Torah Pearls #43 – Masei (Numbers 33:1-36:13)

You are listening to The Original Torah Pearls with Nehemia Gordon, Keith Johnson, and Jono Vandor. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Jono: G’day to everybody who is registered to spy out the land with Keith and myself. Keith, fill in the listeners.

Keith: There it is. I’m telling you, folks, we are really, really getting close. I mean, by the time you hear this, we’re going to have the date, the itinerary. We’ve just got a really exciting announcement that most people aren’t going to be aware of, but we’ll let him make the announcement. But in the meantime, we are going to be in the Land. We’re going to have a great time. We’ve got people that are interested already. We’re putting things together. If you’re interested, if there’s room, you just have to let us know. You can go to hishallowedname.com. You can send up a smoke signal. You can do anything you want to let us know. Facebook, it doesn’t matter. Send us a personal letter in the mail. Let us know that you’re interested in coming, and if there’s room we’re going to have you come with us to spy out the land in Israel, 2013, early March. It’s going to be a blast.

Jono: It’s going to be great. It’s going to be great. But in any case, of course, it is time for the Torah Portion with Keith Johnson, Pearls from the Torah portion.

Keith: Yes.

Jono: Keith Johnson and Nehemia Gordon. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us once again.

Nehemia: It’s great to be here, Jono, from Jerusalem. And, man, is it hot here. I think I know what those Israelites felt like when they were on their travels through the desert. The name of the portion, of course, is Masei, which means, ‘the travels’. This is masei b’nei Israel, the travels of the children of Israel. So, it’s Masei.

Jono: Excellent.

Keith: Masei.

Jono: Thank you, my friend. Numbers, chapter 33, verse 1, to Numbers 36, verse 13, and it begins like this, “These are the journeys of the children of Israel, who went out of the land of Egypt by their armies under the hand of Moses and Aaron. Now Moses wrote down the starting points of all their journeys at the command of Yehovah. And these are their journeys according to their starting points. They departed from Rameses in the first…”

Keith: Hold on one second, Jono. I know we’re going to do this and we’re going to get to talk about these stages of the journeys. But again, there’s just this one thing that’s always been interesting to me. It’s kind of funny to me, but it’s something worth taking just a minute to look at. So, in chapter 33, verse 1, it says that, “when they came out of Egypt by divisions under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.” And basically, the idea, I think you would get it in your version… Nehemia, I’m sure you would get it in your Hebrew, is that they came out, sort of marching like an army. Is that fair to say?

Nehemia: Yeah. Pretty much.

Jono: Well, mine actually says armies. It says they came out by their armies under the hand of Moses, and yeah.

Keith: Yours says armies, mine says by division.

Jono: Okay.

Keith: And Nehemia, what does yours say?

Nehemia: So here we’re talking about… yeah, so it says “le’tzivotam,” and that actually is the same word as when we talk about the LORD of Hosts.

Keith: Yes. That’s what I was…

Nehemia: In Hebrew, it’s Yehovah Tzabaoth.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Tzabaoth means hosts, and it also means armies. Tzavah really means a gathering, in Biblical Hebrew, a gathering of any large number. So hence, that’s what an army was; it was a gathering of a mass number of people.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: Also, Tzavah is sometimes used to refer to the hosts of heaven. That is, the myriads of angels that are surrounding Yehovah. So that’s what Yehovah Tzabaoth refers to, both the tzva’ot, the armies you could say, or the masses of Israel, and also Tzabaoth Shamayim – the masses of the angels.

Keith: So, here’s what I love about it, though, is when… and again, I’ve always loved this statement, it says that the children of Israel came out of Egypt and they were like armed and ready to go; they were prepared for battle. But then Yehovah says, “But I’m not going to let them fight right now, they’re just not ready.” What I love about it is it’s like the parade. We’re going to come out. We’re going to be ready. We’re going to look like we’re ready. We’re going to march like we’re ready, but we’re not going to fight, initially.

And then when we get to Numbers, certainly they did fight many times, but in this particular passage, it just reminds me of that. That He had them actually ready to fight, here’s how we walk, here’s how we march, but then He didn’t have them actually fight in the beginning, beyond the place of battle. And now we can talk about this.

Jono: Well, it begins with, “They departed from Rameses,” Keith, here we go, “the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the day after the Passover the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of all the Egyptians, for the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom Yehovah had killed among them.”

Nehemia: We’ve got to…

Jono: “Also on their gods Yehovah had executed judgments.” Nehemia?

Nehemia: We’ve got to stop there because that’s a key piece of… I know Keith has this, what he calls the project. He’s got the video on the calendar, which maybe by the time this is broadcast, one of two things may happen – either Keith will actually have the video ready and published for people, or maybe the Messiah will come. And I’m not sure which one’s more likely.

Keith: Or it’s even possible that by the time this comes out Nehemia’s book will be ready. Let’s see who’s ready first.

Jono: The imaginary book. Yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah, and that’s, “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence: The Hebrew Power of the Priestly Blessing Unleashed.”

Jono: Excellent. Unleashed.

Nehemia: Jono came up with that name.

Keith: That’s awesome.

Nehemia: Hallelujah. Anyway, so we’ve got to talk about this because this is majorly important for the whole issue of calendar and time and chronology. It says, “and they traveled from Rameses in the first month, ba’hamisha-asar yom la’hodesh harishon, on the 15th day of the first month.” And it says, “mimohorat hapessach, the morrow of the Passover, the children of Israel left Egypt with a high hand before all of Egypt.” We have an equation here. It equates two different timeframes. The 15th day of the first month is equivalent to “mohorat hapessach,” the morrow of the Passover.

Keith: There it is.

Nehemia: Very clear, you know; indisputable. I think you can’t really deny this. Why is this important? This is important because there are some people who dispute when the Israelites left Egypt. Some people try to say, “oh, no, the Israelites actually left…” there are all kinds of different theories, I won’t even go into it. But this really becomes important when we go to Joshua, chapter 5, verse 11. I’m actually going to start before verse 11; I’m going to start in verse 10. It says, “The children of Israel camped at Gilgal, and they did the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, in the plains of Jericho.”

Jono: Amen.

Nehemia: Now, this is cool because, what we’re reading in Numbers, they’re in the plains of Moab, the plains of Moav, at the Jordan of Jericho. They’re on the other side of the Jordan. Here in the Book of Joshua, they’ve now crossed over and they’re no longer in the plains of Moab; they’re in the plains of Jericho. It says, “And they ate of the produce of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on that very day.” Now, why is that important? It’s important because there’s a commandment in Leviticus 23; I’m popping all over the place. I’m sorry, people, we got to do this.

Keith: That’s what we love. We love Leviticus 23.

Jono: Let’s do it.

Nehemia: In Leviticus 23, that’s the portion that I opened up when I read from Keith’s Torah scroll. There’s a commandment there that you can’t eat of the new produce of the land until the morrow of the Shabbat, and it’s talking about the Feast of Unleavened Bread in that context. What that ends up being is that, there’s a Sunday, a morrow after the Shabbat, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at which point the new grain becomes permissible.

Now, verse 11 here of Joshua 5 is telling us the Israelites ate that grain. They ate the new grain because they had just come into the land. They didn’t have any old grain. All they had is what they could pick from the fields that were surrounding them. Basically, they went and pillaged the fields of the Canaanites, let’s be honest here.

Jono: Sure.

Nehemia: Because they were millions of people who had just come across the Jordan, they took whatever they wanted to take. And they started eating of this new produce of the land. Now, why does this create a problem? It creates a problem for the rabbis, and that’s because they say in Leviticus 23 when it talks about the “mimohorat haShabbat,” the morrow of the Shabbat, it doesn’t mean morrow of the Shabbat, it means the morrow of the first Feast of Unleavened Bread, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. What that means is that every single year they begin the 50-day count to Shavuot, the Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, on the 16th day of the first month, or the 16th of Nisan in their terminology, which is the morrow after the first day of unleavened bread. They say, “well, that’s the Shabbat, the first day of unleavened bread,” even though the Scripture never calls it a Shabbat. I hope I haven’t lost anybody. There’s actually a whole study on this.

Keith: We’re still with you. I’ll fix it for you.

Nehemia: Karaite-korner.org has a whole long study on this. Go to karaite-korner.org. But basically, what we’re seeing is, Leviticus 23 is telling us, don’t eat the new produce of the land until the morrow after the Shabbat. And here it says they ate the produce of the land on the morrow after the Passover. Now, when we read our verse in Numbers 33, verse 3, in our current Torah portion, it explains that the morrow after the Passover is equivalent to the 15th day of the first month. Now, remember, the rabbis say you can’t eat the new produce every single year until the 16th day of the first month. And this actually refutes their position.

There’s a really interesting discussion in the writings of a rabbi named Ibn Ezra, who was a brilliant rabbi, even though he was an oral law rabbinical Jew; but he was a brilliant Bible commentator. When he came to this verse, he said, “We blew it here. This uncovers us. If only we could explain away and say that this was the old produce of the land,” even though it doesn’t say that, and it doesn’t make sense in the context. Well, here’s the really interesting thing – if you read in the King James Version in Joshua 5:11, what do you find? You find as follows, it says, “And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day.” Now, the word “old” doesn’t appear on the text, it doesn’t appear in the Hebrew, and in fact…

Jono: I don’t have it in the English, either.

Nehemia: Well, you’re in the New King James. I’m in the old King James.

Jono: Oh, okay. Sorry. Keep going.

Nehemia: So, the New King James doesn’t have it. But the old King James from 1611 says, “And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover.” Now, where did they get the word “old?” They got it from the rabbis who taught them Hebrew.

Jono: How about that?

Nehemia: The rabbis who taught them Hebrew saw this in Ibn Ezra, who was saying, “I wish it said old. It doesn’t, but I wish it did.” And from the ‘wishing it did’, it then ended up in the translation from the stupid Christians who didn’t know any better. Sorry, Keith. But they were misled by the rabbis who taught them Hebrew, and they end up with… rabbinical wishing has now turned into translation in the King James Version. The bottom line is it doesn’t say that. That doesn’t even make sense in the context. I guarantee you the people who were translating this in the King James Version in the 1600s, they had no idea that they were throwing themselves in the middle of an age-old debate that goes back thousands of years in Judaism between when to begin the 50-day count of Pentecost… but that’s… it’s amazing; you can’t blame them that… they had this agenda. But someone had the agenda and fed it to them, and they didn’t know any better.

Jono: And they swallowed it. Keith?

Nehemia: They just swallowed it whole.

Keith: The reason I say I’d like to fix it just a little bit is that I think this is one of the reasons why for those of us that are “stupid Christians,” we don’t get a chance to understand this because there is such confusion that has been passed down through tradition, translation, agenda, et cetera. And so one of the things that I really… and Jono, you’re going to really appreciate this when you come over to Israel – is that when you get a chance to see for yourself sort of the basics and the idea of God’s calendar, it allows you to take a step back.

Here’s what’s happening right now, and this is happening all over the Messianic world, certainly. I don’t think most Methodists even care about it. And many Jews don’t even have to think about it because the rabbis tell them what to do; I’m talking about traditional rabbinic Judaism. So a lot of people don’t get their hands in the dirt. But in the Messianic movement right now, certainly I think many that would listen to this program would say, “oh, this is a huge issue. This is a big controversy. Yes, because we got to decide when the beginning is. We got this verse and we got that verse, and we got this verse and we got that verse.” But if you take a step back, kind of like the way we’ve been taking through the Torah Pearls, and you take a step back, and you say, “okay, here is the beginning of this process where Yehovah speaks unto Moses and Aaron and says, ‘here’s the beginning of the month for you and this is the beginning of the year for you.’” If you take it from that perspective, it really does become much more clear.

What Nehemia just did, which was excellent, is he brought in, “okay, here’s this dimension, this dimension,” and he used verses, where if you don’t put the whole picture together, as we’ve done through Torah Pearls, you could take one of those verses and say, “okay, so, therefore, here’s what it means,” unless, you look at context. And again, why does our verse become so important? Because it adds a dimension of clarity on when the beginning of Passover was and how we count up to the 50 days. So I just think this is phenomenal. And again, the project, and I call it Time Will Tell, is that time really does end up answering a lot of questions.

Jono: Amen.

Keith: More questions than we can even imagine. So I’m looking forward to this. Again, I’ll probably be reading Nehemia’s book before this comes out. But when it does come out, it’s going to help people not be so confused.

Jono: Time Will Tell, the awaited video by Keith Johnson.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: It’s called Time Will Tell, because time will tell if he ever finishes it.

Keith: Yeah. “Time will tell.”

Jono: Nehemia!

Keith: Yeah.

Jono: Okay, now listen, guys. Now, the rest of it, there’s a pretty serious geography lesson going on here…

Nehemia: Oh, boy.

Jono: …in the majority of chapter 33, which would serve the listeners to grab a map if they can, if they’ve got a study Bible with a map or something like that.

Keith: Yes. That’s a great idea.

Jono: It will certainly help you to get through it.

Nehemia: I don’t know

Jono: Nehemia, is there anything else that you want to…?

Nehemia: There’s a little bit of a problem with grabbing a map. This brings us back to… we’ve got to go back to the 4th century A.D., when the mother of the emperor Constantine came to the land of Israel and had dreams telling her where different historical sites were. One of the historical sites that she got in the dream was the place where Mount Sinai is supposed to be. Of course, she had to put it within the Roman Empire because she was the mother of the Roman emperor. So, she put it in what today is called the Sinai Peninsula. It’s called the Sinai Peninsula because of her, not the other way around. Frankly, back then, all those desert areas in what today is the Sinai Peninsula, northwestern Saudi Arabia, and Southern Jordan, that was all just called Arabia. The reason it was called Arabia is that it was, at one time, ruled by the Nabataeans, who were an Arabian tribe. Then it became essentially a vassal of the Roman Empire, and eventually even a province of the Roman Empire.

Anyway, so she’s the one who identified Mount Sinai. Now, I have a very strong connection to her traditional Mount Sinai. I had amazing things happen to me there. But where I really wanted to go was the real Mount Sinai, which is today in northwestern Saudi Arabia, in a region that to this day is called Midian. The land of Midian, or actually it’s called Madyan, which is the Arabic pronunciation, but Madyan is obviously Midian in Hebrew.

So long story short, if you look at most of your study Bibles, they have them wandering around this tiny little triangle, this tiny little peninsula called the Sinai Peninsula. But where they really were wandering around was in what today is northwestern Saudi Arabia and southwestern Kingdom of Jordan, that’s where they were wandering around. That actually fits the story perfectly because we have them here… I mean, really, you’ve got to force the story into this difficult paradigm of this tiny little peninsula. I mean, 3 million people wandering around the Sinai Peninsula.

Actually, when I was studying archaeology, one of the things I learned about is that the Israeli archaeologists went through the Sinai Peninsula with a fine-tooth comb. They combed every inch of that peninsula before Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt, and I think that was like in 1982. So, leading up to that, they went through every inch of the Sinai Peninsula looking for archaeological remains. And one of the things that was very noticeable is they didn’t find the remains of 3 million people wandering around for 40 years. Now, come on, 3 million people wandering around for 40 years – they’re going to leave a lot of garbage. They’re going to leave a lot of bones, a lot of human bones, a lot of animal bones…

Jono: Sure.

Nehemia: …a lot of fires, and encampments. And they didn’t find it.

Of course, what did my professors… what did they conclude? Well, the whole story is a myth, it never happened. There was no such thing as the Israelites leaving Egypt. It’s just a fairytale. The only problem is they were looking in the wrong place. If you study this geography carefully, it becomes clear that they actually crossed over… and then here’s where they got confused.

There are two branches of the Red Sea. The western branch is commonly today called the Gulf of Suez. The eastern branch is called the Gulf of Aqaba, or Jews call it the Gulf of Eilat. It’s pretty clear to me that they crossed over the Gulf of Aqaba, or Eilat; that sea, and not the Gulf of Suez. Really, to make them cross over the Gulf of Suez, what historians have to do, or the people who do believe the story, is they’ve got to have them cross over this tiny little piece. It’s like, why didn’t they just go around it? It’s some little piece at the edge there. That’s because the Gulf of Suez drops thousands of feet, and even if you split the sea, you couldn’t cross it. The Gulf of Aqaba, on the other hand, has a land bridge, actually in two locations, one at Nuweiba, and one in Sharm El Sheikh. Geographically, it sounds much more like they crossed over at Nuweiba.

What all of this means is that, if you look at most of your study Bibles, they are locating these places in the wrong place. Now, what gives them the ability to do that is that these are desert oases. If you ask somebody where Jericho is, well, there’s no question where Jericho is because people always lived in Jericho; it was never forgotten. Jerusalem was always called Jerusalem. Some people might have renamed it, but everybody always remembered it was called Jerusalem. If you go to a city, I don’t know, the city of Gilgal or Yotvata, which is actually a modern town in southern Israel, but the original Yotvata, it was some desert tribe who maybe came there once in a while for water. Those desert tribes moved or were wiped out, and we don’t know where all of these places are. That’s the bottom line.

There are a couple of cities here that are unquestionable. One of them, for example, is in verse 35, where it says Ezion-Geber. Ezion-Geber, we know from other references, was the southern port city of King Solomon, and today, we call that Eilat. In fact, in the Bible, it’s referred to as Eilat, as well, in one context. So, it’s actually probably right next to Eilat, just east of there or west of there. But Ezion-Geber is a port city on the southern or on the northern shore, southern shore, whatever, on the northern edge of the Gulf of Eilat. In other words, it’s the southern shore of Israel, but it’s the northern edge of the sea.

Jono: Sure.

Nehemia: So, we know that in verse 35. But for example, if you want to know where Tahath is or Rissah or Libnah, or any of these other places, no one really knows. People have all kinds of guesses.

Keith: If you want to know where those places are, just ask me, and I will make them up for you.

Nehemia: Well, Keith may know through revelation.

Keith: And I will make them up for you, and we’re going there on tour.

Nehemia: Hallelujah.

Jono: It’s listed on the tour. Excellent.

Nehemia: Yeah. You guys are going to Saudi Arabia; you may get beheaded.

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: Okay. What we can do, what’s interesting is to point out a few little quirks… not quirks, but a few little, maybe, pearls of some of these names, which I think are really interesting. So, first of all, I want to point out something that confuses a lot of people, which is that we’ve got three different deserts mentioned in the Torah that they went through. Remember, when we say today ‘desert’, we talk about the Sahara Desert, it covers thousands of miles. Back then the desert might be just a little region. Then there’s a mountain, and on the other side of the mountain, there’s another desert. And they’d count those as two different regions.

So, we’ve got the desert of Sinai in verse 15, and we’ve got the desert of Sin in verse 10. “Midbar Sin,” and “Midbar Sinai,” very similar names, but they’re different places. There’s a third place called the desert of Tzin, or in English, it’s usually written Zin, Z-i-n. So, we’ve got Tzin, Sin, and Sinai, and they sound very similar and they’re near each other. All of those are somewhere in northwestern Saudi Arabia, apparently in that area, or roughly.

In any event, you’ve got some really interesting names here. So Elim, we hear about that in Exodus. And “Kivroth ha-te’avah,” the graves of lust, we read that story in verse 15. Then there’s a place called Rimmon Perez in verse 19. What do we really know about Rimmon Perez? So Rimmon Perez is never mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, only in these two verses. What does it mean? There’s a story there. How do I know there’s a story there? Because “Rimmon” means pomegranate, and “Paretz” means bursting; bursting pomegranate.

Jono: Nice.

Nehemia: Believe me there’s a story there. I don’t know what the story is, but the word “bursting” is sometimes applied to Yehovah when He, like… He burst forth upon the Philistines in the Book of Samuel. That’s actually in my book, we’ll talk about that in the book, “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence: The Hebrew Power of Priestly Blessing Unleashed.”

Actually, in Modern Hebrew, Rimmon Perez would mean, “exploding grenade.” But in ancient Hebrew, it meant “bursting pomegranate.” There’s some story there where God burst forth upon the people; something to do about pomegranates, I have no idea what. Then there’s Kehelathah, which is from the word kahal, gathering, something to do with the community. Maybe some of these are some of the ten tests that he alludes to, “you tested Me ten times.” And we don’t have all ten stories.

Jono: Sure.

Nehemia: Maybe these are allusions to that. Numbers, verse 24, isHaradah, which means anxiety or trepidation. Why is it called that? There’s got to be a story behind that. Makheloth is the gathering or the choirs. Tahath in verse 26, I’m not going to tell people what that means because there are children listening.

Jono: Okay.

Nehemia: Mithkah in verse 28 is sweetness. You know, so there’s something going on here, there’s like little stories behind many of these places, and we don’t know what they are. It isn’t really until we get to, like, verse 45 that we hear Divon-Gad that we, all of a sudden, have places that we can identify with much more certainty, because those are settled areas that, to this day, people have always lived on those spots. Divon-Gad, to this day, is called Dhiban, same exact word, just with an Arabic pronunciation of Dhiban. So, the places haven’t changed their names in the settled areas. But you go on to the desert, and it’s really any… you know, Punon, where is that? Well, I don’t know, it’s anybody’s guess.

So, really up until verse 45, that’s where people can get creative, and they can come in and make up their maps to fit their theologies and back up the tradition of Constantine’s mother. Because who’s to question her? You know, some desert guy who is illiterate, and it’s never been recorded what he calls the name of this place. I mean, there really isn’t anyone to question. So, there it is.

Jono: Very valid. In verse 48, “They departed from the mountains of Abarim…”

Nehemia: Avarim.

Jono: “Avarim and camped in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. They camped by the Jordan, from Beth Jesimoth as far as the Abel Acacia Grove in the plains of Moab.” What do you have in the Hebrew there? “Abel Acacia Grove”?

Nehemia: It’s Abel-Shittim.

Jono: Abel-Shittim.

Nehemia: And Shittim means acacias. So presumably it was, and there were several cities called Abel, which means mourning. There’s Abel-Maacah. There’s Abel-Shittim and several others like that.

Jono: Okay.

Nehemia: So, this one is what’s being identified because it’s the one that has the big acacia grove.

Jono: This is where they find themselves. But I just want to jump back to verse 38 if I can. Because, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think verse 38, and particularly verse 39, it talks about, well, in 38, “Then Aaron the priest went up to Mount Hor at the command of Yehovah, and died there in the fortieth year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, on the first day of the fifth month.” Now, is this new information? It says, “Aaron was one hundred and twenty-three years old.”

Keith: Yes, it is. It says in Numbers 20:28. “After Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar. And Aaron died there on top of the mountain. Then Moses and Eleazar came down.” What’s interesting, and this is another great story, and I’m glad you brought this up, Jono, is that if we just read Numbers 20, we could make up a bunch of things. We could say here’s how old he was; this is when he died; this is the time he died.

We get to Numbers, the boring book that only talks about numbers, and sure enough, it says right here, not only it tells us what happened, but it tells us the actual age that he was. But what I love about it is it says exactly when he died. So, he died on the first day of the fifth month. Again, it’s another example where, if you’re reading the whole of the Torah, there are pieces that get put together.

And I want to stop again and say something regarding the tradition that I come from. One of the things that really has happened, and I’m not sure if this happens in Judaism, I certainly know that the rabbis have done this where they’ll take a part of a verse, an aspect of a verse, and build an entire command around an aspect of a verse, or even at times misinterpret that.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: And you know, I won’t call them any names, but I will say that it’s been convenient for them to do that. Well, in my tradition, many times there’s the same thing. It will take an aspect of a story and then build an entire theology or an entire process of commands regarding that. Again, what’s so cool about the Torah, and I just want to remind people about this again, if you’re like Jono, you’re an ancient Australian. You’re living out in the… what is that called again? What do they call that in Australia?

Nehemia: The Outback.

Keith: Yeah, the Outback. You’re in the…

Nehemia: And you play the didgeridoo.

Keith: Yeah. Let’s just use Jono. This is a great example. So Jono and his wife and children live out there in the back. They’re skinning goats. They’re doing what they’re doing. They’re battling the grasshoppers and the bees and all these things that Jono does. And then –

Jono: Because that’s it, listeners, what we do all day is that we sit out there skinning goats and battle the grasshoppers and the bees.

Keith: No, I’m telling you, I mean I can’t wait to come to visit you. But first, you’re going to visit us in Israel.

Jono: Okay.

Keith: But listen, here’s what I want to bring up. So, imagine this. Jono is not every day ripping apart the Scriptures and ripping apart the Torah trying to figure out how Numbers 30 matches with Deuteronomy 16. He basically has heard the Word of God; he’s brought his family and he’s stood and he’s listened to it once every seven years. Because guess what? He doesn’t have a Torah scroll in his house. He’s got to survive off the land. He can’t hire a rabbi, a scribe, to go spend an entire year to create his own Torah scroll that he can put in his bathroom like the Methodists do with the Bible – you know, they put it in their bathroom for casual reading. He gets to hear the Torah once every seven years during Sukkot. From that reading of the Torah and his children hearing it, he puts the pieces together.

So again, when it was written, was it not written for the Jonos and the Chanis and their children to hear it and to put the pieces together? Versus the great scholars like Nehemia Gordon, who knows every little in and out, who can say, “this is the verse and that’s the verse.” And it’s awesome that he has that, but the average person didn’t have that same access. So that’s why it’s so powerful about reading the Torah that way. If we get to that spot where we say, “what else do we know about this in Genesis chapter 12?” Two words that I love to say: keep reading.

Jono: Yeah.

Keith: We keep reading and we find it in Numbers. We keep reading and we find it in Deuteronomy. Here’s what I want to say; sometimes we keep reading and we don’t get the answer, and guess what? That’s okay too, because what is supposed to be communicated is communicated. So, I’d like for people to take the approach with the Torah – if in fact, we believe this is the Word of God revealed to Moses over a period of 40 years that has been given now to us, we keep reading. We see what we can do. We dig. We search. But in the end, we ask ourselves, “what’s the message that He has for us”? And that’s what we stick with.

Jono: Amen.

Keith: That’s what I love. Okay.

Jono: Amen.

Nehemia: I want to comment. It seems to me like… I agree with you completely, Keith. For me, the key point is that the Jonos and the Chanis who were skinning goats and wrapping themselves in kangaroo skins, the kangaroo loincloths, didn’t need to be great Bible scholars…

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: … because they just heard the words and lived by them.

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: The reason today we’ve got to pull up our Bible program and read Scripture many times and make these connections, is because what we’re trying to do is dig through all the layers that have been put upon Scripture.

Keith: Absolutely.

Nehemia: The way I look at it is, Scripture has become like this barnacle-encrusted ship. You’ve got to dig through all those barnacles and tear them off. It’s layers upon layers of barnacles until you finally get to that pure, beautiful, pristine word. Which, to the ancient Chanis and Jonos, who were eating kangaroo meat because they didn’t know Deuteronomy 14… they heard Deuteronomy 14, Leviticus 11, and they said, “no more kangaroo”!

Jono: Amen.

Nehemia: We don’t need a rabbi to tell us that. We don’t need to jump through all kinds of theological hoops and issues. All we do, we hear the Word of God, and we…

Jono: And we apply it in our lives.

Nehemia: We wear the kangaroo, but we won’t eat the kangaroo.

Jono: It’s actually not too far from the truth. Oh, my goodness. Alright, yeah, now, verse 50, “Now Yehovah spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you have crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants from the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places; you shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land and dwell in it, for I have given you the land to possess. And you shall divide the land by lot as an inheritance among your families; to the larger you shall give a larger inheritance, and to the smaller you shall give a smaller inheritance; there everyone’s inheritance shall be whatever falls to him by lot. You shall inherit according to the tribes of your fathers.’” And here is a very interesting verse, “But if,” Keith.

Keith: Yeah, there it is.

Jono: Verse 55, “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell. Moreover…”

Keith: Don’t read the last verse. Please, don’t read the last verse, Jono.

Nehemia: Come on.

Keith: Can we just not read the last verse? No, if you read the last verse, then we’re going to start on that verse. I want you to hold the last verse, just for one second if you would.

Jono: Okay.

Keith: I want you to hold the last verse. Now, I want to back up just for a second. Because I think that the statement that takes place in verse 51 speaks to the Israelites, “Say unto them when you cross the Jordan into Canaan.” So, first of all, that statement is exciting because, again, remember the process that we’ve been on with Pearls from the Torah – we have been in a process where we have been trying to get to this spot, when they cross over. When they cross over. I know we’re going to do this again. We’re going to get into Deuteronomy. We’re going to talk about it.

But this is a statement of fact. He says “when,” not “if.” He says “when.” It’s going to happen. You’re going to cross over the Jordan. I’m sure that when Moses hears that and the people hear that, they’re like, really? You’re kidding me. When is that going to happen? So, okay, that’s going to happen.

Nehemia: It’s almost like Keith’s video – is that ever going to really happen?

Keith: Exactly. So, it says, “When you cross the Jordan into Canaan.” And then it says, “drive out the inhabitants of the land before you.” And again, we could stop there, but he goes on to say, “destroy all of their carved images and their cast idols and demolish all their high places.” I’m just sitting and I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, we’ve been 40 years in the desert.” In the desert, they’ve had some battles and they’ve had some personal issues. They’ve had some people that they’ve had to come against.

But it’s interesting, and we had the situation with Moab, but I would ask you two this question – how many times did they deal with other images and religious symbols in their 40 years? We know about the one they created – the golden calf. We know about the bronze serpent that they created and that became something else later in Scripture.

But what do we know about them actually having to confront the high places or the cast idols that were in the place of their wandering? And the reason I want to ask that question while you two do this, and maybe Nehemia will tap on his computer, I’m not sure. But while that’s going on, here’s the question -what is the process of the wandering that finally gets you to that place… and I think we get to this in, oh boy, oh boy, off the top of my head, “You’ve wandered around this mountain long enough, now turn north.”

Nehemia: Deuteronomy?

Keith: That’s Deuteronomy. But here’s the point – isn’t it interesting you two that for these 40 years that they’re on the wandering, they’re not dealing with the theology of the other places yet? In other words, He’s making them in the desert. He’s making them in their wandering. He’s making them in the process. And then when they cross over, He says, “now, look, when you get over there, we’re going to have to do some theological, some religious housecleaning of others.” And you know, I just get this image, you guys, that the process that they’ve been in for that 40 years, is for them. Is to build them up.

It’s like what I said earlier, when they came up out of Egypt they were armed for war, but they weren’t ready to fight. When they finally were ready to fight, they fought. Then, when they fought, they had the ability to win. And then when they won, they then dealt with internal issues. They started grumbling. And then when they grumbled, there was teaching. There were plagues. There were all these things to build this people. And then, He says, “now, you’re ready to go. When you cross over, now, we’re going to have to do some cleaning out of some other stuff.”

And I just think that that’s a really cool image because it isn’t good enough for them to cross the land and say, “okay, we’ve made it. We’re here. Let’s sit back and relax. This is great.” No, they’ve got high places over there. They’ve got carved images over there. And for us, if I can say this, and I’m waxing on longer than usually I’m allowed to, that even for us, sometimes what we want to do is start out by saying, “Look at everything that’s wrong with the Jews.” “Look at everything that’s wrong with the Christians.” “Look at everything that’s wrong with the Muslims.” We haven’t even had a process of internal building ourselves. Spending more time looking at what’s wrong with the other religion over there, and I almost wonder if some of us don’t need to stay in that place of personal growth and development, looking first at ourselves before we start spending so much time saying what’s wrong with the Messianics, or what’s wrong with the Christians, or what’s wrong with the Jews, or what’s wrong with the Karaites, or what’s wrong with the Australians. You know, what process are we in?

Nehemia: It’s the kangaroos.

Keith: Yeah. So, I just wanted to say…

Jono: Oh, come on, everybody wants a kangaroo deep down.

Keith: …that I think this is really interesting. You two might have something that you could pull out of your hat on this.

Nehemia: Sure.

Keith: But I think it’s interesting that it isn’t until they’re crossing the land that they really get to do the kind of cleaning out of the others, in terms of religion.

Jono: Well, you know what, Keith? Just quickly, Yoel ben Shlomo and I have been going through the Book of Joshua.

Keith: Shout-out to Yoel.

Jono: “Light of the Prophets,” excellent series on Joshua. We’ve finished that.

Nehemia: Yo-Yo-Yoel!

Jono: Yoel. And we did touch on, and I remember this verse, Joshua 23, verse 13, “Know for certain that Yehovah your Elohim will no longer drive out these nations from before you. But they shall be snares and traps to you…”

Keith: Come on.

Jono: “…and scourges on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land which Yehovah your Elohim has given you.” That brings us to the next verse. But first, Nehemia, you were going to say something?

Nehemia: Yes. So just to reiterate, or to kind of back up to what Keith is saying, there are a couple of verses in Deuteronomy that say that pretty explicitly.

Jono: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s in Deuteronomy 12, in the English, and in the Hebrew, it’s verse 8. It says, “You shall not all do as we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For you’ve not come to the rest of the inheritance which Yehovah, your God, is giving you. But when you cross over the Jordan, into all the land which Yehovah, your God, is giving you to inherit, and He gives you the rest from all your enemies who are on about so you dwell in it, then there will be the place where Yehovah, your God, chooses to place His name,” et cetera.

So, what we have here is, he’s saying, “look, you’ve had 40 years of grace; it’s got to end. We’re crossing over. I gave you 40 years to prepare. You got to stop doing what’s right in your own eyes and start doing what is right in the Creator’s eyes”.

Jono: Amen.

Keith: Amen.

Jono: Sorry, I was just going to say before we go on, it is in 12 earlier on, isn’t it, from verse 2, I think. “You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars and break their sacred pillars and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down their carved images and their gods and destroy the names from that place. You shall not worship Yehovah your Elohim with such things.”

And I think it says something similar in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, but we will get to that. We will get to that. The next verse 56, “Moreover, it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them.”

Keith: Oh, boy.

Jono: Oh, boy.

Keith: Chapter 34, “And the LORD said unto Moses, command the Israelites,” no, I’m just saying,

Jono: You just want to move on from that one.

Keith: I’m telling you, that’s a tough one.

Jono: It is a tough one.

Keith: That’s a tough one.

Jono: It is a tough one, but I guess… Nehemia, do you have anything to add to that?

Nehemia: I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Here’s something I do want to talk about because somebody could look at this without the full context, and say, “that God of Israel, he’s a racist. He’s telling you to wipe out those nations, to kill every last man, woman, and child, to replace the Canaanite race with the Israelite race.” I guess it could sound like that if you only read certain verses and not the broader context.

But now, we’re going into chapter 34, and we find out something really cool that we haven’t heard before, which is in verse 19 – sorry to jump ahead to verse 19 – we hear the list of the princes of the 12 tribes. The prince of the tribe of Judah is now Calev ben Jephunneh, Caleb the son of Jephunneh. We’re told in other places that he’s a Kenizzite, which is one of the original Canaanite tribes.

So, on the one hand, we’ve got this commandment – wipe them out, they’re idolaters. On the other hand, what we see is that when one of them turns from their idolatry and becomes loyal to the God of Israel, to the one true God, to the Creator of the universe, that not only is he accepted in Yehovah’s covenant, he could become one of the leaders of the people. He’s the leader of – and I’m a little biased here – but he’s the leader of the most important tribe, the tribe of Judah. Spoken as a true Judahite, right? As a descendant of King David, I feel that way – that Judah’s the most important tribe.

And who is the leader of our tribe? Before, he wasn’t a leader; he was a spy. I mean, he was kind of a leader, but he wasn’t the leader. He wasn’t the Nasi. Nasi is the prince. He is the prince, and maybe you could even say a picture of the future Messiah who will be a prince from the tribe of Judah. He is a prince of the tribe of Judah now in Numbers 34:19, and he’s not even of physical Israelite descent. He’s joined the people. He’s joined himself to Yehovah, “to love the name of the God of Israel.” He is now not only one of the people; he is the leader of the people from that tribe.

Jono: So…

Nehemia: I think that’s important. So, it’s not a racial issue. Every one of those Canaanites had the opportunity to repent and turn to the God of Israel. We have a few rare examples of people who did that. We’ve got the example of Rachab, or Rahab, in the Book of Joshua. We’ve got a few examples, a handful, where people said, “okay, I’m going to repent and I’m going to join the God of Israel.” Most of them said, “we love our Canaanite gods. We’re going to wipe you out, and Ba’al will give us the power to wipe you out; Ashtoreth, Ishtar (Easter), will give us power to wipe you out.” And they were kind of disappointed because we won.

Jono: Amen. Just remind the listeners if you would, Nehemia – how did Caleb, in his adoption, if you like, into Israel – how did he get allocated to the tribe of Judah?

Nehemia: Well, we’re not actually told that information. We don’t know. It doesn’t say. But what we do have is a reference –

Jono: It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Nehemia: It is. Let’s start with the facts. Genesis chapter 15, and I know we talked about this in a previous portion, but I’ll just quickly run through it. Genesis 15, here God lists the different tribes. This is significant, I think, for our portion because we’ve got the borders that are defined that God is giving Israel. But then there’s a broader border that’s given in Genesis 15. The borders here are for Israel at that time, but then there are borders that we can eventually grow into.

It says, “On the same day, Yehovah made a covenant with Abraham,” I’m in verse 18, “saying, ‘To your descendants, I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates.’” That’s a pretty significant border. Then He lists ten tribes that live in that land – I believe it’s ten. He says, “The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” That’s ten different tribes that are living there at the time of Abraham.

Now later on there are only seven tribes, because some of them left or they got intermingled or whatever happened to them. But in any event, one of them is the Kenizzites, the Kenizzi. We’re told later on, in a number of places, for example, Numbers 32 verse 12, it mentions Calev the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite. And in Joshua 14:6, Calev the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite. In Joshua 14:14, third witness, Calev the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite. Three times he’s called the Kenizzite. So, in other words, he is what we might call a gentile who has joined himself to the God of Israel.

And you asked, how did he become specifically connected to Judah? I think the answer to that is something we can find in the Book of Ezekiel, and that’s specifically Ezekiel 47, verses 22-23. It’s not talking about Caleb; it’s talking about the broader principle. I’ll start in verse 21.

Jono: Yeah.

Nehemia: This is, I think, relevant to our Torah portion because our Torah portion talks about dividing up the land under Joshua. Here, it’s talking about dividing up the land under the Messiah in the future kingdom. It says, verse 21, “Thus, shall you divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel.” And in verse 22, it says, “It shall be that you will divide it by lot as an inheritance for yourselves and for the strangers…” say strangers.

Keith: Strangers.

Nehemia: “…for the strangers who dwell among you and who bear children among you; they shall be to you as native-born among the children of Israel. They shall have an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.” Verse 23, “And it shall be that in whatever tribe the stranger dwells, there you shall give him his inheritance, says the Lord Yehovah.”

Jono: Aha.

Nehemia: So presumably – we don’t know for sure – but presumably there were 12 different camps surrounding the tabernacle; 12 of these. So, Caleb must have just planted his tent in the tribe of Judah, and he was a Judahite.

Jono: Yeah, sure. So, he had mates in Judah. He had his tent there, and so that’s where he ended up.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Jono: Okay, makes sense.

Nehemia: He would walk out the tent and say to the other people, “G’day, Judah, g’day.”

Jono: G’day, Judah, there you go, mate.

Keith: So, let me give a little something about this that is interesting.

Jono: Judah, Judah, Judah, oy, oy, oy.

Keith: Oy, oy, oy.

Nehemia: And they wouldn’t call him Caleb, they’d call him Colbo.

Jono: Hey, g’day, little doggy, how your goin’? Keith?

Keith: Before that verse, and again it just speaks of this idea that there’s going to be this appointing that’s going to take place. And I think we should put a little bit of context to it because we have Caleb, and of course, what Nehemia’s brought up is obviously really important.

At the same time, if you look at this, it says, and it speaks here in verse number 17 after 16, “Yehovah said unto Moshe, these are the names of the men who are to assign the land for you as an inheritance.” And then it says that the two men here specifically, the high priest and Joshua the son of Nun, and Eleazar, are going to be the ones that are going to do this and appoint one leader, as Nehemia said, one prince from each tribe to help assign the land.

Let me think here if I’m thinking right, I think it’s the word nachal. Let me just check here. In the English Bible, we use the word ‘apportion’ for this word, the nachal. They used the word ‘apportion’, I think it’s six or seven times here. So why would you have Caleb be the one who would be the leader of the, as Nehemia said, “the most important tribe”? A pretty big portion, if I’m thinking right here.

Nehemia: Amen.

Keith: So, what did Caleb do? And of course, I’ve got to tie this in. For those that want to understand what Caleb did, let’s go see what Caleb looked at and where he went. We’re going to spy out the land. What did Caleb do, Jono? He spied out the land. So, what was his expertise in this area?

We didn’t just pick some guy who’s sitting on the side of the road, who was… whatever. This is a guy who actually has experience in the land. So, is there a connection with the fact that he’s the one that’s going to help make the apportion, as I said in English, the apportion, to apportion by lot? But he’s also one who had walked the land. He’d been in there. He spied out the land. So, he’s not some rookie who doesn’t know anything. He can actually go in and say, “here’s where this is and here’s where that is.”

So, I just wanted to bring that up that there seems to be a connection with the fact that it wasn’t just that he’s a great warrior who went out and fought, but he also had some knowledge. It’s possible that these other men that are in here, though they weren’t the ones that actually spied the land, because we know those guys didn’t make it. But maybe they were also those who had information that was given and passed down and had some understanding of the land.

Jono: Amen.

Nehemia: Can I jump to… I mean we’re talking, and I know it’s a little off topic, and we brought this before, but I want to bring it in this context. Isaiah 56, one of my favorite passages, verse 3. It’s talking there, it says, “Neither let the…” I’m reading here from the King James Version. I know people… I trash the version all the time, to be honest with you, but despite itself, sometimes it can get it right.

Jono: True.

Nehemia: Even though sometimes it adds words like the ‘old’ corn instead of just the grain. “Neither let the son of the stranger that has joined himself to the LORD,” and of course, “LORD” in caps in Hebrew is Yehovah. “Neither let the son of the stranger, that has joined himself to Yehovah speak, saying, ‘Yehovah has utterly separated me from his people.’”

So, what does this mean? Here the prophet is speaking to Caleb. He’s saying, “Caleb, you’re the son of the stranger who joined yourself to Yehovah. Do not say, ‘Yehovah has utterly separated me from his people.’ Don’t say that, Caleb.”

And why not say that? He jumps back in verse 6 to the son of the stranger. He says, “And also Caleb, the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to Yehovah. Caleb, who has joined himself to serve Yehovah and to love the name of Yehovah, to be his servant, everyone that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of My covenant; even them will I bring to My holy mountain.” Caleb, you’re going to come to the holy mountain. “And make them joyful in My house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon Mine altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people,” including you, Caleb. “Thus says Yehovah, which gathereth the outcasts of Israel sayeth, yet will I gather others,” that’s you, Caleb, “to him, besides those that are gathered unto him.” Come on with that, Caleb.

Jono: Amen.

Keith: Amen.

Jono: That’s brilliant. Thanks for highlighting that. Let me ask a question, because you jumped to Genesis 15 and we were looking at verse 18, that it is “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” Of course, we have the Mediterranean, the great sea. How far east are we talking?

Nehemia: How far east? Well, first of all, the land that God gave Abraham was essentially west of the Jordan River. In other words, you follow the line of the Jordan River, all the way up to the Euphrates. That includes a large chunk of Syria and all of Lebanon, and a little bit of what today is Egypt. I’d say about two-thirds or so of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. And of course, all of what currently is the state of Israel.

Now, the borders over here in Numbers are a much more limited area, and that’s because he explains in another passage that, “look, I can’t give you the whole land at once because it will be too much. Wild animals will… you’ll drive out the foreigners and then you’ll have these empty cities that wild animals will take over”. So, He says, “I’m going to give it to you gradually.” Basically, what we’re getting in the Book of Numbers is the first installment, the first chunk. But there’s much more of the land that’s awaiting us from the Euphrates.

Of course, once we have the agreement, the covenant that’s made with the two-and-a-half tribes for Transjordan, that also includes a significant amount of area in what is today the Kingdom of Jordan and the occupied kingdom, or Republic of Syria. Those areas will eventually be liberated when the King Messiah comes to rule as king over Israel. All those nations are going to be united into the Kingdom of Israel. It’s going to be part of the land of Israel. Those are part of the land of Israel, they’re going to be liberated. And may it be soon.

Jono: May it be soon. Amen. And then the Levites once again will be, as we read in – you made mention of Ezekiel, but it mentions, of course, again, dedicated areas for the Levites. Here in chapter 35, it’s the cities for the Levites. Do you want to highlight something there?

Nehemia: Who, me?

Jono: As soon as I said that I thought, “you shouldn’t leave open-ended questions like that.”

Keith: No, no. You can’t ask that question. That’s where you’re supposed to say this, “Everyone that’s listening to Torah Pearls.”

Nehemia: I’ve got a whole story to tell, what are you talking about?

Keith: Listen. Everybody that’s listening to Torah Pearls knows this. Every once in a while, Jono is going to go, “Keith!” and then it’s my turn. But if you generally say, “do you have something to say”? Nehemia thinks you’re saying his name. You can’t do that, Jono.

Jono: If I say, “Keith,” yes, that means it’s your turn. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get a chance to talk. So, Keith…

Nehemia: Amen.

Jono: …do you have anything to say in regards to the first half of chapter 35, in regards to the cities of the Levites?

Keith: Well, all I have to say is that I just think it’s amazing. And I think this is really, again, I hate to keep bringing this up, but I think people really need to understand the significance of who these Levites are. These are servants that have been selected through the line of Aaron, that have a job to do. And He says because you’ve already got a job to do, you’re not going to need to get another job. I’m going to have this be your job, and I’m going to take care of you in this way. I’m going to give you land, you’re not going to have… here’s your portions, you’re going to go out and do this and do that. This is going to be the area that separates you, so you’re not thinking about those things so you can go and do the things to serve Me in the Tent of Meeting, et cetera, and in the Temple.

One of the things that I do think, and I’m just going to say this, is that we have to be very careful when we use that word, especially for my tradition, when we use that word to say, “As the Levites, here’s what we require. Here’s what we need to get.” Because I know a man who I believe is from the tribe of Judah. Yoel is from the tribe of Levi, at least to the best that he’s aware. So it is a really important thing to understand that this reasoning, the reasoning behind that is for the purpose of what their job is.

Now, what we’ve done in the Catholic Church, and what we’ve done in the Protestant movement, is said, “We’re going to take the Levitical role, including the Levitical benefit of the tithes and the offerings, and that’s going to come to us.” I still remember the first time that I understood this in its depth of what it meant to be a Levite, and where I realized that I was not.

I may be in the role of trying to help people learn and to giving Scripture and that sort of thing, but I don’t claim the Levitical bloodlines. The reason for that is because of the holiness of that entire process and how they were set aside and how they were separated. And without me knowing that, I do Levite myself; I do join myself to the Creator of the universe, as Nehemia just spoke about in 56. But I don’t claim that I am from that bloodline where I can handle…

Jono: So, Keith, I have a question. I have a question for Nehemia in regards to you, Keith. As the verse that Nehemia has just read out in Isaiah 56, and with the analogy that we used in regards to Caleb, that he just set up his tent in Judah and that’s where he lodged…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Jono: Now, Nehemia – if Keith, when the Messiah comes and everything is restored, and Keith says, “you know what, I want to hang out with Yoel, and I’m going to set up my tent here.” Does that mean that Keith can be… I mean, does he get drafted into Levi, maybe, perhaps?

Nehemia: Why not? I don’t know.

Jono: Why not?

Keith: Listen. Hey, folks, listen.

Nehemia: At least as far as inheriting land…

Keith: Yeah, inheriting land.

Nehemia: If you want to be drafted into the Levites, you’re not going to get much land.

Keith: Right.

Jono: Well, you’ll be in the city, rather.

Nehemia: Well, so let’s talk about that. So, they get the city and then they get 2,000 cubits surrounding the city. Why did they get that? There are three areas. There’s the city, around the city for the first 2,000 cubits is called the migrash. And I forget how they translate that in your English, but basically, it’s like the lots around the city, it’s where the animals live. So look, people needed to… they couldn’t very well…

Jono: They need to have a place to skin their goats, right? I mean, come on.

Nehemia: Exactly. And turn their kangaroos into shirts, and whatever you guys do over there.

Jono: Yeah, and koalas.

Nehemia: Koala bears, little koala mittens.

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: Not endorsing that. So anyway, they’ve got 2,000 cubits surrounding the city for their animals. Then beyond that are the fields, where they’re actually growing the grain and the wheat and the barley and stuff. Basically, the situation here is that they’re not getting areas to grow their wheat and barley. That’s for the other 12 tribes, or the other 11 tribes, depending on how you count it. But they need to have animals because you can’t go to the local store and buy milk. If you want milk you got to have a goat to milk, you know?

Jono: Amen. We do.

Nehemia: So this actually becomes an important issue in later Jewish tradition, when they look at kind of an obscure verse in the Book of Exodus, which I don’t remember if we talked about or not. But let’s just really quickly look at it. It says there in Exodus, chapter 16, verse 29, it’s talking about how the people went out into the fields to collect the man or the manna. And then, it says that they went out on Shabbat.

In response to that God says, “Shvu ish tachtav ve’al-yitze ish mimekomo bayom hashviyi.” Sit each man in his place and let each man not go out of his place on the seventh day. So, the rabbis came along about 1,500 years after Moses. They said, okay, what does this mean? It’s talking about going out into the fields, and we know the fields are 2,000 cubits outside the city. We know that from the Book of Numbers. And they established the rule that you can’t walk more than 2,000 cubits outside your city.

Jono: So that’s the Sabbath day walk, right?

Nehemia: That’s the Sabbath day’s journey.

Jono: Right.

Nehemia: In fact, when I grew up as an Orthodox Jew, that was the rule. You can walk through Chicago, where I grew up, 25 miles from north end to the south end of Chicago, no problem whatsoever. But if you walk 2,000 cubits into Evanston, or into Skokie, then you’ve violated this commandment, “to sit each man in his place, to not go each man from his house,” or it doesn’t say house, “go not each man from his place on the seventh day.”

In other words, they understood correctly that, in the context, it’s talking about going out into the fields to collect the manna. So “your place” doesn’t mean sit on your butt. It obviously can’t mean that because, and I don’t mean to be crude; people didn’t have indoor plumbing. So, they couldn’t literally stay in their tent for 24 hours. That would have been pretty messy. They had to go outside to do their business.

Jono: Sure.

Nehemia: But the point is what He was telling them – this is what the rabbis understood – is don’t go out into the field. What’s interesting is that the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls had the same understanding as the rabbis, except instead of it being 2,000 cubits, and I forget if they said 1,000 cubits or they had a different number. They got that different number from the same passage we just read in Numbers, because there there’s an issue about 1,000 cubits and 2,000 cubits. So, they took the one verse versus the other verse that the rabbis took.

But the Sabbath day’s journey, to this day in Orthodox Judaism, refers to not going more than 2,000 cubits outside of the city. What they’ve done is combine our verse in Numbers with this verse here in Exodus 16. That’s where they get that issue. Now, the way I look at it, and I could be wrong, maybe the rabbis and the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls were right. The way I look at it… and I think they were right in their context.

What I do ask, though, is, if I’m going to apply this to a modern context, what is the application? To me, the application, because I’m not a farmer who goes out into his field, so that doesn’t really mean anything to me. So, the way I think this applies for me is that, what is my place of work? My place of work is the mall, and the factory, and the stores. So, I think for the modern person, that is our equivalent of going out into the fields, to go to our places of business and work.

Jono: Sure. Yeah.

Nehemia: So, I think that is what the Torah is telling us; don’t go to your place of business and work. But I could be wrong, and I really do pray that Yehovah opens my eyes for me to see the truth. If I find out I’m wrong, I’ll be so blessed because I’ll have the truth. And maybe this is a good time for us to pray the prayer.

Keith: Amen.

Jono: That’s an excellent idea.

Keith: May it be.

Jono: Psalm 119, verse 18, and it says… Yehovah, thank you so much that we have the opportunity to do these Torah Pearls, I just want to take the opportunity to say. And I thank you for Nehemia Gordon, and I thank you for Keith Johnson. I thank you for the listeners – they’re so thirsty to know what it is that your Torah says. Father, we pray that you will open our eyes that we may see the wondrous things of your Torah. Amen.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Amen.

Jono: “Then Yehovah spoke to Moses saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan…’”

Keith: There it is again.

Jono: “…then you shall appoint cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person accidentally may flee there. And they shall be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer may not die until he stands before the congregation in judgment.”

Nehemia: I got to stop you. Does yours really say “manslayer”? Is that what you have, Keith?

Jono: I’ve got manslayer. That’s… yeah.

Nehemia: Because mine says dragon slayer. So, I don’t know.

Keith: “Someone comes to your town,” I see here, “of refuge, to which a person who has killed someone accidentally may flee.”

Jono: “Someone who’s killed someone,” okay.

Nehemia: Yeah, that’s just what it says here.

Jono: So rather than a murderer, someone who’s guilty of manslaughter, right?

Nehemia: Well, no here’s the point, and we have this definition earlier in Exodus. If you kill someone intentionally, then you’re put on trial and you’re executed. If you accidentally kill someone, and somewhere – maybe in one of the passages we read – it talks about, for example, if you’re swinging an ax and the head of the ax goes flying off and kills somebody, then you have the option of fleeing to the city of refuge.

What we’re finding out here is what’s called the “Go’el HaDahm,” the redeemer of blood. That’s a kinsman of the person who was killed accidentally; he actually has the right to redeem the blood of his relative. What that means is, he can kill you if you’re the one who accidentally killed him, unless you go to the city of refuge. In the city of refuge, he has no right to touch you. And there are these six cities of refuge. The person essentially is stuck in the city of refuge.

It says in verse 25, “He shall dwell in it until the death of the high priest who was annointed with the holy oil.” So, we’ve got the high priest who’s anointed with holy oil; until he dies, the person is stuck in the city of refuge. That could be 60 years; that could be one day. You might accidentally murder someone or kill someone, and the next day, the high priest dies.

Jono: So, hang on, Nehemia. In verse 28 it says, “But after the death of the high priest, the manslayer may return to the land of his possession.” Now, am I to understand then, that the avenger, the kinsman, the one who has the right to avenge the blood of his relative, he has no right now because the high priest has died?

Nehemia: Right. That’s correct.

Jono: Okay.

Nehemia: In other words, the guy has done his term of service; the avenger of blood can’t touch him. And if he does, it’s murder.

Jono: Wow. So he’s under house arrest.

Nehemia: It’s almost like there is this system of, kind of like bounty hunters…

Jono: Yeah.

Nehemia: …except they’re kinsmen. It’s an interesting setup. But if you look in the… I know in the Bedouin culture, they have a system which is, compared to this, quite barbaric. In their system, even if you… in fact, there was a case in Jerusalem, that… one of the suburbs of Jerusalem, which is actually a Palestinian city, it’s outside Jerusalem, ruled by the Palestinians, a bus driver was in a bus accident. It was a school bus and some children were killed. This was in a place called Anata. And the avenger of blood said, okay, I can kill the bus driver. Then the Palestinian authorities stepped in and said, okay, we don’t want you to kill the bus driver. Will you take a monetary compensation instead? And he had to pay a monetary compensation to the avenger of blood…

Jono: Wow.

Nehemia: …basically the same thing. Now, here’s the thing – in some of the Bedouin cultures, there is no option of a monetary compensation, and there’s a requirement of the avenger of blood to come and kill the bus driver or whoever commits the act. Then you end up with a situation where now the relative of the bus driver has to kill either the avenger of blood or his family. And you end up with these blood feuds that last for generations. I mean literally. They would go back-and-forth with these blood vendettas generation after generation. “Yes, 15 generations ago, my cousin Ahmed accidentally killed Abu Musa”. And then so-and-so killed him, and they’ll go back and forth.

So what the Torah is setting here is a limit. Okay, we understand there’s this concept of redeeming the blood, what’s actually called a redeemer of blood, but it has a limitation. It’s the lifespan of the kohen gadol, of the high priest, and even in that time there are these cities of refuge. You can’t go and kill someone just because you want to, or you feel this familial obligation to, if he puts himself under this sort of house arrest in the city of refuge.

Keith: Okay.

Jono: Excellent. Thank you for that. Keith, in chapter 27, if I remember correctly, we were talking about… fill me in – in the scenario of chapter 27, there was the daughters of Zelophehad, is that his name?

Nehemia: Tzlofhad.

Jono: Thank you.

Keith: Tzlofhad.

Jono: That’ll do. Now, he had daughters, right? Now, what was their complaint? What was their concern?

Keith: So, they were saying to themselves, listen, we’re daughters. We don’t have any land that’s being given to us. And if I remember right, it was, let’s see, yeah, chapter 27. They said, “Our father died in the desert, he was not among the followers of Korah… why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives.” And of course, Moses did a really wise thing. He went and checked with Yehovah about that. And so now, we’re getting up to that in chapter 36.

Jono: And so the question then becomes, what happens when they get married, right? Because if dad inherited the land, they now, I guess, in a sense, hold the deed. Is that fair to say? What happens when they get married? This is really what… now, by the way, hey guys, this is the last chapter of Numbers. We’ve reached the last.

Keith: No, it can’t be. It can’t be.

Jono: Oh, my goodness. We’re knocking on the door of Deuteronomy, almost.

Nehemia: Devarim.

Jono: Before we even talk about it, what happens when they get married? Keith, do you have any idea?

Keith: Did you say my name?

Jono: Come on, Keith.

Keith: What are you talking about? If they own it and they get married, then their husbands own it too.

Jono: All right.

Keith: Lama lo? Why not?

Nehemia: I think the issue here is that all inheritance and tribal affiliation in Scripture goes according to the man. Let me point out that if you ask a Modern-Orthodox Jew, is someone Jewish? What makes somebody Jewish? They’ll say, “well, if their mother is Jewish.” But that’s actually a very recent innovation; it only goes back a few hundred years. In ancient Judaism, and in the Bible, it went by the father. So, if your father, for example, was from the tribe of Judah, and your mother was from the tribe of, I don’t know, Issachar… you were a Judahite. You weren’t an Issacharite. You were from Judah.

The situation here is that you’ve got these daughters, the daughters of Zelophehad, and they get the land. The fear is that, okay, they’re going to now marry someone from Judah and then their children will be Judahites, and the land is going to pass over to the tribe of Judah. We’re going to lose land out of the tribe of Joseph, in this context. So that’s the concern there.

So, the ruling that’s laid out is, if they want to inherit the land, they’ve got to marry someone from their tribe. Now, here’s something really weird I once heard from someone who wasn’t Jewish, and I don’t know where he got this. But he thought that the 12 tribes of Israel could only marry amongst themselves. Meaning if you’re from Issachar, you could only marry someone from Issachar. If you’re a Levite, you could only marry a Levite. I don’t know where they got that. That’s utter nonsense. The only context in which that becomes an issue is if there’s a girl who inherits land from her father because the father had no brothers. Then if she wants to keep the land, she’s got to marry within her tribe. If she wants to marry outside of the tribe, she forfeits the land.

Keith: And Jono, that’s where verse 12, time to keep reading. So what does verse 12 say?

Jono: Okay, so verse 12, “They were married into the families of the children of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of their father’s family.” Beautiful. There it is. So in other words, if they did marry outside, if they married into Judah, then the land would then follow on into Judah.

Now, let me just jump off the topic onto something that you happened to mention, Nehemia. The idea is, and I hear it so often – in fact, when I visited a synagogue recently, there were people on a number of occasions saying, so your mother is Jewish? I say, no, they’re not. Oh, is your wife’s mother Jewish? No, she’s not. And you kind of feel, and I know a lot of people have encountered this, they feel like second-rate, somehow, because they don’t fit into that. But then, like you say, that’s only new in the last couple hundreds of years, right?

Nehemia: Well, I mean, look, are you talking about someone whose father is Jewish but whose mother isn’t? Is that what you’re talking about?

Jono: Someone whose father is Jewish.

Nehemia: Right. I mean, so, look, that’s a rabbinical tradition. It’s a rabbinical tradition that doesn’t go back even that far. It’s only a few hundred years old, and not all Jews accept that. Karaite Jews definitely don’t accept that. We say that inheritance is based on the father, just like in Scripture. So, if your father is Jewish, then you’re Jewish. I know that Reform Jews say the same thing because they say, look, in Jewish history, it was never the case that it was only by the mother. If your father is Jewish, you’re Jewish. You know, people like to knock the Reform Jews, and I want to give them credit here in that, in this instance, they’re actually more strictly Biblical than the Orthodox. The Orthodox are the ones who have gone ultra-liberal and changed Scripture, and the Reform Jews are saying, “yeah, the Bible says if your father is an Israelite, you’re an Israelite.” And that’s biblically correct.

So, here’s what I want to point out. I want to say something even more radical, Jono. When you’re saying that somebody whose father is Jewish, and mother isn’t, that they feel like they’re left out; that is certainly the position of the Orthodox. It’s not biblical; it’s clearly not biblical. This passage makes it ultra-clear; many other passages make it very clear. But I want to say something even more radical, and this goes back to Isaiah 56. I read it before, and I want to read it again. I want to read it directly from the Hebrew.

It says literally, “Let not the son of the gentile who joins himself to Yehovah say, ‘Yehovah has surely separated me from his people.’” So, what is he not supposed to say? He’s not supposed to come into the synagogue, and I’m not talking about you because you come from Jews on your father’s side. I’m talking about Keith, who has shaken the family tree, and no Jew has fallen out. His natural inclination is to say, “look, the Jews don’t accept me. I’m not really part of Yehovah’s people; not that people, that’s the special people. I’m separate from them. I’ve joined the God of Israel, but I’m not really part of the chosen people of Yehovah. I’m not part of his people.” He’s saying here to those people, “The son of the gentile who joins himself to Yehovah must not say, ‘Yehovah has surely separated me from his people.’” I’m going to read it again. “The son of the gentile who joins himself to Yehovah to serve him.” Say, “serve Him.”

Jono: Serve him.

Keith: Serve him.

Nehemia: “And to love the name of Yehovah.” Say, love the name.

Jono: “Love the name of Yehovah.” Amen.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: You guys are not a good audience.

Keith: We’re working with you.

Nehemia: Work with me here. “To be his servants, all those who keep the Shabbat from desecrating it and grab hold of my covenant.”

Jono: Grab hold of the covenant.

Nehemia: That’s actually an important point. That Hebrew word “lehachzik,” in biblical Hebrew… in Modern Hebrew it means ‘to hold on’; in biblical Hebrew it means ‘to grab hold’. They’re grabbing hold of the covenant. “I will bring them to My holy mountain, make them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and peace offerings shall be accepted upon My altar; for My house will be called a house of prayer only for the Jews.” No, that’s not what it says.

Keith: No.

Nehemia: “For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Can I get an Amen?

Jono: Amen.

Keith: Amen.

Jono: Amen.

Nehemia: Hallelujah.

Jono: Thank you, Nehemia. Keith, can you read out the final verse of Numbers for me, please, my friend?

Keith: I really would like to do that. I just want to say that what is interesting is that you might have the Reformed saying that it isn’t according to the mom, it’s according to the dad. And you might have the Karaite saying “no, it’s not according to the mom; it’s according to the dad.” But let me tell you where the authority is at right now.

So Jono, if for example, you decided that… you find out that on your father’s side there’s Jewish blood. And you apply and say, okay, I want to make aliyah. I want to go over to Jerusalem. I want to go to Israel, and that’s going to be my connection to the God of Israel. Well, you can go to the Reformed all you want, and you can go to the Karaites, specifically if you want to say as it pertains to your line. Not talking about conversion now, I’m talking about your bloodline. If you go into Israel right now, the Orthodox are running the show. And so, they say it’s got to be the mom, and if it ain’t the mom…

Nehemia: That’s actually not true. That’s actually untrue. In fact, so to make it clear… here we’re talking about Israeli law, not Scripture. Under Israeli law, you need to have one Jewish grandparent.

Keith: Jewish grandparent?

Nehemia: That could be your mother’s mother. It could be your father’s father. The Orthodox, they might not like it, but if you’ve got a father’s father who’s Jewish, you could make aliyah. You could immigrate to Israel as a full citizen. So, it’s actually not the Orthodox running the show.

Keith: Okay. So then that’s even better. So then it isn’t anything to do with the mother. So then what is the purpose of them making this rule in the last couple hundred years?

Jono: Actually, sorry, hang on, wait, Keith, I would challenge what Nehemia said, just make it a little bit more complicated because let’s say that the father’s father, the grandfather, okay?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Jono: He is Jewish because his father is Jewish, but his mother wasn’t.

Nehemia: Well, so then it comes down to, you know, then you’re dealing with… whoops.

Keith: And he’s fallen off the chair, ladies and gentlemen.

Jono: He’s fallen off the chair.

Nehemia: Falling off laughing, rolling on the floor laughing out loud. No. Actually what you’re dealing with then, Jono, at that point, is bureaucratic issues. Because ultimately, if you want to immigrate to a country, you’re dealing with a political bureaucracy. The bureaucracy will say okay, your grandfather is Jewish; prove it through documentation. And that documentation can take all kinds of forms. One of the most common ones, I mean the best one they want is that you have a ketubah, a marriage contract between your grandfather and your grandmother. Now, a lot of people don’t have that. So, another thing that you can show is that your grandfather or grandmother, any one of the four of them, is buried in a Jewish cemetery, for example.

Keith: This is important. I want to ask a question.

Nehemia: But this is bureaucracy.

Jono: Yeah.

Keith: So then what is the purpose, Nehemia, of the fact that you said the last couple hundred years they’ve dealt with this issue of it going to the mother?

Nehemia: The significance is, if you want to be married by an Orthodox rabbi to someone who is Orthodox, then you’re going to have to show that you’re Jewish on your mother’s side.

Keith: Ah, that’s it. So it’s marriage.

Nehemia: Right. It’s for marriage in the Orthodox Jewish community. Exactly.

Keith: There it is. Okay.

Jono: Okay.

Keith: So Jono, you’re in.

Jono: You reckon I’m in… you know what? I think it’s a little bit harder than that.

Nehemia: If you can show the documentation, then you’ve got no problem.

Jono: It’s interesting…

Nehemia: Like, for example, when I made aliyah, what I brought in to the aliyah office nearly 20 years ago, was a photocopy, or maybe the original, actually, of my mother’s ketubah – my mother’s marriage contract with my father. They looked at it, and they sent it to some kind of agency to be verified. They said, “okay, if your parents had a ketubah, they must be Jewish and you can make aliyah.” Not everybody has that, like I said. There is usually documentation. Sometimes, there is not. A lot of times there is not. A lot of times there are people in Europe whose documents were burned. Half of Europe is burned in the Holocaust. So, they don’t have the documentation.

Jono: True.

Keith: Okay. There it is.

Jono: There it is.

Keith: So, the Orthodox aren’t running who comes in for aliyah. It’s completely disconnected to them.

Nehemia: Well, they want to run it… no, they’ve got some influence, but they don’t actually run it. They wish they ran it.

Keith: Got you.

Jono: There we go.

Nehemia: They do have influence, though.

Keith: Let’s see what the last verse…

Jono: I’ll tell you what, Keith, when we’re over there, Keith, we’re going to be twisting some arms there.

Keith: Oh, we’re twisting arms, man.

Jono: Alright.

Keith: So, the last verse is, “These are the commands and regulations Yehovah gave unto Moses to the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho.” And let me just tell you, it’s amazing. I want to say this again; this has probably been the thing that’s changed my entire view of the Bible, more than anything else. I want people to consider this any way that you can, and it certainly doesn’t need to be with us. Any opportunity that you have to get to the land and to actually stand in places where, when you’re reading it, you can say we’re actually standing on the place.

Now, there are many places, as Nehemia mentioned earlier, that came through revelation and dream through… for the Christian tradition from Helena. But there are so many more places that we actually do have authentic places that we can actually stand and go to that are biblical-based places. And so when you open up the Scriptures and you’re reading about Jericho, and to be in Jericho. Even though some people say don’t go to Jericho, I say go to Jericho. But the list goes on and on and on. These are places that exist right now. So it’s really a very, very powerful experience to be there. Especially when you can be with a guy like Nehemia, who’s a walking encyclopedia and a walking map. I mean this guy can look at a stone and say this stone is from such-and-such a year and such-and-such a period, and this came from so-and-so place. So it really is an amazing, amazing…

Nehemia: I’m not sure you could really date stones, but we get the sense of it.

Jono: Yeah.

Keith: Okay. Sorry about that, maybe pottery.

Jono: To be there with Keith Johnson and Nehemia Gordon and myself in my kangaroo underwear. It’s happening in late February, early March. Dates will be up on the website…

Keith: You bet it is.

Jono: hishallowedname.com, looking forward to seeing you there.

Keith: Absolutely.

Jono: Thank you, Keith Johnson and Nehemia Gordon. Next week, oh my goodness, we’re in Deuteronomy!

Keith: Hey!

Jono: Devarim, Deuteronomy 1, verse 1, to 3 verse 22. And until then, dear listeners, be blessed and be set apart by the truth of our Father’s word. Shalom.

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