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© 2017 John D. Brey.

. . . the primary meaning of blood דם is "image" [". . . for in the image of God he made man." (Gen. 9:6)]. . . But your blood, which belongs to your souls, is Mine, not yours. . . The special meaning of דרש is to demand one's property that was entrusted with someone . . . Man's duty---as implied by his name אדם ---is to be God's representative . . . the Divine soul [resides] within every man. . . God, as it were, breathed into man a spark of His Own essence.

Hirsch Chumash, Bereshis, 9:6.

The statements above are a mishmash taken from Rabbi Hirsch's commentary on Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man.”

R. Hirsch interprets the verse to mean that man's blood doesn't belong to him, that it's God's soul mixed with an earthen altar, such that man doesn't have the right to take another man's life (euphemistically "shed the blood") since in doing so he's infringing on God's property: "The special meaning of דרש is to demand one's property that was entrusted with someone" (Hirsch Chumash at 9:5).

Ironically the verse justifies capital punishment by implying that the same reason a person is not to shed the blood of another man, i.e., because the blood is God's, gives the man's peers the authority to shed his blood as recompense for his error.

Since God's blood resides in the murderer's peers, they have the God-given right to cast a judgment of death on the murderer. They possess God's blood, soul, such that they can demand the life of the murderer with God-given authority, speaking from, and on account of, the blood of the slain victim. The blood, or soul, of the victim also resides in his or her peers.

The idea is that the soul of God ("blood" and "soul" are parallel concepts in the Tanakh) resides in man. The blood of God is the blood found in man. Man is created in the blood (image דם) of God.

The essay dam Adam covered all this inside out. It's old hat. . . But it's a stepping stone to more esoteric exegetical essentials.

As the sages point out over and over, parah adumah, the red cow, is the Chok of the chukkim. The Chok of the chukkim is the singular "decree" (chok) necessary to make heads or tails of every other decree (all chukkim).

For the sake of the non-Jew it's necessary to point out that a "chok" (plural "chukkim") is a "decree" given by God whose meaning and symbolic import is unknown. Why, for instance, can't a Jew eat pork? Why, for instance, remove flesh from that particular organ? . . . The answer to all of these strange decrees resides in the Chok of the chukkim: the decree of decrees, the supra-rational rationale necessary to understand God's reason for all other seemingly non-rational decrees: parah adumah.

Many of the sages (to include R. Hirsch) are shocked to read the text implying that the red cow is the "decree of the Torah." The red cow, parah adumah, is not just one of many decrees (chukkim) in the Torah, it’s The Decree of the Torah: it's the Decree upon which every other decree rests.

. . . the Torah is to be born by us, by human beings. The house that we build for the Torah is not external to us, separate from our personalities; it seeks to become true in us and inside of us; we ourselves must become a sanctuary unto God. The tefillin are the Ark of the Covenant in miniature.

Hirsch Chumash, Devarim, 6:8.

We're the sanctuary/temple of God. We're the home of God. We're where he dwells. The most holy place where the Ark of the Covenant dwells is the place where the rosh bayit is found. The rosh bayit is the ark of the covenant in miniature, such that the head of man is the most holy place of the sanctuary.

This earthen sanctuary has an altar where blood is shed. And God states in the Torah that where blood is shed on the altar, his Presence will be seen, his Name will be Present.

And so the rabbis teach that brit milah evokes a theophany. God appears at every brit milah since the blood shed on the earthen altar is the place where God's Name (Shaddai) is revealed. The sages imply that the Name “Shaddai” is cut into the earthen altar itself during the bris.

And the blood, shed on the altar, must be brought to the most holy place of the temple; where the rosh bayit, the ark of the covenant in miniature, resides: metzitzah, John 6:53-53. The idea is that man is the temple of God; man is the measure of all things. Man's genital organ is the altar (in the middle of the temple) where the preeminent sacrificial blood is spilled. 

After Avrohom was circumcised, the Holy One, Blessed Is He, revealed Himself, in His glory, to visit him, as it is stated, "Hashem appeared to him." Rabbi Yitzchok Napacha began [his lecture and expounded the verse]: "You shall make for Me an Altar of earth, etc," and it states [in the same verse], "Wherever I allow My Name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you." The Holy One, Blessed Is He said, "If I reveal Myself to someone who sacrifices a burnt-offering or peace-offering, to bless him, all the more so [will I reveal Myself to] Avrohom, who sacrificed himself before Me!" Therefore it is stated, "Hashem appeared to him" (Parentheses appear in translation cited).

Tanchuma Vayeira 2, points out that brit milah is the prototype and archetype of all sacrificial blood. ----Man is the measure of all things. The sacrificial blood drawn from man signifies not just pre-sexual sacrifice (every animal sacrificed must be virgin) but the sacrifice of any possibility of phallic-sexuality. -----Brit milah is the measure of all animal sacrifice. The animal must be virgin because the true sacrifice, upon which all animal sacrifice rests, is the sacrifice of the very possibility of phallic-sex, brit milah. 

According to Jewish commentary, after the spilling of the prototype of all sacrificial blood, brit milah, God's Name is found to reside on the altar where the blood is drawn. And it's not that the Name is actually cut into the altar (as some imply). On the contrary, this particular cutting reveals, rather than creates, the Name. -----It always resided there, underneath the orlah, that hid that fact from uncircumcised eyes: eyes that have never experienced the theophany related to a proper brit milah. 

The Name of God, which represents his Person, and Presence, has always resided on the altar in the middle of the male body. Brit milah doesn't create the Name, and thus the relationship between this blood, and God. It merely uncovers the truth for those with circumcised eyes. 

The blood drawn from the altar in the middle of the temple of man's body, is tahor, clean. ----So much so that it can clothe the Torah scroll. The blood drawn from the altar of man's body --- blood drawn from a place where God's Name is uncovered, can be used to clothe the Torah scroll, therein signifying the relationship between this blood and the Torah scroll itself. It's almost as though the blood drawn from this sacrifice signifies the blood of the Torah scroll. Which would be to say that the blood of brit milah is the Torah's blood, and the Torah's blood is drawn at every brit milah.

Since this is the case, the Jewish sages point out, almost to a man, circumcision is the key to "seeing" the Presence of God. The blood of circumcision is God's blood, such that the relationship between the ritual uncovering, and the blood, is the key to knowing God.

The Torah scroll represents God's seminal means of creating heaven and earth such that if the symbolism holds true, then from the get-go God intended to engage two creations. One for profane purposes, Gentiles, and one for sacred purposes, those born of the blood of the scroll: 

formed:[ייצר, with two "yod," hints at] two creations, a creation for this world and a creation for [the time of the] resurrection of the dead, but in connection with the animals, which do not stand in judgment, two "yod" are not written.

Rashi points out that unlike the word for the creation of the animals, the creation of man has two yod. Man has two bloods: animal blood, and Torah blood, God's blood. -----Rashi points out that the two "yod" signify two creations of man, two births of man, while Rabbi Hirsch points out that the second birth occurs on the eighth day, the very day the means of the first birth is cut and bled, implying that the conception of the second birth (i.e., being born-again) comes from the blood of the organ responsible for the first birth. 

The blood spilled at the first conception is tame (unclean) niddah, while the blood spilled at the second conception is tahor (clean). The first conception spills female blood (when the membrane is opened) while the second conception spills male blood, when the membrane of male virginity is torn to signify the permanent virginity of the groom, and thus his bride, since the blood of brit milah sacrifices the very means of the first creation, and the first conception of man, thereby giving miraculous birth to the New Man, and the New Heaven and Earth.

Rashi points out that there are two "yod," and thus two bloods, involved in the creation of man. This is born out when the sages tell us that a "yod" is uncovered when the Name of God is uncovered in the act seminal to the birth of the New man, the Man born to eternity rather than to the first creation. 

Not a sage among the lot of them is unaware that the Name uncovered at the uncovering of God's Name, brit milah, is the Name "Shaddai." No hoary sage nor a hairy sage is unaware that the Name "Shaddai" is the word "Lamb" until the second yod in God's name is uncovered at Abraham's circumcision. Remove the dalet (veil) covering the second yod, in the Name of God (the first being the yod in Yahweh) and you get the Name of God, "Shaddai," from the Name of the "Lamb" of God whose blood is shed on Passover.

Until Abraham's circumcision only one yod is related to the Name of God, the yod in Yahweh, which is the first letter in God's first Name. The yod in "Shaddai" is the second yod (and comes last, at the completion of the Torah scroll) and signifies both the second creation and also the New Man, signified by Abraham and his baptism in the blood of the Lamb.

This "blood of the Lamb" is the "blood of God" spilled in brit milah, and thereafter used to clothe the Torah scroll so that even the person least interested in God's word will not be the least in the world-to-come if they but connect the dots as even a child can connect the dots (Matthew 18:3) even as the dots, or yod, are connected here, by one who is clearly the least of all the saint, unworthy to give even a nod to the second yod of God.

As has been pointed out before, the term "holy water" is a hapax legomenon (one time occurrence) in the Tanakh. On the authority of Mishnah Parah we have cause to suspect that either there's a case of water being "holy" outside of the sotah passage (Numbers chapter 5 where the singular use of the word is found) or else the water associated with parah adumah (the "red cow") is merely another parabolic manifestation of the same water found in the sotah passage (Numbers chapter 5)?

As fate would have it, very little exegesis is required in order to establish the fact that indeed the waters of niddah, associated with parah adumah (Numbers chapter 19) are speaking of the same thing as the "holy water" associated with the sotah in Numbers chapter 5. In the parah adumah passage, Numbers chapter 19, the manufacture of the holy water contains details omitted in both Numbers chapter 5, the sotah water passage, and Exodus 32 (where Moses manufactures holy water by making colloidal gold). 

In the parah adumah passage, we're given a key piece of the puzzle needed to make heads or tails of all three parallel passages: we're told that the "crap" or "dung" of the red cow is included in the manufacture of the "waters of niddah" that separate a Jewish man or woman from their sins: i.e., “holy water” (able to wash away sin). 

According to Mishnah Parah, the water used in manufacturing the water of separation must be more pure than the water used in a mikveh. The water of separation represents the highest purity obtainable: a purity beyond the purity attained through immersion in the mikveh.

The "water of separation" associated with parah adumah represent sanctified menstruation.

Whereas menstrual blood represents death (death itself),  sanctified menstrual blood, as represented by the  "water of separation" water of niddah, represents the opposite of natural menstrual blood. The waters of niddah represent menstrual blood that sanctifies from death rather than blood that associates one with the soul of a corpse. 

The mitzvah of circumcision is placed in the middle of the laws of uncleanness, breaking their continuity. This indicates that circumcision is deeply connected with these laws. 

Hirsch Chumash, Vayikra, 12:3.

Rabbi Hirsch is responding to the oddity that right in the midst of laying out the laws of purity for a mother Leviticus chapter 12 states that the male child shall be circumcised on the eighth day? Understanding the strangeness of this imposition on the topic at hand, Rabbi Hirsch points out that the reason for the imposition here is because circumcision is directly associated with the laws of cleanness and uncleanness, and more importantly the reality that these law represent for some, and mask for others. 

In a nutshell, the blood of circumcision is sanctified menstrual blood. Circumcision removes the taint of menstrual blood (so to say). Circumcision blood makes the death associated with menstrual blood impossible, ritually, symbolically, and in reality. In this sense, circumcision blood sanctifies menstrual blood. The blood that once made unclean, now makes clean.  

In the same sense that no sacrifice is possible without parah adumah, no mikveh is possible without the water of niddah, the waters of separation, associated with parah adumah. The water of niddah, of separation, are the true mikveh, even as parah adumah is the true sacrifice upon which all others depend.

Those who enter a mikveh not associated with the waters of separation are made unclean by the waters of separation. Those who are deemed unclean for not practicing the impracticality of a mikveh not associated with the waters of separation, i.e., the goy, are made clean by the water of separation.

Here's the translation in the Hirsch Chumah at Numbers 19:9 (emphasis mine):

A man who is pure shall then gather up the ashes of the cow and lay them down outside the camp in a pure place. It shall remain for a water of separation; it is an offering that clears of sin.

Rashi says:

for purification: חַטָּאת, an expression of cleansing (חִטּוּי), according to its simple meaning, but according to its halachoth, Scripture calls it חַטָּאת, “sin-offering,”

Dozens of Jewish texts claim the sotah water is associated with Moses making colloidal gold at the golden calf fiasco. They're parallel events in the minds of the Jewish sages. So the triune piece of the puzzle so far as holy water is concerned, the pièces de résistance, is parah adumah:

Why are all the sacrifices male and this one [parah adumah] female? R. Aibu explained: This may be illustrated by a parable. A handmaiden's boy polluted a king's palace. The king said: "Let the mother come and clear away the filth." In the same way the Holy One, blessed be He, said: "Let the Heifer come and atone for the incident of the Calf!"

Midrash Rabbah, Numbers, 19:8.

Numerous Jewish texts fancy the red heifer the mother of the golden calf. Perhaps they forget, perhaps not? But the red heifer is a virgin (never been mounted). If she's the mother of the golden calf, then the golden calf, worshiped as God, is the firstborn son of a virgin mother.

When Moses pulverizes this firstborn son of a virgin mother, and sprinkles the dust in the holy water, and has Israel drink the red brew, unbeknownst to all but a few, he's presaging John 6:52.

. . . the primary meaning of blood דם is "image" [". . . for in the image of God he made man." (Gen. 9:6)]. . . But your blood, which belongs to your souls, is Mine, not yours. . . The special meaning of דרש is to demand one's property that was entrusted with someone . . . Man's duty---as implied by his name אדם ---is to be God's representative . . . the Divine soul [resides] within every man.

Hirsch Chumash, Bereshis, 9:6.

Rabbi Hirsch makes nothing so clear as the fact that man is the temple where God's blood resides (Rabbi Hirsch says, point blank, that God's "soul" is his "blood"). Adam becomes the Godman when God puts his own blood (nefesh), his very soul, into the earthen vessel that's Adam's body. Even Adam's name makes this clear, as pointed out in Midrash Rabbah, Numbers, 19:3, which echoes almost word for word, Midrash Tanchuma Chukas 6.

The word "alef" (which is the name of the first letter in Adam's name) means a “bull,” “cow,” or “calf.” Adam's name means he's the "blood" דם of the bull, cow, or calf, "alef" א. His name is alef--dalet-mem: א––דם.

We know from Numbers chapter 19 that Adam is the "blood" of God (represented by the alef, the cow) such that in type, he's the parah adumah, the red cow. The red cow represents the incarnation of God in Adam. 

The Jewish sages have surmised that the golden-calf represents the firstborn Son of the parah adumah. And since they also point out that the parah adumah is virgin, has never been mounted, the Son of the parah adumah is a virgin-born firstborn of a perfectly red (Adam-ah) cow.

Knowing just that, anyone concerned can make perfect sense of the triune relationship between the red cow (parah adumah), the sotah water (“holy water” of Numbers chapter 5), and Moses manufacture of colloidal gold, gold water, representing God's blood. God's blood is manufactured from the sacrifice of the Son of the parah adumah, the red cow (her virgin Son). Knowing just this, John 6:52-53 comes into perfect view in relationship to the whole panorama of the Tanakh.

More than one important Jewish sage implies that when Moses sprinkled the Israelites with the blood of a sacrificial bull, those garments, stained with the blood of the bull, became the "ornaments" spoken of as being removed after the golden-calf fiasco. If in fact the sacrificed bull represents God, then the "ornamental" clothing produced when Moses sprinkles the Israelites with this blood implies not only that every Israelite is a priest, wearing priestly clothing, but that this kingdom of priests is clothed in God, or in God's blood: they are "Adam" --- those clothed in the blood (dam) of the bull or ox (alef).

The ancients used colloidal gold to produce purple, blue, and red hues which they then used as stains for artwork, vases, and various other cunning works. Wikipedia produced this particular image in speaking of colloidal gold:

Based on the size of the nano-particle, the colloidal gold produces reds, scarlet, blues and purples. Armed with that fact, and the truism that Moses sprinkled the Israelites with bovine blood to cloth them in God, as priests of God, their clothing allowing them to enter into temple service, symbolic of the right to enter back into Eden, where Adam was once the priestly occupant, it becomes obvious that when the Israelites removed their priestly garments, their garments ornamented with God's blood, was immediately after Moses made them drink the colloidal gold.

After having Israel drink the blood of the golden-calf, only the specialized priesthood, Aaron and the Levites, get to wear the new priestly garments. Only they get to enter into the replica of Eden, the tabernacle, and later the covered temple in Jerusalem.

It's interesting to note the colors produced for the priestly garments:

And they shall take gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen. 6 And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, and of purple, of scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cunning work.

The same color spectrum produced by producing colloidal gold, is produced in the new, specialized, garments of the new priesthood. The blood of the bull is replaced by the colloidal gold made from the golden-calf (such that it represents his blood). And how are these colors produced? The KJV calls it a "cunning work." The Hebrew suggests something like alchemy, or an esoteric art form known only to priestly initiates.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16.

If 1 Corinthians 3:16 is read according to its full context, the Apostle can be interpreted to be questioning if the believer is in fact even aware that he’s the temple of God, such that Gods' blood dwells inside him. The Eucharist, which is the Christian equivalent of the Jewish sotah water ordeal, has the believer take in not only the blood, or spirit, or breath, of God, but his flesh as well. The wine consumed at the Eucharist represents the breath, or spirit, or blood, of God (nefesh), while the unleavened-bread represents his actual body, flesh, earthly frame.

In the sotah water ordeal, colloidal gold-water (holy water) represents the blood of God. The "bitter water" is read like blood; it's red from the gold-dust sprinkled in it in order to make it "holy water." Judaism makes due with colloidal gold-water as a surrogate for what the Christian Eucharist uses the wine to represent: the nefesh, or spirit, or blood, of God.

Since Jews reject the fleshly incarnation of God as represented by Jesus' earthly frame, the closest thing they have to an incarnate, or earthly home, for the blood of God, his spirit, is the Torah scroll. Ergo, what Jesus' flesh represents for the Christian, the Torah scroll represents for the Jew. 

In the Jewish Eucharist (the sotah water ordeal) the priest writes the Name of God on a scroll, which the rabbis claim is representative of the entire Torah, and places the scroll into the holy water, the colloidal gold-water, both of which are thereafter swallowed, per the Christian Eucharist, by the Jewish believer.

In both versions of the faith, the believer is made into a temple where not only God's blood dwells, but his flesh too.

Jewish thought is patently aware that the sotah water ordeal, found in Numbers chapter 5, is archetypically related to the golden-calf fiasco in Exodus 32. Likewise, the golden calf is related to the Yom Kippur bull such that since the blood of the Yom Kippur bull is brought into the most holy place of the Jerusalem temple we're not too surprised that Moses makes the blood of the golden calf to reside in the temple that is the Jewish believer's body.

Just as the Yom Kippur bull is slaughtered and its blood brought into the "bedchamber" (Rashi) of the Jerusalem temple, so too, Moses pulverizes the body of the golden calf, sprinkles it on water flowing down from a fountain in the Rock, so that it enters into the bodies of the children of Israel (God's bride/temple).

Moses follows through with the symbolism of the sotah as God's temple/bride when he sacrifices the golden calf and sees that its blood is made to reside in the temple of God's bride, the children of Israel.

Not only does the sotah water episode parallel the events at Horeb, but the events at Horeb parallel the events at Yom Kippur. In both, all, cases, blood of a sacrificial bull is brought into the temple of God in order to affect the incarnation of his Son through the use of his (God's) bride.

With so great a cloud of witnesses, who could yet be confused about precisely what will be the consummate form of mating that will consummate the relationship between God and his bride? What form of mating will lead God fearers to conceive God's Son within the temple that is their body?

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17.