The Garden Within | BEHA'ALOTCHA בְּהַעֲלֹתְךָ - Portion 36

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Teachers of Torah have coined the Hebrew term PaRDeS (פרדס – a word literally meaning “garden” or "orchid") to refer to a four-tiered system of biblical interpretation, which reveals that each word, verse, and story in the Bible could be simultaneously understood on four different levels.  

Through this year-long course, we will explore the very words of God from these levels of the garden.  The name The Garden Within was chosen for this teaching series because it adopts the PaRDeS system of learning and because it delights in the spiritual pleasure through reaching new understandings and being pierced by lightning flashes of the intellect. The pleasure gained, of course, also refers to the nearness we feel to God when learning His Word.

One of the primary goals of The Garden Within is to demonstrate that the “stories” in the Torah are not merely one-time occurrences, temporal incidents undergone by specific individuals long ago. Rather these stories are archetypal in nature, reflecting or representing various physical and spiritual energies ever present in all aspects of reality and within each and every person.  That is, the Torah is deeply personal and speaks directly to each individual reader for where they are in their life.  So, come, take a walk with God in the Garden of the Torah!

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Transcript

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Good evening, everyone, Era of Tove. Welcome to the Garden Within. And as we pick back things back up, uh, the good news is, even though it was a two-week break, we really only missed one week uh in the cycle. We left off uh at portion 34, Bahmid Bar, the opening of Numbers, and then we had uh a festival uh in that midst, and so we really only missed portion 35, and so we're picking it up this week with portion 36. Uh we'll talk a little bit about uh what that name of that is and what it covers uh after the blessing before the study of Torah. So let's pray. Baruchata Adonai Elohenu medekoy namishanobisvita vesevanu le sok bidibre Torah. Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and has commanded us to be immersed into the words and the matters of Torah. Amen. All right, so where we find ourselves is in the portion known as Behaalutka, uh, which covers Numbers chapter 8, uh chapters 8 through chapter 12. Uh, this is the third reading, our section, our portion, parashat, uh, from the book of Numbers, uh, 36th reading from the Torah's 54 divisions. Uh Behalotka is a word that literally means when you set up in Hebrew. And it comes from the very first verse of the portion, which could literally be translated as when you set up Behalotka, the lamps, uh, there in Numbers chapter 8, verse 2. A reference to the fact that the priest had to set up and clean and light the lamps of the menorah in the tabernacle as it traveled with them through the wilderness. Uh, this portion uh covers quite a bit. You can see there, Numbers chapters eight through twelve. It is jam-packed, uh telling the story of the consecration of the Levites, the first Passover that was held in the wilderness, the silver trumpets, the cloud of glory, the departure from Sinai, some grumbling in the wilderness, the first Sanhedrin. So, like when you get into the New Testament, you get into the Gospels, and you have this Sanhedrin force, right, that uh faces our Messiah. Well, that Sanhedrin is not some extra-biblical thing. It has its roots right here in portion Behalotka. Uh, and so that we'll talk a little bit about that. And then, of course, it also has in this portion the punishment of uh Moses and Aaron's sister Miriam. So just uh a whole lot of things uh going on in this week's portion, uh, and uh we'll talk about some of them, uh, but not all of them, but some of them. Uh so let's get started by looking at this idea of a book within a book, uh, a separate book of the Torah. Uh if you were to ask a true Torah scholar and say, how many books of the Torah are there? Uh, you know, they might first say five, like you would, you know, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. But if you said, oh, but how many are there really? Uh, they would give you potentially at least two more answers, and one of them would be seven. Uh, and that would be based upon what we're going to talk about right now. Uh, so in the Torah portion of Behalotka, we find a phenomenon that occurs nowhere else in the Bible. And so, again, when we look in the Sermon on the Mount, in Jesus' words, when he says, not one jot or not one tittle will pass away until heaven and earth pass away, uh, he's talking about these extra kind of markings in a Torah scroll. Sometimes a big letter, sometimes a tiny letter, sometimes the pagination on the page. This page of the Torah scroll has three columns, this one has two, sometimes uh, you know, it's a wavy pattern with lots of spacing between, sometimes it's more cramped. All of those things are very intentional and they're carried on or they're copied like that from Torah scroll to Torah scroll. And so, in many ways, it's not just the black letters on the page, but it's kind of illustrated. Uh, it has its own kind of pictures, if you will. Uh, and so in the garden within, I've tried to show you a time or two some of those as they appear in the text. And so this week is one of those examples. So if you have a Bible with you, you may want to turn to Numbers chapter 10 and look at verses 35 through 36. Um, you know, and it's on your handout, but also on the screen for you. Uh, that's what it looks like in a Hebrew Bible. And even if you don't read Hebrew, uh, I've marked them for you, but you can kind of see it's bracketed. Um, but it's not just bracketed with brackets, it's bracketed with the Hebrew letter nun in U-in, kind of like our Hebrew letter in. It makes the N sound and all of that, but it's inverted or upside down. So it has uh brackets with an upside down letter nun. Uh, and so Numbers 10, 35 through 36 is bracketed that way, and no other set of verses has this kind of bracketing, are these kind of inverted nuns and so forth. So naturally, uh this caused a lot of you know discussion. Uh, this is a jot in the text. And so, what is this about? What is this pointing to? What is this, you know, giving us deeper insight into? Now, the verses read, and and it's often called, these two verses are often called the song of the ark. Um, now, as a side note, and man, it took everything in me, including hitting the delete button, uh, not to go on the excursus of this is also quoted in Psalm 68. So, Psalm 68 is going to quote this portion, and then Psalm 68 is heavily sung in the traditional Easter Vigil liturgy. And so there was a whole bunch of why this would be part of the resurrection and the Easter Vigil. Um, but uh that just that took that would take us too far afield off the Torah. So um that's in that's in the bus parking lot for us at a different time. All right. It'll come out at some point in my teaching. But nonetheless, this is often called the Song of the Ark. Okay, and it reads, and when the Ark would journey, you know, remember the tabernacles, the mobile worship center. So as the people moved through the wilderness, they had very specific instructions on how to take apart the ark and pack it up for travel and then put it back together. So when that would happen, the ark would go with them. So when the ark would journey, Moses said, Arise, God, and let your enemies be scattered. Just from um my days when we did the traditional Easter Vigil liturgy, I can hear that being chanted now uh at midnight. At midnight, you're outside the church doors, and the church doors are locked, and you come with a big cross and you beat the door, and you say, Arise, O God, let your enemies be scattered, and you start beating the door to be let in. Uh but arise, God, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those that hate you flee from before you. And when it, meaning the ark rested, when it came to their new location and it was everything was set up, he would say, Rest peacefully, God, among the myriad thousands of Israel. So that's what's bracketed in a very unique fashion. And again, not just between two letter nuns and two large letter nuns, but two inverted large letter nuns. Okay. Now, in the synagogue liturgy, the first verse is recited around the world whenever the ark is opened and the Torah is removed for public reading. So much like in our worship services, we have uh the public reading of scripture is an integral part of our worship service. It's always got a key feature of our worship service. Uh, in synagogues, when that happens, they will go to what's called the ark that contains the scroll, and they will take it out and unroll it to that day's passage. Well, when they go to the ark to take out the Torah scroll, this first verse here, verse 35, is sung. Uh, the second verse is recited whenever the Torah is returned to the Ark after it has been read in the public worship service. Rashi, quoting the Talmud, uh specifically Shabbat 115b, uh, first explains that these two verses are set apart because they're out of chronological order. Uh he says that it's the text is flowing and this is kind of like uh parenthetical information, and so it's kind of, oh yeah, and it's not supposed to kind of be there, but it's kind of throwing it in. Uh, but this would not seem to be a reason enough since Rashi elsewhere explains that events recorded in the Torah are often out of sequential order. So why then, according to the Talmud, do the nuns appear in this specific case? And so Rashi grants that, yeah, that's probably not really a good reason. And so he offers a second opinion. He proposes that the Torah here is separating two sets of sins that occurred in the desert in the wilderness, both of which are recorded in this portion. So, like one before this and one after this. So kind of setting them apart. Uh and maybe, maybe we'll come back to that as a possibility. But the Talmud offers a third possibility that Rashi doesn't mention, and that is these two verses are set off because they are actually a completely separate book. And that's where I said if you were to approach a Torah scholar, they would say there are seven books in the Torah, because they would count these two verses as their own book. And so, in light of this proposal, the five books of Moses would become seven, uh, as the creation of this two-verse book splits the book of Numbers into three separate books. And as we have noted repeatedly when we are in the garden, right, when we're using the parday system, Peshat, Rhmez, Daratch, Sod, each word, each verse, each story, each connection, each mitzvah can simultaneously be understood on multiple levels. And this is especially true when the phenomenon under discussion occurs only once in the Torah, like these inverted nuns. Now, the Sloner Arebi in his Netivot Shalom, Netivot Shalom is uh one of my favorite commentaries of the Torah. It's a classic, classic, deep mystical commentary on the Torah by the Sloner Rebbe, and he gives an insight that he received from an individual known as the Magid of Kotznich, who suggests that the ark symbolizes the biblical scholar. For both are external vessels that contain the Bible inside of them, where the ark holds the word of God, holds the Torah scroll, the word of God, and so forth, the Bible scholar, the one who devotes his life to learning the scriptures and inwardly digesting the word of God, likewise has the word of God on the inside. Indeed, sometimes Bible scholars are referred to within the Torah tradition as walking scrolls, uh, living words, the living words of God. Because the Bible has been so wholly integrated into their being, it's like when you see them, you're like, look, there goes the Bible, there goes the Torah, there goes the Word of God, walking in our midst. And the Hebrew word for journey, which in Hebrew is nesia, uh used in this set of verses, shares the same root uh for the Hebrew word for test, which is nision, thus implying that anytime the ark goes on a journey, right, when the ark gets to moving, as the verse describes, or anytime a student of the scriptures embarks upon a journey in life, or a journey in life embarks upon the student, right, whether you wanted to go on it or not, challenges and tests will inevitably arise. That is what the journey is all about. And so the Slona Merebi explains that this paradigm applies to anyone who is wanting to journey from a lower spiritual level to a higher one. And so this is where we can begin to apply the text to our own lives. If your desire is, well, I would like to know more about God, I would like to grow closer in my relationship with God, I would like to know more about the word of God, I would like to be more passionate about the things of God, I would like to have a more refined level of spiritual maturity and spiritual consciousness, uh, then this text is speaking to you, because one of the vital goals of learning the word of God and living it out in practice uh just this, right? That we are on the move and that we are learning and growing as we go. And so in the first verse, Moses utters the prayer that God uh come to the aid of all of those longing to elevate themselves and protect them from their enemies, right? So you're the ark. If you're desiring this spiritual refinement, if you're desiring this spiritual growth by God's grace, but you're desiring the spiritual growth, you're the ark, right? Because you want to contain the words of God, right? That's what the ark did. It contained the things of God, including the very words of God. It contained the tablets from Sinai in it, right? You want to contain the word of God in you. And so Moses is praying that your enemies would be scattered, that those who wish you harm, that they would be scattered, that they could not uh achieve their goal, uh, that all the forces in the world uh trying to obstruct you would be um met with um failure. Uh and instead there would be something positive and constructive and some kind of spiritual advancement in this. And within this rubric, God's enemies become our enemies, and vice versa. And as we become closely identified with God, our greatest desire is to do God's work in this world, and for this very reason we have been chosen by him. And the Chasidud point out that the first part of the verse in Psalm 34, verse 15, it says, Turn from evil and do good. That this expresses the desire for spiritual advancement. And in the second verse of this section of verse 36, Moses utters a request that God rest peacefully among his people. Okay, that as God would come and dwell in us, right, that we become this ark and he dwell in us, that he would rest peacefully among us. And the second half of Psalm 34, verse 15, turn from evil and do good reflects this aspiration. In truth, only once God helps us defeat his and our enemies can our mission of doing good truly begin. The culminating point of a human being's service to God is to draw near to our Lord and to draw near to his love and to create a vessel, an ark, so that he can dwell within us in this world. Even more significantly, this culminating moment is achieved when we allow him to dwell within each and every one of us. And according to the Slana Rebbe, the ideas presented in these two verses form the very basis for serving God. And he says this is why they are separated from the rest of the Torah to stress their crucial importance. So if you want to know what it is to serve God and to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, and your mind with everything you've got, the Slonor Merebi says the key to that, to understanding that and to doing that are these two verses. And that's why they've been marked out so that we can clearly identify their importance. It's as if God took our Bible for us and highlighted it for us. Like, you know, you may have a study Bible. It's God kind of already gave us the original study Bible. It has his notes, it has his jots and his tittles. And so he has marked these two verses as something extra special. But the question remains, though, as to why the letter nun was chosen to set these verses apart. Why not the letter Olaf? Why not the letter bait? I mean, why the letter nun? And of course, we'll get to then why is it inverted. But why the letter nun? Among many concepts represented by the letter nun, one of the main ideas associated with the letter nun from a mystical perspective is the concept of falling. That's because the verb to fall, no fell, uh, begins with the letter nun. And if you look in your Bibles to Psalm 145, maybe your English Bible will note this for you. It almost always notes it for you in Psalm 119. Uh, but it probably will note it for you in Psalm 145 as well. Psalm 145 is what's known as an acrostic, meaning in Psalm 145, each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. So again, from our perspective, and you can't get it in English, so it isn't gonna go A, B, C, D for you. Unfortunately, it just can't translate that nicely. Um but uh it would be like verse 1 would begin with an A, verse 2 would begin with a B, verse 3 would begin with a C, verse 4 would begin with a D, right? Verse 5 would begin with an E, and so forth. That's called an acrostic poem. Uh Psalm 119 does this in sections, I think, of eight verses, right? The first eight verses all begin with the letter aleph, the next set of eight verses all begin with the letter bait, the next set of eight verses begin with the letter gimel. And maybe your Bible in Psalm 119 will even have that as a heading, like Olaf, bait, gimel. That's what it's doing. It's letting you know it's in an acrostic poem. But in Psalm 145, when David wrote this acrostic poem, following the Hebrew alphabet, he did not include the letter Nun. He skipped it. And of course, it's not because David didn't know his alphabet, it's not because there was some typographical error, it's not because some verse disappeared in the history of time, and we're gonna find some manuscript hidden in a cave in the desert of Israel that has the let the verse that begins with the letter none. And no, he leaves it absent on purpose because he doesn't even want to allude to any future downfalls or hardships for God's people that they might suffer. Nonetheless, aware of such potential downfalls, the very next verse in this states that God supports all of those who have fallen. And so the verse provides crucial encouragement for all of those who experience life's inevitable setbacks. David is referred to in the Talmud as the fallen one, a term that literally denotes a stillbirth or a miscarriage. And this is because, according to Jewish tradition in the Midrash, David's soul was actually not granted any time in this world. He was supposed to be a stillbirth, he was supposed to miscarry. But according to the tradition, Adam prophetically sees this, and he witnesses David's stillbirth, and so he volunteers to give David 70 of his 1,000 years, which is why Adam lives 930 years, according to the Torah. He gave David 70 of his years. And despite Adam's generosity, David experienced each moment of his life as if he was in a constant state of existential freefall, although he also simultaneously experienced God's constant support. The inverted nuns, this is why they're inverted, therefore prophetically allude to the many trials and tribulations facing God's people in their attempt to fulfill God's will in this world. In explaining the purpose of the inverted nuns, Rashi actually alludes to this as the two nuns separate two sets of sins that occurred in the wilderness. The people in the desert, the wilderness, they fell, none, right, because the challenge either overwhelmed them, causing them to experience a lapse in judgment, or because they followed their more baser desires. And Moses' brief two-verse prayer reverberates throughout the generations, for he addresses both each and every for each and every individual as well as for the nation, encouraging them and encouraging you to stay the course with the knowledge that no truly worthwhile achievement is ever attained without overcoming some kind of opposition. In other words, there is always going to be descent before there is ascent. Indeed, despite all that God's people have been through in history, God has never let any of his people fall completely. And time after time he has saved his people and he has scattered their enemies. And ironically, within a very short time of these verses, Moses would need this prayer answered for himself. And the narrative following these two verses, the Torah recounts how the people complained about the manna, that heavenly bread, and the lack of meat. In a moment of obvious discouragement and futility, Moses cries out to God, in Numbers 11, verses 14 and 15, I alone cannot carry all these people, for it is too heavy for me. And if this is how you deal with me, then kill me now. Moses' request that God kill him is startling when compared with the links to which he went to to defend the people after the sin of the golden calf. There he even exclaimed that God could wipe him out of the book of life if he was not going to forgive the people. But here, though, Moses seems to have suffered a severe fall. However, God recognized Moses' plight. He legitimized his complaint, his lament. So again, we have permission to have lament to our God. And he appoints, as we're going to be reading, 70 elders to assist him. So God hears Moses' lament, and he hears Moses is overwhelmed, and he hears Moses is burdened to the point of exasperation. And his response to Moses almost falling is he gives Moses 70 elders to assist him. And the elders then become prophets as Moses, and they have that spirit conferred upon them. And that's where we will now take a look with the prophecy of Eldad and Medad. So Numbers chapter 11, verse 27 says, So a young man ran and told Moses and said, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. All right, so here you have biblical tattletaling, right? So these two individuals, Eldad and Medad, we're gonna have a couple of different explanations as to how these two individuals are gifted with this prophecy and who they are and their personalities. But they begin to speak on the level of Moses, right? They begin to exude the kind of authority that they had only seen in Moses. And a particular individual, we'll find out a little more about who he is in a moment, doesn't like this. And so he runs and he tries to tell them then to Moses, basically saying, look what they're doing, assuming Moses is also going to be upset by it and therefore going to stop them. But we'll see uh what happens with that. So first I kind of want to look at this in light of the New Testament and the gift of the Holy Spirit, because in many ways, prophecy is not just foretelling the future. Prophecy can include that. It doesn't have to include that. In fact, much of the time it does not include that, right? Limiting it to that is not what biblical prophecy is. Prophecy, biblically speaking, when you really do the word study and the word search and you do all of all of the homework on it through the scriptures, you'll find that those who prophesy do so when they're filled with what's called Ruach Hachodesh, the Spirit, the Holy One, or they're filled with the Holy Spirit. That's what's meaning, that's really what's meant by prophecy. So this person runs to Moses and says, Someone has been filled with the Holy Spirit, right? And they're testifying, right? They're giving testimony, right? And we we don't we don't support that, right? Right, according to this one person. Um and so I want to look at that and and look at how this finds a little bit of uh its connection into uh Pentecost and uh the New Testament, and then also look at a little bit of who it who are Eldad and Medad, what tradition says about them, and even uh looking in the midrash, what did they really prophesy about? What got this guy so upset? Like uh the text itself in Numbers doesn't give us that, but the oral tradition tells us some of what they said. So what got him so upset? Like, what was he saying, right? So in Acts chapter 2, the believers of Messiah, they were gathered together in the temple in Jerusalem when the Ruachodesh, right? The Holy Spirit descended upon them with a sound like rushing wind. All right, so from a biblical perspective, when it says they were um the Holy Spirit descended upon them, biblically speaking, they were given, they were endowed with the gift of prophecy. Again, not meaning they could see the future. Got to get that definition out. Prophecy doesn't mean necessarily foretelling. More than anything, it means the ability to forth tell, to forthell, to be able to understand the scriptures, to understand the word of God, to understand the will of God and the ways of God, to understand that, and also to understand what's happening all around you and to see how these two things are happening together, and then proclaim the truth of all of that to the people, to forthell that. That is biblical prophecy. Okay, so in Acts 2, this happens. The scene is similar to the endowment of the Spirit in Numbers chapter 11. Moses summons seventy elders and gathers them around the tent of meeting inside the tabernacle courts. The Lord descends upon them in the form of a cloud of glory in Numbers 11, verse 24. And he took of the Spirit who was upon Moses and placed the Spirit upon the seventy elders. And the elders then began to prophesy, signifying their sudden kind of Moses-like pneumatic endowment. Henceforth the men of the Sanhedrin could be said to sit in the seat of Moses. That is, they took a share of his spirit and his authority. And so, Sanhedrin. When you're reading in the New Testament, you come across the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin are the 70 leading religious authorities that make the main decisions. Where did that come from? Right here in this week's portion, these 70 men are the original Sanhedrin, right? And then they just kept this court. This is the court. They just kept re-electing officials when one would die off or retire or no longer be able to serve. They just filled the office. And this Sanhedrin continued to function. Uh, and it continued if it would periodically be suspended due to exile or whatever, when the they came back into the land, it was revitalized. Um, but this is the origin of the Sanhedrin. And so this original Sanhedrin, this original 70 in Numbers 11, receives the same spirit that Moses has. Okay. And the terminology for that is they can sit in the seat of Moses. Because they have the same, that means the same authority. The word for seat in Greek and Hebrew uh means authority. Uh even in uh modern Catholicism, if the Pope is ever speaks and he declares I'm speaking ex a cathedra, which means Latin, ex out, exit, a cathedra, seat, out of the seat, that's when he means I am speaking with infallibility, because I'm speaking from my authority chair. Okay? So the seat has authority. And this is behind what you will read later in the Gospels, like in Matthew 23. The scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus said, seat themselves in the chair or the seat of Moses. Therefore, all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say things and do not do them. So it's interesting what Jesus is saying here. He's granting that they actually have this authority. But he's saying, Do what they say, don't do what they do. Right. And maybe you you've you've probably heard that from a parent or two at one time or another, right? Uh, whenever you, you know, you know, I remember um first time I went golfing with my dad as a wee young lad, uh, and heard some very unflattering words from my dad's mouth, right? And was shocked, right? And I was like, uh, we don't say that. I'm telling mom or whatever, and you would get mad at me or something. It was like, you know, you told me never to say those words. And he was like, what do you think he said? Do what I tell you, do what I say, not what I do, right? And that's what Jesus is saying. He's not denying they don't have the authority that they don't have this or that they don't understand the scriptures, but he's saying, Oh, but they're big fat hypocrites. So, like, make sure you distinguish between the two. Make sure you fully understand the difference between what they're saying correctly from the word of God and then what they're actually doing with their lives and their choices and their corruption and so forth. Make sure you got that down. Um, but that's where this idea of the seat of Moses is. Um, the seventy elders in the tabernacle briefly demonstrated their new spiritual prowess by means of prophesying. But the Torah does go on to say, interestingly enough, for this group, he didn't do it again. Uh Moses was still the premier prophet in their midst. Now, Eldad and Medad, two members of the newly formed Sanhedrin, they did not come to the tent of meeting when they were summoned. And we'll talk about some of the different interpretations through the ages about this. The Torah doesn't tell us why, which is why there's been some different interpretations through the ages. One ancient commentary on the book of Numbers suggests that they were too humble, they were too bashful to attend. And so you have what's in the sifre uh on the commentary of Behelotka. It says, Rabbi Shimon says, the two men, uh Eldad and Medad, remained in the camp, because when they saw Moses choosing the elders, they said, We are not worthy of this high position. So they went and they hid themselves and said, God, you humbled yourselves, so I will make you greater than all of them. Now, for whatever reason, and we'll talk about a couple of more in a minute, Eldad and Medad were still in the camp of Israel when the Lord descended in the cloud and took the spirit that was upon Moses and placed the same spirit upon the elders. As the elders in the tabernacle began to prophesy, Eldad and Medad prophesied as well, even though they had not come into the tabernacle. Whereas the elders in the tabernacle prophesied only briefly, Eldad and Medad continued to prophesy. To Joshua it seemed like a subversion of Moses' authority. And so he says in Numbers 11, verse 29. Oh, I didn't put it in there. Moses, my Lord, restrained them because he was worried that Moses might be usurped, and he wanted to protect Moses and Moses' position. But Moses reasoned that if God was speaking through Eldad and Medad, that was God's business. And so Moses' response to Joshua, Numbers 11, verse 29, would that all the Lord's people were prophets, right? Would all the Lord's people were like this? That the Lord would put his spirit upon, within, descend upon them. And here again, Moses foreshadows the Messiah, the first Redeemer, foreshadowing the ultimate Redeemer. Jesus desired to share his authority and his spiritual gifting with his followers, and he did so by bestowing upon them his spirit and the authority of his name at Pentecost. And after his ascension, the apostles prophesied and worked many miracles in the name of Jesus and in the power of Jesus' Spirit. According to Peter, this happened as a partial fulfillment of Joel chapter 2, which says, And it shall be in the last days, God says, That I will pour forth of my spirit on all mankind, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, even on my bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. Apparently, Eldad and Medad prophesied for a long duration, longer than the other elders of the Sanhedrin. And what was the substance of their prophecy? Well, the Targum tells us, the Targum Yonatan creates the oracle for them that ultimately has them prophesying regarding the battle of Gog and Magog at the end of days. The oracle that they had begins with matters immediately relevant to the context of Numbers 11, but they quickly expand to speak of the final days when the Messiah will come and make war at Gog and Magog. The imagery is borrowed from Ezekiel 38 and 39. So in the Targum, right, those Aramaic paraphrases, this is what it records as Eldad and Medad saying. So again, for a Targum would be in the first century, you're in the Galilee, you're hanging out with Jesus and the apostles, and you decide to go to synagogue with them, and Numbers chapter 11 is read for you. It's read for you in Hebrew, and you're like, dang, I only speak Aramaic. I don't, my Hebrew is really bad. And Jesus leans over and it's like, don't worry, guys gonna get up in a minute, and he's gonna tell you what all it means in Aramaic. And you're like, oh, that's great, that's great. So you just kind of chill a little bit. They read the Torah scroll in Hebrew, then a person gets up, and then they're gonna tell you what it Numbers 11 said in your language. All right, but it's not a translation, right? It's a paraphrase slash commentary that was alive and well even in the first centuries BC, but certainly alive and well in the Galilee in the times of Jesus and the apostles. And Numbers 11.26. See how short it is in your Bible? I'm about to read you Numbers 11.26 and the Targum. Buckle up, it didn't fit on one screen. Alright. Eldad prophesied, saying this Moses shall depart from this world. And Joshua, son of none, who served Moses, will rise after him. So they're giving a prophecy. Moses is gonna die soon. Right? That's kind of correct. They're getting close to Moses' death here. Deuteronomy is right around the corner. And they're then they prophesy, Joshua's gonna succeed him. Okay? And he will lead the people of Israel, and he will bring them into the land of Canaanite, the Canaanites, and conquer it for them. In other words, Moses isn't going to go to the promise. They're prophesying. Moses is going to die without entering the promised land. But Joshua is going to take over, and Joshua's going to conquer the land and bring us into it. That was what Eldad prophesied. Medad then prophesied, quote, Behold, the quail is rising from the sea and covering the entire camp of Israel, and it shall be a stumbling block for the people. Both of them then prophesied together, quote, Behold, a king will arise in the land of Magog, right? So now they're going way into the future. So Medad then said, People are complaining of this manna from heaven. They're going to eventually say, We want meat, and God's going to shove them so much meat, they're going to puke, and it's going to be this whole issue, and they're going to grumble and blah, blah, blah, right? And then they prophesy together about the ultimate end of days. A king will arise from the land of Magog at the end of days, and he will gather crowned kings and princes clad in armor, and all the nations will obey him, and he will make war against the land of Israel and against their people. But the Lord who comes to his people in their time of trouble will kill them all by burning their souls with flames from beneath his throne of glory. There will be many corpses that fall in the hills of the land of Israel, and all the beasts of the forest and the birds of the skies will come and eat their corpses. This is all Ezekiel 38 and 39 imagery, by the way, which then finds its imagery into the book of Revelation. Therefore all the dead will be revived and resurrected, and they will delight in that which has been prepared for them from before the foundation of the world, and they will receive their reward. So that is the content, apparently, according to the Targum of the prophecy of Eldad and Medad, that got that one individual really upset enough to say, Moses, you gotta shut him down. He's talking crazy. He's saying you're gonna die. He's saying you're not gonna get into the promised land, right? He's saying we're gonna have a quail, it's gonna be a stumbling block. Like, what does that even mean, right? And then he's talking this end times where some king is gonna have a coalition of nations and is going to take make war against your people, and at first will succeed, but you you will resurrect your people in the end and you will prove victorious. That is their prophecy, at least according to the target. Quite a lengthy verse, is it not, right? Prophecy past, present, and future. So let's keep talking about El Dad and Me Dad and why they couldn't why they kind of hung back, right? Because the text itself doesn't tell us, so that became fodder. For all of the tradition throughout the ages. So, in response to Moses' request not to bear the burden of the people by himself, that it was too much, right? God tells them, Hey, I hear you. Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for being, you know, brave enough to lament and voice that. And God says, You know what? Let's get you some help. Let's get you 70 elders. Since 70 does not divide evenly by 12, an equal number of elders from each tribe could not be appointed. In order to spare Moses the unpleasantness of slighting any of the tribes, I can't imagine that would have happened, God instructed him to choose 72 elders, six from each tribe, and then cast a lot to determine which two would not be included in the final count. When the two elders, again, this is the Midrash's story of it, Eldad and Medad, voluntarily, in their humility, again, this idea that they're very humble, opted out and said, No need to have the lottery, we will step out. And because of that, God's spirit rested upon them and they began to prophesy. Joshua then, of course, pleads with Moses to stop them. But again, Moses responds with, Are you zealous for my sake? Would it be that all the people of God could be prophets if God would place his spirit on them? And although the Talmud in Sanhedrin 17a presents a number of different versions of Eldad and Medad's prophecy, I gave you one from the Targum. There are others in the Talmud. Rashi chooses to cite the tradition that they prophesied Moses' death in the desert and Joshua's leading them into the promised land, much like the Targum does. This tradition, which sheds light both on Joshua and Moses' reaction, highlights Joshua's humility and extraordinary love for his mentor and Moses' lack of concern for his own fate. Indeed, as the Torah reports, Moses' instinctive reaction was selfless. Would that all the people were close enough to God to merit his spirit resting upon them? If that was the content of the prophecy, it doesn't seem to have rattled Moses. Moses' words allude to an even deeper principle at work. The assertion that whatever a great person says ultimately comes to fruition on some level. Again, the idea that words matter, that words create. And oh, if we would just learn that lesson and learn it well. Words matter, words create. And so if you are living in a heaven, it's largely because you choose to create a heaven with your words, a heaven on earth. And if your life happens to be just kind of miserable and a living hell on earth, it's probably because you fill it with a bunch of just junk talk, right? And so whatever a person says ultimately comes to fruition on some level. Classic example of this is Rachel's tragic death in childbirth as a result of Jacob's hasty vow to Laban that whoever was found guilty of stealing Laban's idols should die and be put to death. He didn't know that it was his own wife that did that. And although the idols were not discovered, and Jacob did not know that Rachel had in fact stolen them, his words, once spoken, brought that into her fate. Moses was also swept away by emotion when he pleaded with God to forgive the people after the sin of the golden calf. In Exodus 32, he says, If you would forgive their sin, but if not, erase me from your book that you've written. And God did in fact forgive the people, but he also fulfilled Moses' words on some level. Moses' name appears in every single Torah portion from his birth in the book of Exodus until his death in Deuteronomy, except for one portion, the portion Tetzeveh, the portion preceding the sin of the golden calf. He is referred to in that portion, but only by the pronoun you. And it is explained by the sages that that is a darash, where God has symbolically erased Moses' name from that portion of the book. And just as utterances of a great person can have negative repercussions, they can also have positive ones as well. When Moses spontaneously prayed that all God's people should be prophets, he was basing this on the hope that each and every person's innate potential to experience holiness, to experience divine revelation, to experience a connection to God on some level that he was hoping and praying that that would become a reality. And although the prophetic era, as we would kind of define it, officially ended with the Second Temple period and with our Messiah, even today individuals can have insights and experiences, divine inspiration, what we would call Ruachha Chodesh. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lagazato, also known as the Ramkol, he explains in his very classic book called Derechashem. It's one of my most favorite books when I was studying in Israel in Yeshiva. This is a first-year Yeshiva textbook. It's called Dere Hashem. So impactful for me. In this particular book, Derech Hashem, it says that although God may choose to speak with a certain individual directly or help a certain individual reach an elevated level of consciousness in order to communicate a particular message, prophecy should be defined more broadly than that. The Ram Call teaches that for the most part, the prophetic experience does not necessarily entail a direct and specific message transmitted by God to an individual. In other words, it's not, I'm predicting the future, it's not last night God woke me up and told me this. Rather, prophecy in its more general biblical manifestation is just a level of consciousness in which an individual comes close to God and can sense God's presence in their life that you have entered into because of your prayer. And of course, all of this is by God's grace and by God's gifting and through his spirit. That's without saying. But it means through your devotion and through your connection to God, through your connection to his scripture, through your prayer, you have had this interaction with God in the sense that you have experienced him in a very unique way. And because of that, you now have an understanding you did not have before. You now have an insight that you did not have before. You now have an awareness that you did not have before. It doesn't mean it was audible. It doesn't mean it was written on a wall. It doesn't mean that someone spoke it out loud. It just means you now have it and you didn't have it before. In this sense, to have prophetic experience is simply to attain a higher level of spiritual maturity, a level of greater spiritual consciousness, where you become intensely aware of God's unequivocal presence in your life. The more you realize God is always present in your life, always with you, always active, always interactive, always at work, the more you're truly aware of that and are interacting with that, like then the more you're going to be elevating on that and entering into this state that the Ram Kal would call Ruachodesh. And although the Talmud establishes that there were only 48 male prophets and seven female prophetesses, it goes on to state that this accounting is only those prophets and prophetesses whose words and actions were deemed worthy of being preserved by name in the Hebrew Bible. But uh it goes on to say, however, there were more than a million such prophets and prophetesses in the biblical period. These prophets were people who strove with their entire being to come near to God by learning what was handed down to them from those who had gone before them and to engage with God's word. One tradition claims that when the Messiah arrives, that that time will be accompanied by a renewal of prophecy. And this is symbolized by Elijah the prophet returning to herald the coming of Messiah. At a certain point, prophecy becomes the natural state for all humanity. And it is at this time that Moses' words will be most fully actualized in its true fashion, and what he said will come true. But for us, let us always take serious the idea. Like, and I I've talked about it before, like, you know, when we sp we speak words over our children, or we speak words to our spouse, or we speak words to our fellow church members, or to our pastor, or whatever, like um choose them carefully. And you know, I was even talking today with someone about this, like how you can be living in heaven or hell. Two people could be how two people could experience the same event and one think it's just they're in hell, and the other think this is the greatest thing ever, and you're like, you know, one's looking at the other like, what are you smoking, man? Like, you know, how could you think this was great or whatever? And an example of this would be, let's say you went to go to a wedding, you know, you you drove up to Traverse City for the weekend, it's the wedding of your college roommate or whatever. And you you did the wedding, you did the reception, you did all those things, and you get in the car with, you know, your spouse, maybe your family, or who, you know, maybe some people you carpooled with or whatever, and you shut the door. What's your conversation like? Is your conversation, and she was a beautiful bride. I'm so happy for her. And Tim, I've never seen Tim look that, I've never seen Tim cry before, or I've never seen Tim look hand. I've never seen him in a suit, you know, he looked great, or or the music was wonderful, or you know, wasn't the weather nice? It sure was good the rain didn't like you could talk about that, and the car next to you could be like, man, did she not did she not look like I mean, did she have to pick that dress? Like she looked, I mean, like, she was like really popping out of that thing, right? You know, I think she could gain some weight. Like, like two experiences, right? Right? Who do you think has the happier life? Who do you think's living in a heaven on earth? And who do you think's living in a hell on earth? Who do you think goes through life as a victim and everyone's against me, everyone hates me, and no one likes me, no one wants to be around me, and everyone's always against me, blah, blah, blah, right? Life's miserable and all that. And the other people are like, oh, you know, you know, well, yeah, it didn't, it didn't work out the way I thought, but you know, and then, right? You it's the same reality. We're living in the same reality, but yet we're not living in the same reality because our words do matter. And you see that time and time again in the scriptures, over and over and over again. You do, in many ways, create the world you live in. That's a very fundamental spiritual truth. And it will affect your soul because your soul lives in your body, right? And if you live in hell, then your soul is captive. And it's gonna be in anguish, and it's gonna be crying out, and it's gonna be scratching, and it's gonna be doing anything it can to get your attention, right? Instead of thriving, instead of being what it's supposed to be. So always, you know, me included, me included, right? All of us. Me oh. Second Passover. Fascinating thing coming on this week's uh portion that has, I think, an interesting connection to the Gospels that we should think about. We should think about two individuals whenever we are reading Numbers chapter nine, and we should think about two individuals from the gospels and the life of our Messiah. So Numbers chapter 9, verse 6 says, but there were some men who were unclean because of the dead person, right? Unclean, not a moral judgment, doesn't mean they did anything wrong, doesn't mean they were sinful, right? If you go to work and you work outside and you got dirt on you and you have to come home and take a shower, you didn't sin by getting dirty, you just got dirty and you need to take a shower. Okay, so they became spiritually unclean because they encountered a corpse, but because of that, they could not observe Passover on that day. And so they came before Moses and Aaron on that day. They kind of thought, well, you know, this doesn't seem very fair. Like we understand, we understand the rule, right? We understand the reasoning we've talked about a couple of portions ago. One of the reasons death is unclean and so forth is because it it it it causes us that seed of doubt and and and so forth. They weren't bucking like saying this is a junk law and God doesn't make any sense and do away with it. They were just kind of saying, hey, we'd we'd kind of like to be part of Passover, so like, there's something we can do about this, right? And again, this is a case where you you can learn that it's it's not wrong to come to God with an issue, right? And that God, God listens. So Numbers chapter 9 tells the story of the very first Passover that's celebrated out in the wilderness. Comes time to keep the first anniversary of the Passover. Several men come to Moses and they say, you know, hey, uh, though we are unclean because of the dead person, why are we restrained from presenting the offering of the Lord at its appointed time among the sons of Israel? Like, we would like to do this. Like, you know, they're asking Moses, can we do it? Is there some way we can do this? Again, the Torah forbids anyone in a state of ritual impurity from eating of the sacrifices. In the apostolic times, in the New Testament times, members of the priesthood refused to enter Pontius Pilate's palace, lest they would be rendered unclean and unable to eat the Passover on their evening. In the narrative of Numbers 9, several men of the community had become unclean because of their contact with a corpse. Purification from the corpse took seven days, and by that point Passover would be over. And so they came to Moses to protest. Moses hears them, says that sort of sounds legitimate. Let me go talk to the boss. He goes to the Lord, he introduces this to the Lord, and the Lord says, Okay, you know what? Let's do this. Let's have a second Passover. The second Passover is to be celebrated one month after the first. It's the first Passover is in the month of Nisan, the second Passover is one month later to the date in the month of Eyar. And it was celebrated by people who weren't able to participate in the first Passover. By the way, this would have a mystery of Jew and Gentile and all that, but that's a different discussion. There's just as the first redemption with the first coming of Messiah happened at a Passover, okay, there's get your gears grinding there. There's a second Passover coming for the folks that weren't able to participate in the first one. Um, but nonetheless, those who were unable to celebrate in the first one, because they were either unclean or could not reach the tabernacle, they could participate in the second. All the laws, everything that applies to the first, applies to the second. Now, why I think this is interesting for us as followers of Jesus the Messiah is because it makes me think of two individuals. The story of Passover in the wilderness, an event disrupted by contact with a dead body, should remind us of the Passover of our Messiah and the precious body of Jesus. For it was at Passover time that he suffered and died. And the traditional explanation of the rabbis, the dead body, that engendered the uncleanness of the men in Numbers 9 was none other than the corpse of Joseph, the son of Jacob. Remember that the Israelites were carrying Joseph's bones with them as they left Egypt. So once again you have Joseph prefiguring and connecting to Messiah. On the Passover of Jesus' death, two men found themselves ritually unclean because they chose to care for Jesus' body. That would be Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, two secret disciples of Messiah, both members of the Sanhedrin, removed the body of Jesus from the cross, and therefore that would have ritually contaminated them mere hours, mere hours before they were to go celebrate Passover festivities. But by caring for the body of Messiah, they rendered themselves unclean, and as a result, neither of them would have been allowed to eat of the Passover sacrifices or the meals that evening. Both Joseph and Nicodemus were men of prestige and influence, and so their absence would have been noticed. They could have sent servants to take care of the burial of Jesus, and therefore not forfeit their satyrs and their sacrifices and their duties and their place of prestige. But instead they showed their love and their devotion to their Messiah by attending to his body personally. But no, one month later, somewhere in Jerusalem, on the 15th day of the second month of the year in the month of Eyar, Joseph and Arimathea and Nicodemus sat down and had a Passover Seder meal. So one of the things I try to do is when Passover comes by each year, one month later, usually I have a calendar that has that marked. One month later, just to honor them, to honor Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, that they did get their second Passover because they chose to give up their Passover to bury our Messiah. Make yourself a trumpet. So in many ways, our age is an age of what I would call vicarious virtue. That is, all of us prefer to continue living our lives just like we would want to live it, much as we would prefer to live it, much as we always have lived it. Um and at the same time, we would like for our leaders and pretty much everyone else around us to perhaps have a different standard, a higher standard than our standard that we personally privately live, but maybe profess differently with our words. That way, again, it's vicarious. And so we get to enjoy our own laxity. You know, you need to obey the rules and you need to not do that. But you know, I kind of do that, right? I expect my politicians to be above board. I'm not necessarily above board in those situations, but by golly, you should be, right? Okay. So we get to enjoy our own laxity while still claiming credit for having the morality of our ideals. Isn't it great when our morality is in the ideal abstract and we don't ever have to like live it out? Our mouths tout one thing and our deeds blare a different, much different tune. When we insist on doing our own thing, our music becomes discordant and self-indulgent. Simultaneously, the distance between our ideals and our actions grow wider with each passing day. And so, because of this, frustrations can mount. We can lash out when the pressure gets too high, striking out wherever the pinch hurts most, whether that's at each other, our religion, our politicians, our family. But the fault, if fault is to be found, lies with our own lazy acceptance of ourselves for who we are. Our elevation of self-expression to the level of idolatry. And so in this week's portion, it speaks of the tabernacle that's built out in the wilderness. And the Israelites were to assemble it and to serve God from there, to have God in their presence, in with and among them there. And the Levites were selected to perform the sacred rites and the sacrifices of biblical worship. And in Numbers chapter 10, verse 2, it says, Have two silver trumpets made. Make them of hammered work. Now the literal Hebrew translation of this, really like the FIV, would be you have for Yourself to silver trumpets made. It's a little redundant. You have for yourself. Well, I know you're you're addressing me. You have, right? You, I'm the subject. You don't need to tell me it's for myself, right? Goes back to portion like Leik Lachah, go, go to yourself, right? This inflection back to the self. Whenever the Torah puts that redundant lakha in there, that to yourself, oh, it's always fodder for thinking introspectively, all right, and telling us something deeper. So these trumpets on the Peshat level, uh, as the text tells you, following Numbers 10, verse 2, they were to be used to summon the community when they needed to gather together, uh, when it was time to go on a journey, when it was time to go to war, when it was time for a festival to begin, when a new month began, right? So you could keep up with the calendar, when uh the sacrifices were being made, it was kind of like your church bells. Like it served as ways of the priest to have a way of letting the community know things were happening, right? So different tones meant different things, but it was, you know, hey, worship has started, danger is coming, we're going to war, new month has started, new week has started. Uh, all these kinds of things, right? That's on a Peshat level what it was for. And then in verse 10 it says, these two silver trumpets shall be a reminder of you before your God that I, the Lord, am your God. Now, the rabbis of the Midrash notice this ambiguous Hebrew form that I talked about. The Torah literally says, Asei l'cha, shte hashterot. Literally, you make for yourself, not you make for the people, you make for you the two silver trumpets. And so the sages said, hmm, this sounds very personal, and it's got that lichha. And lakcha is a big deal in the Torah. What, asked the sages, is the purpose of this lakcha, yourself? What does it mean to make yourself a trumpet? A beautiful trumpet, even in the midst of producing music, doesn't draw attention to itself. It is the music, not the horn on which the people focus. And so too, say the sages, by making ourselves trumpets, we focus attention on the God in whose service we delight. Our music is the sacred acts we perform, the connections we make with our Creator. And so the sages illustrate this point with a charming midrash about King Solomon. They say, as he was bringing the ark into the newly built temple, remember, Solomon fulfills his father's desire, and he builds a temple, and as he's kind of moving in the temple, he has the ark brought into the newly built temple, and as it's coming in, Solomon sings to the gates of Jerusalem. He says, O gates, lift up your heads, so that the King of Glory may come in. The doors, thinking that Solomon was referring to himself, were appalled by his arrogance, and at once they threatened to sink down on him and crush his head. And they asked, Who is this King of Glory? And fortunately for him Solomon answered, The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Globe. Of course, this is a Psalm, Psalm twenty-four. The Midrash tells us that thereupon they paid God honor and listed themselves up, and then the ark entered. Solomon was as wise and as rich and as powerful a person who ever lived, and yet he knew that the credit for his wisdom did not lie with himself. He was but a trumpet in the hands of a master musician. The notes, however, beautiful, were his to emit, but not to own. And we too work hard to produce some beautiful notes, by raising our children to be godly, by studying and praying with them in our churches and our homes, by volunteering in our communities, by working with integrity and diligence, and in countless other ways. But our work becomes more than merely prudence and more than self-gratification and more than works righteousness when we do it in the spirit of glorifying our Creator, our commander, and our Messiah. Our goodness is the earthly reflection of God's divine Kesset upon us. And so our actions are our eager gratitude for the gift of life. And our passion for our faith is our joyous delight in God's bounty and the beauty of our heritage. We are but trumpets. Make yourself a trumpet. God wrote so that God could then write the score. And so the next time you want to toot your own horn, go ahead. But remember, be sure to play to God's tune. Make yourself a trumpet. Quite literally. Make yourself God's trumpet. Alright, we will close there for this week. And we will pick it up next week as we continue in the book of Numbers. Let's close with a blessing. Baruchatah Adonai Notain Hatarah. Blessed are you, Lord God, who has given to us the gift that is the Torah. Amen. Shalom, shlom, go in peace. 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