Light In Torah

This week's Torah portion,  Beha'alotecha  ("to ascend"), starts off with Aaron being commanded to ascend toward the lamps and light the seven lamps which will give light  over against  ( mool ) the lampstand, just as Moses commanded. It goes on to give us a description of the lampstand: how it is made of beaten work of gold, forming the shaft, the arms, and the flowers in the shape of an almond tree (Num. 8:2–4; Ex. 25:31–39). This is at least the third time that the lampstand description has been given (Ex. 25; Lev. 24), along with the value and importance of lighting it in the morning and the evening (Ex. 25; 37; Lev. 24). In the Middle East, the almond tree blossoms first, very early in the spring. However, it is the last of the trees to be harvested before Sukkot. And as we see in California, it requires a tremendous amount of water in order to bring forth its fruit. The comparison of our lives to the menorah is easy to make :-) The shape of the lampstand is sim...

Isaiah 53 does not end with a crushing death. It ends with His days prolonged and the will of the Lord prospering in His hand. "After the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied." That is not the language of remaining dead. He goes down, is cut off, and is buried with the wicked—but death does not have the final word. The writer of Hebrews names what is happening here: He holds His priesthood by the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7). That is the same life Peter preached: "It is impossible for death to hold Him" (Acts 2). Put this together: the servant carries our sicknesses, our pains, and the forces of death we cannot carry. He goes into the wreckage where sin has done its worst. He bears it. He dies under that weight. And then the life that emerges is stronger than the death He carried. That is the center of Isaiah 53—not God as punisher. And that is not a smaller story than penal substitution; it is much bigger. Finally, verse 12: "He bo...

"He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities." That is the traditional phrasing. "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed." The Hebrew word for "chastisement" here is  musar .  Does anyone know what  Musar  is?  It is a study of Jewish ethics, but also teaching and discipline. Notice the little word "for"—pierced  for , crushed  for . Let us apply our first tool: each can mean "on account of." But look at this: "The  musar  of our peace was upon Him." Most English Bibles render this as "chastisement" or "punishment," which sounds courtroom-like. Yet  musar  is a broader word rooted in father-son formation. Proverbs 3 says, "My son, do not despise the  musar  of the Lord." Yes, it can include painful correction, but  musar  is not a retributive penalty. The Greek translators of the Septuagint chose  paideia —training, formation, discipline—...

Continuing from yesterday:  "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about what is happening in this state—to preserve many people alive." (Genesis 50:20) Did Joseph suffer? Yes—in the pit, slavery, false accusations, prison. His brothers were truly against him. Their evil was not theatrical; it was not just a show. And God used that suffering. The same suffering that came from human evil became the doorway through which God preserved life. But notice what is not in that story: God did not author the brothers' evil. He did not need their violence. He was not waiting for an innocent person to be punished before He could bless His people. The brothers meant harm; God overcame it and made that harm serve life. PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) says the violence satisfies God. The Joseph pattern says God overcomes violence and turns it toward good. That is the pattern: people do bad things; God means it for life. Remember what we said about ...

For the past fifty days, we have focused our attention on grace—how proud God is of us through our obedience—on past, present, and future aspects of salvation, and on four weeks devoted to blood through the sacrificial system, adding additional thoughts to John 1:29: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." One major focal point is that He goes ahead of us, not instead of us. That is powerful, and that phrase will continue to do work for us in this week's Isaiah 53 study. However, this Isaiah 53 text is likely what people have been waiting for—politely and silently. I have received very little pushback or critique on these fifty days of study, which has surprised me. Maybe that means something good—people are hearing and listening. But there is a passage, a section of Scripture, that I think many people would say blows up everything I have been saying. It is in the book of Isaiah, chapter 53—the Suffering Servant. If someone wanted to push back on th...

  I left you with a question on Shabbat morning, the 49th day of counting the Omer, and here we are on the 50th day—Pentecost. If lambs do not remove sin in the sacrificial system, what is John saying? Why does he say it? John knows lambs are not the animals used at Yom Kippur. He knows the Passover lamb is not a sin offering or a purification offering for the sanctuary. So why does he say, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29)? Because John is doing what the prophets do: bringing multiple streams together into a powerful statement. "The Lamb of God" draws us into Passover, Exodus deliverance, and the birth of a redeemed people. It draws us into the prophetic promise that God Himself would remove sin, end exile, cleanse His people, give them a new heart, and pour out a new Spirit. These are not competing ideas. John is saying, "Behold the Lamb of God"—the place where these ideas converge in Yeshua. Speaking from within th...

I ended our study yesterday with a question on people's minds. In Matthew's account, he adds the phrase "for the forgiveness of sins": "This is the blood of my covenant for the forgiveness of sins." The question people ask is, "Doesn't that prove this is the sin sacrifice?" Is Yeshua saying that blood for forgiveness means substitution? Penal substitution? Penalty paid? Transactional language? No. It means Jeremiah's language. Jeremiah 31—the very passage Yeshua invoked when he spoke of the new covenant—says, "I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." Matthew points us to the prophetic promise of new covenant forgiveness (Jer. 31:31–34). We will return to this because it changes how we see John 1:29. The Lord's Supper becomes sacramental. This is important. Even though suffering, blood, and death are in the background, the table's focus is never on death as payment. It focuses on covenant parti...

One of the weirdest verses in the entire New Testament cannot be understood unless we stop sounding like Yeshua is asking everyone to become cannibals: "I tell you: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood…" (John 6:53–57) That is weird, isn't it? People have wrestled with this and worried about it. It was strange then, and it is strange now. The disciples were certainly confused about it. But after the supper—after seeing Yeshua as the  shelamim  (peace offering) of the Passover, whose meal the people share as the  tzaddik  (righteous one) through whom God's life is given—John 6 looks different. It is the same logic that Yeshua gives at the Last Supper table, but He gave it in advance in John 6. Now it is being realized at the table. His people are participating in His life. They receive it. They abide in Him, and He abides in them. The point is union, communion, par...

Death by itself is not unique. Suffering itself is not unique. Injustice by itself is not unique. If we all say that salvation happens only because a righteous person died, I think we have missed the real story. Because if what saves us is simply that there was suffering and death, guess what? The idea of suffering is already part of the Jewish story. The prophets knew about innocent blood—lots of it. John the Baptist himself knew suffering; he could qualify as a righteous martyr. Rome had crucified many Jews. When Yeshua was a young boy, about 2,000 people were crucified during the Roman unrest along the sides of the Jerusalem road. Thus, crucifixion itself was not unique. Jewish suffering under Rome was not unique. Their willingness to die courageously for others was well known, but not unique. And it is not unknown or unique today. There is so much more. Something in His life must have led to that death. And Lord knows His death absolutely matters—absolutely. It is a foundational co...

The counting of the Omer is winding down—or should I say moving toward the pinnacle :-). We are now on day 45. Less than one week remains before hitting 50: a mini-jubilee—a time of freedom, restoration, and intimacy. With one week to go, the timing begs the question: "What makes life meaningful?" Take the time to think it through before you keep reading. .... .... .... .... .... The answer is easy to see, but not obvious to our daily mindset:  Pain and suffering.  Surprise! Pain and suffering in life cause us to act in ways that make us want to avoid pain. The pain of hunger drives us to eat. The pain of lust causes us to "hoochie-coo" (PG-13). Pain also pushes us away from things that would otherwise hurt us. That all makes sense. But why do we seek out pain and suffering? Why do we choose to inflict pain on ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and financially? Why do we go to movies that scare the heebie-jeebies out of us? Why do we do th...

  In our study yesterday, when Yeshua heals the man with leprosy (biblical  tzara'at ), He sends the healed man to the priest to offer a sacrifice as Moses commanded. We touched on this because He is honoring the established order. He is not bypassing the priesthood. He is doing something the priesthood was never able to do. That is our first study. Our next case is the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5)—an ongoing discharge. How long? Twelve years. I need you to understand the significance of those twelve years for her: twelve years of separation, of restriction; twelve years of embodied weakness; twelve years unable to participate normally in sacred life, in family life, in intimate life. And she has not sinned morally. The Torah does not condemn her. She is suffering from a condition that turns her body into a boundary between living and feeling dead, between belonging and separation. Twelve years, and she comes to Yeshua completely desperate. She is in the crowd. She p...