Yeshua: “Touch me not”—An allusion to the red heifer?

John 20:17, Touch me not. Touch is the Greek word haptomai meaning “to fasten one’s self to, adhere to, cling to,” and can be used to refer to touching in a carnal and passionate way as between a man and a woman.

Perhaps Yeshua didn’t want his disciples to cling to him as a wife clings to her husband, since, in a spiritual sense, they (and us) were/are only betrothed and not yet married to him yet. (The marriage of the saints to Yeshua will occur at his second coming.)

Additionally, Yeshua had not yet ascended to heaven where he would be accepted by his Father as the perfect, unspotted, undefiled and sinless sacrificial Lamb of Elohim. If a sinful human had touched him, this may have ceremonially defiled his state of perfect cleanliness.

In the Torah, for example, if a man touched a dead human carcass, he would become ceremonially unclean and need cleansing (Num 19:11–13). This pertained to the law of the blemish-free red heifer through which a person could be cleansed from ritual defilement if they had touched a dead body (Num 19:1–10; Heb 13:10–12).

The red heifer was a prophetic picture of the sin-free Yeshua dying on the cross to cleanse spiritually dead humans from their sin. The lesson here is that all men are dead in their sins until they come into contact with Yeshua the Messiah, and this is a fact about the red heifer that most people miss. 

 

2 thoughts on “Yeshua: “Touch me not”—An allusion to the red heifer?

  1. I’m confused. I thought that when Yeshua rose from the dead He was in an incorruptible body. Help, please.

    • Yes, of course he had an incorruptible body, but he had to ascend first the heaven to present himself to the Father and are accepted as the perfect, spotless, undefiled Lamb. Had he been touched by humans, he’d have been defiled. It’s a ritual purity thing. That’s my best understanding.

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