What is the meaning of Numbers 19:5?

Then the heifer must be burned in his sight

• The red heifer is slaughtered outside the camp, and “Eleazar the priest is to watch it be burned” (Numbers 19:3–5).

• This public, priestly oversight underscores accountability—nothing about sin or cleansing is hidden (Leviticus 4:12; Hebrews 13:11–12).

• The location “outside the camp” prefigures Jesus suffering “outside the gate” to sanctify us (Hebrews 13:12).

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Its hide

• Unlike most sacrifices where the hide was kept for the priests (Leviticus 7:8), here it is consumed, showing the totality of judgment on impurity.

• Complete burning pictures thorough cleansing: “Purge me… and I will be clean” (Psalm 51:7).

• Christ’s atonement is likewise all-inclusive—nothing of our guilt remains (Hebrews 10:10).

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Its flesh

• The costly meat is not eaten but destroyed, teaching that purification from death requires full sacrifice, not partial offerings (Leviticus 1:9).

• Isaiah points to the Servant whose “wounds” heal us (Isaiah 53:5); John calls Him “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

• By faith we receive the benefit at no cost to ourselves, but at total cost to the substitute.

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Its blood

• Earlier, Eleazar sprinkles some blood “seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting” (Numbers 19:4); the rest is burned.

• Blood both cleanses and judges—life is given, life is consumed (Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22).

• Peter reminds believers we are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19).

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…along with its dung

• Even the offal is burned (Exodus 29:14), emphasizing removal of every trace of defilement.

• Paul counts all earthly “gain as dung” compared to Christ (Philippians 3:8), mirroring the disposal of impurity.

• God calls His people to “perfect holiness out of reverence” (2 Corinthians 7:1), leaving nothing unpurged.

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summary

Numbers 19:5 depicts a complete, visible, priest-supervised burning of the red heifer—hide, flesh, blood, and dung—to demonstrate God’s thorough answer to death and impurity. The ritual points forward to Jesus, whose sacrifice outside the camp fully consumes sin’s penalty and leaves believers wholly cleansed.