The Story of How The Story of The Bible Became The Story of The People Of God V. Part II. The People’s Delivery from Egypt (Moses)

2016 4 24

2. The Commissioning of Moses (3:1-7:7) continued (again, I am drawing on Waldemar Janzen's Genesis in The Believer's Bible Commentary, subsequently referred to in the instalment below with the appropriate page reference as, e.g., Janzen 82 ff.)

Exodus 4:18-20 Moses gains his father-in-law's permission to return to Egypt. Interestingly, there is no record of Moses telling Jethro about his most important encounter with God in the desert. This would appear to be particularly worth paying attention to as we have read that his father-in-law was a priest, so it would seem reasonable for his son-in-law to consult with him to discern about matters such as this. Furthermore, we read that Jethro did provide some help in terms of leadership to Moses later on when they met in the desert after the Children of Israel left Egypt, so we know that Moses did value his wisdom. Indeed, one wonders whether the preparation that perhaps Moses had spiritually doing his years with Jethro and his family had something to do with God's choosing Moses' tribe as the priests for The Children of Israel, although it was Moses' brother Aaron who was given the leadership here. Perhaps the writers simply thought we would understand that this was discussed as the reason for Moses leaving, although what the text says is that Moses asked to be allowed to go back to his relatives in Egypt and see whether they were still living (4:18).

Here we again have the Lord repeating to Moses, "Go back to Egypt; for all those who were seeking your life are dead." Supposedly this should reassure Moses and remove one of his fears about returning to Egypt on this mission God is sending him on. Does this saying also sound familiar to something that was said about someone else in the Bible? Look in the New Testament at Matthew 2: 19-21. You will remember that when the wise men came from the East and told King Herod they were looking for a new king that was born he, in his jealousy, had ordered all the baby boys in the area to be killed to preserve his own line. Jesus' parents had fled with him to Egypt to save his life. In these verses in Matthew, Jesus' father Joseph is told to return to Egypt for those who sought his life are dead. Now he was going to be free to grow up to do his task.

Moses, like other Old Testament characters, as we have said before, is often seen again as a type of Jesus, and this is one of those parallels in their lives. He is now free to go back to Egypt to do his task.

4:27-31 Moses had complained to God in 4:10-17 that he was not a good speaker so how could he persuade Pharaoh to let his people go. God had said he could use his brother Aaron as his mouthpiece. Here we read of Moses meeting Aaron and telling him everything. Then they meet with the "elders of the Israelites" and "Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and performed the signs in the sight of the people. The people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had given heed to the Israelites and that he had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped." It seemed that Moses and Aaron had gained the trust of the leaders of the children of Israel so they were on side with the plans to leave Egypt. Now they just had to convince the king.

6:2-9 Janzen 97 ff. - In the preceding passages, Moses and Aaron had gone to Pharaoh to ask for the release of the Hebrews. All that had done was make their work harder, which had cause the people to turn against Moses. When Moses complains to God about all of this, this is the answer he gets:

"I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as ‘God Almighty,’ ‘El Shaddai,’ but by my name ‘THE LORD,’ ‘YAHWEH,’ I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens. I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites who the Egyptians are holding as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the Israelites,' I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.' Moses told this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery."

So, here we read of God again identifying himself as the God of his ancestors who had “established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens.” (verse 4) He tells Moses to tell the children of Israel that “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm in his mighty acts of judgment. I will take you my people, and I will be your God… I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord." (verses 7-8) God is now making it clear that all of this action is because he is continuing to honor his covenant commitment with Moses' ancestors. They had become a numerous people, which begins to fulfill one of the promises, but they were still up in their own land. Furthermore, we are not sure that they were existing in much of a relationship at this time with the God who held his covenant with them. Just the same, God is promising to do was responsible party to a covenant would do when the other party is in trouble, which Israel is. He has not forgotten them and his covenant with them, although they may have. Now he is stepping up to take the next step in what this covenant relationship is going to be. He will free them, deliver them, redeem them, take them as his people and be their God. When Moses conveys this message to the children of Israel though, unlike the first reception Moses and Aaron had when they met with the Hebrew elders, this time they cannot hear the message "because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery." (Verse nine)

So here, for the first time in Exodus, the language of the covenant reappears. The same promises that we have seen given to the ancestors named here, are now repeated to Moses to be passed on to those descendants. However, just as The Pharaoh's heart has been hardened and he is not inclined to let the people go, the Israelites themselves now are no longer able to believe that Moses can do anything for them. Moses’ task is getting harder.

We have spoken of Moses as a type of Jesus. Do you see further parallels here between the story of Moses and the story of Jesus? We mentioned one of those parallels right at the beginning of the stories of these two individuals, referring to both King Herod and the Pharaoh wanting to kill baby boys.

Remember that Jesus also was not received by the leaders of his day. Indeed, he was rejected by his own people overall for the most part. He did indeed do a great saving work for us, just as Moses was to help God perform for the Children of Israel. However, perhaps like with Moses and Aaron, it was not until another spokesperson, Aaron, was identified, who became the Chief Priest and therefore the ancestor of all the subsequent Jewish priests, that God's plans were able to be accomplished. Jesus himself is referred to in the New Testament as a High Priest, and we as believers, Christians, are referred to as his children and also as priests. It is through his descendants that the church has grown to become what it is today. Just as Moses needed a spokesperson to accomplish God's tasks, Jesus needs us as his spokespersons in the world to carry on his mission.

Janzen 40

Another way in which Moses and Jesus are similar in that both were used by God to carry out missions of salvation through liberation from enslavement. As recorded in Luke chapter four, where Jesus was quoting Isaiah 61, he states that his mission was to free the prisoners and liberate the captives etc. That is what God is doing with his people here in Egypt under Moses as well. The difference here in Exodus is that the liberation, salvation, consist of one people whereas under Jesus liberation and freedom from oppression is available to all. Thus, the book of Exodus has been held up by the oppressed such as black slaves, or poor laborers in Third World countries, to show that God is on the side of the poor and oppressed and resists oppressors like Pharaoh. Here, all of this is included in the language of covenant faithfulness though, but that is something we have come to understand also applies to the church. Thus, Exodus also contains "a specific message regarding election, covenant, obedience and service."

Going back to the story and the resistance Moses was running into both with the Pharaoh and his own people, we read that in spite of all that, and God's bringing 10 plagues on Egypt until they were finally at a point where the Children of Israel were allowed to go free, they were delivered. The actual story of the beginning of that begins in Chapter 11 through 12. This included the institution of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as well as a return to the consecration of the firstborn, as described in chapters 12 and 13. Chapter 14 – 15:21 is a story of their ultimate delivery from Egypt with the crossing of the Red Sea - for God had miraculously opened up the waters for them to pass - and the destruction of Pharaoh and his army by the returning waters when they tried to pursue the children of Israel into the sea.

Chapters 15:22 to 19 tell the story of the beginning of their travels towards the promised land and their arrival at Mount Horeb for worship, now referred to as Mount Sinai, which, you will remember, God had promised Moses was the sign by which he would know that God was really calling him and empowering him to do this. Chapter 18 is a different part of the story, describing how Moses is reunited with his family and also gets some advice from his father-in-law, whom you will remember was a priest, about who how to delegate the work of being a judge in Israel.

The Story Of How The The Story Of The Bible Became The Story Of People Of God V. The People’s Stay in (Joseph) and Delivery from Egypt (Moses)

I want to say at the outset that I need to acknowledge the help I have received in studying this material from former Professor Waldemar Janzen, who was a teacher at Canadian Mennonite Bible College when I attended there. The help I am referring to comes from the volume on Exodus he contributed to the Believers Church Bible Commentary. It is in our church library.

In his introduction he states that "Exodus is the heart of the Old Testament… in Exodus, God's double promise to give Abraham and Sarah descendants and land is beginning to be fulfilled.… God reveals for all time the divine name, Yahweh (the Lord), and fills that name with its central meaning: Savior and Lord.

In Exodus, the descendants of Jacob/Israel become a people with a special commission, established by the covenant relationship with Yahweh mediated through Moses at Mount Sinai.… Israel commits itself to a new life governed by the Torah… (and) introduces the form of worship that characterizes biblical religion and successors." (page 15)

Outline

Exodus 1:8-14; 2:1-25; 3:1-15; 4:17-20, 27-31; 6:1-9 God calls Moses to lead Israel back to the promised land

[Janzen, page 19: Anticipation 1. The Salvation of Moses (1:1-2:25)

      2. The Commissioning of Moses (3:1-7:7);

Realization 3. The Salvation of Israel (7:8-18:27)

        4. The Commissioning of Israel (19:1-48)]

1. The Salvation of Moses (1:1-2:25)

1:8-14 sets the stage for the next part of the story of The People of God. You will remember that at the end of Genesis (27:21), it could be understood that everyone in Egypt was rendered a slave to The Pharaoh because of the severe famine and the need to pay somehow for the grain they were given out of the storehouses Joseph had set up. Joseph had brought his family to Egypt to escape the famine and be with him. However, now this people has become so successful and numerous that the Egyptians are feeling threatened by them. They are now being ruled by a king who does not remember the circumstances of how The Children of Israel came to be in Egypt.

2:1-10 is the story of the birth and beginnings of the man, Moses, who would become the deliverer of the People of God from the slavery and oppression they were now experiencing under the Pharaoh. Ironically, it is the ruler's own daughter who receives this Hebrew boy whom he had ordered killed, and brings him up in the court at the King's expense. Why would she have done this? Would she have been a young woman rebelling against her father? In any case, it allowed Moses to grow up in the place where he would have become familiar with Royal life and protocols, the Egyptian language and perhaps even Egyptian writing. This was surely good preparation for when he came back to deal with the Pharaoh when God had called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt.

This story also points out again the important role that women are given in this record compared to their place in much of society in that day. Here, as in a number of other Bible stories, women take a prominent role as saviors of lives and situations. There are two midwives, Moses' mother and the Princess of Egypt that all play these rules here.

2:11-22 tells the story of Moses, seemingly accidentally killing an Egyptian who was mistreating a fellow Hebrew. Somehow, Moses knows of his origins, that he is Hebrew, not Egyptian, and begins to stick up for his brothers. We do read in Exodus 2:9-10 that Moses' mother was allowed to raise him until he was weaned. This could well have been until he was three years of age, by which time she could have taught him something about being a Hebrew that he may have dimly remembered. He escapes for his life to the land of Midian, gets married and has a child. Midian, for the record, was one of Abraham's descendants by his second wife Keturah.

Interestingly, the land on which he "settles (verse 15)" belongs to a priest. Whether that had some bearing on Moses choosing to settle here because he knew that we do not know, but the role of this man did figure significantly in the life of Moses and The People of God in the future. It also turns out in the future that it is Moses' tribe that becomes the priestly clan, the Levites. Who knows what he learned about these matters and perhaps even about God from this father-in-law.

In his escape from Pharaoh who wanted to kill him for this, we see a premonition of Moses own leading the Children of Israel to escape from Pharaoh who would have liked to see them all done away with. When can also see here that in Moses returning towards the land of his ancestors, he is being prepared for when he will come back to the same area leading The People of God through it.

2:23-25 - Here it is simply inserted in the story that the Israelites began to complain about their lot as slaves. We can assume that some of their prayers were directed to the God of their fathers as it states that "their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… and God took notice of them." That obviously sets up the story and gives us a clue that something is going to happen.

2. The Commissioning of Moses (3:1-7:7)

3:1-22 Moses meets God

Janzen page 20

"While tending the flocks, Moses gets close to Horeb, the mountain of God" where "he is stunned by a bush that burns but is not consumed." Moses goes near and is addressed by God who reveals his new name, Yahweh, identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that he remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, including the promise of the land to which he will now lead his people (page 23) and so now wants to free Israel from Egypt and lead them back to the land promised to Abraham with Moses' help.

1-6 Moses’ attention is attracted by what appears to be a burning bush. Suddenly, God calls to him out of this Bush and identifies himself as "the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

7-12 God explains why he is calling Moses. He says "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I've heard their cry… I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…" Furthermore, he tells Moses that "I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

White might God have chosen Moses for this task? If we think back to Moses’ childhood, and where he grew up, I think the answer can be fairly obvious. He grew up in the court of the Pharaoh, so he would have known the language, the rules and customs, possibly even his way around. He might even have known how to write in the manner of the Egyptians. In other words, if ever there was someone prepared to be a leader in that people who are otherwise slaves, the obvious choice would be Moses.

13-15 The authority by which this is happening.

It is not clear why Moses, in verse 13, asks whom he should say is sending him when God has already identified himself inverse six in the traditional language used so far in the Bible after the calling of Abraham. Perhaps, as they had done before and were to do many times yet in the future, the Children of Israel had turned to other gods, perhaps even those of the Egyptians, or back to the ones they had before Abraham began to worship the one true God. One can see how they might have done this, thinking that their God had abandoned them if they had become slaves. They were not in their own land and the laws were against them becoming a great nation, so they might have thought that the promises that Jacob and his descendants probably passed on were meaningless.

In any case, God answers with a new name which no longer ties him to a specific group of people. Perhaps we can see here a premonition of the fact that God wants his people to grow beyond the Hebrews. He also expands his self-description to something that could also be seen as larger than what a tribal God might be seen as. He tells Moses "I AM WHO I AM," which is translated The Lord, or Yahweh, and says, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you." Some scholars also say this could be translated "I am who I will be," emphasizing the future-oriented and active God, also one who is totally self-determined, as opposed to someone who just is, but could also be so at some other agent's behest. Then he does also identify himself as "the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" but here is where he expands things saying that "this is my name forever, and this my title for all generations."

Thinking Biblically about Real Estate

As noted in my previous posting by date, our congregation is currently traversing the Bible in a year and we are presently still in the first 5 books of the Old Testament. I touched on a number of the themes in these passages in the previous posting and here I want to write about land, real estate and even about rights as it pertains to this topic. Contrary to what is preached by those purveyors of the so-called "prosperity gospel" that is all-too prevalent in our continent, especially south of the border, I don't think there is anything here to promote capitalism and acquisition of wealth. Come to think of it, our current government in Ottawa seems to be quite pre-occupied with that as well.

One could write a lot on that topic itself, although it is somewhat of a digression from what I am speaking about here. Let me just say that my understanding of the blessings that God promises to those believe in him has nothing to do with property or wealth. It has everything to do with properties of the mind, heart and soul, the fruits of the spirit: character, that is all. The abundant life promised us is a life overflowing with peace and joy, not possessions and status.

I was just thinking about writing this when I discovered that our pastor is going to be speaking about this next Sunday, February 8, 2015. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. In our congregation we are currently utilizing a practice where our small groups are encouraged to study the pastor's Sunday message and associated passages either before and/or after the message is delivered. Therefore, I also see one question in the preparation phase that addresses an issue that I believe must be part of this discussion and that is, who owns the land?

In our North American and Canadian context, this issue of land ownership is especially pertinent. This is because we as a nation, speaking for Canada at least, are embroiled in difficult discussions with the indigenous inhabitants of this land because we have quite different views of land ownership. Our government, based on democratic principles as honed in the British system over the centuries, believes in private property in conjunction with certain property rights.

Our indigenous peoples have never believed in land ownership. They believe that the land is for everyone to share and is in effect owned by The Creator, which is their title for the Supreme Being we refer to in English as God. A couple of paragraphs back I noted that our pastor referred to a passage that suggests ultimate land ownership is God's (Exodus 15:13, 17). More on this soon.

There are at least 4 different passages/stories that I want to refer to in developing my thoughts on this topic.

The first that we come across in reading these books is the whole concept of the Year of Jubilee. This is spelled out in Leviticus chapter 25:8-34, with a few more details with respect to specific situations added in verses 47-55. The general idea is that, because the land belongs to God, which is clearly stated in verse 23, which adds that the Children of Israel are “but aliens and tenants," the land is to be given a rest again, as it is completing the 7th of the 7-year sabbatical cycles (see below). Not only that, it is been to be returned to whoever may have bought it during that 49 year period of time. God's reasoning for this is that it is not land that is being sold, but "the number of harvests that are being sold to you" (Verse 16). Again, he reassures the people that if they obey this, they will get such good crops in the 6th year that the can live on them for the following 3 years!

However, although houses in villages in the countryside are included in this, houses in walled cities are not. If they have not been redeemed within a year of their sale, they will "pass in perpetuity to the purchaser, throughout the generations; it shall not be released in the Jubilee." So, I'm not quite sure what that would say to our current urban real estate markets.

Another thing that was supposed to happen in the year of Jubilee is that slaves were to be released if they so wished. The details of what to do if they were released or not are what is referred to in the latter verses of the chapter. In any case, all of this certainly goes against acquisition of large tracts of land and the amassing of wealth that could be related to that. However, it seems to apply more to the agrarian setting than urban, so, again, how do we understand this for our towns and cities?

The 2nd section of significance that I want to refer to here is how the division of land is spelled out for when the people enter the Promised Land. It is allotted according to the population of the tribe, and that was the way it was to stay. I am not sure what the ramifications of that would have been if one tribe significantly outgrew a smaller neighboring tribe in number (Interestingly, this is spoken to somewhat in Joshua 17:14-18 when the tribe of Ephraim, son of Joseph, complains that the land given them is too small). However, again, I believe this speaks to a general principle of fairness and justice. This is discussed in Leviticus 26:52-56. Here it is stated that "to a large tribe you are to give a large inheritance, and to a small tribe you shall give a small inheritance; every tribe should be given its inheritance according to its enrollment." The land was to be apportioned by lot.  In chapter 32 particular reference is made to the tribes of Reuben, Dan and Manasseh who wanted to take good ranch land east of the Jordan River because they were tribes with cattle, and in their passage through this land on the way to the Jordan, which they would eventually cross, they found it to their liking. The actual details of how the land was apportioned to the 12 tribes is not spelled out until Joshua chapters 13-19, after the Children of Israel had crossed the Jordan River into the promised land.

As I referred to in my previous blog installment's title, God does not forget the details. In Deuteronomy 19:14, he warns that landowners should not move boundary markers to enlarge their property.

A further development of this theme that goes against acquisition of wealth does not even require people to wait 50 years. According to Deuteronomy 15, any debt was to be forgiven every 7th year, at least when it pertained to members of the community, i.e. the People of Israel. This rule is accompanied by the reassuring promise in verse four that "there will be no one in need among you because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord God is giving you as a possession to occupy, if only you will obey the Lord your God by diligently observing this entire commandment that I command you today." In the same passage, God warns the people that they should not begin to think along the lines of how close they were to the 7th year and make judgments about debt on that basis, i.e. not lending something that was going to be repaid perhaps a year later. As it says in verse 9-10: " your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and all that you undertake."

Indeed, not only where they to forgive debts in the 7th year, they were to set their slaves free, again, at least if they were Hebrew. Indeed, not only were they to set them free, they were to "provide liberally" "the bounty with which the Lord your God has blessed you, remembering that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; for this reason I leave this commandment upon you today" (Versus 12-18) Again, God promises to bless them if they do so. They were not to leave their freed slaves without anything to live on before they could re-establish themselves.

Thirdly, there is the interesting story of the daughters of Zelophehad, which begins in Numbers 27. A man died leaving 5 daughters but no sons. In those days, it was established that property was passed down through the sons. These sisters were brave enough to come to Moses and the other leaders of the people and say that it was not fair that they would not get their father's land as an inheritance when there were no sons in the family. Moses brought this matter to the Lord and was told that, "the daughters of Zelophehad are right." As a result, God instituted the method of passing on inheritance in this situation in considerable detail in verses 8-11 of this chapter. I am not going to spend much more time on property inheritance, but if these rules were still followed, it might save a lot of grief in families with respect to execution of wills and passing on of inheritance.

This story takes another twist in Numbers 36 when the heads of the clan to whom these daughters belong come to Moses with the concerned that these daughters may marry and then males who may not be of their tribe will end up with their property, particularly in the year of the Jubilee. The solution given for this at the time is that these daughters must marry within the tribe so that the land stays within the clan or tribe. I think this also underscores what I believe to be the principle that God was trying to teach us through the whole Jubilee process. God had given the tribes each a certain amount of land according to their size, and this was essentially not to change. Again, it goes against anybody increasing their portion of land, even a tribe. I could see that as having ramifications for nations trying to increase their size as well.

In any case, I wonder what it would do to our economic system and our method of handling property if we paid more attention to some of these rules. I think it could be quite literally liberating, as the Year Of Jubilee was to be.

God is in the Details

Our pastor’s message theme for this year is The Bible in a Year. In keeping with that, he challenged us to read the Bible in a year. I have read it through a number of times in different translations but my wife and I decided it was a good idea to go along with this. Then she discovered a website, one of many actually, Biblica, where you could listen to it being read aloud, and we have generally been doing that at our breakfast times. We also have a tape-recorded version we can listen to.

There is something to be said for listening to the word, rather than reading it silently. Indeed, references to approaching The Word in The Bible generally refer to hearing it and that was the way much of it existed before it ever did get written down. We also know now from science that information received through the ears is processed differently than information received through the eyes. There is a different impact to something being heard, the way were originally created to receive information. Having said that, we should not underestimate the place of writing in ancient times. Moses is generally regarded as the first person to start to put things down in writing, and we know he was brought up in the courts of Egypt, so he may well have learned to write. Certainly, there are a number of references to writing things down in the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible, sometimes also called The Books of Moses.

Some of this material is probably the least read of all the Bible content. When you get past mid-Exodus, past the giving of the 10 Commandments, you start to encounter what seems to be endless detail and even repetition. Particularly for us as Christians, knowing that this is all generally referred to as The Law, given to the Jews, which we understand from the New Testament do not need to follow to the letter anymore, this material is often passed over.

You may be familiar with the saying, “the devil is in the details.” My understanding of this is that it often refers to 2 areas where we get caught, i.e., ignoring something which then results in a rather unfortunate outcome. Sometimes this is when we neglect to execute or carry out “the details”; at other times it is when we fail to do something like read “the small print.”

Well, if you listen to these generally un-read books of the Bible, certain themes begin to arise from the details. I believe there is much we can learn about God from these details and the resultant themes.

In the first place, I think it reinforces our understanding of God as perfect and just as our Creator. If we believe these qualities about God, we would not expect him to not care about details. We would not expect him to not to leave things to chance. Yet, that is what people who believe in evolution do, but that is another topic. Here we have God basically doing 2 things: the first is giving the people the law, which he goes into great detail to spell out to make sure everything is understood. The 2nd is giving instructions on how to make some of the accoutrements that go with worship, such as the "tent of meeting" and all that goes in it. Along with that, are all the instructions about worship, which includes a lot of detail about the number of kinds of gifts and sacrifices.

There is also a sense here that God wants his people to give their best and to make their best. Given the circumstances, ostensibly roaming through the desert having just escaped from Egypt, there is a lot of gold, silver, brass, spices, fine linen/cloth and leather to be gathered and used. Nowadays, with Jesus' teachings about simplicity ringing in our Anabaptist ears, we sometimes question this, comparing it to the exorbitant resources that were put into building cathedrals in Europe in days gone by Christianity before our spiritual forefathers got into the Reformation. Perhaps the point here is this: in God's perfect and ideal world, which he originally created, there would be nothing but the best. However, as we know too well, we do not live in that world. Indeed, many of us become too preoccupied with collecting and building up our approximation of the best or the ideal, to the neglect of what God also considers important, looking after one another, particularly the needy. No doubt Jesus had to keep speaking against riches because of how they do sidetrack us from our tasks of ourselves trying to keep our focus on God and bring others to the same place.

Another aspect of God, that is somewhat unique to Judeo-Christian religions, is the concept of God loving us and wanting a relationship with us. Indeed, that is how we understand God creating us in the first place. To put it simply, he had so much love, he needed a lot of people to share it with. Sometimes it doesn't seem like this is coming through in many of these chapters where people seem to be dealt with harshly and with all this emphasis on following so much detail. However, I think there is still the underlying idea that God cares about everything and wants us to be part of the Kingdom where everything is good.

Part of this that struck me is how God tells Moses in great detail who is to oversee making all of the things for which he has given Moses the instructions, who are the craftsman that he has gifted. When it comes to appointing leaders of the tribes in the census in Numbers, God knows the names of all of those he wants to be the heads of the tribes and their clans. Now, I know full well, having myself studied for 3 years at a theological institute and doing a lot of learning since, that there are many who study the Old Testament who dismiss much of what we read at face value as content that was written much later by people who had the records of those who performed these tasks. However, the more the Bible has been studied and archaeology and other disciplines have also added their understanding of the distant past, the more the literal content of the Bible stands up to examination, so I will take some of this as it is read. The take-home message here is that the Creator God of the universe at the same time knows and cares for each one of us individually by name. Of course, there are many other stories in the Bible where people are called by God by their names.

I will also briefly address this issue of those who want to refer to what some see as God being violent in these accounts. Now we know from the biblical record, that there was a previous time, in fact a couple of times, that God was very upset in his holy and just righteousness at what his creatures had chosen to do in terms of evil. In the story of Noah, he destroyed all but that family because of the wickedness at that time. Not much later, when people's pride was again getting the better of them, he scattered them abroad from their efforts to build what we refer to as The Tower of Babel.

Indeed, it is recorded that when God spoke to the patriarch Jacob, telling him it was all right to go to Egypt during the famine where his son Joseph was in charge, he was told that his people would be brought back to the land promised to his grandfather Abraham, because God was not yet "done with the Amorites." This suggests that these people were possibly already then becoming quite wicked in God's eyes. We know from the Bible that God was very upset with the Canaanite tribes' offering of infants and children in sacrificial fire to their gods. He was also upset with their distortion of the gift of sex by how they incorporated it in worship-related prostitution.

We are not God. We do not know when it is the right time to bring about a final punishment on an individual or group for their wickedness. However, again, if we believe that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, he would know when people are past the point of no return, as had happened before. I believe that was the case with those many tribes that at that time inhabited the Land of Canaan. They were just too wicked to be allowed to continue. Therefore, to some extent, God used the return of the Children of Israel to punish them with his commands of driving them out of the land and keeping so very separate from them. At the same time, we read of numerous times through Israel's history of how God carry out these acts himself and did not require his people to be violent. I think that goes along with how we understand Jesus teaching us in the New Testament. We are told that vengeance belongs to God, he will repeat. We are not to take things into our own hands. Again, this is something you may understand with hindsight, but I don't think it justifies us in our current attempts to say that war or capital punishment is right at times. In keeping with the latter I always keep in mind that God did not even kill Cain, the first murderer. He just banished him.

God was trying very hard to keep his people from falling prey to the wiles of the tribes around them, and we know how many times they failed as we read through the books of the Old Testament leading up to The Exile. No wonder he had to give such strict laws about their purity and sometimes exacts such strict judgments against them for failing him and not recognizing his awesome holiness and righteousness. To be sure, Jesus, in his relationships with individuals, and his teaching, really drove home the point that God wants to be in a relationship with us. However, I think sometimes nowadays we have overdone that friend aspect to the point where we sometimes forget about the Holiness, the Justice and the Righteousness of our mighty God. God is all of these things, and it is all for our good. We may not ever understand it all; our calling is to faith.