Lynell: Now, let me stop sharing my screen… alright everyone.
Drew: You are live.
Lynell: Awesome. So, the recent teachings on divorce and toward… That was nice. There we go. Alright, so I can hear the streaming in the background, there’s a double now. I think we should be good. You’re muted sweetheart. Hang on. I’m…
Drew: Yeah, you might want to move to your browser or just close that page.
Nehemia: Can you hear me? Is my microphone… is the gain okay? Do I need to turn it up? Testing. One. Two. Three. Can you hear me? This is what I sound like.
Lynell: Thanks, Drew. You were exactly right. I needed to close that page.
Nehemia: Someone says, “Lynette,” I think they mean Lynell. “I can’t thank you enough for the daily YouTube words and prayer. Praise Yehovah.” Amen.
Lynell: Amen.
Nehemia: Guys, you know, Lynell is putting out daily devotionals on various social media. I guess on YouTube and on TikTok. Alright. Someone says, “Is it the black shirt or is Nehemia losing weight?” It’s one of those two for sure.
Lynell: He’s losing weight. He’s lost a lot of weight. A ton of weight.
Nehemia: Almost at 100 pounds, having lost, so…
Lynell: He’s almost me, as far as the weight. He’s working very hard at it.
Nehemia: I think Cedric gained some of that.
Lynell: He’s been feeding me caramels, though, because I’ve been the one gaining weight.
Nehemia: I feed Cedric all the grubs. Don’t eat ‘em anymore.
Pam: Wow. I mean, I knew he lost weight, but…
Lynell: Yes. Okay. I’m going to try to… Everyone mute themselves, please. Ma’am, mute yourself. Awesome. Escape out of here… Um… I need to change the view. Alright, Nehemia, you want to speak, sweetheart?
Nehemia: Testing. One. Two. Three. Testing. Testing, testing. Can you hear me?
Lynell: I hear you.
Nehemia: Alright. Excellent. I’m going to hit record on my little device here.
Lynell: Alright. We’re going to use Q&A, guys, for any questions you have. There’s already one in there. And we will answer those at the end in the order that you put them in. We are really excited. Chag Sameach to make to everyone. We’re so thrilled to celebrate Shavuot with you. And Nehemia, do you want to open in prayer?
Nehemia: Looks like we have one minute. So, can we wait that one minute?
Lynell: Oh, we can. I’m sorry.
Nehemia: In case somebody’s like, on the right…
Lynell: Nelson said he would read the scripture.
Nehemia: Oh!
Lynell: If he wants.
Nehemia: That sounds great. Alright, let me open up my little software here so I look more intelligent and know what it actually says in the Bible. Okay.
Lynell: Oh, shalom and Chag Sameach from Switzerland. How awesome.
Nehemia: Shalom, Switzerland. Alright. Let’s… Oh, no. I still have one more. Oh, I’m going to wait till it says two o’clock. Oh, it says two. Alright. Do you want to open it up, babe?
Lynell: Sure. Yehovah, thank you for this time, that we can celebrate Shavuot together. Father, I pray that You would give Nehemia wisdom as he teaches. And God, I pray that You would give us great fellowship together after the teaching, that we can have time together to enjoy this feast. And Yehovah, please bless everyone who comes. I pray that the word would imbed deeply in our hearts, and that we would understand all that You have for us today. Amen.
Nehemia: Alright. Shalom, everybody. So, today we are celebrating Chag Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. I want to start with, just what are some of the names for this holiday? And this is one of the features of some of the holidays, or most of the holidays in the Torah, is that they have multiple names. So, Shavuot is in Exodus 34:22 and Deuteronomy 16:10. And Nelson, can you post, like, each line there as I’m talking about it?
Nelson: Certainly.
Nehemia: Okay. So, it’s called Chag Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. Then it’s also called Chag Hakatzir. Katzir means harvest. Chag is feast. And actually, chag is more than just feast, it’s pilgrimage feast. So, it has an implication there… well, really two things. One is celebrating, from the word chug, which means to dance in a circle, and chag also has this implication of pilgrimage. You actually see that in Arabic, that somebody who makes a pilgrimage to Mecca, they call it the Hajj. Right? So, Arabic is a related language to Hebrew. If you remember from, I think it was Aladdin, wasn’t there a character named Hajji? Right? So, Hajji is somebody who had made the Hajj, the pilgrimage. So, chag, in Hebrew, is both a pilgrimage and a celebratory feast. So, it’s Chag Hashavuot, Chag Hakatzir, the Feast of Harvest. So, that’s the agricultural aspect.
And then it’s also called Yom Habikurim. Bikurim means “first fruits” and yom is day. And ha is “the”, right? Yom Habikurim, The Day of First Fruits. And it’s also called… So, this is interesting. When we look in different passages, it doesn’t always have that exact phrase, Yom Habikurim. For example, in Exodus 23:16… let me pull that up here… it has this long, complicated name; Chag Hakatzir Bikurei Ma’aseikha. So, it’s “The Feast of Harvest, the First Fruits of your work,” or of your deeds. Right? So, you might think, it’s a long four-word name. Chag Hakatzir Bikurei Ma’aseikha. That’s actually the full name there.
And then… then in Exodus 34:22, you have Chag Shavuot. And it’s interesting; it’s without the ha. Right? So, it’s Feast of Weeks. And then it says, bikurei katzir chitim. “The first fruits of the harvest of wheat.” Right? So, is that the name of it? Or is that the description? I mean, in a sense, it’s both. But it has that word bikurim, which is the name of the feast in Exodus 23:16.
And then in Leviticus 23:17 and 20, it mentions a sacrifice which is bikurim. So, it’s not the name of the feast, but it’s the name of the sacrifice, the first fruits. And then Numbers 28:26… And what’s interesting in Leviticus 23 is it doesn’t have the word Shavuot at all. And then Numbers 28:26 again has Yom Habikurim, which is the name of the feast, and it says, “At your Shavuot,” Beshavuoteikhem, which literally means “at your weeks”. Right? So, the name isn’t actually Shavuot there, for linguistic reasons, but it’s a description of it. It’s “at your weeks”.
So, those are our three names. I know it didn’t sound like three there, but really, we have Shavuot, Katzir, which is harvest… So, weeks, harvest, Shavuot, Katzir. And then Bikurim and variations of Bikurim. Right? Bikurei is the “bikurim of.” Bikurei ma’aseikha is the bikurim of your deeds. Bikurei katzir chitim is the bikurim of the harvest of wheat, the first fruits of the harvest of wheat.
So, those are the three names. There’s actually a label… Well, we already said one label is chag, which is pilgrimage feast, and yom, which is day. So, there’s another label applied to it, which is Mikra Kodesh. Mikra Kodesh is usually translated in the King James, for example, as “Holy Convocation”. Convocation is a fancy word for gathering, but it could also mean “holy proclamation.” That’s something you proclaim to be holy. And then there’s another term applied to Shavuot. And there’s lots of mikra kodesh, right? Not just Shavuot. There’s another one, which is Regel. Regel is an interesting word because it literally means foot or leg. But in this context, it doesn’t mean foot or leg. It says… let’s read Exodus 23:14 and 34:23-24 has…
And what we’re doing here, guys, is… my wife said to me, “What is Shavuot about?” Okay, well, I could tell you in abstract terms, or we could look and see what the Bible says. And it’s interesting, when I went through each one of the passages that mentioned Shavuot, I realized, “Oh, we kind of have 13 bullet points here.” Originally there were seven. But as I kept going over the passages, I’m like, “Wait a minute. We really should have this as its own thing.” I guess you could count them in different ways, I don’t know.
So, Exodus 23:14 is shalosh regalim tachogu be’shana, which is literally three “regels”, three feet, but it means three times. “Three feet you shall chag me, you shall celebrate for me, or pilgrimage for me, in the year.” That’s Exodus 23:14. And then 17 repeats it, but they’re using a different word. Instead of regel it uses the word pa’am. So, it’s shalosh pe’amim, three times. What’s interesting is… so in modern Hebrew you would say pa’am. You’d say pa’am once, pa’amaim twice, shalosh pe’amim three times. But in Biblical Hebrew, pa’am literally means foot, or a hoof. Right? So, you have the word that means both foot and hoof, or leg as well, that also means a time. And then from that you get aliya la’regel. People call the pilgrimage aliya la’regel. And in modern Hebrew they think that means “ascent.” Aliya is ascent, “by foot”. They’re like, “Oh, I’ve got to walk to Jerusalem.” No, it’s actually “at the time”. Right? So, these are sacred times. Regel is “a sacred time”, or just a “time”, really, but in this context, it’s a time that you do a chag. Right? That’s the full phrase there.
And then in Exodus 34:23, it’s shalosh pe’amim, three times. Right? So, there it has again the word time. And then Exodus 34:24 again, shalosh pe’amim, three times. So, regel pa’am, is really essentially the same thing. It means “a time.” So, it’s a sacred time, sacred occasion. Okay, those are all the names. We have chag and yom and mikra kodesh and regel. The names are the titles.
So now, point… I got there to five points. I guess yom could have been at some point, maybe, I don’t know. So, number six is, no work. Nelson will post the verses here. It’s Leviticus 23:21 and Numbers 28:26. And it’s interesting; Exodus doesn’t say anything about no work for Shavuot. It does for chag Hamatzot and for Shabbat. Chag Hamatzot, what we today colloquially call Passover. But it doesn’t say anything about no work. But it does in Leviticus 23:21 and Numbers 28:26. “Rejoicing…” Oh, and number seven, sorry, “A sacrifice for atonement.” And that’s explicitly stated in Numbers 28:30. And that one I’m going to ask Nelson to read.
So, Numbers 28:30. And there’s more verses around that that describe some of the sacrifices, but Numbers 28:30 is the one that specifically says what the purpose of the sacrifices are for, which you could say is implied in the other ones, but not explicitly stated. 28:30. Numbers 28.
Nelson: Do you want me to read from 27, that range, or just 30?
Nehemia: So, it’s not… Oh, 28:30. No, just read verse 30; that’s the key one. You know what? Read all… Yeah, read from 27, that’s fine. So, 27 is a list of sacrifices. And it’s funny, when I was looking at this in our morning Bible studies with Lynell, I’m like, “We could skip over that. It’s a bunch of sacrifices.” And then she kind of insisted, “No, let’s read each verse.” And I’m like, “Oh, wait. This is actually a really important point that does apply today.” Even though I can’t bring sacrifices, there’s a single word here in Hebrew, or maybe two words, that give this a whole new significance. So yeah, if you want to read that.
Nelson: Okay, Numbers 28:27-30, “You shall present a burnt offering of pleasing odor to Yehovah, two bulls of the herd, one ram, seven yearling lambs.”
Nehemia: And you know what that means, by the way? It means God likes the smell of barbeque. But really, what does it mean? “A pleasing odor.” That’s really what it means. Alright, go on.
Nelson: “The meal offering with them shall be of choice flour with oil mixed in, three tenths of a measure for a bull, two tenths for a ram, and one tenth for each of the seven lambs. And there shall be one goat for expiation in your behalf.”
Nehemia: So, expiation is le’khaper, to atone. So, it’s le’khaper aleikhem, to atone over you, or for you. So, there are all these sacrifices that are brought, and their purpose is atonement, which is not intuitively obvious because you think, “Well, we have the Day of Atonement. That’s for atonement, right?” But no, actually, here’s a bunch of sacrifices whose purpose is atonement. There is a principle that I believe in, and you don’t have to agree, but I’m right, that today we can’t bring sacrifices, so we have prayer in place of sacrifices. I’ve done studies on that; Psalm 51 and Hosea 14:2-4, and a bunch of other passages. “So, how do we fulfill this today,” is what my wife asked me. To me, it’s obvious; we pray and ask God for atonement. Okay, so that’s sacrifices, and today, prayer for atonement.
There’s more sacrifice in Leviticus 23, although frankly it doesn’t mention atonement there. It mentions the word chatat, that some are sin offerings. That’s not the only type of sacrifice for atonement. Anyway, number eight is, “Rejoice together with your family, the Levite, the sojourner, the widow and the orphan.” And that’s Deuteronomy 16:11. Nelson, can you read that one? That one’s worth reading, because here we have like, “What are we supposed to do on Shavuot,” my wife asked. Well, we have a commandment to rejoice. And you rejoice with other people, and hopefully you guys are rejoicing with us here today.
Nelson: “You shall rejoice before Yehovah your God with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite in your communities, and the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your midst at the place where Yehovah your God will choose to establish His name.”
Nehemia: So, this is part of the pilgrimage. It’s something we’re supposed to do in Jerusalem when we go up on the pilgrimage at the feast, and we bring family, and we bring the disadvantaged and the people who can’t afford it, and we celebrate together with them. And in the Jewish tradition we have this thing called mishloach manot, which is “sending portions”, which is something they do on Purim as part of the celebration. And what you do, really, on Purim is you send these different… like, literally a plate of food to your friends. There’s a lot of regifting, by the way, because, like, how many hamantaschen does one really need? And how many little, tiny bottles of wine for kiddush does one really need? So, you end up getting all these things, and you repackage them, and you send them out to more people. That was a tradition I had growing up. They don’t really do that in Israel as much.
Lynell: Would you explain that, Nehemia?
Nehemia: So, it’s “sending portions”. And what we would do on Purim, which is in the 12th month, is we would have, like… we’d clear the dining room table and put out a bunch of paper plates. And then, you know, if you wanted to be really fancy, you have, like, baskets and stuff like that. And then you put a little bottle of wine, and you put, like, different kinds of sweets, usually like tiny little candy bars and hamantaschen, little cakes and things. And then you have a list of people, and you get in the station wagon, when I was growing up, and you drive around the neighborhood giving these to people. And they hand you one when you come to the door. And when they hand you one, you’re striked off their list and you strike them off your list. And then you come back home and you’re like, “Okay, who brought us? Oh, okay, that guy got two because I gave him one and he also brought one.” And you’re like, “Okay, now we’ve got all this junk I’m never going to eat. Now let’s give out more.” Right?
So, it’s kind of like trick or treat, but you’re actually going in people’s houses, giving them a little bottle of wine so they can say Kiddush, and… But where does it come from? It comes from Nehemiah… and Nelson, you want to turn to there, Nehemiah chapter 8. And there it’s not talking about Purim; it’s talking about any holy celebration. And the purpose there is something completely different than what we do today, which is giving stuff to your friends.
Let’s see. Okay, let’s read Nehemiah 8:9-10. And the context here… let’s read verse 8 first. Verse 8 is a profoundly important verse for reasons I won’t go into today. Well, maybe I will. Read Nehemiah 8:8-10, Nelson, and I’ll stop you at verse 8.
Nelson: Alright. “They read from the scroll of the teaching of God, translating it, and…”
Nehemia: The teaching of God there is, “And they read from the book,” which they’re translating here as “scroll”, of the sefer, the book, of the Torah of Elohim. Right? So, here they have the Torah, right? They have a Torah scroll, just like we have today. That’s… almost no doubt that that’s what that means, right? So, even those, you know, secular scholars who don’t believe that Moses wrote the Torah, even they have to admit, “Okay, here they have the same Torah we have today.” Right? Maybe they think it’s slightly different, but basically the Torah we have today is the Torah that was there in the time of Ezra. Right? That’s really beyond doubt. Okay, sorry, read that again now.
Nelson: “They read from the scroll of the teaching of God, translating it and giving the sense, so they understood the reading.”
Nehemia: So, each word there is really important, and it doesn’t mean translating it. That’s based on what the Talmud says it means. And the Talmud is anachronistically reading back into time something that was going on in the 3rd century AD, when many Jews didn’t know Hebrew. And they would have what’s called a meturgaman, which is the person who gave the Aramaic Targum, the Aramaic translation, they would read one or three verses, and then they would usually translate verse by verse, or sometimes three verses by three verses. So, they’d read it in Hebrew, read three verses in Aramaic, read three verses, read three verses in Aramaic. So, the rabbis in the 3rd century CE are anachronistically reading that back into Nehemiah, and then the translators of the JPS say, “Well, we know what the Talmud says it means, let’s just give that translation, that explanation.” So, it’s not translation, it’s mefurash, which… it literally means “rightly dividing it” or just dividing it. Let’s not go into that; we can do a whole teaching on that.
This is important because one of the explanations in the Talmud is that they were reading it with the Masoras. And you’ll hear about the Masoretic text. This is the first time the concept of a Masoretic text is mentioned by name in history is when the Talmud mentions, “this refers to the Masoras.” Even if it’s not exactly what our… Masoretic… we call it, maybe proto-Masoretic. So, we have, mefurash is “dividing it,” “ve’som sekhel,” “and giving sense to it.” Sekhel is like logic, sense. “Ve’yavinu ba’mikra,” “and they caused them to understand the scripture.” So, “caused them to understand” probably is some kind of a commentary.
Hebrew had changed from the time of Moses to the time of Ezra. It’s a long time. It’s like a thousand years or 900 years, and during that 900 years, some of the words, you know, people didn’t remember what, I don’t know, sha’atnez means, so they gave it an explanation.
Alright. So, now the important part for our discussion… but I just love that passage because it’s the first reference to a concept of that there was a Masora. Meaning, a way of transmitting Scripture letter by letter, maybe even word pronunciation of every word, maybe. So, verses 9-10, Nelson. Oh, and the context here is they’re upset. Why are they upset? They didn’t know they were supposed to be doing all these things in the Torah. Alright.
Nelson: “Nehemiah the Tirshatha, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were explaining to the people, said to all people, ‘This day is holy to Yehovah your God. You must not mourn or weep.’ For all the people were weeping as they listened to the words of the teaching.”
Nehemia: And what was the holiday there that they weren’t supposed to be weeping on? So, if we look earlier in the passage, it’s Yom Trua; it’s the first day of the seventh month. It’s not Shavuot, but it’s a feast. And he says, “On a holy day, it’s a day that’s holy to Yehovah, you shouldn’t be sad and mourning. You could do that tomorrow.” Alright, keep reading.
Nelson: “He further said to them, ‘Go eat choice foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to whoever has nothing prepared for the day…’”
Nehemia: Yeah, okay, I’m sorry, go on. For the… yeah…
Nelson: “‘…for the day is holy to our Lord. Do not be sad, for your rejoicing in Yehovah is the source of your strength.’”
Nehemia: It says “ki chedvat yehovah,” “The rejoicing of Yehovah,” “hi ma’uzkhem,” “is your fortification.” So, we should be rejoicing today because it’s the holy day. This is Yom Trua, but it applies to every day that’s a holy day. And one of the phrases here is, it says “ikhlu mi’shmanim;” “eat fatty foods.” They say, “choice foods”. I think that’s a lipophobic translation, which really… I won’t go into that. Anyway, it literally is, “Eat fatty foods and drink sweet drinks and send portions to those who have none prepared.” Who are the people who have none prepared? The poor people. Right? And that’s “shilchu manot,” “send portions”. Right? So, that’s where this concept comes from. It’s also in the scroll of Esther, right? But it’s what you do on a holy day is, you eat, and you also give to those who can’t afford.
Okay. No, lipophobia is not a term I coined, that’s actually a term. It comes from when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, and he had a heart attack. And the sugar lobby literally paid doctors to say it was because he had too much fat, even though it was probably caused by the sugar. But maybe I’m wrong. I’ll leave that to you guys to argue about.
Okay. So, here we send portions. That’s something we ought to be doing, I suppose, and I guess the way you could do that is to give charity. That actually is point eleven here, is freewill offerings to Yehovah. I would pour that into that. You know, in biblical times… Well, really it was in point eight. In biblical times you go, and you celebrate in Jerusalem. And you don’t celebrate alone; you invite other people to join you. And if you don’t, you know, we’re not going to Jerusalem today because we don’t have a temple, so the way we can do this is, or one way is, when we celebrate and also include those who are less fortunate either by sending food to them or inviting them to join you.
Alright, that was point number eight. Number nine is “count 50 days or seven weeks and one day”, and this is the 50th day, today, of that count. And by the way, this is why I’m celebrating it today and most Jews celebrated it last week on Sunday night and Monday. And the reason they did that is an age-old debate that goes back to Second Temple times of, when do you start to count the 50 days? Do you count it from… And really, it’s a question of… it says, “the morrow of the Shabbat”. I won’t go into that; I’ve done other teachings on that. I have many pages on my website that talk about this in great length and detail.
But basically, when it says mi’mocharat ha’shabbat, the morrow of the Shabbat, or the morning after the Shabbat; what is Shabbat? Is Shabbat the first day of Unleavened Bread, and hence the morrow is the second day of Unleavened Bread, meaning Chag ha matzot, or Passover? Or is the morrow after Shabbat the Sunday during the Feast of Unleavened Bread? And of course, the correct answer is the Sunday, but we… like I said, I’ve discussed that on other occasions. But that’s really like a 2,000-year-old debate. Oh, so that was count 50 days.
Ten is, there’s the bikurim bread, which is really interesting, because in the entire Torah there’s many flour offerings. You can read Leviticus 2, which my wife loves because it’s like a cookbook. There’s, you know, it’ll often say grain offerings, or in British English, they’ll say corn offerings. Corn means grain in British English. In American, corn is maize. So, grain offerings… Lots of different recipes for grain offerings. There’s only one occasion when you have leavened grain, and that is this specific sacrifice, which is the bikurim, which is two leavened loaves of new grain. You could, if you want, I suppose, have some leavened bread on Shavuot. Just remember, you’re not actually bringing the sacrifice. You can also offer a prayer in place of that sacrifice.
Eleven is “freewill offerings to Yehovah”. That is, you can donate to various causes. We don’t have the Temple today, so you can’t actually give it to the Temple. You can give to the poor and the needy as well.
Number 12. We’re going to come back to number 12. Number 12 is the Covenant at Sinai. I want to go a little bit more detail on that.
Number 13 is one that’s not obvious at all. And again, it’s one of these things that my wife’s asking me. And I’m reading every verse with her and I’m like, “Oh, you know, I hadn’t really thought about that.” So, Nelson, can you read Deuteronomy 16:12? Nelson, can you turn on and off your camera? Because I think it’s lost focus of you. If you turn it on, it should find you. There it is. You’re in perfect focus now. Alright, Deuteronomy 16:12.
Nelson: “Bear in mind that you were slaves in Egypt and take care to obey these laws.”
Nehemia: Okay? And then “bear in mind” isn’t bear in mind in Hebrew, it’s… let me find the verse here. It’s ve’zakharta, “and you shall remember”. “You shall remember” in Hebrew is kind of an active thing. Like, we think of “remember” as this just kind of floating around in my head and in the back of my mind somewhere. In Hebrew it also can mean “to mention.” Right? It’s the same thing that describes the name of Yehovah. He says, “This is My name forever, this is My zekher for generation to generation. This is My mention,” or My memorial it translates it sometimes. But it’s the way we mention Him.
So, really, it’s “you shall remember.” Which also means “you shall mention that you were slaves in Egypt, and you shall diligently do all these statutes.” Referring to Shavuot, and other things. It’s also including Pesach here, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but it says it specifically in verse 12, in the context of Shavuot. So, we’re supposed to remember we were a slave, not just on Passover, but also on Shavuot.
So, why on Shavuot? Well, that brings us back to point number 12, and here I feel like I had one in Exodus, and I lost it. Where was it? It was in Exodus 3 somewhere, Nelson. So, if we go back to Exodus 3, Moses has this incident at the burning bush. And Moses is given a series of signs, of miracles. Right? He sticks his hand into his cloak, and he brings it out, and it’s white like a leper, right? It’s maybe like a… what would we call that? The people have the pink eyes… albino, right? He brings out his hand, and it’s white, like an albino or like a leper back then. Right? Leprosy was something where your hand was, like, bright white, without pigment. And then he puts it back in, and then it comes back to its original color. Right? That was one of the miracles. He throws the staff down and it turns into… people don’t remember that. They remember the miracles that he did for Pharaoh. These weren’t miracles for Pharaoh, these were miracles for the people of Israel. When Moses says to God, “I don’t think they’re going to believe me, that God appeared to me.” He said, “I’ll give you these signs.” But then there’s a fourth sign, which is, in a sense, the most important sign that Yehovah really revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush and revealed His name was Yehovah. And that ties into what we’re going to see in point number 12, which is the revelation at Sinai. Let’s see…. alright… Nelson, where was that? Do you remember that was in a previous version?
Nelson: Was it Exodus 3:12?
Nehemia: Yes! Can you read that?
Nelson: Yes. So, Exodus 3:12, “And He said,” Yehovah said.
Nehemia: Actually, we have to read verse 11… 11 and then 12, yeah.
Nelson: Okay, let me go back. Okay. “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?’ And He, Yehovah, said, ‘I will be with you. That shall be…’”
Nehemia: “And I will be with you,” that’s eheyeh. Right. So, He’s referring to… this is kind of a teaser about what’s about to come in verse 14: eheyeh asher eheyeh, I will be. And here He’s saying, “For I will be with you.” “Who are you, who am I? I’m the one who will be with you.” Alright. “And this is for you the sign…” Yeah.
Nelson: “And that shall be your sign that it was I who sent you. And when you have freed the people from Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”
Nehemia: So, what’s this mountain? This mountain is Mount Sinai. So, there’s three signs. There’s the staff turns into a snake and then back into the staff. There’s the water turns into the blood. There’s the hand turns like a leper and then turns back normal. And then there’s the fourth sign, which is the most important one, which is that all of Israel will be brought out of Egypt. And they won’t just disappear and cease to be a people or go into the land, they’ll actually come to this mountain where I’m revealing myself to you. And they will know that I’m the one who sent you, because you’ll come and worship Me at this mountain. And what happened at that mountain? What happened at that mountain was the Revelation at Sinai. And what’s the first word in the Revelation at Sinai, the first two words, Nelson?
Nelson: “Ani Yehovah.”
Nehemia: “Anokhi Yehovah. I am Yehovah.” He says, “Anokhi Yehovah,” right? Why is he saying that? Because He predicted they would come specifically to this mountain. And if you look at the whole story of the Exodus, repeatedly they come to Pharaoh. And we have the version in American culture, which is where he says in the cartoon and in the movie, “Let my people go.” But that’s not what he said. He says, “Let my people go, that they may worship me in the wilderness.”
And he keeps saying, “We need to go out into the wilderness to have a chag. We have to go out to have a chag. We have to go out to have a chag.” What’s the chag where they’re worshiping Yehovah? Well, first, it’s Passover. But he was saying, “We’re going to go out into the wilderness for three days and we’ll worship Yehovah at a chag.” That’s what Moses kept saying to Pharaoh. And what was the chag? The chag was Shavuot. The feast, the Pilgrimage Feast, was they were going to not just celebrate, because Pharaoh said, “Why can’t you do it here? Why do you have to go in the wilderness?” Because it’s a pilgrimage feast! You have to go to a place where Yehovah has put His name. And the place Yehovah put His name at that time… literally, He says, “Anokhi Yehovah,” is Mount Sinai.
Now, nowhere in the Tanakh does it explicitly say Shavuot has anything to do with Mount Sinai. Jewish tradition says that. But where does Jewish tradition get it? It gets it from… we’re going to read a few verses here. Let’s start, Nelson, in Exodus 19:1. Now, let’s remember, Shavuot is the only one of our feasts. We have seven mikra kodesh days that are annual mikra kodesh, annual holy proclamations, and each one has it. Six of them have a date. With the exception of Shavuot, which has no fixed date. It’s a 50-day count from the morrow after the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. What’s that date? The date can vary. Okay, so now, let’s read Exodus 19:1.
Nelson: “On the third new moon, after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai.”
Nehemia: So, they’re entering the wilderness of Sinai on Rosh Chodesh, on the beginning of the third month, meaning the third new moon. So, it’s the first day of the third month. In modern Judaism, we call that Sivan. That’s a Babylonian name. So, the first day of Sivan is when they enter the wilderness. And then read verse 2.
Nelson: “Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the wilderness of Sinai and encamped in the wilderness. Israel encamped there in front of the mountain.”
Nehemia: Alright. So, this was the prediction! “You’re going to come out of Egypt. Not only you come out of Egypt, you’re going to come worship Me at this mountain.” And then let’s skip ahead to verses… Moses goes up to Mount Sinai, talks to God. Let’s skip ahead to verses 10-11.
Nelson: Okay, 19:10. “And Yehovah said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day Yehovah will come down in the sight of all the people on Mount Sinai.’”
Nehemia: So, the third day of what? It’s not entirely clear. It could be the third day of Sivan, the third day, the third month, or they traveled after they… I mean, they entered Sinai, the wilderness of Sinai. And then it says in verse 2, they camped in front of the mountain. So maybe this is two or three days later, it’s not entirely clear.
Okay, but whatever it is, the third day from that revelation. And by the way, third day is very interesting. It’s inclusively the third day, which means, God’s speaking to Moses… let’s call it on Tuesday, right? Well, we won’t call it Tuesday, we’ll call it Friday. He’s talking to him on Friday, and He’s saying the third day; that’s Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So, Sunday is when the revelation is taking place. Right? In modern English, we’ll say three days from now. On Friday, we actually mean Monday, but not in ancient Hebrew. Generally, He means three days from now. That’s what’s called an inclusive count. An exclusive count would be you don’t count the first day. An inclusive count as you do count the first day.
So, He’s talking to him on a Friday. He’s saying, on the third day, let them prepare themselves, sanctify themselves… It’s very interesting. Actually, something just occurred to me, but we’ll save that for a different study. Okay. Let’s skip ahead now to when he actually comes down and tells them to do that in verses 15-16.
Nelson: “And he said to the people, ‘Be ready for the third day. Do not go near a woman.’”
Nehemia: Why don’t go near a woman? Because they haven’t learned the laws of ritual purity yet. But the entire area where they’re going to be requires a state of ritual purity, and if you have relations with a woman, then you are ritually impure until you wash yourself and then wait until sunset. He’s like, “No. On the third day, you’ve got to be ritually clean.” Alright.
Nelson: “On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder and lightning and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn, and all the people who were in the camp trembled.”
Nehemia: And this is the Revelation at Sinai. Right? This is what’s happening. God is appearing to every Israelite man, woman and child on the third day, in the morning, interestingly. And what’s interesting is that mi’mochorat ha’Shabbat, we translate as “the morrow after the Sabbath”, but mochorat actually means “the morning” after the Sabbath, right? So, the revelation is in the morning and Shavuot is based on a sacrifice that takes place on the 50th morning counted from the Sunday during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So, it doesn’t explicitly say that Shavuot is the celebration of the covenant at Sinai, but there is an implication here. There is a connection to it. Timing wise, both when that day falls out, the 50th day, sometime early in the third month, right? Shavuot is always going to be early in the third month, if you’re counting during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Sunday during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, you always end up early in the third month. But it’s going to be a variable day. And that’s exactly what we have: Shavuot being a variable day, meaning, day of the month, early in the third month in the morning.
Okay. So, if you want to say, “No, Shavuot has nothing to do with the Revelation at Sinai.” Okay. I said that for many years. Now, I did a teaching called the Feast of Oaths. I did this literally in 2015… no, it was probably 2013 or 14. So, a little over ten years ago. And I was basing myself on something in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and when I prepared this for this morning, for today, I learned that something I said there wasn’t entirely correct. So, consider this an appendix to what I said ten years ago. I’m right now, and I was wrong then.
So, Jubilees is a book that was written around 200 BCE. It was part of the Bible of the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had this doctrine, which is that there were 24 “revealed” books, which is our Tanakh, plus, there were 70 “secret” books. So, they had a canon that was only for the initiated. And in Jubilees 6:11… I’m going to read you the Wintermute translation, which is published by Charlesworth. It’s a more recent translation. And by the way, the Book of Jubilees… fragments survive in Hebrew, but not this section. So, this only survives in Geʽez, which is the ancient language of Ethiopia.
So, this is part of the Ethiopian Church’s Bible, and it’s somewhat of a mystery. How did the Ethiopian church end up with books that were part of the secret canon, that you had to be a member of the Essenes to have access to? Meaning, if you were a Jew in Second Temple times, you probably didn’t know the Book of Jubilees even existed unless you were a member of the Essene movement. So, how did that end up in Ethiopia? There’s no doubt that there were Jews who must have gone down to Ethiopia, and then they became Christians. Or the Christians got their Bible from them, from the Essenes.
Okay. He says, “Therefore he spoke to you so that you also might make a covenant.” This is taking place in the time of the forefathers. “He spoke to you that you also might make a covenant with the children of Israel with an oath in this month upon the mountain,” that’s referring to Shavuot. So, there seems to be a play on words between making an oath and the feast of Shavuot. “And you will sprinkle blood upon them, on account of all the words of the covenant which the Lord made with them for all time.”
Nelson and I looked at the Geʽez. Right? Because we don’t have this in the original Hebrew. Fragments of Jubilees survives in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I said, “Nelson, you know, if there really is a connection here, I would expect there to be that the word for oath here is related to the word Shavuot.” And let me back up. In Hebrew, we have two related words. And I’m going to say them, and I’m going to ask Nelson to cut and paste the little tables I have here. In the singular, we have the word shavua, which means week, and we have the word shvu’a, which means oath. In the plural, both of those words have an “ot” ending, which is a bit unusual for the word shavua. Shouldn’t it be shavu’im, or shvu’im, or something like that? It is actually, in the Book of Daniel, but usually it’s not. Usually the plural is shavu’ot, with an “ah” for when you’re talking about weeks, and shvu’ot when you mean oaths.
And it’s interesting; people will say, from the Hebrew Roots community will tell me, you know, they’ll talk about Yeshua, or they’ll say YESH-ua. And I’ll say, “No, the emphasis is very important that it’s Yesh-U-a.” And it is, because yeshuAH is salvation, and yesh-U-a is a shortened form of the name Joshua, or Yehovah yoshia, “Yehovah saves”. Two completely different things.
So, here we have an example of where the emphasis makes a difference. So, we have shvu’ot is oaths, and shavu’ot means weeks. And here the emphasis is the same. The emphasis is on the end of the final syllable, “ot”. Shvu’ot and shavu’ot. The difference is the first syllable is the eh or an ah, and it completely changes the meaning, although sometimes shvu’ot does mean weeks. But I won’t go into that… in certain instances.
So, when we have Chag Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, it’s possible that, from the very beginning, there was a play on words that this is a feast of oaths. That seems to be the case in the Book of Jubilees in Geʽez, in the ancient language of Ethiopia. Although the word there for oaths is a completely unrelated word, and the feast is actually called “weeks” in Geʽez. And what I found is that… and look, I’m much more knowledgeable now than I was ten years ago, as you would imagine. The claim that Jubilees is interpreting the Feast of Weeks as the Feast of Oaths comes from a scholar in the 1950s who believed that the Book of Jubilees, and this was a hypothesis he had, which I don’t know that anybody today accepts, it certainly has no basis; his hypothesis was that the Book of Jubilees was an alternative Torah. And that it’s actually polemicizing, arguing against the Torah that we have today. And in our Torah, the Torah is… the feast is Shavuot, Feast of Weeks. And in Jubilees, it was Sh’vu’ot, Feast of Oaths. That was his hypothesis.
And I, frankly, didn’t know enough to realize that this was just a hypothesis, not fact. That is, there’s no basis for that hypothesis. Or let me rephrase it. There’s no basis for the hypothesis that Jubilees was arguing against our Torah. That’s utter nonsense. And how do I know that? Because the word in Ethiopian, in the ancient Ethiopian language, Geʽez, for Shavuot, is the word in Ethiopian that means weeks, and has nothing to do with the word for oaths. Yes, it mentions oath, and there’s a play on words there in the Geʽez, probably, or in the, let’s say, the Hebrew behind the Geʽez, right? Which is what he was saying. He was saying that the Ge’ez was translated from the Greek and the Greek was translated into Hebrew, and in the original Hebrew there was a play on words. Okay. If there was a play on words, that’s in our Torah as well. We don’t need the Ethiopian for that. We don’t need the Geʽez for that. Meaning, if you want to say Chag Shvu’ot… and specifically there, there is where you could make the strongest case. There’s cases where the word for weeks is shvu’ot, which should literally mean oaths, but means weeks in the context. Right?
So, long story short, that was something that I presented in that Feast of Oaths teaching, trusting this scholar from the 1950s, who was kind of just making it up. And when I went to look for the source, Nelson and I probably spent a whole day looking for the source, realizing, the guy just made it up and I believed him. Shame on me. Yes, shame on me. And look, there’s a lot of scholars who blindly repeat what this guy said. I frankly didn’t have the resources at the time to check the Geʽez, because I don’t read Ancient Ethiopian. Now, I have the resources, and I realize, wait a minute; this guy literally made that up? The word for Shavuot in Ethiopian is just the word that literally means weeks? So, how can you say that in the Book of Jubilees it’s not about weeks? It’s clearly about weeks. The word is weeks.
Anyway. Alright. Now, with all that said, you could argue that in the Torah itself, when it says Chag Shavuot, there’s a play on words because it sounds like the word for oaths. And we have the precedent for that. We have the name of the place is Be’er Sheva, which… It’s interesting; The Book of Jubilees translates Beersheba as “the well of oaths”. But be’er sheva doesn’t mean the well of oaths, it means “the well of seven”. And Abraham, if you recall, says to Abimelech, “What are these seven sheep that you put aside? That’s a sign that there’s an oath between you and me that we won’t make war.” Right? That was with the ancient Philistines. Interesting. Anyway, so, within the Torah itself, we have this play on words that’s going on between oaths and weeks. We don’t need the book of Jubilees for that. Right? If you want to say Shavuot is both weeks but also alludes to the oath that God made at Sinai, okay. That has nothing to do with the Book of Jubilees.
What the Book of Jubilees could show is that somebody made that interpretation already in ancient times. Right? In the context of the feast of Shavuot. And I think that’s kind of what I said ten years ago. I maybe took it one step further, and that’s still correct. In other words, in the Book of Jubilees, there is a play on oaths being related to Shavuot. Right? There’s somebody who’s interpreting Shavuot as shvu’ot. Right? What this scholar in the 50s said, which I don’t think I ever claimed this, so maybe I am vindicated, which is that “No. The Book of Jubilees is disconnecting it from the concept of weeks.” That’s nonsense. Right? He’s saying it also means oaths. Right? That’s, what he … or that’s what I would say, let’s put it that way. And that’s what more recent scholars have said, and that’s definitely correct.
Alright. I hope that made sense. I know it’s a bit complicated. We have two words that are almost identical in English, shavu’ot and shvu’ot, and they mean completely different things. But they do sound similar even in ancient Hebrew, which is why Abraham put aside seven sheep to make a covenant, to make an oath. Shiv’a, sheva. Seven oaths… the word sounds similar. Right? So, a lot of times in ancient Hebrew we have what are called word puns, or… there’s one scholar who calls them MNDs. An MND is Midrashic Name Derivation. Midrashic indicates that it’s not a linguistic argument; it has more to do with how it sounds.
Okay. Tov, I hope that made sense. Alright. Now, to get to the main thing I wanted to talk about today, all that was…
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: All that was introduction. This would have been a very short teaching if I’d just cut to the chase. Nelson, can you read Deuteronomy 5, verses 3-5? And I’ll do my best not to interrupt you. But we’ll go back over them after that. Deuteronomy 5, verses 3-5. Here Moses is retelling what we read in Exodus 19, which was the Revelation at Sinai.
Nelson: “It was not with our fathers that Yehovah made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today. Face to face, Yehovah spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire. I stood between Yehovah and you at that time to convey Yehovah’s words to you, for you were afraid of the fire, and did not go up to the mountain.”
Nehemia: Okay. Now, if we were to read this very literally, we could say Moses is a liar. And that’s what I wanted to call this teaching; “When Moses Lied.”
Lynell: [Laughter] No!
Nehemia: Lynell vetoed that one.
Lynell: No! [Laughter]
Nehemia: But here’s an example where a literalist interpretation is untrue, is wrong, because it makes you say that Moses is a liar, and I don’t believe Moses is a liar. Moses was speaking the truth. But what he meant by that isn’t what you would understand if you take it literally. Okay, so… let me read this very literally and explain why it’s not literally true. It says, “Lo et avoteinu karat Yehovah et ha’brit ha’zot.” “Not with our fathers did Yehovah cut this covenant.” Well, that’s not true; it was with their fathers. Many of them weren’t born. How do I know that? Because when they believed the evil report of the ten spies, they said, “Our children are the ones who are going to die when we go into the land, because we can’t defeat the Philistines.” And God said, basically, “That was prophetic.” Or, He didn’t say it in those words, but in our terms: “That was prophetic. Your children are the ones who are going to go in and you’re going to die in the desert.”
And so, an entire generation, everyone… and then we later learn in Deuteronomy that everybody who, at the time of the sin of the spies was under the age of 20, they survived. And everyone whose birthday had been that day, 20 years and up, they died in the desert. So, you have an entire generation that died out in the desert. An entire generation who either hadn’t been born or was under the age of 20 were the ones who Moses was speaking to in Deuteronomy 5. So, why would he say, “It was not with our fathers that Yehovah cut this covenant?” And it’s interesting; which translation did you guys paste in here? Was that the JPS? “God cut this covenant not only with our fathers?” Or was that…
Lynell: That’s from our study. That’s from my notes.
Nehemia: Okay. So, the Hebrew frontloads it with the words, “Not with our fathers.” Right? You could, you normally would say this in Hebrew, “Yehovah…” You would say “He did not cut,” and then you would bring the subject, which is Yehovah. Meaning, “Yehovah did not cut this covenant with our fathers.” That’s how you’d normally say it. But instead, it says, “Not with our fathers.” Right? It’s emphasizing that it was not with our fathers that Yehovah cut this covenant. “For with us,” we, these, here today, all of us who are alive… But that’s not true. It was with the fathers. Some of them maybe were born, right? Anybody who is under the age of 20 at the time of the spies. But most of them hadn’t even been born. So, what does he mean by that?
So, to understand what that means, here’s what the medieval commentators explain. They say, first of all, there’s a linguistic issue here. And a linguistic issue, to understand it, we have to look at Genesis 35:10. When Hebrew says, “not with”, it could mean “not only with”. Or “not X” can mean “not only x.” What’s an example of that? Genesis 35:10 it says, “Va’yomer lo Elohim,” “And God said to him,” “Shimcha Ya’akov lo yikareh shimcha od Ya’akov,” “Your name Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but rather Israel shall be your name.” And he calls his name Israel.
And so, the medieval commentators say, “Okay, linguistically that means he was called Jacob, clearly.” Right? If you look in the Torah, he’s continued to be called Jacob. “But he’s not only called Jacob,” is what it means. So, just for starters, “not with your fathers” could mean linguistically, “not only with your fathers.” So, what is it? But even that’s not true. It was only with their fathers! Most of the people there hadn’t been born yet! So, what does he mean? What he means is, “not only with your fathers, but it’s as if you were there at Mount Sinai.” That’s what it means. And now, later Kabbalists took this in a mystical way, and they said, “The soul of every Jew was at Mount Sinai.” Literally. “And the soul of every convert was at Mount Sinai.”
So much so that there was a dating site… I don’t know, I haven’t looked at dating sites in many, many years. But there used to be a dating site for Orthodox Jews, or anybody who aligned with that ideology, called Saw You at Sinai. I don’t know if that still exists anymore. And it was a pun. If you weren’t raised with that midrashic explanation that every soul was at Mount Sinai, you wouldn’t understand it. Right? So, it was kind of a shibboleth. Right? It was kind of like a test… to sign up for that site, you would have to have that kind of cultural background.
And once I was rebuked by a rabbi in front of a bunch of other people, because I said, “It’s not true. My soul was not at Mount Sinai, and neither was yours. That’s just a lie.” And I was right. It was a lie. But what Moses is saying here, “It was not only with your fathers, it’s as if you were at Mount Sinai.” And he says that in a very definitive way to show how certain that is.
And here’s an example of a medieval rabbi who said that. Levi Ben Gershon, who was a rabbi in southern France, in Provence, which is another part of southern France, but it was considered a Sephardic region even though it was in France, what today is France. So, he lived 1288 to 1340. He was actually a very famous mathematician and astronomer. There’s a crater on the moon named after this rabbi, Rabbi Levy Ben Gershon, and it’s called the Rabbi Levy Crater because he was a famous astronomer. And he explains: “The meaning of this is that the Torah was not given to the fathers alone, but to them and their descendants after them in perpetuity. And concerning this, it is appropriate that every generation thinks it is as if the Torah was given to them.” So, those words, “as if”, means it’s not literally true, but it’s as if it’s true. And so, you can say it as a definitive statement. And the Kabbalists are the ones who want to say it’s literally true and say, “Nehemia’s soul was at Mount Sinai.” That’s a lie. My soul was not at Mount Sinai, and neither was theirs. They just want to say that that’s true.
Alright. Okay. This is a strange thing; why does Moses come along and say, “It’s as if I was at Mount Sinai?” Why does he need to say that? Why isn’t it good enough to say that my ancestors were at Mount Sinai? There’s this concept… and here, really, I think this ties into Shavuot. Shavuot is… I’ve said in the past… Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pesach, is a covenant festival, and so is Shavuot. It is a Feast of Covenant. And there is this idea throughout the Tanakh that, people in every generation, they would not only remember the covenant, they would renew the covenant. And we can see that in a number of passages. Jeremiah 31:31 is a famous one. I’ll ask Nelson to read, actually verses 31-34 of Jeremiah 31.
Nelson: Sure. Pulling that up right now. Okay. Jeremiah 31:31…
Nehemia: And the background here is that three times, at least, maybe even four, I don’t remember, in the Torah, in Exodus, in Leviticus, and in Deuteronomy, it says that when you have a Hebrew slave, that Hebrew slave will work for you for six years. So, he’s not slave in the modern sense, or in the sense of 19th century America, it’s more a sense of what we would call an indentured servant. And so, he’s a slave for you for six years. In the seventh year, he has to go free. And the Jews of the late First Temple period said, “You know, that’s not really good for business. Let’s just keep the slaves.” Alright. And then they repent, and then they go back on their repentance. Alright, read that, Nelson.
Nelson: “‘See, a time is coming,’ declares Yehovah, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I espoused them,’ declares Yehovah. ‘But such is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after these days,’ declares Yehovah. ‘I will put My teaching in their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’”
Nehemia: Now, if we stopped reading here, and I’ve had a lot of Christians who presented this verse to me and say, “See, we’re now living in the New Covenant, in the Brit Chadasha,” which is the phrase here, “a new covenant.” Some people translate “a renewed covenant.” I think renewed is correct, and here’s why. We’re obviously not in this covenant now. Well, I’ll explain why in a few minutes. But we’re obviously not in this covenant now because of the next verse. What is the next verse?
Nelson: “‘No longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another, heed Yehovah. For all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed Me,’ declares Yehovah. ‘For I will forgive their iniquities and remember their sins no more.’”
Nehemia: And may that be soon. And the Hebrew it doesn’t say, “heed” Yehovah, it says “know” Yehovah. So, “‘No longer will a man teach his fellow and a man his brother, saying,” “De’u et Yehovah”, “know Yehovah.” “Ki chulam,” “all of them,” “yed’u oti,” “they will know Me.” “From the smallest to the greatest,’ says Yehovah. ‘For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.’”
So, the fact that Christian missionaries spend billions of dollars every year to teach their fellow man about their understanding of God proves that, at least from a Christian perspective, we couldn’t possibly be in the New Covenant. Not in the Jeremiah 31:31 sense. Maybe in some other sense, right? But what is this new covenant? Is this different from the current covenant? Meaning, are the terms of it different? No. It’s different in the sense that everyone will actually keep it, and you don’t have to teach people about it. And then the context here is what we see in Jeremiah 34:8-22. Right? That’s the context in which Jeremiah is saying this, so let’s read that. So, Jeremiah 34:8-22. This is “they’ve freed their slaves”, and then they said, “Boy, that’s bad for business.”
Nelson: “The word which came to Jeremiah from Yehovah after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim a release among them.”
Nehemia: Well, that’s strange. Why do I need a covenant to let the slaves free when the Torah commands me? There already is a covenant that says that. It’s called the Torah. So, this is a renewal of the covenant. The renewal of the covenant says, “I’m going to actually do what God said to do.” That’s what the renewal is. It’s not a new covenant with new terms and the old one’s done away with. No, it’s the same covenant, just, I’m going to actually do it. Alright, let’s keep reading.
Nelson: “That everyone should set free his Hebrew slave.”
Nehemia: Well, I’ve got to stop you here. We did a teaching on divorce recently, and the word for divorce is literally the same word, shallach. It’s the piel form of “to send”, shallach. So, you can say, “That each man will divorce his slave and each man his maidservant. His Hebrew, male and female, they should be free.” So, what does that mean, divorce? Divorce is, to set somebody free when it’s the appropriate time. Okay, keep going.
Nelson: “‘…both male and female, and that no one should keep his fellow Judean enslaved.’ Everyone, officials and people, who had entered into the covenant agreed to set their male and female slaves free and not keep them enslaved any longer.”
Nehemia: So again, is this a new covenant? We’re like, “Oh, we don’t have the Torah anymore”? No, we’ve got the Torah. We’re just not doing it. “Alright, let’s all get together and swear before Yehovah. We’ll make an oath, and we’ll perform a covenant ceremony,” as we’re about to see. Which blew my mind when I first read this many years ago. Well, I’m… spoilers. Let’s read it.
Nelson: “They complied and let them go, but afterward they turned about and brought back the men and women they had set free and forced them into slavery again.”
Nehemia: And by the way, they complied. Excuse me. “They complied” in Hebrew is va’yishme’u, they “shema’d”. Right? So, what were they doing? They were obeying what God had already said in Exodus. They were obeying what God already said in Leviticus. They were obeying what God already said in Deuteronomy, that they’re now swearing they’re going to do, and then they obeyed, and then they did it. And they’re like, “Nahhh, that’s bad for business. It’s much better to have people work for free, against their will.” Alright, let’s keep going.
Nelson: “Then it was that the word of Yehovah came to Jeremiah from Yehovah. Thus says Yehovah, the God of Israel: ‘I made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage, saying…’”
Nehemia: Hey guys, this is a quote from Deuteronomy. It’s something that appears in Exodus 21:2-6, and a form of it appears in Leviticus 25:39-43, but this is a very close paraphrase of Deuteronomy 15 verses 12-18. Alright, go on.
Nelson: “‘In the seventh year, each of you must let go any fellow Hebrew who may be sold to you. When he has served you six years, you must set him free.’ But your fathers would not obey Me or give ear. Lately, you turned about and did what is proper in My sight, and each of you proclaimed a release to his countrymen; and you made a covenant accordingly before Me in the House which bears My name. But now you have turned back and have profaned My name; each of you has brought back the men and women whom you had given their freedom and forced them to be your slaves again. Assuredly, thus says Yehovah: ‘You would not obey Me and proclaim a release, each to his kinsman and countryman. Lo! I proclaim your release,’ declares Yehovah, ‘to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine; and I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. I will make the men who violated My covenant, who did not fulfill the terms of the covenant which they made before Me, like the calf which they cut in two so as to pass between the halves.’”
Nehemia: Woah, there, we gotta stop. That’s unbelievable. The what now? The who? The where? So, it says here that… So, let’s remember; in Genesis 15, Abraham has a covenant with Yehovah and we call it, in Hebrew, brit bein ha’betarim, the covenant between the pieces. And he cuts these animals in half. And then the vultures come to eat the carcasses, and he shoos them away. And we’re like, “What is this weird thing? He’s cutting…”
So, this is another interesting thing; the word for making a covenant is “to cut a covenant”. And there’s this literal act where they split an animal in half, and then they walk between the pieces. Why do you do that? What’s the significance of that? It’s not clear in Genesis. They understood, because they were part of that culture. Right? This is an ancient cultural practice. We only find out here in the Book of Jeremiah what it meant. And what does it mean? Read the next verses.
Nelson: “The officers of Judah and Jerusalem, the officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the halves of the calf shall be handed over to their enemies, to those who seek to kill them. Their carcasses shall become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.”
Nehemia: So, what it meant when Abraham cut the animals in half, and he walked between the pieces to make this covenant with Yehovah… there’s an implication there that, if I don’t keep this covenant, I’m going to be like these carcasses that are eaten by the birds of the air. Right? Like a carcass thrown in the field, in the countryside, and the vultures come and eventually eat it. That’s what it means. You’re laying a curse upon yourself by saying, “If I don’t keep this covenant, I will be cursed in this way. I’ll be cut in a way…” You know… An animal cut in half, can’t… you put it back together, it doesn’t help. It’s still dead. It’s a carcass. “I’m going to be a carcass like these carcasses if I don’t keep this covenant.” And in the time of Zedekiah in the 580s BCE, they cut an animal in half, an egel, a calf, and they walked between the pieces as a symbol of this covenant. And it’s not a new covenant. It’s a renewal of the covenant. And that’s what he’s saying. He’s sort of mocking them in Jeremiah 31, saying, “In the future we’re going to have a new covenant where you guys actually keep it. Right now, you made a covenant, and you didn’t keep it. We’re going to have a new covenant in the future, in the Messianic Era, which nobody will even need to teach anybody what to do, they’ll just know to do it.” And may that day be soon. But here’s the covenant they did make and didn’t keep, or they kept it very temporarily until it wasn’t convenient. Alright, let’s keep reading here.
Nelson: “I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah and his officers to their enemies who seek to kill them, to the army of the king of Babylon which has withdrawn from you. I hereby give the command,” declares Yehovah, “by which I will bring them back against this city. They shall attack it and capture it and burn it down. I will make the towns of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.”
Nehemia: So, the point here is that there was a practice of renewing the covenant, and they would renew the covenant every year. Every time you celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, you’re renewing the covenant of the Exodus. Every time, you… and look, the culmination of the Exodus was Shavuot. Right? They left Egypt, but then the promise from the very beginning in Exodus 3 was, “You’ll come and worship Me at this mountain,” which was Shavuot, the Revelation at Sinai. So, the moment they left Egypt, it wasn’t completed until they reached Mount Sinai. That’s when the promise was completed. That’s when we know that it was Yehovah who really spoke to Moses.
And so, that is commemorated on Shavuot. And when Moses said it wasn’t with your fathers, it’s true. I mean, I said earlier it wasn’t literally true, but in a sense, it literally is true in that this year, Yehovah is… right now, today, is a renewal of the covenant. And it’s important, I think, to acknowledge that and to remember that, that we have a renewal of the covenant every year, and that’s what Deuteronomy 5:3 means. It’s as if you were at Mount Sinai, and you’re commemorating that every year on Shavuot.
Alright, one last verse here. You can put it up on the screen. It’s Ezra chapter 10, verses 2-6. It’s another time when they made a covenant to do what God had commanded. They had married these women who were worshiping idols, and they’re like, “Yeah, a little bit of idolatry, no big deal.” And they said, “Okay, we’re going to have to divorce our wives, who are worshipping idols and teaching our children to worship idols.” And they make a covenant to do that, because that’s not an easy thing to do. And it was a process, and we could do a separate study on that sometime.
So, the idea here, I believe, in Deuteronomy 5, when… and look, let’s look over Deuteronomy 5 again, and I want to read it very closely. Right? I had Nelson read three verses and at first, I thought, I’m just going to have him read one verse, verse 3. But in verses 4 and 5 he repeats it. So, it says, “Not with our fathers.” So, we have the word “our,” “did Yehovah….” I’m going to put up my fingers here and count every time he was referring to this non-literal concept. “Not with our fathers did Yehovah cut this covenant, but with us, we, these, here today, all of us who are alive.” So, seven times, you can maybe count that as eight, “Face to face Yehovah spoke with you.” And the “you” there is all y’all, meaning, he’s directly speaking to the people who are there at that time, “…in the mountain, out of the fire.” And then verse 5, “I am standing,” and this is the narrative present tense. He said, “I am standing between Yehovah and between you…” He’s describing what happened. So again, it’s all y’all, in between all y’all.
Well, what do you mean? Most of those people hadn’t been born, “…at that time to tell you the word of Yehovah, for you were afraid…” It wasn’t “you,” it was your fathers. But no, it was as if you were there, “…for you did not go up to the mountain, saying…” Right? And then it’s, “I am Yehovah,” that’s what Yehovah said.
So, 13 times, and I hadn’t counted on my fingers before. So, 13 times we have him referring to this non-literal concept, which is “as if you were there”. “It’s so much as if you were there… I’m going to say that it wasn’t with your fathers or only with your fathers. It’s that it was with you. You who weren’t even born yet.” And that is just as true today as it was 3,400 years ago or so, when Moses said this in the plains of Moab, just as they were about to enter the land, just before Moses died.
It’s just as true today as it was back then, because it wasn’t literally with them, it was with their fathers. And it wasn’t literally with me; it was with my ancestors. But it’s as if I was there. And it’s as if every one of you was there. And this is today where we commemorate that covenant as if we were there.
Alright. Let me end in a prayer, and then we’ll do a Q&A. Yehovah, Avinu she’bashamayim, Yehovah, Father in heaven, I thank You for this covenant that You have given us, that we renew today. That we renew every year. That You made with us. The covenant where You gave blessings and curses. And Yehovah, I ask You to guide me on the path that I may walk in Your ways, that I may walk on your straight path, that I may not veer to the right or to the left and fall off into the abyss. Father, give me the wisdom and the knowledge, and all of those here who are hearing Your words, Yehovah, all those around the world who call upon Your name, who love You, Yehovah, who maybe don’t even know what Your name is, who raise their hands, praying to a foreign God, as it says in Psalm 44. Yehovah bring them close to You, and let them know You, so that we’ll be in that new covenant that no man will need to teach his fellow to know Yehovah. That from the smallest to the greatest of us, we will all know You. Amen.
Alright.
Lynell: So, guys, here is Q&A. There’s a Q&A button. I’m going to be looking over on YouTube. There are some questions over there as well. We also want to remind everybody that on Nehemia’s Wall… Nelson, if you’ll put the event website there, we’ve got some scriptures up for you there. This teaching will also be available on demand. I mean, I don’t know if it’ll be on demand, but it will be at Nehemiah’s Wall for certain. How ever Nehemia and the team decide to put it up so you can listen to it again. But we’re ready for live Q&A. We’re going to do the Q&A button to start with. Please write your questions in. And then I’m going to unmute everybody, and you guys can talk and fellowship together, okay? And if you’re listening streaming, on YouTube I put a link if you want to join for the chat. You’re welcome to join for the live chat. But we’ll open that up after Q&A. And I think that’s…
Nehemia: And we have over 200 people here, so maybe we don’t want to unmute all the microphones at once.
Lynell: Well, I’ll unmute, I’ll allow them to talk, and you can unmute yourself after that. That’s what that does. And there are 200 people watching over on YouTube as well, and a bunch on Facebook, and you guys can join live here if you want, with that link I put up, or I’ll try to keep up with your questions there. But my voice isn’t so great. Alright, sweet pea, do you want to start the Q&A?
Nehemia: Alright. So, we have a question. “Are there any plans to release your own translation of the Hebrew Matthew?” Not really related to today’s teaching, so I’ll leave that for a different time. “What is the physical act of consecration of oneself?” So, in the context of Exodus 19, the physical action that they had to do was, number one, not expose yourself to things that cause ritual impurity, of which Leviticus and Numbers have many descriptions. They didn’t necessarily know all of those details yet, and so what they’re told specifically is, don’t have sex with women. There were other things that they probably didn’t know about, but that’s what God told them in Exodus 19.
Someone says, “What is the second scripture other than Exodus 23:13 with pa’am?” And we had… Nelson, can you put that up there? So, where it talks about regel, which is an occasion, was in Exodus 23:14, and then Exodus 23:17. Let me pull this up… make sure I’m right. I think I’m right. Yeah, it has shalosh pe’amim, three times. And then Exodus 34:23 has pe’amim, times. Then Exodus 34:24 has pe’amim, times. So, it has one time regel, which is occasion, literally foot, and then three times pa’am, or pe’amim, which means hooves or feet. And then you could also say, and I put this one in brackets, Deuteronomy 16:11, because Deuteronomy 16:11 doesn’t have the word regel or pa’am, but it talks about the occasions that you’re celebrating before Yehovah. Meaning, they’ve talked about the pilgrimage part of it, so…
Lynell: Nehemia.
Nehemia: Oh, there was a passage that I’m not sure we read, which actually was kind of important. Which was…
Lynell: Sweetheart?
Nehemia: Yes.
Lynell: Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt…
Nehemia: Go ahead.
Lynell: No, I have a question that… when you’re finished.
Nehemia: Okay. Hold on to that.
Nehemia: Nelson, where was the verse where it talks about… It’s actually a really important one, and I think we had looked at it a little bit differently. It was in Deuteronomy 14, I want to say. I feel like that was the one, the one that talks about the tithing. Let’s read that verse, because that’s actually kind of an important one. Give me a second here. Okay.
That was… Deuteronomy. Yeah, 14:22. Can you read that one? Oh, no. Is that… yeah. 14:22. Can you read that passage, Nelson?
Nelson: Yes. 14:22. “You shall set aside every year a 10th part of all the yield of your sowing that is brought from the field.”
Nehemia: Keep reading.
Nelson: “You shall consume the tithes of your new grain, and wine and oil, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks in the presence of Yehovah your God in the place where He will choose to establish His name so that you may learn to revere Yehovah your God forever.”
Nehemia: So, this passage doesn’t mention Shavuot per se, but it’s something that would apply to Shavuot, that they would do at Shavuot, because they’d be coming up on the pilgrimage. Keep reading.
Nelson: “Should the distance be too great for you, should you be unable to transport them, because the place where Yehovah your God has chosen to establish his name is far from you, and because Yehovah your God has blessed you, you may convert them into money. Wrap up the money and take it with you to the place that Yehovah your God has chosen and spend the money on anything you want; cattle, sheep, wine or other intoxicant, or anything you may desire. And you shall feast there, in the presence of Yehovah your God, and rejoice with your household. But do not neglect the Levite in your community, for he has no hereditary portion as you have. Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of your yield of that year…”
Nehemia: That’s already something else.
Nelson: Ah.
Nehemia: So, here we have this idea that when we go on the pilgrimage, we bring a portion. We bring some of the tithe, and we can spend that. But we don’t spend it just on ourselves, we also take care of those who don’t have, and especially the Levite, who doesn’t have a hereditary portion and therefore doesn’t have a tithe. So, when he comes in the pilgrimage, he doesn’t have anything to spend. So, that ties into… and it’s really interesting here. So, I know in some Christian circles, alcohol is of the devil. But here God said, in verse 26, “And you shall give of the silver according to all that your soul desires.” And soul here is nefesh, which also means appetite. “Of the cattle and the flocks, wine and strong drink, all that your nefesh,” again, your appetite or your soul, “desires. And you shall eat there before Yehovah, and you shall rejoice, you and your house.” So, we’ve got rejoicing, and we have eating here, eating and drinking strong drink. And it doesn’t mean get drunk and do stupid stuff, but… and let’s also remember, they didn’t have distilled spirits in the time of the Torah. That’s something that was discovered and developed in the Middle Ages. But, so, intoxicant, there, probably something we would call beer. So, that’s another part of it; that’s part of the celebration, right? So, we brought a verse that talks about celebration, Deuteronomy 16:11, but this is another part that informs us about celebrating during the three feasts. Alright, let’s see what our next question is.
Lynell: I’m going to ask one too, Nehemia.
Nehemia: Oh yes, my love.
Lynell: So, Terry Hardaway asked, “We just finished a Shavuot service. Is this a Karaite tradition, or a Gordon tradition?” He’s asking, why did we do this?
Nehemia: I don’t know how to answer that question.
Lynell: It says for us to get together on Shavuot.
Nehemia: Well, so the question is, what does mikra kodesh mean? Does mikra kodesh mean holy proclamation? In which case my obligation is to proclaim it holy. Or is it holy convocation, meaning holy gathering? I prefer the interpretation of holy proclamation. If you want to interpret it as holy gathering, then yeah, you’re required to gather. So, I’m not doing this because it’s a holy gathering. I’m doing it because today is a holy day to Yehovah, and I want to celebrate it with other people. I don’t know that it’s a tradition at all. You were invited to come. I’m glad you came. If you want to celebrate it by yourself, that’s… that’s your prerogative. So, I would say it’s neither.
Alright, let’s read some more questions here. “Does anyone actually send portions now? If so, how do you do it?” So, I think the way to do that today would be to give charity to those who can’t afford to celebrate. But if you know somebody specifically, you can send something to them. And the answer is no, people don’t really do that today, they give money to charity. Let’s see. I can’t actually see how this is… it’s kind of a weird system here, because whenever I scroll down, it kind of disappears.
Lynell: You want me to read to you?
Nehemia: No, I want to try to scroll down… Oh, I see. “So, exactly what does chag mean?” Chag has three connotations. One is to celebrate. Number two is to… and so, it’s interesting. We translate it “fast”, which implies food, but Hebrew doesn’t have that implication. There is a statement that we just read, in Deuteronomy 16:11 and Deuteronomy 14:22, which talks about celebrating with food. That doesn’t come from the word chag itself. So, that’s just something God tells us to do. The word chag literally is from the word chug, which means a circle, and it means “to dance”. But it also implies a pilgrimage, like we mentioned in Arabic there’s… In Arabic, it just means pilgrimage, right? But Hebrew is not Arabic. They’re just sister languages.
So, for example, there’s a beautiful passage in Judges that I’ll have Nelson read, and it talks about how there’s a chag in Shiloh, in Shiloh. And the women go out there to dance. So, it’s Judges 21:19. This is when the Benjaminites don’t have wives, and everybody took an oath saying they won’t give their daughters to… it’s kind of a crazy story. But Judges 21:19. You want to read that, Nelson?
Nelson: “They said, ‘The annual feast of Yehovah is now being held at Shiloh. It lies north of Bethel, east of the highway that runs from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah.’”
Nehemia: Right. And so, chag there was something that happened at a specific geographic location. Right? So, they’re making a pilgrimage to this particular place out in the vineyards. Right? It’s in the fields. It’s on the highway that runs from Beit El to Shechem, south of Lebonah. And so, let’s keep reading verse 20.
Nelson: “So they instructed the Benjaminites as follows: ‘Go and lie in wait in the vineyards. As soon as you see the girls of Shiloh coming out to join in the dances, come out from the vineyards. Let each of you seize a wife from among the girls of Shiloh and be off for the land of Benjamin.’”
Nehemia: And by the way, this is an example of how this world is chaotic. There’s what we would say in modern Hebrew a balagan. Everything’s a mess here because they’re, like, kidnapping women to marry them. It’s crazy. But it’s talking about when the women go out to dance. Why are they dancing? Because there’s a chag, right? And if you’ve ever been to a Jewish bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah or wedding, they dance in a circle. That’s an ancient Jewish… people talk about, like ancient Hebrew dance; that’s ancient Hebrew dance. You dance in a circle, and that’s implied by the word chag. Okay. So, chag implies dancing in a circle, it implies a pilgrimage, and there may be a connotation of, or maybe not, a feasting. But feasting is kind of its own thing as well. But if you just translate it as feast, you’re missing part of the flavor of the meaning.
Somebody says, “NASB says consecrate, but the one reading says warning.” I don’t know what verse we’re talking about, so, sorry. Oh! You’re talking about in Exodus 19. No, the word is “to consecrate,” is “to sanctify”. And there, sanctify means ritual purification, from, in that case, what it talks about in Leviticus 12. You guys can read that.
Somebody said, “Did the people hear the voice of God at Sinai or the voice of a horn?” They heard the voice of Yehovah. That’s what it says. The translation… okay. This… can we, like, mark this? I don’t know if you can mark those and get rid of the ones that we already answered. Otherwise, I’m confused, and I can’t keep track of where I am. I’m on Sheryl… oh, and now it just disappeared, so I don’t quite know how to do this. I see, let’s dismiss these. I’ll do that now that I understand it.
“I thought that curse of everyone dying above 20 related to doubt prior to going into the Promised Land.” Yes. It wasn’t doubt. They were saying… I mean, it was in a sense. What they said is, “We’re going to die in the desert and our children are going to die as well.” And God turns around and says, “Well, your children are the ones who are going to go, and you will die in the desert.” That’s in Numbers and Deuteronomy.
“Did the movable Shavuot gain popularity in response to the…” I don’t know, “the” is what? I’m going to dismiss that.
“If the Temple gets rebuilt in Israel, will that mean we should go to Israel to celebrate the feast?” Yes.
Lynell: May it be.
Nehemia: “Passover, the marriage being covenant between Yehovah and his bride, Israel… The 71…” Okay. I don’t… that’s some allegorical thing.
“Did the movable Shavuot become popular in response to the Sunday celebration of Pentecost?” No. So, we have testimonies from the Second Temple period that there was a debate between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the debate was about when to celebrate Shavuot. And that was before the rise of Christianity. It had nothing to do with Christianity. And the debate was, how do you interpret, “the morrow of the Shabbat”? The Pharisees interpreted it as the morrow after the first day of Unleavened Bread, hence the second day of Unleavened Bread. Hence, in their calendar, Shavuot is always on the sixth of Sivan. And the Sadducee says, “No, Sunday is a Sunday.”
Interestingly, today we know the Dead Sea Scrolls calendar also had it on a Sunday. But not the Sunday during Unleavened Bread, but the Sunday after Unleavened Bread, which for them always ended up on the… ends up always counting the 50th day as the 15th of Sivan. So, yes. And I once had a professor at Hebrew University who said, “Every Jewish…” “Every tradition,” that’s what he said, “every tradition beside ours understood ‘morrow after the Sabbath’ as a Sunday.” And I said, “Who’s ours? I think that’s right.” Anyway. And what he meant is the Dead Sea Scrolls have it on a Sunday. Not the same Sunday as I think, because they were wrong and I’m right. The Sadducees, the Karaites, the Ethiopian Jews… The Samaritans have it on a Sunday, as well. Right? So, every community, everybody who read the Tanakh, or the Torah, understood it as a Sunday, except for the Pharisees. And the Pharisees essentially admit: “We didn’t get it from the Torah; that’s from the Oral Law. We’re reading that meaning into the Torah because that’s what was told to Moses on Mount Sinai.” So, if you believe that was told to Moses on Mount Sinai, you should do it on the sixth of Sivan. If you don’t believe that, then you should do what the Torah actually says, the way it’s written.
Somebody says, “Okay, long…” Okay, that sounds like something for a different discussion. Let’s go to the next one. So… alright, somebody’s asking about, ooh, now a new one appeared, I don’t know how that happened. They’re asking about the mikra kodesh, which could be a holy convocation or a holy proclamation, a holy declaration. It depends how you interpret it. They’re both possible explanations. Convocation means a gathering.
“Most of the fruits that are used in Jewish tradition on Shavuot were not ready to be harvested.” Okay, I don’t know what that… I’m not sure what tradition you’re talking about. “When you give charity or portions for a day like today, do you need…”
Lynell: Read it out loud, so people can…
Nehemia: “When you give charity or portions for a day like today, do you need to note that when you give it?” Like, no. The answer is no. They don’t necessarily need to know why you’re doing it. “What do you think of the Rabbinic teaching that God offered the Torah to all the nations, but they refused it and only Israel accepted it. As a result, the souls of the goyim were dramatically diminished?” I just find that utterly nonsensical and with no basis in the Tanakh. The idea that the Jews have a different type of soul than non-Jews is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard in my life. And not just that, it’s diametrically opposed to what it says. Like, the whole point of Genesis… Genesis 1-3 is, Yehovah made man in His image, in His likeness. He didn’t say He made the Jews in his image, in His likeness, it says He made human beings. So, to say, “Jews have a different soul than non-Jews” is heretical from a Torah perspective. It’s completely contrary to what the Torah says, and that is one of the bizarre things that have come down to us through Kabbalah. It isn’t really even a concept that appears in the Talmud, as far as I know. At least not in that abominable form. Now, I’ll tell you what I really think.
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: Somebody says, “Deuteronomy 29:1 talks of Horeb covenant besides these words. Later in 29:9, Israel…” This sounds like a very complicated question. Somebody… send me an email about that. I don’t know.
“Jade to ask…” Okay. And then they’re responding to somebody else. Okay. I feel like I’ve answered all the questions.
Lynell: I’ve got one more question.
Nehemia: What’s that?
Lynell: And I can’t post it. Guys, do you see where I posted a question? It’s like, because Nehemia…
Nehemia: Is it in the Q&A? I don’t know.
Lynell: It is in the webinar chat. Will somebody put it in the Q&A?
Nehemia: I don’t know how to do that.
Lynell: Okay, I’ll read it out. “If you could please, what is the difference between avinu, sheva, shvarim, shavua tov, elisheva, and Shavuot? Is there any commonality between the words?”
Nehemia: So, Avinu sheva shvarim means “our father of seven breaks”, so that’s gibberish. I think what you want to say is Avinu she’bashamayim. I’ll write that here. Which is “our father who art in heaven”. So, the word sheva is not in Avinu she’bashamayim. It’s Avinu she’bashamayim. Shvarim are like breaks or splits, or it can mean blast of a horn. So, “our father of seven blasts” is not a thing. That’s something that you just misheard or misunderstood. It’s actually shavua tov, not shevua tov, right? Right? And it sounds like I’m splitting hairs here, but here the hairs are quite important. So, shavua tov means good week. It’s what you say after Shabbat. It’s a modern expression; it’s not an ancient Hebrew. Shavua tov is good week. It’s probably a Hebrew translation from the Yiddish gute vokh, which means “good week” in Germanic languages. I don’t think Germans say that, but Jews do. And then… oh, no, it disappeared. And then the other phrase was Elisheva.
So, one is shavua, and shavua, which means week, definitely comes from the word sheva, which means seven, because shavua is a period of sevens. Right? So, a period of sevens is related from the word sheva. And then be’er sheva… was that the other one? Oh, no, shavuot is weeks. So… but then we have Beersheba, or be’er sheva, which means the well of seven, and it refers to the seven sheep that Abraham set aside. But the seven sheep represented an oath. Right? So, within the Torah itself, there’s this play on words, right? Not necessarily related to Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, but related to be’er sheva. Right? But then you could make that connection as well. That makes sense. I hope that makes sense.
Somebody said here, “This year, the morrow after the Sabbath happened to coincide with the actual morrow after Shabbat. It’s only confusing this year because it was day two of the feast. So, some…” Okay, well, it depends when you think the feast started, I suppose. I made a decision nine years ago. I was going to stay out of calendrical matters. So, work it out for yourselves in fear and trembling with prayer and study before the Creator of the universe.
Somebody says, “What do you think about the seven weeks and then 50 days counting?” That’s utter nonsense. It’s beautiful; we have a phrase in English “that’s six of one, one half dozen of the other”. That’s the seven weeks and the 50 days counting. Right? It’s two ways of doing the same thing. Right? The way Deuteronomy 16 has it is, it’s seven weeks, and then Shavuot. And then Leviticus 23 has seven Shabbats, and then the morrow after the seventh Shabbat. And I was looking at my wife’s translation, the JPS, that she uses, the new JPS from 1985, and there it translates “the morrow after the seventh Shabbat.” Somebody check me on this; it translates it “the morrow after the seventh week.” Well, it’s not what it says in Hebrew. It says the morrow after the seventh Shabbat. That’s very different than the morrow after the seventh week.
Lynell: Totally different.
Nehemia: But why do they translate that? Because they want to get to the objective, which is that we’re keeping it on the Rabbinical day, right? Like, they’re not hiding the ball, right? It’s Rabbinical translation. I do want to bring up one thing. Are we still recording? Let’s stop recording and I’ll share it.
Lynell: Hang on a minute, Jerry. Okay, I’m going to stop recording, guys. One second. I’ll stop recording. We’ll still be live. Yes.
Nehemia: Okay, and I would love the feedback of the audience here. So, in the Hebrew Roots community, and I’m using Hebrew Roots in a very broad sense, of anybody who calls Jesus Yeshua, or uses the term Yeshua, let’s call it that, put it that way, because maybe you don’t call him Jesus, so it’s completely different things in your mind. Okay. So, in the Hebrew Roots community, there’s this idea that there’s a feast called the Feast of First Fruits, and it’s nothing to do with Shavuot… or, the Day of First Fruits isn’t Shavuot, the Day of First Fruits is the Sunday on which the 50-day count begins. And I’m trying to find the source of this idea. I don’t know the source.
The earliest reference I could find to it was a book, or kind of a pamphlet, put out by Zola Levitt. And what Zola Levitt is talking about is Easter. He’s saying originally Easter, which is the Sunday during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, was the Day of First Fruits. And what he’s doing is from… as best I can understand it, but I need to really see the source of this, and I think he wrote that maybe in the 80s or 90s, so it’s not that old. And he has a book, or a pamphlet called, like, The Seven Feasts. And in order to get to seven, he’s taking Easter as the Day of First Fruits.
The problem is, the phrase “day of first fruits” appears in the Torah as a name for Shavuot. So, to rebrand that as the day of the waving of the Omer, which is the term in the Torah, right? It’s the day on which the Omer offering is waived. In calling that Day of First Fruits, you’re confusing the word reishit, which means first, and bikurim, which means first. And they’re two completely different words in Hebrew, so it doesn’t work in Hebrew. So, if anybody has any information about where that comes from, I’d be really curious. You can send it to me. You can put it in the chat here or put it in an email to me. I’m genuinely looking for who is the first Hebrew Roots or Christian person to identify Day of First Fruits as the Christian Easter, and hence the beginning of the Omer is the Day of First Fruits. Because nowhere in the Torah is it called “first fruits.” Right? It’s the day in which reishit, the beginning of the… I mean, it’s a bit confusing because when you’re doing it in English, reishit and bikurim are both translated in the King James as “first fruits”, so you wouldn’t know it was two different things. So, I understand how he got confused. But to call it Yom Ha’bikurim, “Day of First Fruits”, that is changing what it says in the Torah. Yom Ha’bikurim is Shavuot. It has nothing to do with the day of the Omer offering. Does that make any sense?
Somebody writes here, Paul Cook writes, “Some Messianics celebrate Bikurim as the third day of Pesach when Yeshua rose.” I understand where they’re getting it from. Right? And that’s what Zola Levitt was saying. He’s saying, “Well, in the Christian world, we,” meaning, he’s Jewish, but he was coming from a Christian culture. They have Easter, and Easter, you know, is from Ishtar, right? So, what’s the Jewish background? The Jewish background is the day of the wave sheaf, and that’s first fruits. And now, he confused that with bikurim. So, what I’m really looking for is the earliest source that says that. I understand why he wanted to celebrate. He wanted to have a biblical holiday to celebrate. But it has a name. It’s kind of not a name, right? But if you look in Leviticus 23, it’s the day of the Omer offering. Right? So, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with calling it the day of the Omer offering? Why do you have to call it First Fruits? That’s really what I’m asking. And it’s really an open question. If somebody knows a source that predates, let’s say, I don’t know, 1990, please send that to me.
Someone asked about the Dead Sea Scrolls being dated 100 years older than first thought. Is that believable? I’m not going to comment on that. I’m hearing people who are saying they don’t agree with it, and that it’s not, it… but I don’t know enough about it. They’re basing that on C-14, that they’re then cross-referencing. I’m going to wait to see what the critiques are, and I don’t know. C-14 is… is it really that precise that, you know, that it can be a hundred years? When we’re talking 2,000 years ago? I’m not so sure. I don’t know. Maybe that is true, I don’t know.
Somebody said, “Easter with Yeshua being the fulfillment of the wave sheaf offering.” Okay. And I’m not going to get into that theology, but that has nothing to do with the word bikurim. Bikurim is specific in the Torah to Shavuot.
Sandi Christian: Oh, did I… is it gone?
Sam Gray: Shalom, shalom, am I…?
Lynell: Oh Sam, I wondered when you’d show up. That’s so cute.
Sandi Christian: I just muted.
Nehemia: I think Sandi was talking. Do we want to hear what she has to say?
Sam Gray: Um, I didn’t know if I was on mute or off mute. Let me just take this off. Yeah. Can you hear me?
Lynell: Yes, we hear you.
Nehemia: We can hear you.
Sam Gray: Oh, okay, so…
Nehemia: Didn’t you see my thumbs up? No, I’m just joking.
Lynell: [Laughter]
Sam Gray: [Laughter] Not unless it was… Anyway, never mind about that. So, I had a bit of difficulty joining, and I think it was T-Bone… was it? T-bone reading Deuteronomy…
Nehemia: No, that was Nelson.
Lynell: Nelson.
Sam Gray: Nelson was reading Deuteronomy 14. So, did you answer my question?
Nehemia: I don’t know what your question was.
Sam Gray: Alright. It was a voice note that I put into the…
Lynell: No, we don’t…
Nehemia: I’m in the middle of a zoom here, I can’t listen to it.
Sam Gray: Yeah, yeah, no, no…
Nehemia: Why don’t you tell us, briefly, what your question was.
Sam Gray: Oh, right. Oh, no. Well, it was just basically a technical question about the word in Deuteronomy 14 where it says that you will… at the end of every three years…
Nehemia: Yeah. Oh, that was the part that was actually not related to our study.
Sam Gray: Oh, right. I see. Yeah, yeah.
Nehemia: But it does say at the end of three years, tyes. That’s a different usage of the tithe. And we should do a study on tithe, but, yes.
Sam Gray: Yeah, yeah, okay. That was what my question… My question was basically about the tithe. And then when I heard… came in and Nelson was reading that part before it, I thought, “Oh, have I missed it?” Okay, yeah. So, I do want to get an answer for that, in the web chat if somebody could look at that. But with regard to this thing about a reference for the wave sheaf, I have no idea where that came from. As you know, I was in the World Wide Church of God.
Nehemia: I didn’t know that.
Lynell: No, we didn’t know that, Sam.
Nehemia: So, did they do that in the World Wide Church of God? That’d be interesting…
Sam Gray: Well, I was in the World Wide Church when I was a young person, much younger than I am now. And so, I knew nothing about all of this, but when we celebrated the feasts of the Lord, as it was, as I was told at the time, we were told that the day that we started to count the seven Sabbaths from was the day that the wave sheaf was…
Nehemia: Right? So, the question…
Sam Gray: Yeah…
Nehemia: …in Second Temple times was… and is debated. It’s brought down in sources from the Second Temple period, was: when is the wave sheaf brought? Is it brought on the second day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Or is it brought during the Sunday during Unleavened Bread? And hence it’s a mobile day. And there’s a tractate in the Talmud that called Horayot, instruction, and it talks about there how… Well, you know, a lot of times the high priest is a Sadducee, and so you want to give him instructions about when to do this. And they kind of wanted to avoid it being on a Sunday to take the wind out of the sails of the Sadducees, although sometimes it would fall on a Sunday anyway. And so, here’s a historical question that is beyond the scope of today’s study, which is: at the Pentecost described in Acts chapter 2, was that the Pharisee day? Was it the Sadducee day? Or maybe it was a year in which they both coincided. Right? In other words, was that Sunday the 16th of Nissan? And was that the day that they were celebrating it in the Temple, on the same day as Pentecost? Or was it a different day? Right? We could have a whole interesting discussion about that. Or maybe it was the same in that year. Right? That’s ultimately the question.
If you say that Yeshua was crucified on, I think a lot of people say late Wednesday afternoon, and that Wednesday night was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, well, then it’s the Sunday during Unleavened Bread. And it wouldn’t have been the Pharisee day, because Thursday would have been the day that they brought the Omer offering. Right? But I feel like that’s beyond the scope of today’s discussion. It’s a fascinating…
Ruth Walkes: Can I ask a question?
Nehemia: Yes, Mark. Oh, no. Is that Ruth? Who’s… Did somebody else have their hand up?
Ruth Walkes: Yeah, I was asking a question. I would like to.
Nehemia: Oh, Ruth. Go ahead. Ruth.
Ruth Walkes: In Numbers… I think it’s 18 and 21… in the tenth of offering is… Is that a… that is also part of giving to the Levites at that time? Was this the same thing?
Nehemia: I’m sorry. What verse are you in?
Ruth Walkes: Numbers 18 and 21. When the children of Israel is supposed to give a tenth to the Levites. Was this a part of that congregational gathering and giving of a tithe?
Nehemia: Ooh, we have a poll, everybody. Everybody please go answer the poll.
Lynell: And, Nehemia will answer you, Ruth.
Nehemia: Yeah. So, we should do a teaching on the tithe, and I’m going to leave that for a teaching on the tithe. But my short answer on that is that there’s a Rabbinical position that says there were two tithes, hence 20 percent. I believe the Worldwide Church of God said it was 30 percent. Because they say there’s three tithes, and some Karaites believe there were three tithes. My position is it’s all the same tithe; it’s used for different things and at different times. But we should save that for a tithe discussion. So, in my view, yes, there… well, it’s the same 10 percent. It’s used for different things.
What other questions? Let’s have a look here at the… Oh, where did it go? The little quiz thing that popped up.
Ron Guthrie: Nehemia, can you hear me?
Nehemia: Yeah, but let’s hold on there.
Ron Guthrie: Okay.
Nehemia: Lynell, how do I get to see the um…
Lynell: So, there’s a poll that just came up. The first question is…
Nehemia: Oh, here it is. Polls and Quizzes. So, at the bottom is the little thing that says polls and quizzes when you click on more, at least on mine, and the question is, “What would you like to have Nehemia to teach next?” Long answer.
Lynell: That’s really important, guys. I want to hear from you who are listening, who watch. What do you want us to teach on? And I’ve written down the things that you say, and Nehemia and I get together every morning for Bible study, and occasionally I’ll bring these up, especially if it’s something I know somebody wants to teach on. So, your answer really matters.
Nehemia: Question two is, “What did you enjoy most about today’s webinar?” Long answer. Question three, “What can we do better next webinar?” Long answer. Alright.
Lynell: So…
Nehemia: Yes.
Lynell: Ruth’s question was answered?
Nehemia: As much as I’m going to answer it today.
Lynell: Okay, Miss Ruth.
Ruth Walkes: Understood.
Nehemia: I understand. Ron had a question.
Ruth Walkes: I do.
Ron Guthrie: So, I consider myself a talmidim of Yeshua.
Nehemia: Uh huh. So, just some grammar here. Talmid is singular, means student, and talmidim is plural.
Ron Guthrie: Okay.
Nehemia: And you may identify… you may have, you know, and I completely understand people who have multiple personalities, and I want to try to be respectful of that.
Ron Guthrie: [Laughter]
Nehemia: If you are plural talmidim, but… probably a talmid of Yeshua. The feminine, by the way, would be talmida.
Ron Guthrie: Thank you for grammatically correcting me, because I am not a native Hebrew speaker. [Laughter]
Nehemia: I understand. I have people who say, “Oh, I’m a goyim.” Really? Are you all of them? Goyim means, well, singular is goy. Which means, uh… people think it means something bad, but it just means “someone from the nations”. Alright, go ahead. Sorry.
Ron Guthrie: So, you’ve challenged me, because I come from a Christian background. I had been exposed to some Hebraic roots, got exposed to you and questioning things. And I’m sure, like many who consider themselves followers of Yeshua that are participating today are questioning and seeking, you know, the way. So, you challenged me, one, by asking where this came from. And so, it’s like, “Mmm, that’s a good question.” And so, this is not… I’m not saying this is the answer, but I think this is where they get it from, and it’s in Leviticus 23.
Nehemia: Mm-hmm.
Ron Guthrie: And it begins talking about the Feast of the Lord, the Feast of Yehovah. And it speaks of the Sabbath, and then it speaks of the Sabbath, I mean, the Passover. And then in verse 9 it begins speaking about the…
Nehemia: Right…
Ron Guthrie: Feast of First Fruits.
Nehemia: So, I alluded to that. So… and no, it doesn’t. There’s no Feast of First Fruits. Or let me rephrase that. The phrase “Feast of First Fruits” does not appear anywhere in Leviticus 23:9-14. I’ll read you what it says. “And Yehovah spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land that I am giving you, you shall harvest its harvest and you shall bring the first omer [the first sheaf] of your harvest to the kohen [to the priest].’” So, they have the word “first” there, and you have a sheaf. So, I think the King James might translate that “first fruits”, but it doesn’t have the word bikurim there. And so, I understand the source of the confusion is they take the word reishit, which is literally the same as be’reishit, which is “in the beginning”. Here it’s omer reishit, “the omer of the beginning” “k’tzirkhem,” “of your harvest”. Right? So, if you want to give this a day, you could call it Yom… well, it gives it, in verse 12, a name. “And you will waive the omer [that is the sheaf] before Yehovah to be accepted for the morrow after the Sabbath. The kohen [the priest] will wave it, and you shall do on the day of the waving of the Omer.” So, there’s the name: Yom hanifkhem et ha’omer. The Day of the Waving of the Omer. So, it has a name; Yom hanifkhem et ha’omer. Right? And if you want…
Ron Guthrie: Okay.
Nehemia: …want to give it like a more abstract name, you could call it Yom hanafat ha’omer. The Day of the Waving of the Omer. So that’s the name of the holiday, not first fruits.
Ron Guthrie: Okay.
Nehemia: So, that’s the name of the holiday, not first fruits.
Ron Guthrie: So, I happened to be looking at the… because I use a Bible app, and actually, I’m looking at the King James Version at the moment.
Nehemia: Okay.
Ron Guthrie: And it actually says “first fruits” there, and so that’s how I was able to find…
Nehemia: Right, so here’s what they did. Okay? And my question is, who did this first? Okay? And I don’t know the answer. I honestly don’t. So, you have in Hebrew the word reishit, which means first. And you have… like in be’reishit. And that’s in Leviticus 23, what we just read. And you have the word bikurim, which means first fruits. And somebody, not knowing what was in the Hebrew, made a mistake and thought the reishit in Leviticus 23, verse… let’s see… verse 10, was bikurim, when really it’s reishit. And they conflated the two and they said, “Oh, we have this Day of First Fruits, and therefore there’s a feast the Jews did away with.” That’s one version I’ve heard. That the Jews originally had a Feast of First Fruits, and they did away with it because they didn’t want to honor Jesus. Right? Literally, I’ve had Christians tell me that. And I’m like, “You have no idea how ridiculous you’re making yourselves look when Jews hear that, because bikurim has nothing to do with reishit.” Nelson wanted to say something. Thanks, Ron.
Nelson: Yes. And my apologies if somebody else had their hand raised up before me. Quick question, Nehemia. So, the word bikurim. This is sort of a two-part question. Is there anything else you could translate it as… you could translate it as besides first fruits? And if so, what?
Nehemia: So, no, it can’t be translated… as the form appears to us. And what I mean by that, the way we read that word, it can’t be read any other way. Here, I will say, that… and let me just pull it up here to make sure what I’m saying is correct. So… hold on. So, bikurim appears in Exodus 23:16, and it’s the “Feast of Harvest of bikurei ma’aseikha”, “the first fruits of your labor”, or literally “of your deeds.” Right? Well, what does that mean? And then in verse 19, it’s bikurei admatkha, the first fruits of your land. Right?
And why is that important? Because if we take out the vowels, we could… if you wanted to, I suppose, you could try to read that as bekhorei, which is “the firstborn.” Right? But then the problem is you get “the firstborn of your land”. Wait; how is that crops? Right? So, there’s two words that are graphically the same, bikurim and bekhorim. One means first fruits, which is agricultural, and one is bekhorim, which is first born. And if they’re spelled without vowels, then you could switch between them. And I suppose it’s… The way it’s traditionally read is bikurim. Right? Meaning, that’s our reading tradition. I suppose in Exodus 23:19, if you say reishit, which is the… It’s interesting. So, let’s look at King James here, because I don’t know what the King James has. “The first of the first fruits.” It’s interesting; reishit is translated in Exodus 23:19 as “the first”. So, we have reishit and bikurei. We have both words in Exodus 23:19. So, it’s “the first of the first fruits”, which is correct. Right? But if we take the translation that the King James uses in Leviticus 23, you would have to translate it “the first fruits of the first fruits”. But anyway, it’s of your land, so you certainly can’t say that that is first born there. And then Exodus 34:22, it’s, “Chag shavuot you will do for yourselves, bikurei,” meaning the bikurim of, “the harvest of wheat.” So again, that can’t really mean firstborn. And then Leviticus 2:14 has a flour offering of bikurim. Right? So, that obviously is, again, not firstborn. So, I don’t know if that answered your question. Did that answer your question?
Nelson: Yes, it did. It answered the spirit of what I was getting at, which is probably what we as Bible readers need to do, is start to disassociate this idea of “first fruits” when it comes to day one of the counting, or the day in which the omer is waved.
Nehemia: I would say differently. I have no problem if someone wants to call that first fruits, but then know in Hebrew that’s reishit, not bikurim.
Nelson: Amen.
Nehemia: When you say, when you call… you’re kind of making a fool of yourself. I mean, you’re showing you don’t know Hebrew. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to anybody. Right? If you want to call that reishit and say that’s first fruits, that’s fine. King James translates it that way, right? But call it reishit, which is a completely different word. And it has a name; Yom hanifkhem et ha’omer, The Day of the Waving of the Omer. That’s what it’s called in the Torah. Leviticus 23. Right?
Look, we use terms today that weren’t used in the Torah. Like, when we refer to the Feast of Unleavened Bread as Passover, that’s a colloquial usage. Right? Meaning… and in Second Temple times, they were already calling it that way. They were saying Passover when they meant the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It’s fine to call “the day of the waving first fruits” as long as you know that that’s a reishit. If you say it’s bikurim, then… And then you take it one step further… and I really don’t know who the first person to say this is. I’m very curious. I really want to…
Ron Guthrie: Unfortunately, I would say that it doesn’t help…
Nehemia: Let me, sorry, let me finish.
Ron Guthrie: Oh, I’m sorry.
Nehemia: So, I don’t know who the first person to say that the Jews distorted it, and originally they had a Day of First Fruits, which was bikurim. And to cover up the rising of Jesus, or the rising of the dead of Yeshua, they changed… they got rid of bikurim. If you say that, you’re really making a fool of yourself. Right? And Jews do have yom hanafat ha’omer, The Day of the Waving of the Omer. In every Jewish household around the world, let’s say every observant Jewish household, they make a big deal of counting, “Today is the first day of the counting of the Omer.” And then they’ll say in the next day. “Today is the second day of the counting of the Omer.” “Today is the third day.” I grew up with that ritual that my father would gather the family and they would say, “Today is the first day of the counting of the Omer.” Right? In other words, when it says to count 50 days, he took it very literally. We’re going to actually count each day. Right? Is that necessary? I don’t know. So, Jews have not done away with it. They’re just doing it… they’re counting the Omer. And omer is the term which means sheaf, and it uses the word reishit, which you can translate, if you want, “first fruits.” But it’s a different first fruits than bikurim. And I just read you a verse where it uses both reishit and bikurim. Right? So, I understand why it’s confusing. But if you say the beginning of the Omer counting is bikurim, that’s just nonsensical, from a Hebrew perspective, at least. Yes, Ron, what were you saying?
Ron Guthrie: I think, and maybe this is part of the clue too, is that it doesn’t help that Strong’s Concordance apparently… because if you have like a King James Version Plus or whatever, where you can click on the, you know, the meanings of words. Strong’s concordance for that says, it’s from the same root as H7218, the first in the place, time, order or rank, and then in parentheses it says, “specifically a first fruit”.
Nehemia: For which word? The word in Leviticus 23…
Ron Guthrie: Well, it’s just in general. This is just in general the Strong’s Concordance I guess, you know, definition for the word.
Nehemia: Yeah. So, the point is there’s two different things in Hebrew that are both translated into English as first fruits. Here’s another confusion. People will say, “Oh…” And the rabbis essentially did this, right? They’ll say, “Well, we rest on the first day of Unleavened Bread, and therefore it’s a Shabbat. And the morrow after the Shabbat, therefore, is the second day of Unleavened Bread.” Right? So, this kind of confusion happened in ancient times as well. Right? When you have a second language, which in this case is English, it makes it even more confusing. So… I’m just trying to clear up that confusion. And again, I have no problem if somebody wants to observe the day that they believe Yeshua was raised from the dead as a Day of First Fruits, and they call it reishit and they say that he’s the omer. Fine. Okay. But don’t call it bikurim. That’s nonsensical.
Lynell: Steve, do you want to go ahead and ask your question? You’ve got your hand raised. I’ve unmuted you, so you can talk if you want. There you go.
Steve Mathe: Yeah.
Lynell: Okay.
Steve Mathe: Yeah. Thank you, Lynell and Nehemia for the service and the teaching. I’m asking the question: Is there a theological connotation to first fruits? That’s because I have a church background, and they had a teaching about that, and… it’s not too popular in other churches. In a way…
Nehemia: What was the teaching? I’m not familiar.
Steve Mathe: The teaching that the first fruits picture… of Shavuot… picture, the resurrection will be resurrected first along with the righteous Abraham, Yitchak, Moses, all those other saints, so-called, of old. Mashiach will bring that to him, and these will administer the messianic millennial kingdom of the Great Shabbat. And then there will be a second resurrection at the end of the Millennial Kingdom, and that’s pictured by the fruits, the harvest, the second great harvest, at the end of that, when all those who will be given eternal life are pictured.
Nehemia: So, that, that… so, that’s based, I suppose, in Revelation talking about the first resurrection, the second resurrection, or the final resurrection. I’m going to stay out of that discussion.
Steve Mathe: Yeah.
Nehemia: I’ll stay out of that discussion.
Steve Mathe: Before the great judgment…
Nehemia: I think, from my perspective… here’s what I can contribute to that. If you’re going to say things like that, first know the difference between reishit and bikurim. You could say, “Oh, the first one is reishit and the second one is bikurim.” Or you could say… meaning, you could tie it back to Hebrew concepts but first let’s know what the Hebrew concepts are. That’s what I’m saying. That’s kind of the point I’m trying to make. I’m not telling you theologically what to believe. I’m just saying, don’t say the Jews did away with Yom haBikurim, which was the Day of the Waving of the Omer…
Steve Mathe: [Laughter] I’m not saying that.
Nehemia: No, I know you’re not. I understand. So that’s a theological application that I feel like I should stay out of.
Steve Mathe: Yeah. What I want to ask, can you do sometime a teaching on the resurrection period?
Nehemia: Oh, I’d love to do a teaching on the resurrection. I think that’s a great idea.
Lynell: That’s a great one.
Steve Mathe: Because if everybody is going to heaven, why have the resurrection?
Nehemia: Right. I had a fascinating conversation with Michael Rood, and I’ll just share very briefly. He has this young man that he’s taken under his wing, kind of as his adopted son. Not literally, but metaphorically, I suppose. And the man brought his fiancée to meet Michael. And… what was the exact thing? I have it written down somewhere. But he said something like, um… Oh, so Michael said to this young lady, he said, “Are you saved?” And what would the average Christian respond to that? “Yes, I’m saved.” Or maybe, “No, I’m not saved,” because you don’t believe you’re saved. So, the young man had prepared the woman, his fiancée, that “When Michael asks if you’re saved, Michael doesn’t believe you’re saved until…” I believe it’s… somebody help me here. Is it the day of judgment? I think Michael says… Oh, Michael’s here! Is Michael here? Is that actually Michael? Alright, in any event, I hope I’m getting this right, but I believe Michael’s teaching is that you’re not saved until the day of judgement…
Michael Rood: No, exactly.
Lynell: [Laughter] Here he is.
Nehemia: Michael! Thank you for joining us. I’m so honored. So, um… Yeah, there you go. Thank you.
Lynell: So, what did she say? You have to tell the story then, Nehemia.
Nehemia: Oh. Remind me. Or maybe Michael will tell, because I literally wrote it down when I was typing on my computer. I wrote it down, but I don’t remember exactly.
Lynell: Okay, let Michael tell.
Michael Rood: You’re not saved ‘till the resurrection.
Lynell: That’s what he said.
Nehemia: Is that Michael?
Lynell: [Laughter] That’s Michael.
Michael Rood: And then once you’re saved, you’re always saved.
Lynell: There you go.
Nehemia: So, that’s Michael’s explanation of, “Once saved, always saved.” Got it. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that, Michael.
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: Right? So, the point is, the first resurrection, the second resurrection… I understand where that comes from in Revelation, and if you want to say one of those is the reishit and one is the bikurim, that’s fine. Right? Or I think maybe the New Testament application… and again, here I’m going out on a limb and applying, maybe, Michael’s teaching. Maybe I’m wrong, would be that one is the shavuot and one is the last great day, or what we would call Shmini Atzeret. Right? I think maybe that’s what… I think that’s probably more… Michael. Michael, can you help me on that? What in the feasts model, Michael, is… meaning, the scheme of the feasts. Where would you put second, the final resurrection?
Michael Rood: I wouldn’t put it anywhere.
Nehemia: Okay.
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: Alright. So, I apologize.
Steve Mathe: Can I have a comment on that? A brief one?
Nehemia: Sure.
Lynell: Um… okay.
Steve Mathe: A very brief one. In The Church of God what we used to believe is that, after the final judgment, at the end of the seventh millennium, comes eternity. Then we will be inducting eternity, and the Almighty doesn’t tell us anything about it because we couldn’t understand it anyway. And that’s why it said there would be a new earth and a new heavens and everything, and we will be inducted into the Almighty’s plan for us, for His children in this earth as a womb from which we will be born again and one with God…
Nehemia: You know, it’s interesting, Steve. I invite you to look back at… The Worldwide Church of God’s teaching on Shavuot. And I’ve been told this by people who are involved in it in the 60s and 70s, so I don’t know that this is correct. But I was told that, up until sometime in the early 70s, probably before I was born, they taught that Shavuot was always on a Monday because they would count 50 days, and then it was the day after, and then somebody said, “Guys, you know, in Hebrew you always count inclusively,” meaning if I say “three days from now,” I mean, today, tomorrow and the third day. And so, then they fixed it, like, in the early 70s. I don’t know if that’s true. That’s what I was told.
Steve Mathe: They fixed it several times.
Nehemia: Okay. ’74, Jennifer says. Great. Thank you, Miss Piggy. Alright. Oh, so it was after I was born, so…
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: I must have forgotten, since I was two years old. Okay. Somebody says, is Johnson here? I don’t know the answer if Keith Johnson is here. I hope he’s… I would love to speak to Keith Johnson.
Damon & Shawna Shirrel Sr: 1963.
Nehemia: But here’s what I’ll give the Worldwide Church of God credit for, which is, at least they were looking in the Bible and saying, “Okay, we’ll figure this out.” They got it wrong, but they were trying, and I give them respect for that. Michael, since we have you here, I’m going to…
Ruth Walkes: Can I…
Nehemia: Can we have Michael say some final words before we end? I would be so honored if you would do that. If you’re up to it. If not, no worries.
Lynell: Hold on, hold on.
Michael Rood: Oh, this is excellent.
Lynell: [Laughter]
Nehemia: Oh, you just got Cedric really excited.
Lynell: [Laughter] I can hear Annalil in the back, giggling.
Nehemia: I need that little dog. Michael, would you pray?
Sam Gray: Shalom, shalom, can I…
Lynell: No Sam, please. Please, everybody be quiet.
Nehemia: Let’s let Michael speak. I’m going to give the floor to him. I’m really honored.
Sam Gray: Yeah, yeah. He’s speaking, is he? Right, okay.
Lynell: Sam, shhh.
Nehemia: Okay. Alrighty. Here we go. Alright, just pray to close.
Michael Rood: Okay. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this time we’ve had together, and for the remembrance of this Shavuot and what it means to all of us. I thank You for Your help in our understanding and bringing forth this wonderful message. Amen.
Lynell: Amen.
Nehemia: Amen! Alright, thank you everybody. Michael, you made my day. Thank you so much
Lynell: No kidding. I love that you came in with the story.
Nehemia: That’s a dog, right? Not a cat.
Unknown: I’m going to mute us.
Lynell: No, I’m muting myself. I’m having the same problem.
Nehemia: Shalom, y’all.
Lynell: Shalom, guys. We love you very much.
Nehemia: Thank you for coming.
Lynell: Chag Sameach, we love everyone.
VERSES MENTIONED
- Chag Shavuot - Feast of Weeks (Ex. 34:22; Deut. 16:10)
- Chag Ha-Katzir - Feast of Harvest (Ex. 23:16)
- Yom Ha-Bikkurim/ Bikkure Maʿasecha/ Bikkure K’tsir Chittim - Day of Firstfruits (Ex. 23:16; Ex. 34:22; [Lev. 23:17, 20]; Num. 28:26)
- Mikra Kodesh - holy proclamation (Lev. 23:21; Num. 28:26)
- Regel – pilgrimage-feast to Temple; one of three regalim (Ex. 23:14, 17; 34:23–24; [Deut. 16:11])
- No Work (Lev. 23:21; Num. 28:26)
- Sacrifices (today: prayer) for atonement ([Lev. 23:18–20]; Num. 28:[27–]30)
- Rejoice together with your family, Levite, sojourner, widow, and orphan (Deut. 16:11; [Deut. 14:22–27])
- Count 50 days/ 7 weeks + 1 day (Lev. 23:15–16; Deut. 16:9–10)
- Bikkurim Bread = Two leavened loaves of new grain (Lev. 23:16–20; Num. 28:26)
- Freewill offering to Yehovah (Deut. 16:10)
- Covenant at Sinai (Ex. 19:1, 10–11, 15–16)
- Remember you were slaves in Egypt (Deut. 16:12; Ex. 3:12)
| sh'vuʿot | שְׁבוּעוֹת | oaths |
| shavuʿot | שָׁבוּעוֹת | weeks |
SEE ALSO
Ex. 19:1
No date for the Revelation at Sinai
Deut. 5:3
Anyone not under the age of 40 was not even born yet!
Gen 35:10
He was still called Jacob so it means “your name will not [only] be called Jacob”. Therefore, Deut. 5:3 can linguistically mean “not [only] with our fathers”
Levi ben Gershom [1288–1340, southern France & Provence] - famous mathematician and astronomer.
Jer. 31:31
Jer. 34:8–22
Hebrew slaves: Ex. 21:2–6; Deut. 15:12–18; [עולם in Ex. and Deut. means until the Jubilee year in Lev. 25:39–43]
Ezra 10:2–6
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Thank you for these Shavuot teachings. Truly we are called to the “restoration” of His Truths in the prophesied achareet hayamim. Am looking forward re learning of the theological significance of this feast also called the “Feast of Firstfruits.” Does this feast also refer the faithful to the “first” resurrection Yeshua talked about?