Seder 125: Psalm 38---A Lament in the Midst of Suffering

 Psalm 38 is an individual lament and one of the seven penitential psalms.  The psalmist is suffering greatly, partly as a consequence of his own sin and partly because of undeserved persecution (vv 3, 17-20).  He admits his sin and asks for God's mercy, that he not have to suffer all that he might deserve.

He pictures his suffering in graphic terms.  "For your arrows have sunk into me," he says in verse 2.  Commentator Willem Van Gemeren points out that in Canaanite mythology, Resheph the god of archers is also the god of plagues and diseases.  It's possible that the psalmist is borrowing Canaanite imagery here.

He is experiencing great physical suffering and also mental anguish, realizing that his sin has caught up with him (vv 3-6).

In his agony he cannot communicate well, but God can hear his groaning and sighing (vv 8-9).  He calls upon the God who heard Israel's groaning in Egypt (Ex 2:25) to hear him as well.

He feels isolated and hears little of what is going on around him.  He has no interest in defending himself, unlike Job, for example.  He waits for God to answer, submitting to his will, and hopes for divine vindication (vv 15-16).  In the end he leaves things in the hands of Yahweh, his covenantal God and Father and the Great King (vv 21-22).

Christians recognize in the suffering of the psalmist a foreshadowing of Jesus' suffering on the cross, particularly in verse 11:  "My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my nearest kin stand afar off."  This reminds us Luke 23:49:  "And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things."  Of course not everything in Psalm 38 points ahead to Jesus, in particular the psalmist's acknowledged sin.  

Seder 111: Numbers 12---Moses' "Cushite Wife" and the Jealousy of Miriam and Aaron

A wise saying has been attributed to the 19th century American financier J.P. Morgan:  "There are two reasons for everything----a good reason, and the real reason."

Moses' older siblings, Miriam and Aaron, at one point "spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married" (Num 12:1).  Since the "Cushite woman" is mentioned in the Bible only in this verse, her identity has been the subject of much speculation. 

We know that Moses had a wife named Zipporah, daughter of Jethro the Midianite (Ex 2:21-22; 3:1).  When Moses returned to Egypt he did not bring his family into the dangerous situation he would be facing, but he was reunited with his family at Mt Sinai (Ex 18:2,5).  

In Hab 3:7, we read, "I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble."  This parallelism in this verse indicates that "Cushan" is another name for "Midian" or some part of Midian.  Based on this verse, one possibility is that the "Cushite wife" is Zipporah, with "Cushite" meaning "from Cushan."  Perhaps some friction had developed between Miriam and Zipporah, the two most important women in Moses' life.  

On the other hand, the adjective "Cushite" is usually a reference to Cush, the region south of Egypt in today's Sudan.  Some have speculated that Zipporah's mother was a Cushite, so that Zipporah could also be called a Cushite.  

Another possibility is that Moses had married a Cushite who was part of the "mixed multitude" that joined the Israelites on the Exodus.  Perhaps Zipporah had died, or perhaps they had had a falling out related to the "circumcision incident" recorded in Exodus 4, or perhaps this was just an additional wife.  Miriam could have been critical of this second marriage.  

There was also a body of legend surrounding the first 40 years of Moses' life, before he fled to Midian.  Stephen seems to make reference to this in Acts 7:22 when he says that Moses "was mighty in his words and deeds."  Josephus records a legend in which Moses, while acting as an Egyptian military leader, marries a Cushite princess.  Perhaps this was the Cushite wife, and Miriam  was criticizing something about this marriage.  

Some today wonder if there was a racist aspect to the criticism of the Cushite wife.  It is known that ancient Egyptians tended to harbor some prejudice against Cushites.  

Rabbinic tradition proposes an elaborate and imaginative scenario meant to portray everyone in the best possible light.  In this scenario Miriam and Aaron are saying that Zipporah is special and distinctive in the same way that a Cushite's dark skin is distinctive, and they are critical of Moses because he has become so focused on spiritual matters that he has stopped sleeping with Zipporah.  

Whatever the identity of the Cushite wife, the real reason for Miriam and Aaron's complaint is that they wanted a more prominent leadership role in Israel.  They said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?  Has he not spoken through us also?" (Num 12:2)

Moses is described here as "very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth" (v 3).  The word for "meek" could be a reference to humility, or it could be a reference to how weighed down he was by the burden of leading the Israelites.  In any case, he didn't reprimand his older sister and brother.  

But God did.  God made it clear that Moses had a special relationship with him and was to be treated with appropriate respect (vv 4-9).  And he struck Miriam with a serious skin condition.  Her skin became "like snow," perhaps a sort of poetic justice if Miriam had said something derogatory about the skin color of the "Cushite wife."  

Moses interceded for his sister.  "O God, please heal her---please" (v 13).  And God did so after a week of punishment.  In Num 11-12 God's mercy is prominently displayed, as Rob Wilson pointed out in a sermon at Church of the Messiah on Aug 6, 2022.

Seder 97: Lev 24---Olive Oil, Bread of the Presence, and a Case of Blasphemy

 The crops from Israel's harvests, celebrated in the festivals of Lev 23, would contribute to the worship of God.  Olive oil would be used to keep the menorah in the tabernacle buring continually (Lev 24:1-3), and grain would be used in making the bread of the presence, twelve loaves each week representing the twelve tribes (vv 4-9).  

On this chapter commentator Jay Sklar notes that when the lights are on and there is bread on the table, someone is home.  The lampstand and table announced God's presence with his people. 

Not all of the Israelites at Sinai wanted to be in God's presence.  In one of only a couple of narratives in the book of Leviticus, a man made it known that he did not want to follow the God of Israel.  After a blasphemous tirade that was an assault on God, he was stoned to death.  Hands were laid upon his head, symbolizing the placement of the pollution produced by his words back upon him, and he was executed outside of the camp.  

Fittingly, the man's name is not mentioned.  We are told that he had an Egyptian father and a Danite mother.  An imaginative midrash speculates that he was the son of the man that Moses had killed 40 years before (Ex 2:11). 

Leviticus 24 is the second of three places in the Pentateuch in which the lex talionis is mentioned.  This is simply the principle that a punishment for a crime should fit the crime.  

In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on March 26, 2022, Kyle Kettering laid out the "olive tree theology" based on Paul's analogy in Romans 11 and expounded, for example, by Marvin Wilson in Our Father Abraham.  In this analogy, believers from the nations are grafted into the olive tree of Israel, which is rooted in the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He encouraged members of the congregation to show grace to each other as we work out the meaning of our position in that olive tree.

Seder 45: Between Exodus 2 and Exodus 3---Moses' Silent Years

 The Bible tells us little about Moses' 40 years as a shepherd in Midian.  It is interesting to speculate on Moses' mindset as he fled to Midian and settled down there.  Mosheh Lichtenstein presents some interesting discussion of this topic in his book-length character study of Moses. 

On the day after Moses intervened on behalf of an Israelite slave, Moses saw two Israelites fighting.  A midrash suggests that they were fighting about what Moses had done.  Some Israelites felt that it was time to rebel against the Egyptians, while others strongly opposed such a move.  Lichtenstein proposes that Moses was disappointed that his people were not united.  Rashi says Moses had learned that there were some Israelites who were traitors and collaborators with the Egyptians.  Perhaps Moses became disillusioned and despaired of the possibility of freeing his people.  So he retreated from public life and decided to live a quiet existence, communing with God in the wilderness.

There is speculation that Jethro and Moses were kindred spirits in this regard.  In one midrash, presented in Exodus Rabbah and the Talmud, there was once a meeting of Pharaoh, Balaam, Jethro, and Job to talk about the Israelites.  Balaam proposed killing male Israelites babies, and Pharaoh readily agreed.  Jethro fled to the wilderness, repulsed by this idea but powerless to do anything to stop it.  (Job said nothing.)

At any rate, Moses spent 40 years away from Egypt, and he surely was disappointed that his earlier efforts to help the Israelites had not led to anything.  He would need some convincing to take up this cause again.

Seder 45: Exodus 2---Moses, a Deliverer-In-Training

 While the Israelites suffered in slavery, God had not abandoned them.  He arranged for Moses, the man through whom he would work to deliver Israel, to be raised in Pharaoh's household.  As Stephen would later tell it, "Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds" (Acts 7:22).  One story, related by Josephus, has him become an Egyptian military leader.  (It was in this capacity, the story says, that Moses obtained the Cushite wife spoken of in Num 12.) 

As an adult Moses chose to embrace his Israelite identity.  Heb 11:24-26 states, 

"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.  He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward."

Stephen says that he was 40 years old (Acts 7:23) when he saw an Israelite being beaten by an Egyptian (Exo 2:11).  Moses then "looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" (v 12).  

Verse 12 does not mean that Moses looked around to see that no one was looking.  Instead, he was hoping that someone would do something to stop the injustice being perpetrated upon the Israelite.  

The Hebrew expression in Exo 2:!2 also appears in Isa 59:16, which says of God.  "He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him." 

Moses' heart was in the right place, but he was not ready to lead Israel's exodus.  The death of the Egyptian was probably an accident, but he should not have killed him.  When what he had done was discovered, he fled Egypt for Midian, where he rescued a damsel in distress, married her, and settled down as a herdsman working for his father-in-law Jethro.  Another forty years would go by before God called him for a special mission. 

Seder 45: Exodus 1-2---Israel Enslaved but not Defeated

 Egypt and its rulers had benefitted greatly from the wisdom of Joseph and the presence of his family.  This is one example of the promise to Abraham and his descendants in Gen 12:1-3.  

But eventually they refused to acknowledge the truth.  A pharaoh warned of the threat posed by the presence of this growing nation within their nation (Ex 1:9-10).  He questioned the loyalty of these people who, he knew, planned to return to Canaan one day.  

The Egyptians then enslaved the Israelites, but this did nothing to reduce their numbers (vv 11-12).  The continued growth of the Israelite population shows God continued blessing and implies highlights the faith of the women of Israel, who continued to carry out the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" even under these trying circumstances.  

The Pharaoh then decided to pursue a policy of genocide, ordering the leaders of the midwives of the Israelites to have all male infants killed.  

Questions are often raised about the rationale behind such a policy.  The idea may have been that with fewer males, Israel would pose less of a military threat.  Another possibility:  one midrash says that the royal magicians had determined that a male deliverer of Israel would soon be born. 

Whatever the rationale, the policy was ineffective.  The courageous midwives refused to enforce it, continuing in their commitment to promote life and fearing God rather than Pharaoh.  God rewarded these brave women for their faith and courage.  

While Pharaoh focused on the threat posed by Israelite men, a number of women thwarted his policies, including his own daughter, who rescued the baby Moses (Ex 2:1-10).  

We do not know the name of this woman who chose to defy her father's order.  The book of Jubilees (47:5) calls her Tharmuth, and Josephus calls her Thermuthis.  Another tradition identifies her as Bithiya or Batya, the daughter of a Pharaoh who married Mered from the tribe of Judah and became an Israelite (1 Chr 4:17).  The name Batya means "daugther of God."  One tradition says since Batya adopted Moses as her son, God adopted her as his daughter.  

Rob Wilson spoke on Exodus 1-2 at Church of the Messiah on Feb 20, 2021.