar wood and hyssop represent the class of trees, as Ibn Ezra explained9 based on the description of King Shlomo’s wisdom: “He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall.”10 Trees are the symbol of eternal life that can revive from the mere smell of water; mixing their dead ash with the ash of the dead cow, and then these together with living, life-giving water, serves as a sign and a symbol: just as the tree lives forever and can be revived, so too dead man, reduced to dust and ashes. He too is in fact treelike, his death but a temporary phase.11

Through this ritual alluding to eternal life we attain purity from death, by asserting that man is a tree, like the very Tree of Life. But is he truly? Is Iyov completely wrong? Doesn’t man’s short, strife-filled life prove that he is indeed decreed to be like a grass?

The incongruity between human experience and the belief embodied in the red cow ritual also manifests within Tanach itself. Iyov was not the only one to liken man to grass. Many passages support his dismal stance; let us turn our attention to them and to the roots of this inconsistency.

Eden Lost:

“Like a tree planted by the water,” proclaims the prophet, announcing the truth of human eternity. But many passages assert just the opposite:

Mortal man! As grass are his days,
As a flower of the field, so he blossoms;
The wind sweeps over and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.12
In the morning they are like grass that sprouts anew,
In the morning it sprouts and springs up;
By evening, it is withered and dry.13
All flesh is grass, all its goodness like the flowers of the field.
The grass dries up, the flower withers,
When Hashem’s wind blows over it;
Surely, the people are grass.14
Why should you fear humans who will die,
Mortals who shall become as grass?15

Man is tree, and man is grass. How are we to reconcile this contradiction?

The solution is rooted in Bereishis, in the foundational story of man. Once upon a time, man wasn’t mortal. This condition that plagues every woman-born man was not present in Adam, perfect handiwork of Hashem himself. He could have actually lived forever. Himself treelike, he was placed in a garden of trees, the Tree of Life at its center. But he sinned and was expelled from the garden, condemned to live off the grass of the field instead of the fruit of the tree: “You will feed on the grasses of the field”;16 at the same time, he himself became like grass, destined to wither and die: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”17 As Ramban puts it:18 “He is dust, he eats dust, and to dust he returns.” Losing his lofty, treelike status, man was lowered to the dust.

In his primordial state man was immortal like a tree, but he lost that greatness; in his noble future, he will regain that level: “The righteous will flourish like the palm tree, and grow tall like a cedar in Lebanon”; in the meantime, his status is murky and the contradictions abound. As would be expected! For within man, mortal in actuality, there inheres a potential for eternity, the conflicting aspects producing tension and dissonance. Seeing death but nonetheless sensing our intrinsic nature of eternal life, we assert that we are, indeed, like trees, that our original, Edenic state still determines our essence. The tree that purifies from death is none other than the verdant tree of Eden, the same tree of the righteous who will grow tall like a cedar, planted in the house of Hashem and flourishing in the courtyards of our God.

The symbols of the ritual are reminiscent of Eden: trees, a body returned to dust, and living water. From Eden came a river: “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden”;19 this river has a parallel in the Holy Temple and is recalled by taking the cow outside the camp and sprinkling its blood toward the front of the temple.

Here’s how.

In the vision of the prophet Yechezkel, a river will come out of the future Holy Temple:

I saw water coming out from under the threshold towards the east … On both banks were every fruit tree; their leaves will not wither and their fruits will not cease; they give new fruits monthly – for its waters come from the holy place.20

This east-flowing, holy river and its trees correspond to Eden and the Garden at its east, as is written: “They are filled from the fatness of your house; you give them drink from the river of your Eden,”21 and thus the figure of the righteous man likened to a tree “planted in the house of Hashem” who will flourish “in the courtyards of our God” harks back to the trees of the Garden. The red cow too is taken outside the camp, slaughtered and burnt, removed from Eden, as it were, to the place of death and destruction – but its blood is sprinkled westwards towards the Temple, source of the life-giving Edenic water, connecting it back to the place of eternal life.

The Paradox:

We have seen how the red cow purifies from death, negating Iyov’s claim that man is but a grass and that no one could bring pure from impure. By asserting that man is like a tree, purity from the greatest degree of contamination is attained. Chazal take things a step further: they apply to the red cow the very words used by Iyov to deny the possibility of immortality (the signification of the ritual), and indeed read them in a sense diametrically opposed to Iyov’s intention:

“This is the decree.” About this it is written: “Who can bring a pure thing out of an impure thing? Not one” – such as Avraham from Terach… or the world to come from this world. Who did such a thing? Who commanded such a thing? Who decreed such a thing? Was it not the True One?! We have learnt: “Those who prepare the [red] cow, from beginning to end, contaminate clothing,” (Parah 4: 4) while it itself purifies clothing! Says the Holy One, blessed be He, “I legislated a law, I decreed a decree – you may not transgress my decree!”22

The paradoxical law of the red cow – it purifies the contaminated but contaminates the pure – is read into Iyov’s statement that denies its idea, his words made to mean the opposite of their plain sense. Iyov said that no one can make pure out of impure; Chazal state that none but one – The One – could thus unite opposites.

What is the meaning of this cryptic statement? Why would Iyov’s words be twisted out of context? How are his very words used to refute him, and how does this relate to the unique laws of the red cow?

As we shall see, the idea contained in these hints is the crux of the whole purification process. A philosophy of evil and its ultimate good purpose, it supplies the complete solution to the many contradictions about the status of man, likened alternately to tree and grass; indeed arguments against immortality – such as Iyov’s – become arguments in its support when viewed in light of this doctrine that unites opposites.

In order to appreciate how Iyov’s arguments can be flipped against him, we must first understand their logic well.

Iyov contended that man is doomed to impurity, never to transmute into something perfect and pure. As far as our experience goes man is impure (limited, mortal, imperfect), bearing, for his short life, the disgraces and travails of bodily being, suffering ungodly indignities of pain and sadness. It follows, then, that this is how man is supposed to be, forever. For if he were supposed to eventually become pure (eternal, divine, perfect), why is he now impure? Hashem would not make man different than he is supposed to be! He is one and his work is unified; no One would make something from its opposite – if Hashem wanted man pure, then pure he would be.

Iyov’s impassionate argument is eminently reasonable, seemingly irrefutable. Why indeed should we not accept the miserable state of humans as the sum total of the human condition?

A question – not about the logos of the argument, but rather about the passion brought to bear on this charged issue – will point out the flaw in Iyov’s position and lead us to the alternate opinion represented by the mystery of the red cow.

The Pain of Mortality:

If man is merely a mortal creature, why then does it disturb him so? If this is the sum of man, his days measured and allotted, why then does Iyov mourn? It is madness to bemoan that the number of man’s days won’t surpass limits that he cannot exceed. This is an untenable stance: man ought to live forever but, alas, cannot.

But there is a reason people mourn death, and this puts the lie to Iyov’s conclusion: because they really should live forever. It is due to their innate sense of immortality that people are shocked by death, horror-struck when facing the end of something that feels divine and eternal – their self. Thus Iyov’s lamentation about mortality proves its opposite, for only one who believes that man really is supposed to live forever would lament – and with such pathos! – that he does not. Man rails against death because he doesn’t really accept it; and if man is supposed to live forever, then he must and he surely will.

But what of Iyov’s logic? If man is eternal, eventually to be pure, why then is he now the opposite?

The answer is an extension of the point made about Iyov’s passion. Iyov passionately bemoaned death only because, deep down, he denied it, the deepest life-feeling reacting in pain when facing mortality, the more painful all the greater the proof of how wrong it all is, how unreal death must really be; thus his attestation of mortality actually served as its greatest renunciation. Opposites are closer than we think. The awfulness of death confirms the truth of life, and, to answer Iyov’s logical argument: purity develops out of impurity.

The ultimate purpose is indeed only purity, but of a sort attained through knowing the abhorrence of its absence. We are not granted direct knowledge of divine eternity, but we are granted enough of a sense of it to recoil when confronting finitude; and this pain is our guide to realizing eternity in actuality, the blessing that we once had and still recall, all the more when dealing with its opposite.

This is mysterious way of The One, the grand unifier who turns evil into good. Suffering from evil directs us how not to be and leads us to the good. Indeed Hashem wants only one thing: purity, meaning life and perfection, but the pathway to this goal is tortuous and traverses the world of impurity.

This is the paradox of the red cow that purifies and contaminates too: purity from death can be achieved only through recognizing impurity’s harm, when the very experience of death’s odiousness serves to reaffirm life and evil is transformed to good. This is why Iyov’s argument is flipped: the intensity of his protest demonstrates the incompleteness of his conclusion. This is why man is likened to a tree and also, mournfully, to grass: the lament proves its own fallacy.

Avraham and Iyov:

The mystery of the red cow is the law of paradoxicality: it is good to suffer from evil. Iyov rejected this philosophy when he protested his own unjustified suffering; comparing his ideology with that of Avraham (his counterpart, as we shall see) will show what lies at the root of this rejection.

Iyov and Avraham correspond in several ways. Iyov was termed “one who feared God”;23 as was Avraham.24 Iyov would offer sacrifices corresponding to his children;25 and Avraham offered a ram “in place of his son.”26 Iyov was tested at Satan’s instigation;27 Avraham was too.28 Iyov repented “in dust and ashes”;29 and Avraham said “I am but dust and ashes.”30 They differed, however, in their response to injustice and trial: when Avraham faced apparent injustice on Hashem’s part – the wholesale destruction of Sodom without taking into account that there may be a community of righteous men within it – he approached Hashem and entreated him to make his ways conform with his own, human sense of justice; while Iyov declared that God would never respond to man’s complaints: “For he is not a man, as I am, whom I could challenge, ‘Let us go to trial together’.”31 And Iyov couldn’t comprehend why he should be suffering – he couldn’t fathom that it was all just a test, while Avraham was tested with sacrificing his beloved son and complied without objection.

Even the points common to both great men contain a variation, and that is the basis of their divergence. The sequence is inverted: Avraham called himself “dust and ashes”; responded to injustice with prayer; was tested; and was only then termed god-fearing and brought an animal sacrifice in place of his son. That point is where Iyov began: he was first termed god-fearing and offered sacrifices for his children; was tested and insisted that he could not influence God; and only then learnt to consider himself “dust and ashes,” the final words of repentance that he utters in his book.

Avraham started out knowing that he was dust and ashes while Iyov did not. All hinges on this elementary question: what, fundamentally, is man? Is he dust and ashes, or soul? For man is a composite entity, having been formed “from the dust of the ground” and then received the divine “breath of life”32 that Hashem blew into his nostrils, the neshamah. Which part is essential? Is man essentially a physical, earthly being gifted with a connection to the divine? Or is he essentially a divine, heavenly being connected with the physical world?

Let us explore the vastly different paths of life that derive from these divergent outlooks and how they determine man’s attitude to suffering, the first path the way of Avraham and the second of Iyov.

Of Spirit and Dust:

If we consider man to be an inherently physical creature endowed with divinity, what is the implication? That Hashem desires partnership with the limited, physical world. He desires corporeal man to approach him with his material limitations, with a human sense of justice unlike Hashem’s, and he desires man to actualize and demonstrate greatness in tangible deed, physically. This is the ultimate mystery: God wants the ungodly in their ungodliness. Thus Avraham approached Hashem with human input, telling him what a human thinks about justice after acknowledging that “I am but dust and ashes,” but what dust! – desired by God, ash fancied by his inscrutable will, called upon to give account and communicate with the divine. Hashem does care what pathetic man thinks and will adjust his ways to comport with his limited intelligence. Thus Avraham understood too that he would have to demonstrate his faith through trial and sacrifice his son. Hashem knows what is in man’s heart, but that does not suffice in this material world. The mission of temporal, earthly man is to concretize faith; for that, action is required. Only after demonstrating faithfulness did Avraham earn the status of “one who fears God,” and only after making it clear that he would even sacrifice his own son could he sacrifice an animal in his stead.

This is Avraham’s creed; now for Iyov’s.

What if man is actually soul, a divine spark endowed with a body? How sublime this doctrine! Man is divine, an angel really, charged with doing God’s work on earth. Iyov maintained this lofty stance and was consequently even greater than Avraham, as Chazal tell:

What is said about Iyov is greater than what is said about Avraham. Of Avraham it is written: “For now I know that you are one who fears God,” while of Iyov it is written: “A blameless and upright man, one who feared God and shunned evil.”33

Iyov had nothing at all to do with evil. Pure, abstract, divine soul, his body was entirely incidental to his self. Appropriately, he earned the status of “one who feared God” even before demonstrating faithfulness through action; for him it sufficed to bring animal sacrifice on his children’s behalf as a token of what he would do. Hashem knows the state of his divine soul, Iyov held, his invisible thoughts, how he would be willing to give up everything for Him – why should it be necessary to prove it through ungodly action, material and visible?

Thus, when he did suffer, Iyov was confounded, unable to make sense of the absurd world. There is no need, according to his sublime creed, for suffering, for demonstrating faithfulness through gross action – why then pain, why evil?

Iyov denied that there is any virtue to the world of material constraints and limits. Accordingly, when he was plunged into its miserable gloom of death and decay he could only conclude that “Earth is given to the control of the wicked,”34 nothing redeeming about its evil, no way that God desires to deal specifically with limited man. If man does not transcend earthliness to become pure soul, then God is not present on earth.

Thus spoke Iyov, until he repented and learnt that he too, like Avraham, is dust and ashes: that it is with material, suffering man that God desires to relate.

Iyov had rejected the philosophy that limitations are desired, that evil should be made good. The ideal fear of God is not achieved through ordeal and tribulation. He denied the law of paradoxicality, the mystery of the red cow. But Avraham and his way were chosen by God. Out of impure, pure; out of death, life – suffering the constraints of the physical gives sense of the spiritual. Avraham established this path when he declared himself to be “dust and ashes,” a declaration that earned his progeny the great mitzvah of the red cow, as Chazal say:

You said “I am but dust and ashes.” By your life! I am going to give your descendants atonement through them, as it says: “For the unclean, they shall take some of the dust”; “A person who is clean shall gather the ashes of the cow.”35

Avraham knew the mystery of the grand unifier who makes divinity from dust. Avraham son of Terach – a righteous man born to a wicked man – is the prime example of pure brought forth from impure; his own goodness was motivated by recognizing how terrible sin is, his own greatness built on his father’s failure, redeemed and transmuted to success by serving as a negative example. He knows the mystery of the red cow; he understands that mortal man will yet live again: if man is really only dust and ashes and yet was granted life – why wouldn’t his corpse come back to life once again?

The Man who was too Perfect:

We have explained the paradoxical law that justifies death and all evils: sometimes, in order to reach a desired goal, we need to engage with its opposite. Where we lack direct access to the good we have an indirect connection. The awful effects of evil guide us in the direction of the good, giving a distant sense of what we lack. To this law Chazal applied the verse: “I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was beyond me,”36 and stated that the usual rules of logic don’t hold in this remote, obscure system:

“The pure person shall sprinkle on the impure person” – one who is impure becomes pure, but one who is pure becomes impure… A fortiori! If an impure person becomes pure, shouldn’t a pure person certainly remain pure? … this is what Shlomo was referring to when he said: “I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was beyond me.”37

The law of the red cow is beyond logic; here, anything can be cause for its opposite. An abstruse doctrine, the idea of the red cow wasn’t comprehended by King Shlomo, wisest of men who understood everything but this; not, as we shall see, despite his great wisdom, but because of it.

Chazal tell us about King Shlomo and the red cow:

Shlomo said: “I figured everything out, but the matter of the red cow I investigated, questioned and researched, thinking that I would get wise – and it was beyond me!”38

King Shlomo could not comprehend this law, but Moshe, Chazal tell us, did: “The Holy One, blessed be he, said to Moshe, ‘To you I will reveal the reason for the cow’.”39 The crux of the difference between these great men can be developed from the following statements of Chazal:

“Hashem’s sayings are pure sayings, silver refined… purified sevenfold.” (Tehillim 12: 7)… 50 gates of understanding were created in the world. All but one were given to Moshe, as it says: “You made him but a little less than the angels” (ibid 8: 6)… “There never arose another prophet in Yisrael like Moshe” (Devarim 34: 10)… among the prophets there never arose, but among the kings there did… Koheles wanted to judge matters of the mind, without witnesses and without warning…40

King Shlomo accessed the fiftieth gate of understanding that eluded Moshe.41

“Hashem’s sayings are pure sayings”… the children in the time of King David… knew how to interpret the Torah in 49 facets of impurity and 49 facets of purity… Rabbi Chanan son of Pazi explained the verse as a reference to the parashah of the cow, which has seven sevens: 7 cows, 7 burnings, 7 sprinklings, 7 washings, 7 impure things, 7 pure things, 7 kohanim.42

The section in the Torah about the red cow contains 7 things mentioned 7 times each, equal to the number of aspects of Torah interpretation for purity and its opposite.

“Hashem’s sayings are pure sayings, silver refined in a kiln in the earth.” Just as refined silver enters the kiln and gets refined and purified until it becomes beautiful, so too the Torah gets purified and refined in 49 facets. Purified sevenfold… the Torah is interpreted in 49 facets, and this parashah too is purified sevenfold – it contains 49 purifications… when they would want to burn a cow of purification, what would they do? They would sprinkle him for all 7 days, 7 sprinklings per day, totaling 49 sprinklings: refined sevenfold. Why all this? Because it is equivalent to the whole of the Torah.43

The “Decree of the Torah” is equivalent to the whole 49-faceted Torah.

Every statement that the Holy One, blessed be He said to Moshe, He would say with 49 facets of purity and 49 facets of impurity… Rabbi Akiva had a distinguished student named Rabbi Meir, who would prove from the Torah that a reptile is pure, giving 49 facets of purity and 49 facets of impurity.44

The laws of impurity can be reinterpreted into laws of purity, in 49 ways.

To summarize: Moshe was taught the reason for the red cow, equal to the whole of the Torah and refined in the same number as the Torah’s facets of purity and impurity and the gates of understanding that he accessed, while King Shlomo – who surpassed Moshe to access the final gate of understanding – could not figure it out. What is the meaning of all this?

The idea is clear: only those with limited understanding can understand the paradoxical law of opposites. If our understanding is limited – if there are matters that are beyond our grasp – then suffering actually benefits us, giving us a sense that we lack something the opposite of which is bad. Our sore sense of lack is all we can sense of that which we lack. Accordingly Moshe, who was limited to 49 gates of understanding and knew that he didn’t know, understood the great decree of paradox. But King Shlomo understood all. Everything was clear to him, known; the all-knowing king had no need for an abstruse, circuitous kind of awareness.

This is not the decree of the red cow alone; it is the decree of the whole Torah. For Torah – law – is necessary for one who doesn’t know everything. He cannot always determine what is correct with his intellect alone and therefore requires law to guide him. Additionally, for him good and evil are not so different, pure and impure alike are approaches to the elusive purity, 49 facets to each perspective, so that only revealed law can determine correct practice. But King Shlomo had perfect, all-seeing wisdom hence no need for law; his unerring intelligence would always guide him in the one, clear path of reason to do what’s right. Indeed, his was the way of reason, as Chazal say:

Why weren’t the reasons for the Torah revealed? Because the reasons of two verses were revealed, and one of the world’s greatest people stumbled on them. It is written: “He shall not take many wives, so that his heart doesn’t go astray.” Said Shlomo, “I will take many and won’t go astray!”...45

King Shlomo conducted himself according to reason alone, and this tendency was itself his deficiency: he was too perfect and therefore above law qua law, having no need for obedience, for acting with simplicity and without understanding – which is the very decree of the red cow, as Chazal say further:

Shlomo sought to figure out the matter of the red cow… the Holy One, blessed be He said to him, “Act with integrity and simplicity. I have decreed a decree; I have legislated a law – you may not question it!”46

The secret of the red cow is acting with simplicity, precisely without understanding.

Motherhood:

The ultimate mystery is that Hashem desires that man serve him through the limitations of matter; like all women-born mortals, even the perfect King Shlomo was supposed to be circumscribed by the law. Indeed it was his mother, Bas Sheva, who chastised him for his excesses: “Do not give your strength to women…47”; he too must follow the decrees of the Torah.

In this spirit the red cow itself is named “Bas Sheva” in this cryptic and evocative story:

He brought him to his home and prepared… meat of a… calf… After they ate, the man said to him, “Rabbi, tell me something. I once had a red cow, the mother of this calf whose flesh we just ate. One day – before it conceived and gave birth – I followed it out to graze… and a man passed by and said, ‘What is this cow’s name?’ I told him, ‘From the day it was born I haven’t named it.’ He said, ‘Bas Sheva mother of Shlomo is its name!’ I laughed at that, but now that I have merited to learn Torah I thought about it…” He told him, “It is in fact a wise word… it is actually called ‘Bas Sheva’48 in the secret of wisdom, which is why everything about it is written in sevens: 7 cows, 7 burnings, 7 sprinklings, 7 washings, 7 impure things, 7 pure things, 7 kohanim… That man who said that it is Bas Sheva was right; it is all a secret of wisdom.”49

The red cow of seven times seven facets teaches Shlomo the lesson of his mother, Bas Sheva, which is the lesson of the Torah itself.

Motherhood held King Shlomo back from surpassing all limitation, from becoming a superhuman who could live in the world of mind, divorced from all matter. This is the inner meaning of the familiar story of the two harlots and the baby: it is a parable, as we shall see, about motherhood, death and perfect wisdom.

Two harlots appealed to the king’s court. They had been living together in the same house and had given birth at the same time. One night, said the claimant, the other woman’s baby died and she switched her dead baby for the live one. The other woman disputed this claim and insisted that no, the live baby was in fact her own. King Shlomo ruled to cut the baby in two and share it between them; the one who was the true mother was overcome with compassion and begged the king to give the baby to the other woman – who had accepted this decree with equanimity, satisfied as long as no one would get the living baby.

The king responded and said, “Give her the living child; don’t kill it – she is the mother!”

Ingenious, yes, but why is this story the illustration of King Shlomo’s paradigmatic wisdom?

This parable illustrates the extent of King Shlomo’s wisdom and the fact that it was limited by motherhood alone. The king’s ruling was not merely a ruse; the wisest man would genuinely rule to cut the baby in two, for he inhabited a world beyond death, a world where matter doesn’t matter. The two mothers fighting over a human body were treated no differently than other claimants fighting over a material thing that would be split and divided between them equitably. The eternal, immortal soul of the baby would live on regardless, and the divine king who could know even disembodied thoughts knew that the body is irrelevant. This is the true extent of King Shlomo’s wisdom that transcends all matter.

But the mother intervened – maternity intervened. For a mother who bears a child in her body requires a physical, bodily child, and her maternal instinct for the material resists complete transcendence. Death matters, indeed. The baby must not die; it would be an unbearable tragedy if it did. The material, limited world requires bodily form, delineated and defined, struggling with mortality.

Thus the king demonstrated his transcendent wisdom and its inexorable circumscription represented by the mother. The law of the mother is the law of the red cow, teaching of Bas Sheva mother of Shlomo, indeed the whole Decree of the Torah: that we are supposed to be limited, physical, bounded, and must develop the good by means of a struggle with evil.

This is the Torah, when a person dies in a tent: out of death, life; out of impure, pure.

Unapologetics

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