So God said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

“This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded: ‘Tell the Israelites to bring you an unblemished red heifer in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never been placed.

Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its skin, its flesh, its blood, and its waste, shall be burned (reduced to ash).

The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet [material] and cast them into the midst of the burning heifer.

The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until evening.

Now a man who is [ceremonially] clean shall collect the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the Israelites shall keep it for water to remove impurity; it is [to be used for] purification from sin.

The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until evening. This shall be a perpetual statute to the Israelites and to the stranger who lives as a resident alien among them.

That one shall purify himself from uncleanness with the water [made with the ashes of the burned heifer] on the third day and on the seventh day, and then he will be clean; but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean.

It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the dead man shall take a heifer of the herd, one which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;

and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a [river] valley with running water, which has not been plowed or planted, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.

All the elders of that city nearest to the dead man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley;

So the men of the city said to Samson on the seventh day before sundown,

“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”

And he said to them,

“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
You would not have solved my riddle.”

But Samuel said, “How can I go? When Saul hears about it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer from the herd with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’

My heart cries out for Moab;
His fugitives are [fleeing] as far as Zoar and Eglath-shelishiyah.
For they go up the ascent of Luhith weeping;
For on the road to Horonaim they raise a cry of distress over their destruction.

“Egypt is a very pretty heifer,
But a horsefly (Babylonia) is coming [against her] out of the north!

From the outcry at Heshbon even to Elealeh, even to Jahaz they have raised their voice, from Zoar even to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah; for even the waters of Nimrim will become desolations.

“Though you are glad, though you rejoice,
O you who plunder My heritage,
Though you are wanton and skip about like a heifer in the grass
And neigh like stallions,

For Israel is stubborn,
Like a stubborn heifer.
Can the Lord now pasture them
Like a lamb in a large field?

Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to tread out the grain,
But I will come over her fair neck with a heavy yoke [for hard field work].
I will harness Ephraim;
Judah will plow and Jacob will harrow and rake for himself.