Hebrews 9:13

This service of Christ in his sanctuary exceeds the Aaronical, not only for reconciling souls to God, but purifying of them, as cleared in this and Hebrews 9:14. For if the blood of bulls and of goats: the blood is the same as spoken of Hebrews 9:12. Bulls, here put for calves, are but to distinguish the sex; and it is to be noted, where our translators read oxen, as to sacrifices in the Old Testament, as particularly Numbers 7:87, they mean bulls, for no oxen were by the law to be offered to God at all as sacrifices; see Leviticus 22:17; because they could not be true types of the true sacrifice, which was to perfect them. This blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat and before it, and on the altar, Leviticus 16:14,19, &c., expiating sins, and taking away the guilt and legal punishment. And the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean: the rite of preparing it, read in Numbers 19:1. A red heifer was by the people given to the priest; he was to bring her without the camp, and order her to be slain, and then take the blood with his finger, and sprinkle it towards the tabernacle seven times; after which she was to be wholly burnt in his sight, with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, the ashes of which were reserved; when they used them, they took them in a vessel, and put running water to them, and then sprinkled them with a bunch of hyssop on persons legally unclean, Hebrews 9:18, and so they purified them from their ceremonial filth and pollution; but none of these could purify an unclean soul, that was left unholy and unclean still. Sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; these sprinklings did sanctify those who were legally unclean, and did procure a legal purity and acceptance of them the service of the sanctuary, from which else they were excluded; by this they were looked on as externally holy with the congregation, their flesh and outward man being made pure by it for their external worship.