The Creator of Heaven and Earth can make what appears good and bad to exchange places, shuffled like a deck of cards based on the circumstances. This isn’t to say that what’s bad actually becomes good. Rather, that a bad situation or person can be part of a something bigger. In the Torah reading חֻקַּתChukat (“statute of,” Numbers 19:1-22:1), Moses saved the second generation of Israel from dying of thirst, but they entered the Promised Land, while he didn’t. In a parallel account, the bandit Yiftakh (Jephthah) lost his daughter to a rash vow made after gaining something great.
Through these accounts and the strange ritual of the red heifer to “decontaminate” those who touch the dead, we see shadows of Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), Who took on death to bring rebirth to all of us who are “dead in our transgressions.”
