mordekhi v yisraela

Torah: B’shallach (When he let go), Sh’mot (Exodus) 13.17-17.16
Haftorah: Shof’tim (Judges) 4.4-5.31
Suggested Messianic Writings reading: Revelation 19.1-20.6

Shalom,

As we begin this week’s parashah, Israel has finally been given “permission” from Pharaoh to leave Egypt, and so they headed out into the wilderness, following the column of cloud by day and the column of fire by night. One commentator I read had done a crunch on the numbers of people that left Egypt. Back in Sh’mot 12.37, we are told that 600,000 men left Egypt, not counting children. What we have to read in between the lines is that no women were counted either, nor were the elderly. The Hebrew rule of census taking was to count the men of military age, which would have been from around 20 to 50 years of age. If each of those men had a wife (some didn’t, and some had more than one), that moves the total to 1.2 million. If we give a low estimate of 2 children per family (most families would have more), the number is doubled to 2.4 million. And this number does not include the mixed crowd that left Egypt with them. Plus they had the livestock to take with them – sheep, goats, cattle. They also carried their personal possessions, now including what they had been given by the Egyptians, and some short-term food and water provisions. All told, this particular writer figured the crowd that left Egypt may have been roughly the size of the population of the state of Oregon, which was estimated to be nearly 3.8 million people in 2008. That’s a pretty good sized crowd to hit the road all at one time, not to mention they were traveling by foot and herding livestock.

The route that HaShem sent Egypt on was not the most direct route – known at the time as The Way of the Philistines – a north-south route which ran along the Mediterranean Sea, because HaShem knew the people were not yet ready for any military fighting, which was sure to happen if they passed through the land of the Philistines. Instead, he took them on a longer, “roundabout route,” through the desert by the Sea of Suf (יַם סוּף, yahm soof; yahm means “sea,” soof means “reeds, papyrus;” the “Sea of Reeds”). When the King James Bible was translated, the translators erroneously changed the term Reed to Red. This created some controversy as to the route of the Israelites. Most Bibles translate this verse (13.18) as HaShem taking them by “the way of the wilderness”. What many Bible scholars have apparently missed, overlooked, or ignored is that there was an east-west trade route from Egypt actually known as “The Way of the Wilderness”. This phrase referred to a distinct route, and was not just a general direction. The original plan was for Israel to move directly to inherit the Promised Land, the wandering about part did not happen until they failed to do that. Part of this route confusion came about some 1700 years ago, following the Council of Nicaea where Constantine and company opted to de-Judaize the church of her Jewish roots. Some time after this, Constantine and his mother visited the Holy Land, decided where important locations were in the life of the Messiah, and built churches over them. They also decided where Mt Sinai was, a location that is pretty improbable for the actual route of the Exodus. There certainly was no biblical or historical teaching that prompted Constantine to pick the area in the wilderness of the Sinai. But this was Constantine, the Emperor, so the Church followed suit. The Jews themselves had no firm tradition regarding the location of Mt. Sinai. The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that there is no Jewish tradition of the geographical location of Mt. Sinai; it seems that its exact location was obscure already in the time of the monarchy of Constantine, but the KJV translators went along with Constantine’s opinions, and a whole new route has been erroneously taught in much of the Church through the centuries. The Red Sea was not what Israel crossed. You’ll have to study this on a map to get a clearer understanding.

If you look at maps of ancient Egypt that have the routes marked, you will see the two major routes out of Egypt – one turns to the north, the other runs east. HaShem had taken Israel into a difficult location to begin this journey, so that they could cross the parted Sea and so that Pharaoh could see the Hand of G-d in action one more time. Then they would have hit a major route. The Constantine location of Mt Sinai is way down south on the Sinai Peninsula, and is thus an unlikely site.

Moshe also took the bones of Yosef (Joseph) along, for Yosef had commanded this a few centuries earlier. Yosef had been buried according to Egyptian custom, which means that he had been mummified. Yosef’s mummy traveled with Israel for a long time, for we do not read of the actual burial until sometime after Y’hoshua (Joshua) had had his many military victories entering the Promised Land. This is in Y’hoshua 24.32. Hebraic writing is not always necessary chronological, so this burial may or may not have been after the death of Y’hoshua, which is recorded in Y’hoshua 24.29.

I wrote a few parashiot back that at the time of Yosef, the Pharaoh in control was not actually Egyptian, but was of some sort of Arabic descendancy. There was a period of time when the actual Egyptian monarchs had been dethroned for a season by raiding bands of Arabs. At the time, there was not yet a “Jewish-Arabic” problem, and so Yosef would have been a “cousin” to the Pharaoh he stood before, and thus would have been received a little more kindly into the throne room, and later easily placed into power as the second highest leader over the land. It was Yosef who took the livestock and crops and land, and eventually the independence, of the actual Egyptian population in payment for the grain that had been stockpiled to sell back to them. During this time of the famine, the family of Yosef – Ya’akov (Jacob) and sons – had been prospering, while the native Egyptian was suffering and impoverished. The strife that exists between Egypt and Israel to this day is rooted in this shift of wealth, along with the events of the Exodus itself. This is a different struggle than exists between Jew and Arab, which is the Isaac and Ishmael struggle, but both struggles continue to this day. But it is all based upon the ancient battle between the forces of darkness versus the Light of the Living Uncreated G-d.

Sh’mot 15 is the song of Moshe. It begins with most translations saying something like “Moshe and the people of Israel sang this song….” The ArtScroll Commentary notes that the Hebrew for sang here is actually in the future tense, and literally means, “Moshe and the people of Israel will sing this song….” The Jewish Sages derived from this verse that “God will bring the dead back to life in Messianic times – and then they will sing God’s praises once again” (Rashi, quoted in ArtScroll Commentary). As Messianic believers, we know this occurs in Yokhanan’s (John’s) vision in Revelation 15.3, “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb….” The combined song of Moshe, the great prophet of the Tanakh, with the song of the “Greater Moshe,” Yeshua, the Lamb of G-d.

Sh’mot 15.2 is the only verse in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, found in each of the three separate sections – here (Torah); Yesha’yahu (Isaiah) 12.2 (Nevi’im/Prophets); and Tehillim (Psalms) 118.14 (Ketuvim/Writings): “Yah is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”

And so the great song will ring through the ages (Revelation 15.3-4): “Great and wonderful are the things you have done, ADONAI, God of heaven’s armies! Just and true are your ways, king of the nations! ADONAI, who will not fear and glorify your name because you alone are holy? All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous deeds have been revealed.” Sh’mot 15.18 is certainly a line to be included in that eternal praise: “ADONAI will reign forever and ever.”

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם – Sha’alu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Torah: Bo (Go), Sh’mot (Exodus) 10.1-13.16
Haftorah: Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 46.13-28
Suggested Messianic Writings reading: Romans 9.14-29

Shalom,

Difficult situations have arisen coming into this parashah. Pharaoh has repeatedly refused to let Israel go on a “worship journey,” and the worst of calamities are yet to come. Some may find it difficult to understand why ADONI has done such a thing as to make Pharaoh’s heart hard, so that His (ADONI’s) will can be accomplished. Scripture tells us in many locations that rulers rule only because ADONI places them into power. Free will is very much an aspect in an individual’s life, and ADONI will deal with that in His time, but when it comes to corporate and national leadership, free will that is against the will of the Creator will only last for X amount of time. Leaders and nations may get by with evil for decades, even centuries, but there comes a point when the Creator says, “Enough!” And that is what has happened in Egypt at this time.

It is not so much that ADONI turned Pharaoh’s heart into a heart of stone, but rather that ADONI empowered, or gave freedom to, Pharaoh to continue along the route his heart was leading him – that of slavery, cruelty and harsh treatment of the children of Abraham, resulting in destruction both to the nation he was leading and to himself. But the children of Israel had been crying out for a long time; ADONI had heard, and now ADONI began to act.

The plagues continued; even the servants of Pharaoh were pleading with him to relent. The next to last plague was the plague of darkness (10.21-23). This was a darkness that was so thick it could be felt. The Egyptians worshiped the sun, and this was a slam on their sun-god. I believe that there may be another aspect here. You may have experienced, or heard of the experience of others, of going to a particular land or city and feeling the heaviness of spiritual warfare. That is, there is a spiritual darkness that is brought on by evil, and only the light of the Creator can penetrate that darkness. This is precisely what Yeshua was referring to when He would say, “To him who has ears, let him hear.” Yeshua can only be truly understood with “spiritual” ears. Sha’ul’s thought was the same when he wrote that the preaching of the message of Yeshua was foolishness to those who do not understand. I would be more inclined therefore to think that this darkness brought upon Egypt was the removal of the omnipresence of ADONI for three days, so that the evil spirit realm was free to do what they do. The Hebrew word for darkness in 10.21 is חשׁך, kho-shek, one definition of which is “wickedness”. We can be certain that there was fire and lamps in Egypt, so there was something distinct about this darkness, where people could not see each other, and no one left home. This was a foreboding darkness. In a sense, this darkness is prevalent upon the earth today. There are those who walk in the Light of the knowledge of the Creator and can see (spiritual) truth, and there are those who, though seeing, are blind, without that Holy Light, and are essentially walking about in a (spiritual) fog.

Then came the death of all firstborn in the land of Egypt. From creation, the firstborn has had some sort of special rank in the kingdom of ADONI. The first usage of the word is found in B’resheet (Genesis) 4.4, where Hevel (Abel) brought an offering of the firstborn of his flock before ADONI. Earlier in our current book of Sh’mot (4.22), Moshe was instructed to inform Pharaoh that Israel was His (ADONI’s) firstborn. Because Pharaoh had mistreated the firstborn of the Creator, the firstborn of Egypt would have to be dealt with. And with this punishment was instituted the festival known as Pesakh, or Passover. In Sh’mot 13, Moshe is instructed to set aside for ADONI all of the firstborn of Israel, for they belong to ADONI; this was the original plan for the priesthood of Israel.

The lamb (or a goat was acceptable) slain at Pesakh was not slain to forgive the sins of the people; the blood was simply placed on the doorposts (מְּזוּזֹת, m’zuzot) or each home so that whoever was “covered” by this blood would escape death. To narrow it down, it was only the firstborn in each home who was to be either destroyed or spared; no one else would be touched. And by the way, this was not Mary’s little curled up cuddly lamb that was slain; the Passover lamb was to be a year old; by then probably the majority of his growth had been attained, he would be a little aggressive, and was to be the best yearling owned by the family.

We can get somewhat of a fuller picture of Yeshua, THE Passover Lamb, when we consider His blood covering that is available for us. By looking at Yesha’yahu (Isaiah) 53, we see what the Messiah underwent. “He was wounded for our transgressions (spiritual revolt); He was crushed for our iniquities (moral perversities).” You see, it is therefore not so much that Yeshua took on all of our individual sins, but rather that He carried the corporate burden upon Himself. Oswald Chambers points this out in My Utmost for His Highest (10/7): “The revealed truth of the Bible is not that [Yeshua the Messiah] took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch… It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. ‘He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…’ and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. [Yeshua the Messiah] reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the [execution tree].”

So Pesakh is observed every year, and through the celebration we are to understand the release from the captivity of slavery. That is what Yeshua did for us. Passover is not a celebration of salvation from sin; the sin offerings in Israel came at a later time. Yeshua, as we noted, did carry the burden of the sin nature of humanity but that is not what Pesakh is about. We can know Yeshua as THE Passover Lamb, because His blood covering on our “doorposts, מְּזוּזֹת, m’zuzot” is what brought us out of the abode of slavery, out of Egypt. And as the paradoxes of ADONI typically go, when we are released from being in slavery to evil bondages, we are set free to be a slave to His righteousness (Romans 6.18).

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם – Sha’alu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Torah: Va’era (And I appeared), Sh’mot (Exodus) 6.2-9.35
Haftorah: Yechezk’el (Ezekiel) 28.25-29.21
Suggested Messianic Writings reading: Revelation 16.1-21

Shalom,

“I appeared to Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya`akov as El Shaddai, although I did not make myself known to them by my name, Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh (YHVH) [Adonai].” These words open this parashah, but a reading without an understanding of the Hebrew might be confusing here. Other versions read something similar to, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.” Yet the Sacred Name was used by the Patriarchs (ADONAI or HaShem is seen in most Jewish-published Scripture as a substitution for the Sacred Name; other Bibles often use terms such as the LORD). Some examples: (Gen 12.7) “So he [Avraham] built an altar there to ADONAI, who had appeared to him.” When Avraham was stopped from sacrificing Yitz’khak, he then built an altar and sacrificed the lamb that had been caught in the bush, and “Avraham called the place ADONAI Yir’eh [ADONAI will see (to it), ADONAI provides].” (Gen 26.25) “There he [Yitz’khak] built an altar and called on the name of ADONAI.” The Sacred Name is used as early as Gen 2, at the creation of man. So why did ADONAI make the above statement to Moshe?

The key is found in the word known; “I did not make myself known to them….” Know in the Hebrew is ידע, yah-dah, “to know by experience; a personal, intimate knowledge.” This is the same term used after creation, when Adam yah-dah Eve, and they had children. In other words, the Patriarchs had an intimate acquaintance with the Creator as El Shaddai, the G-d who was their provider. Now He was about to reveal Himself to Israel, the Keil & Delitzsch Commentary notes, “as the absolute Being working with unbounded freedom in the performance of His promises.” The Ramban (a Jewish Sage) understood the name El Shaddai as describing G-d when He performs miracles that do not openly disrupt the normal course of nature. Never before had the Creator overruled His creation to aid mankind. Israel would soon see this happen. The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible has this description of know,  ידע, yah-dah:  “The pictograph for dalet [now written as ד] [here I must apologize, the pictographs would not copy through to the website] is a picture of a door. The ayin [now written as ע] is a picture of the eye. Through the eyes one experiences his world and learns from it. Combined these pictures mean ‘the door of the eye’. The eye is the window into man’s very being. Experience is gained through observation. Knowledge is achieved through these experiences.” Even if one does not have physical eyes, he has “spiritual eyes”. The Patriarchs had experienced the Creator as El Shaddai, who cared for them without “openly disrupting the normal course of nature;” now the nation of Israel would experience the Creator as ADONAI, who will show His power to care for them in a whole new dimension, He will indeed “disrupt the normal course of nature”.

Further, Rabbi Hertz, Chief Rabbi of Britain pre-WWII, wrote this in his Torah Commentary: “The emphasis is on the words I am ADONAY. They are not intended to inform Moses what God is called, but to impress upon him that the guarantee of the fulfillment of the Divine promises lay in the nature of the Being who had given the promises. Even as the phrase ‘I am Pharaoh’ (Gen 41.44) is merely an assertion of royal authority and power, in the same manner, ‘I am ADONAY’ means ‘I am He who has the power and the faithfulness to fulfil any promise vouchsafed by Me. I have promised Redemption, and I shall fulfil that promise; I will and can do it.’”

Next, the Creator told Moshe, “I have heard the groaning of the people of Isra’el, whom the Egyptians are keeping in slavery; and I have remembered My covenant.”  And then He promises four things, which are the primary themes of the Pesakh (Passover) Seder: 1) I will free you; 2) I will rescue you; 3) I will redeem you; and 4) I will take you as My people. Moshe went to the people of Israel and related these promises, but they wouldn’t listen to him because they were so discouraged. I think we can all relate to the Israelites, for when you are discouraged, a promise of “pie in the sky” means nothing until you have fork in hand and a slice in front of you. But the mercies and miracles of G-d did eventually come.

There is one little phrase in this parashah that reveals the sum of the Creator. In Sh’mot 9.14, ADONI relates to Pharaoh, through Moshe, these significant words: “I am without equal in all the earth”. In other words, “all that you hold dear or important, all that you worship, is nothing compared to My Glory, My Holiness, My Worthiness. It is Me whom you should worship and obey.” And those words are not just for Pharaoh, or just for world leaders – although if a few more world leaders would heed these words, the world would be in better shape. But for every human, the ultimate goal should be just as Sha’ul wrote in Philippians 3.7-8, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Messiah. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing the Messiah Yeshua as my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain the Messiah.”

The days are getting darker, and many spiritual forces in this world are fighting against the Creator and His people. Anti-Semitism grows stronger in the world as the prince of darkness fights to keep the Messiah from returning to His people. But his days are numbered, and Yeshua will one day appear to all. The prophet Isaiah wrote these words of the Creator (45.22-23), “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’” Sha’ul reiterates this point in Philippians 2.9-10, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Yeshua every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Yeshua the Messiah is ADONAI, to the glory of God the Father.” Many will bow and make this confession in fear, for their time is up; others will be singing and rejoicing. We have only this lifetime to make that choice. A wise Jewish Sage once gave this bit of advice: “Repent one day before your death” (Perkei Avot 2.15). Since we don’t know when that will be, perhaps we should live today as if tomorrow we die; better yet, live today as if today we die.

Today we are given the opportunity to know, ידע, yah-dah, Him through the Son, the Messiah, Yeshua: “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Timothy 1.12).

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a rousing cry, with a call from one of the ruling angels, and with God’s shofar; those who died united with the Messiah will be the first to rise; then we who are left still alive will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we will always be with the Lord. So encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4.16-18).

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם – Sha’alu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!