Chukath:  (lack of) Understanding 

This parsha has many  edicts that are not explained and, perhaps, cannot be understood.  Death is prominent: Miriam and Aaron die and Moses perpetrates his capital offense of hitting the water-giving rock.  Nations are approached for passage into the Promised Land.  All refuse.  Some are skirted, others engaged in battle and conquered.   The purifying and polluting ashes of the red heifer are a mere spice to these more immediate unfathomables. 

The red heifer is not an animal sacrifice.  It is the main  ingredient in a mixture that is required  to extirpate the contamination that devolves from contact with the dead; the concoction and its associated ritual of separation and sprinkling ,decontaminate the exposed so that they may enter the sanctum.  The sanctum is off limits to those who have not been disinfected. 

The first death reported after the instructions for the red heifer are given is that of Miriam מִרְיָ֔ם. Her name is derived from  the  word mar .  Mar means bitter,  or master, or rebellion.  I think all of these are related.  Having a master  is a bitter situation; the bitter taste recommends rejection - rebellion.  Miriam was born during the bitter times of slavery. 

The Israelites then run out of water.  They complain  There is always a question of whether Moses  felt the needs of the people.  Several times, he had gone without food and water for 40 days at a time, something ordinary humans cannot do.  It seems appropriate that the people report their feeble need to this superman.  It was the nature of the complaint - the blame, the misremembering of Egypt, the preference for dying in a previous rebellion - that incited the  anger of Moses.  That anger was misdirected at the rock which Gd had designated to provide water.  Moshe's anger can be seen in the few words he utters prior to hitting the rock.  He calls the people הַמֹּרִ֔ים   Morim, (bitter) rebels.  

 Soon after, Aaron is sent to die on הֹ֣ר הָהָ֑ר, the mountain ( of mountains).  This drama is a distortion of the binding of Isaac, the human sacrificed to the Divine. In our parsha,  the father is brought up to the mountain  and the son receives the  sacred garments.  Then the father dies through the Divine kiss. 

The sacred garments are the subject of today's daf yomi.  Today we retell part of  the story of Alexander of Macedonia's adventure in the land of Israel.  His first contact is with the Cuthites who convince him to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem because the Jews are rebellious יְהוּדִים שֶׁמָּרְדוּ בְּךָ .  Simon the Righteous, the high priest, decides to (possibly) violate the prohibition on wearing the Priestly robes outside of the temple.  He dresses in those robes. When Alexander sees him, he bows.  His erstwhile allies ask him  

מֶלֶךְ גָּדוֹל כְּמוֹתְךָ יִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לִיהוּדִי זֶה?! אָמַר לָהֶם: דְּמוּת דְּיוֹקְנוֹ שֶׁל זֶה מְנַצַּחַת לְפָנַי בְּבֵית מִלְחַמְתִּי.

Should an important king such as you bow to this Jew? He said to them: I do so because the image of this man’s face is victorious before me on my battlefields,

this is the [dream] image of (my) victory. 

The parsha ends with the victory over Sichon, the Amorite king  and Og, king of Bashan.  The haftarah hints at another twist on the theme of the binding of Isaac.  The previously shunned Jephthah is drafted as the general of Gilead when the territory is threatened by the Ammonites.  Jephthah approaches the Ammonites with the history of the region.  Sichon usurped the previous Ammonite dynasty  and the Israelites  defeated Sichon. Whose land is it now?  When diplomacy fails, the army of Gilead overpowers the Ammonites.  Before battle, Jephthah tries to invoke the help of Heaven: 

And Jephthah made the following vow to the LORD: “If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands,then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return from the Ammonites shall be the LORD’s and shall be offered by me as a burnt offering.”

The haftarah ends before revealing that the  whatever comes out of the door    is his daughter. 

It is all a bitter story.