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Peter 3:5
For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands. I heard it said one time, “A woman can make or break a man”. Another axiom among modern feminists is that, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” Let's look at some of the female heroes that populate the Biblical narrative. Pharaoh sees the Hebrew population getting too numerous. He enslaves them and decrees, “All male new-born must die.” In spite of all this, the Hebrew population continues growing. The sages tell this legend explaining the conundrum: Each day, as Hebrew wives would bring food and refreshments to their husbands, they would also wash and attire themselves all pretty and ready to have relations with them in the fields. They would go to their men with words of encouragement and comfort. The men despaired under the weight of Pharaoh’s decree, but through their initiative, the Hebrew women nursed a little flame of faith that eventually turned into the fire that destroyed even almighty Egypt (b.Sotah 11b). Hashem knew His creation when He said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him (Genesis 2:18)”. The Hebrew text literally says, “I will make him a helper fit to be against him.” The idea in the word against is not opposition but of balance. It is another way of saying, “Behind every great man there is a great woman!” Truly, a woman ‘makes’ a man by balancing him. She gives him wise and fit advice, encourages him when he is down and confused and reminds him of his divine earthly responsibilities. This helps him to properly focus and balance his life between idealism and practicality. On the other hand, she will ‘break’ him is she tries to steal his focus away from his divinely ordained mission and towards herself. A woman will also destroy her man when she either nags him for his weaknesses, or fans his ego so that he gets unduly lifted up in pride and sees himself as the focus of everything. The afore-mentioned legend should provide today's women with a good role model. At times when men feel crushed under the exilic weight of their responsibilities, they need the intuitive and bracing care of their life-long partner working side-by-side with them to counter-act the effects of 'Pharaoh’s' ungodly edicts. The Exodus narrative also tells us of two brave women who feared God above Pharaoh, and therefore refused to kill the Hebrew baby boys (Exodus 1:17-20). Even so today, our modern world has created a society where the weight of spiritual confusion crushes and discourages men who eventually get distracted away from their spiritual responsibilities as fathers and husbands. May Hashem give us great women who know how to use their godly lure to bring these discouraged men back into focus, into being the husbands, fathers, and leaders that will bring the next generation to the Promised Land of the World to Come. “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!”
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Revelations 2:17
To the one who conquers … I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.' The Book of Exodus in Hebrew is called ‘Shemot’, meaning ‘names’. It is the Book of ‘Names’. “Names’ is the first principal word that appears in the book’s narrative and Judaism names the Books of the Bible using the book's first main noun or verb. The names of the different people involved in the scenarios of the book appear little by little, but what we discover most in the Book of Shemot is the Names of God. God Himself introduces His Names first to Moses when he asks, If I come to the people of Israel … and they ask me, 'What is his name' (Exodus 3:13) ‘and to Pharaoh when he challenged Moses’ divine message with, "Who is Adonai, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go (Exodus 5:2)?” Hashem answered Moses’ question by showing His great power to conquer in order to save, and Pharaoh's by showing His great power to conquer in order to destroy. In our Western philosophically Greek culture, we look at names as a sound bite by which we call people. Sad to say, this is also the way we look at the Name of God: an identifying sound bite to which He should answer when called upon. In the Semitic world of the Bible, Names refer to what you are, to what you where created to be. Names describe who you are, the reason and circumstance of your birth; your qualities and/or properties. By knowing your name people know something very important about you. In Exodus, the Father and Creator introduces Himself by many names, not as sound bite we are supposed to use to make sure we are addressing the right person, but as a memorial of what He is in what he does. Yeshua said that the Name of the Father should be hallowed, sanctified (Matthew 6:9), which means set aside for specials times and uses. Yeshua said these things quoting parts of an ancient Jewish prayer referring to the practice of only pronouncing the Sacred Name in the precincts of the Temple and during times of devoted prayer; never in common discussion. Yeshua followed that practice, and also taught His disciples to follow His example of simply calling Hashem: "Avinu' or, 'Our Father' (Matthew 6:9), Western believers have twisted that Jewish application or respect toward protecting God’s name into the idea of a rabbinic conspiracy to hide it for themselves. This idea born from anti-Semitism still lingers. Today each of us has a name given to us by our parents. In this world where truth is hidden under the fiction of a physical veil, this name may or may not have anything to do with us. In the World to Come, Yeshua has promised us a new name revealing to the world our properties, our qualities, in a sense who we really are (Revelations 2:17). Come to think of it, it may a scary thought for some of us! At that time, we will be fully known even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). May it be soon Abba, even in our days! John 2:19
Yeshua answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." As Jacob gets ready to be 'gathered with his people', he charges his sons. The Hebrew word translated as 'charged' is actually the Hebrew word 'tsivah', a conjugated inflection of the verb 'to command'. Jacob/Israel gives his children a command to not bury him in Egypt. This passage is usually read in concert with 1 Kings 2:1-12 where at the point of death, King David also charges, or 'commands' his son Solomon with unfinished business. As Jacob/Israel asked to not be buried in Egypt, he gave a subtle message to his children. He was saying, "The famine has been over for twelve years; what are we doing here? This is not our country, neither the place Hashem gave us. Don't bury me here!" At the point of death Joseph also alluded to the Children of Israel's exodus from Egypt, which will constitute the laying of the first stone in the creation of the Nation of Israel as an individual entity, a nation with the destiny of not only introducing God to the whole world, but to act as a nation of priests and firstfruits. In the same manner, one of the charges of David to his son Solomon was to build the Temple of Israel, (1 King 5:5), a temple that will be called, 'a house of prayer for all nations' as Yeshua reminded the people of His days while quoting the prophet Isaiah (Mark 11:17; Isaiah 56:7). The main mission of Mashiach is to reunite all the tribes as one nation in their own Land (Acts 1: 6), a mission which He actually started 2,000 years ago. Let's say that there have been some setbacks to the program as for the last two millennia the world has tried to annihilate Messiah's people through either violent ethnic cleansing or assimilation. It seems though that much progress has been made towards that goal since the 20th century. Another one of the Father's 'charges' to Messiah is to build the third Temple, the one described in the Book of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 40-48). Only the Jewish people have the knowledge and understanding of the ritual concerns about the Temple. There is an organization in Israel in charge of the building of the third Temple. Many things are already in place and the seven-branch candelabrum designed for it is already available for public display. May we pray for the time when all of Israel is united and the House of prayer for all people is rebuilt. May it be soon Abba; even in our days! Revelations 3:21
I will let him who wins the victory sit with me on my throne, just as I myself also won the victory and sat down with my Father on his throne. In the ancient Middle East, when a father bestowed his blessing on his children he laid his hands on them. In the case of Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, we are privy to the awkward picture of two grown young men sitting on the lap of a blind and frail man over one hundred and thirty years old (Genesis 48: 10-12). In the ancient middle-East sitting on man's lap was part of a ritual of adoption. In that passage of Text, Jacob/Israel does not only bless the children of Joseph born in exile from an Egyptian wife, but he adopts them as his own (Genesis 48:5-6). After this clever patriarchal maneuver, the two boys will technically become brothers to their father and to their uncles. They will inherit as brothers at the same level as the other children of Jacob. They also each will have a tribal allotment in the Promised Land and this indirectly allows Jacob to bestow upon Joseph the double-portion reserved to first-borns, thus circumventing Leah's children. Judah inherited the 'scepter' and the 'crown' of the kings of Israel, but Joseph remained the first-born. From Joshua, several judges, and even the Prophet Samuel, the tribe of Ephraim remained in leadership. Even the Ark remained in Shiloh, Ephraim. King Saul was the first one to call the loose federation of Israeli tribes together to fight against Amalek, and David is the one who united the country as one, thus foreshadowing the Messianic age when peace and unity will be finally accomplished between the House of Leah and the House of Rachel (Ezekiel 37: 15-22). But what about the adoption program? As Jacob prophesied, until this day, each Friday evening at the Welcoming of the Sabbath, Jews bless their boys with the words, "May God make you like Efrayim and M'nasheh (Genesis 48:20)". I know a family that even puts their boys on their lap as they do that. This father of course doesn't need to 'adopt' his boys but there is connection here that as Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted by their grand-father to become full members of the patriarchal leadership of Israel as he uttered Abraham's blessing upon them, so all of us are adopted by Hashem. Abraham was adopted and in him so are we all. The idea also is that Joseph is highly looked upon, considered as someone strong who did not compromise with Egypt. We want to be like his children who probably inherited their father's virtue and strength. To the Messianic community of Laodicea Yeshua says, I will let him who wins the victory sit with me on my throne, just as I myself also won the victory and sat down with my Father on his throne (Revelations 3:21). I always pictured this as a child on the lap of his father or grand-father sitting on his armchair. In this case we have a three generation adoption ritual. Yeshua the 'Begotten' being vested in all the powers of the Father (Psalm 2:7-12) endows these same powers to His victorious 'overcomers' whom He adopts and in whom He invests His powers to rule. May Hashem make you all like Ephraim and Manasseh! John 17:14
"I have given them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world — just as I myself do not belong to the world". When the famine was over, the Children of Israel could have returned to Canaan; after all, they were not Egyptians! We notice though that when they wanted to bury Jacob in Canaan as he had requested, Joseph had to get special permission. Pharaoh granted the request but the flocks and the children had to stay behind, a foreshadow of the request of a latter Pharaoh. Pharaoh also sent an army with the Israelite procession through the desert. Though it had been twelve years since the end of the famine, it seems that the Children of Israel were not free to go (Genesis 50:7-9). We must remember that even as Viceroy, Joseph was still a captive. The situation was similar to that of Daniel who, as a Judean captive held a prominent place in the affairs of Babylon, and later of Medo-Persia. As the Children of Israel came to Egypt under the 'umbrella' of Joseph, they seem to have inherited Joseph status of slaves. We could almost say that whereas Joseph did not want to revenge upon his brothers, Hashem took care of it through the famine. How was Joseph still a slave? He was a slave because he lived in a country with culture foreign to him. Had they planned to do it right at the end of the famine, the Children of Israel might have been able to return to Canaan, but this is the problem with living in Egypt: we get comfortable. Then it becomes hard to leave, to uproot and start again. Comfort and prosperity dulls our senses and lures us into a false sense of security until suddenly one day we wake up and find ourselves bound with gold handcuffs, in the case of Israel, with cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic, and fish which they got for free (Numbers 11:5). The Master did warn us, we do not belong to the world and the worries of the world, the deceitful glamour of wealth and all the other kinds of desire choke, (John 17:16; Mark 4:19). We are not to live for the conservation and preservation of our life and comfort in this world, but as disciples our lives belong to Him and we are expendables for the needs of His Kingdom. May we live our lives in remembrance of that. Revelation 12:5
She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, Believing the time of his departure was nigh, Jacob blesses his children. The pronounced words are not just blessings; they are insights into the future of Israel, and thereby, of the world. When comes Judah’s turn, Jacob says, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples (Genesis 49:10). Judah’s ‘scepter’ takes a prominent place in the Torah from Genesis to Revelation. The Hebrew word for it is ‘Shevet’, a word also related to ‘tribe’, each tribe being represented by the staff of the tribe leader. In Genesis thirty-eight, Judah uses his staff as collateral; as a token of identity. It was most probably a shepherd’s staff, a tool that represents the ruling, shepherding, and even disciplining of the flock. Judah’s staff is a foreshadow of the Messiah’s scepter as it is said in the Psalms, Adonai sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies (Psalms 110:2)! This staff/scepter represents Messiah’s ruling and disciplining of the disobedient as the psalmist says: You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. (Psalms 2:9)". King David must have believed in this rod of discipline as his son Solomon often talks about it in his proverbs (Proverbs 13:24). The ‘shevet’ of Messiah is not only a tool of correction; it is also used for protection against those wolves that would eat us alive if they could. It is also Messiah’s instrument of comfort as is said, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod (Shevet) and your staff, they comfort me (Psalms 23:4), and the sign of our passage into covenant with Him: I will make you pass under the rod (shevet), and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant (Ezekiel 20:37). The staff/scepter/rod/shevet of Messiah is powerful to chastise, to lead, to comfort, and represents a rite of passage of some sort. Isaiah speaks of the ‘rod of His mouth’, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod (shevet) of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked (Isaiah 11:4), indicating that this rod/staff/scepter/shevet is also the spoken Word of the Master. May we pay attention to His Word. May we obey them carefully and emulate Abba by emulating the Master. The word Judah or ‘Yehudah’ means to praise God. It is not enough to praise the Father in Words only; we praise Him best through our actions of obedience to His ways. Just as we as fathers feel praise and honor when our children emulate and obey us, the Father which is in Heaven is also praised and honored when we obey and emulate Him who He has chosen to give us as a guide. It is our choice whether the ‘shevet’ of Messiah is the gentle leading staff of the Great Shepherd, or becomes the heavy a rod of iron and correction. Matthew 25:31-32
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, … Before being ‘gathered to his people’ (Genesis 49:33), Jacob/Israel uttered his last prophetic outbursts. While he addressed his sons, Jacob/Israel prophesied of many things, especially of the return of the Children of Israel to the Promised Land. Already the tension between the House of Pharaoh and the Children of Israel was mounting. The famine was over for twelve years already. The Children of Israel had every right to return to their ancestral land; they were not Egyptians. Yet, they had to ask permission to leave Egypt and bury Jacob. It was granted but with the company of dignitaries who probably required a military battalion, and leaving their little one behind, a foreshadow of what another Pharaoh later imposed on the Children of Israel (Genesis 5). The relationship between Pharaoh and Joseph is remarkable. Joseph is brought to Egypt as slave, first to Potiphar, went to prison, then to Pharaoh. We are never told that he was given his freedom. Joseph offers his gift of wisdom and prophecy to Pharaoh, and becomes a leader in Egypt. Egypt owes its survival to that slave, a non-Egyptian who insisted on being faithful to his God. This story repeats itself through Daniel and Queen Esther. We can even see it in King David who was brought to Israel’s courts as the servant of disobedient King Saul. As such, the world often values the gifts God’s people have to offer, so they bring the anointed to their courts, as captives. The problem is that the true Child of God cannot live in captivity. The Spirit of God cannot operate under the ruling of Man. It is like the story of the king who hears the beautiful song of a bird, but gets upset when the bird stops singing after he puts it in the captivity of a cage. It is also like trying to put a firefly in jar to enjoy its glow, eventually it stops shining. God has a plan though, not through Joseph, but through Judah. Jacob/Israel prophecies, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples (Genesis 49:10). Judah is at the origin of the word ‘Jew’. Technically speaking, a Jew is a descendant of Judah, the others are Children of Israel/Jacob, and those before Jacob are called ‘Hebrews’, after Abraham, the first one ever called by that name (Genesis 14:13) To Judah then was prophesied a kingly scepter who would never depart from him, a scepter where the roles were reversed. Whereas in Egypt the nations attempted control over God’s people, (and throughout history the world has incessantly continued attempting domination on those who can only be ruled by God), the promise to Judah is of an eternal scepter that will this time dominate over the nations, as it is written, to him will be the obedience of the people, meaning, of the nations of the world.. The Davidic monarchy came to a stop with the Babylonian captivity, but through the Judean Jew Yeshua Judah’s scepter will be revived in the end of Days when Yeshua will come to reign over the whole world and establish His Kingdom when righteousness will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. May it be soon Abba, even in our days! John 10:16
And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. Retelling the life story of Joseph we have played with the very important midrashic messianic analogy equating Joseph to Messiah. This has led us to observe that Benjamin represented the Jewish people who did not reject Messiah/Joseph. We are now at the part where Jacob meets his two grand-children conceived through Joseph by an Egyptian mother, the daughter of a priest of Egypt. At first, he does not know who these Egyptian looking kids are. When he finds out, he adopts them as his own. The idea of redemption through adoption is a main theme throughout the whole Tanach. Starting with Abraham, each of us is an adopted son (Romans 9:4-5). In adopting Joseph’s son as his own, Jacob accomplished a very tricky maneuver. His showing favor to Joseph had already caused him much trouble so this time, instead of openly conferring to Joseph the right of first-born, Jacob adopts Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of the son of his true chosen bride and love of his life, Rachel. This not only has the effect of these sons and nephews becoming brothers to their father and uncles, but for Joseph to receive the double-inheritance which is conferred to firstborns. Ephraim and Manasseh could be compared to the offspring of Messiah while in Diaspora exile. Jacob actually says of Ephraim that he will become ‘the multitude of the nations’ (The Hebrew text uses the definite article ‘the’); in Hebrew, this is the same expression used in Romans 11:25, ‘a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the ‘fullness of the Gentiles’ (in Hebrew: the multitude of the nations) has come in.’ Judaism teaches that when Israel was evicted from its land by the Romans, Messiah went to exile with them. Just like Joseph, while in exile Messiah has been busy raising Himself an offspring among the Gentiles, an offspring to be adopted alongside the Jewish people (Ephesians 1-2). Today Judaism and Christianity are seen as two different religions. The truth is that Christianity outside of Judaism did not exist for the first three hundred years after Yeshua and the apostles. Today if a Jew wants His Messiah, Christians tell him that he has to ‘convert’. Convert from what to what? It is the pagans who needed to convert from idolatrous paganism to the God of Israel. It is strange because originally the question was not weather a Jew could be part of the Church but weather a non-Jew could be part of Israel. In Acts 15, the Jewish disciples accepted the Gentile converts, but today, does the Church accept a Jew? In the adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh, we see that in actuality, in Messiah non-Jews are grafted in the 'olive tree' of Jacob/Israel, not Israel in the Gentile Roman ‘Christmas tree’ (Romans 11). Joel rightly prophecied that at the end of time God will pour His Spirit upon all flesh (Joel 2:28), not just on Israel. In that day, there will truly be one shepherd and one flock. May it happen soon Abba, even in our days! Hebrews 11:16
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. A wealthy man who we will name Rav Shlomo was wondering about a certain Rabbi who by choice lived in a very austere manner. The conversation went somewhat like this,” Rabbi, how can you speak so highly of God’s bounty; you yourself seem to live like a pauper and have hardly anything in your house. Look at me, my house is beautiful and well furnished!”. “But Rav Shlomo”, said the Rabbi, “When you travel, do you carry all your furniture with you?”, “Of course not!” replied Shlomo, “I take a traveling bag; but when I am at home I live comfortably”. “Ah, that is it Shlomo, I am not home yet, I am not home!” When Jacob knew that his time had come, he told Joseph his son, “Deal kindly and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers. Carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place (Genesis 47:29-30)”. Jacob spoke of death using the term, ‘lie with my fathers’, a Hebrew expression we also find in Abraham and David (Genesis 25:8; 1 Kings 2:10). It is an early expression referring to life in the hereafter and the World to Come. It was very important for Abraham to bury Sarah in the Land. It was very important also for Jacob and Joseph to be buried in the place God had promised to His Children. This shows that the patriarchs did not look at death as the end of anything but rather as the continuation of life where God’s promises are fulfilled, but in a somewhat different dimension. Yeshua also confirmed (before His death and resurrection) that the patriarchs were alive (Matthew 22:32). You see, those gone before us are not dead, they are only resting, sleeping! At the end of his sojourn on the earth, Jacob yearned to return to his ancestral land. He didn’t even want his bones to remain in Egypt. This has to do with a belief in resurrection. The type of resurrection the patriarchs believed in was not just a spiritual one, but a very physical one with flesh and bones like Yeshua’s resurrection where He said, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have (Luke 24:39)”. That is why it was important to them to be buried in the Land. Even today devout Jews pay thousands of dollars to be buried in Jerusalem’s Old Cemetery. They say that those buried there will be first ones to see the returning Messiah! And what can we learn from that? Have we settled down in this world, in this dimension, in this absurd, temporal reality? Do we live for what we can get today in this world? Or do we use this life to prepare towards the more substantial and eternal reality of the world to Come? Do we feel ‘home’ here, or do we yearn with Jacob and the patriarchs, “Carry me out of Egypt (Hebrews 11:10; 14-16)?” Prisoner in this dimension of time and flesh, like the homing pigeon the soul of the true Child of God constantly yearns to be reunited with the spiritual roots that gave it birth. This is the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘Dror’: ‘Freedom’; freedom to go home! May we all at the opportune time be found with our fathers in our ancestral home, in the eternal dimension of the World to Come! John 8:31-32
So Yeshua said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." The Torah teaches us as much by Its narratives of the patriarchs as by Its legislative Code of Law. Jacob had been unjustly treated by his brother Esau, but at the end of the story, Jacob bites the bitter end and organizes a repentance party where all make peace (Genesis 32). They may not live together but at least enmity is put behind. Joseph follows the pattern of his father Jacob. Having been unjustly treated by his brothers, he also organizes for them a way to properly repent of their misdeeds so the past can be left behind. All this needed to happen before God was ready to make Israel a great nation and fulfill the promises made to Abraham. The pattern of concealed identities, lying, vengeance, and measure for measure retribution needed to stop and by revealing himself and forgiving his brothers Joseph put an end to it all. This story becomes then the contextual cradle where the torah will be given in the next few chapters. Is there a lesson for us in this? Relationships in this world are often born of ulterior personal selfish motives and interests. As a result, we often live lives of pretence hiding our true self under a façade of 'social correctness'. This may be good and well for the unbeliever 'worldlings', but it is certainly wrong for the Children of the Most-High and disciples of the Master. Can the Father of Truth and Lights bless us when we play social games with each other? Sad to say, but this sort of hypocrisy has become a hallmark of religiosity and spirituality. This is often the reason why our teenagers reject the notion of God altogether because they see through the hypocrisy of their 'socially correct' religious parents. And why do people do that? Because they cannot look at themselves in a mirror. They are afraid of admitting to themselves that they are not as good as they claim to be. They think that because they are 'redeemed', they are now sinless but the reality of their true sinful selves still confronts them every wake moment. A a result, they hide behind a veneer of spiritual religiosity made up of cliché statements, clothing, adversarial loud opposition to 'sin', and pious attitudes and platitudes. But this self-righteous veneer is thin, brittle, and cracks easily. When faced with the awful truth about himself, one has two choices: to remain in the bondage of deception by lying to himself in order to sustain a false image, or liberate himself by being honest, ask for forgiveness, and do works meet for repentance. Thankfully, in the case of the patriarchs, the lessons were learned, everybody repents and unites in the days of Joseph which causes Israel to grow as a mighty people who conquered the Promised Land where Messiah would be born. May it be the same with us! May we in our days stop playing 'religion' and learn to worship God as the Master taught us to: in Spirit and truth (John 4:23). |
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