For the week of June 28, 2025 / 2 Tammuz 5785

Korach
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 16:1 – 18:32
Haftarah: 1 Samuel 11:14 – 12:22
Updated version of “Go to God” from the week of June 23, 2001

They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?” When Moses heard it, he fell on his face… (B’midbar/Numbers 16:3-4)

Moses went through a lot. He didn’t want this job in the first place. Many years earlier, he thought he would try to help his people by taking matters into his own hands. Now that he was older and wiser with the desire to be the Great Deliverer purged from his soul, it was God’s idea to send him back to Egypt. Although he resisted, God prevailed, and Moses became a leader.

I have heard it said that Moses’ being a shepherd in the wilderness was to prepare him to lead the people there one day. That may be true, but not in the way some people think. It wasn’t his knowledge of the wilderness itself that qualified him for the job. It wasn’t the day-in and day-out of sheep herding that taught him the group dynamics necessary to lead two million ex-slaves from bondage to conquest. The primary lesson he learned during those forty years prior to God’s call was to be dependent upon God.

Moses had gone from elite status in Pharaoh’s palace to the life of a fugitive, running for his life. Cut off from everything he knew, at age forty he had to start life all over again, so to speak, working a menial job.

This week’s portion includes an example of how he dealt with the predicaments he faced as God’s chosen leader of his people. When challenged by Korah and company, the Torah says, “When Moses heard it, he fell on his face” (B’midbar/Numbers 16:4). Only after that, did he give them an answer. Over and over again, whether Moses was confronting Pharaoh, speaking to the elders of Israel, or dealing with the people’s virtual incessant grumbling, he looked to God.

What a way to react to being confronted! He fell on his face! He wasn’t showing reverence to Korah, nor was he completely overwhelmed. This was Moses’ leadership posture. He looked to God. Then and only then did he deal with the situation.

We don’t find Moses finding guidance via his vast learning acquired in Pharaoh’s court or from his previous years of wilderness wanderings. Whenever he faced a situation he went to God. And it was God who gave him the wisdom he needed.

Isn’t this what we should all do? As we read in the New Covenant Writings:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him (James 1:5).

So the next time you are in a situation where you need wisdom, maybe you should do what Moses did and get on your face.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of June 21, 2025 / 25 Sivan 5785

Sh’lach L’kha
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 13:1 – 15:41
Haftarah: Joshua 2:1-24
Originally posted the week of June 20, 2020 / 28 Sivan 5780

Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” (B’midbar/Numbers 14:1-4)

This week’s parsha (Torah reading portion) includes one of the greatest fails in the Torah. The people of Israel are on the cusp of acquiring the land God promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hundreds of years before. No other people in history had ever experienced the favor and power of God as they did. Having been subjected to the bitter bondage of slavery their whole lives, they saw their God pummel Egypt with devastating plagues until the stubborn king finally allowed them to leave. And that was just the beginning! They were then personally led by God by way of a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. He parted the sea, enabling them to cross to the other side on dry ground, from where they watched that same sea drown the Egyptian army, terminating that threat for good. Each day, except on Shabbat (English: the Sabbath), they woke up to a miraculous nutritious meal of manna. God also provided them with water when none was available be it by transforming poisoned water into fresh or bubbling forth from a rock. The one time they had to endure battle, their victory was in direct relationship to Moses’ prayers despite their complete lack of fighting experience, having been slaves until recently.

Many of these acts of God’s power occurred in the context of a great need or a dangerous situation. Yet, each and every time, God surprisingly and wonderfully came through for them. Now, they face their greatest challenge thus far, the conquest of the Promised Land. While the twelve scouts who were sent in ahead to check out the situation all affirmed God’s claim of the quality of the land, ten of them were overwhelmed by the land’s inhabitants and succeeded in intimidated the people to the point that they weren’t willing to face this challenge at all.

I have no personal quibble with the people. I cannot judge their fear as if I would have done anything different. Their assessment of the situation was reasonable based on the facts on the ground. Yes, God helped them in the other difficult situations, but nothing of this magnitude. They obviously lacked the manpower, the equipment, and the knowhow to face such a challenge.

But those are the facts on the ground. That’s not taking into consideration the facts in heaven. Had not God proved to them that he, the greatest power in the entire universe, was with them? If God had indeed directed them to take the Land, they couldn’t lose. Yet, it would take a level of trust in God that few people, if any, had ever exercised. They decided they wouldn’t either. The result was thirty-eight more years of wilderness wanderings until all the adults among them died out. This extremely difficult faith challenge would wait for the next generation. It would be no less difficult, but unlike their fathers and mothers, they would trust God and succeed.

But why would God subject his people to such a difficult task? While most of us will never face something as daunting as this, we all have to deal with various kinds of difficulties, many of which are extremely overwhelming. Why does life have to be so hard?

There’s no way that I can answer such a question adequately for everyone and every situation. There are all sorts of reasons why we face difficulties in life. Still, there is a universal principle that to ignore or to deny undermines our ability to effectively face such challenges. That universal principle is God is training all of us to be more than we are currently.

Human beings were originally designed by God to represent him and his interests on Planet Earth. When our first parents rebelled against him, the human family broke down. We became twisted, so to speak, and became subject to the very creation we were to rule over. Since then, God has sought to restore us to our assigned role of reflecting him. We haven’t been good at cooperating with his program. Regardless, he continues to work at reconstructing us.

What is true generally for all human beings is far more intense for those who are in close relationship with him. In the current age, that’s especially those who have been reconciled with him by faith in the Messiah. Believers at times tragically assume that “being saved,” puts us in a comfort bubble rather than a war zone. Yeshua followers shouldn’t be surprised or intimidated at finding ourselves on the cusp of battle, not necessarily a literal military one like ancient Israel in this week’s portion, but no less intense. God calls us daily to face down death and so become more and more the kind of people he wants us to be.

Scriptures taken from English Standard Version (ESV)

For the week of June 14, 2025 / 18 Sivan 5785

Beha’alotcha
Torah: B’midbar/Numbers 8:1 – 12:16
Haftarah: Zechariah 2:14 – 4:7 (English 2:10 – 4:7)
Originally posted the week of June 10, 2017 / 16 Sivan 5777

I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness. (B’midbar/Numbers 11:14-15)

I think Moses is amazing. I know he didn’t get off to the greatest start, murdering the Egyptian and running for his life as he feared the wrath of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Note that he knew he was someone special, having miraculously survived the murder-all-the-baby-boys decree, rescued by Pharaoh’s own daughter no less. Killing the Egyptian was wrong, but it was the result of a good motive, as he reacted to his people’s ongoing oppression. The Torah doesn’t tell us how he learned he was a Hebrew or knew that he had a key role to fulfill, but like many people of destiny, he walked a twisted road to get there.

I don’t blame him for his resistance to God, when at age eighty he finally received his commission. Even though he was still afraid for his life, and in spite of his attempt to skirt his call, he went back to Egypt anyway. From that point on, with the exception of a couple of misguided actions due to frustration with the people (again no criticism from me about that), he performed magnificently in the face of Pharaoh’s stubborn short-sightedness and a fairly uncooperative, critical people to lead.

What made Moses such an effective leader was how he dealt with the problems he faced. Every time another issue arose, he would go to God for what he should do. Perhaps this is where Paul in the New Covenant Writings derives his encouragement to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). While some may think Paul intended the believers in Thessalonica to utter barely audible prayers under their breath every waking second – nothing wrong with that if you can sustain such a thing – but more likely he was calling them (and by extension us), to regularly defer to God just as Moses did.

But there is more for us to learn from Moses’s prayers than the frequency thereof. He also “told it like it is,” so to speak. Moses’s prayer I quoted at the start was in response to one of the many occasions of the people’s complaining. This time a bunch of discontents got everyone riled up about the boring nature of their menu. The supernatural provision of the bread-like substance called manna wasn’t good enough for them. They demanded that Moses produce meat. This pushed him to the limit and he told God so, and that he couldn’t take it anymore, saying: “If you will treat me like this, kill me at once” (B’midbar/Numbers 11:15).

That’s not one of the nicest prayers I’ve ever read. It’s pretty confrontational and demanding, don’t you think? Note how he puts the blame squarely on God even though it was the people who were making life so difficult for him. Moses prayed that way because he knew something that we often fail to grasp: while people are responsible for their actions, our lives are ultimately in God’s hands.

His prayer is also pretty drastic: “resolve the problem or kill me!” If God is so in control, why not leave the resolution of the situation with him. But this is how Moses was feeling at the time. So that’s what he prayed. How did God respond? Did Moses get a lecture about appropriate piety and respectability? No; God heeded Moses’s desperate plea.

Why would God do that? Why didn’t he instead put Moses in his place for addressing him that way? Or at least ignore him (which, if we are honest, is probably the way we think God deals with us a good deal of the time)? God answered Moses because this is the kind of prayer God answers: direct and honest. Moses prayed a prayer of desperation because he was desperate. God knew that. Why pretend otherwise? Anything else would have been fake. God sees through fake. He isn’t offended by honesty. Unlike the complainers who put the onus on Moses, who had no ability to grant their request, Moses went to the only one who could do something about his difficult situation. And by baring his heart, he not only got an audience with the Sovereign of the Universe, he got the help he (and the whole community) needed.

The Messiah addresses this in his introduction to his model prayer:

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matthew 6:7-8).

He is not only addressing meaningless repetition here, but the emptiness of fake prayers as well. We need to tell it like it is when we pray. Anything else is just a show. That doesn’t mean there is no room for formal prayer, especially in public. But it better be sincere or else you’ll find yourself filling up space with “empty phrases” than truly conversing with your Heavenly Father. Perhaps it’s time to tell God how you really feel.

Scriptures taken from English Standard Version (ESV)

For the week of June 7, 2025 / 11 Sivan 5785

Naso
Torah:  B’midbar/Numbers 4:21 – 7:89
Haftarah: Shoftim/Judges 13:2-25

And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him. (B’midbar/Numbers 7:89)

I was really touched by something I read in my Scripture reading the other day. I am currently working through the Book of Acts. Chapter nine includes the Lord’s confronting Saul on his way to Damascus as he seeks to quash the fledgling messianic movement. Even though this is a very familiar passage to me, there was something I had never noticed before. It took my reading Richard Longenecker’s commentary (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Revised Edition, 2007) to see it. When the Lord speaks to Saul, we read in the great majority of English translations, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). That this happened at all is extraordinary, especially as the story unfolds. The Messiah not only confronts this zealous persecutor, but he does so by name, while revealing the true implications of his misguided actions, and commissions him to be his key spokesperson to the nations.

However, there is a subtle yet powerful element here that these English translations fail to convey. Acts, like the rest of the New Testament, is written in Greek. Rarely are there any indications that a speech or dialogue originated in a different language. For example, most, if not all, of the speeches and conversations by Jewish people, Yeshua included, would have been in Jewish Aramaic or Hebrew. Yet, there are very few instances where that fact is noted in the Greek. The way it’s done here is most fascinating, partly because most English translations ignore it.¹

First, as you are likely aware, personal names in a foreign context are often pronounced very differently from their original. Sometimes the differences can be drastic. For example, the French name Pierre is Peter in English. John in English is Jean in French, derived from the Hebrew Yochanan. We don’t have time to get into all the whys and wherefores of this phenomenon. A couple of factors are that languages don’t always include the sounds of other languages, and rules for word forms differ from one language to another. The Greek name for Saul is “Saulos” (pronounced sow’-los), representing the Hebrew “Shaul” (pronounced sha-ool’). The reason why we say “Saul” in English, even though we have a “sh” sound, is that the biblical names come down to us via Greek, which does not.

That said, there’s an interesting clue embedded in the Greek text of Acts 9:4. The four times prior when Saul is mentioned in Acts, its author, Luke, uses “Saulos,” the expected Greek derivation of his name. But when the Lord addresses him directly, Luke uses a different spelling, “Saoul” (pronounced sah-ool’). Despite the Greek language’s inability to fully represent Hebrew sounds, this is Luke’s way of telling the reader that God said, “Shaul, Shaul.” Thus, speaking to him in his mother tongue.

This form of his name is also used when he is addressed directly by Ananias, when he healed him of his blindness (Acts 9:17; see also 22:13); the one occurance of his namesake, King Saul (Acts 13:21); and the two times he recounts his encounter from chapter nine (Acts 22:7; 26:14). In the second of these retellings, he makes special mention of the language issue I am referring to, indicating that I am not making a big deal out of nothing (and that this language issue should have been more obvious to me)! Luke wanted people to know this. But why?

I imagine it could have been for accuracy’s sake. That’s what happened. So, tell it like it is. I think there’s more to it. I am writing this on the eve of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, one of the three major festivals on the biblical calendar. It was on this particular festival that God took his messianic restoration plan to the next stage, for it was on this holy day that he poured out his Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) on the believers in Jerusalem in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. God’s plans and purposes, so long incubated within a Jewish context, was going global. This was marked by the miraculous praising of God in a multiplicity of languages. The God of Israel was going to speak to the nations in their own languages.

No one knew, however, that God’s multilingual policy would backfire in that the Jewish Messiah’s Good News to the nations would become incomprehensible to those to whom it originally came. Why bother accurately demonstrating that Luke purposely wrote “Saul” in such a way as to indicate “Shaul,” when the Gospel has been severed from its Jewish roots? I guess few realize that a Gospel that is incomprehensible to the Jewish people is no Gospel at all.

Scriptures from English Standard Version

1. An exception being The Complete Jewish Bible, but wait until the end before checking it out!