I wonder how handy a receipt printer would have been to the money changers in the Temple. Probably fairly handy until Yeshua broke up their little operation. Here’s my commentary on Sh’mot. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah today is Sh’mot, or Names, and covers Exodus 1:1 through 6:1. Here, we begin the story of Moses, whose journey with God and the Jewish people will comprise the last four books of the Torah. How important a figure is Moses? Well, we are told this in the book of Deuteronomy:
Deuteronomy 34:10
Since that time, there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom The L-RD knew face-to-face.
That is the eulogy of this man we are about to meet in our study. What believer, what follower of Yeshua, could wish for better words to be spoken about him or her at the end of their lives? Yes, it is true that no one can look on the face of God and live, as the Torah teaches, but knowing God face-to-face is a different matter; that is possible. Further testimony to this face-to-face nature of the relationship between The L-RD and Moses is given in:
Numbers 12:6-8
And the L-RD said to them, “Now listen to me! Even with prophets, I the L-RD communicate by visions and dreams. But that is not how I communicate with my servant Moses. He is entrusted with my entire house. I speak to him face to face, directly and not in riddles! He sees the L-RD as he is. Should you not be afraid to criticize him?”
Moses is declared by the Torah to be more humble than any other person who has ever lived. While Moses did indeed sin and fall short of God’s perfect standard, he came perhaps closest to any of the patriarchs living a life far above God’s minimum standard of acceptable behavior.
Now, over the last several weeks as we closed out the book of Genesis, we studied the life of Joseph and how much he and his life were a shadow of the Messiah Yeshua. This theme of being a shadow of the Messiah does not rest solely on Joseph, but on Moses as well, and the parallels begin early on in this week’s Torah portion.
For example, in the first chapter, we read that after Joseph and all his brothers died and time passed, there came to the throne a new Pharaoh who “knew nothing about Joseph.” This Pharaoh saw that the children of Israel had prospered and become numerous in the land – a significant enough part of the population that he feared that if they were to turn on Egypt during a time of war, and side with Egypt’s enemies, it could turn the tide of any conflict against Egypt, which was by this time the lone superpower of the ancient world.
So, in an attempt to control the population of the Jewish people in Egypt, the Pharaoh tries to encourage the midwives to kill all the male children born among them, letting only the girls live. When that didn’t work, he ordered a more significant and proactive measure to be taken: that all males born to the Israelites be tossed into the river and drowned.
What we have here, of course, is a slaughter of the innocents during a time when one of the most important people in the history of the Jewish people – short of Messiah Yeshua himself – is about to be born.
And in the life of Yeshua, we see the same pattern. We are told in:
Matthew 2:16-18
Herod was furious when he learned that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, because the wise men had told him the star first appeared to them about two years earlier. Herod’s brutal action fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah: “A cry of anguish is heard in Ramah–weeping and mourning unrestrained. Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted–for they are dead.”
This pattern is not surprising; throughout history, those who do evil have sought to destroy those who fear God and obey his commands. If this were the only parallel between the life of Moses and the life of Messiah, it would not make a good case for Moses as a shadow of the Messiah. Yet the parallels to not end there.
To save his life, Moses was hidden away in Egypt, in the house of Pharaoh himself, raised by one of Pharaoh’s own daughters. In order to escape the slaughter ordered by Herod, Yeshua’s parents, Joseph and Mary, take him to Egypt for a time, until Herod dies. And we know that this is part of the Messianic pattern because of the words in Hosea 11:1, which say, in part, “I called my son out of Egypt.” Although this passage in Hosea is directly referring to Israel as a nation, which a plain reading of the text makes clear, the Gospel writer Matthew clearly saw it also as a Messianic prophecy foreshadowed in Moses and fulfilled in Yeshua.
Now, I’d like to take a moment off my main point to address a popular misconception. Thanks in large part to the famous movie, The Ten Commandments, by Cecil B. DeMille, many people believe this period of slavery in Egypt, into which Moses was born, portrays the Israelites as being the people responsible for the labor behind building the great pyramids of Egypt. The belief that the Israelites were the labor force behind the pyramids is so wide-spread, some Egyptologists have gone so far as to dedicate studies to debunking the myth, and Torah-believers caught up in this myth then feel compelled to defend this misconception.
Well, let’s clear that up, right here and now; the Torah never claims the Jewish people built the pyramids of Egypt. What the Torah specifically claims is that they were the labor force, or at least part of it, behind building the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses. So, while the idea of the Jewish people suffering under forced labor and harsh taskmasters is indeed an accurate one, it is not accurate to associate the Jewish people with the pyramids of Egypt. The accurate portrayal has them building the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses.
Getting back to our main point, there are other parallels between Moses and Messiah Yeshua. For example, in this parashah, The L-RD tells Moses that he is to be the person God will use to lead the Israelites out of physical bondage in Egypt. Similarly, the mission of Messiah Yeshua was to lead people out of their spiritual bondage to sin… first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
Moses is the only prophet that the Torah declares communicated with God “face-to-face.” This was true in the sense that God did not speak to Moses in riddles as He did the prophets, but directly, saying exactly what he meant. Moses became the intermediary between God and man. However, as a human, as someone who did sin and fall short, Moses could not live forever.
In a passage later in the Torah, we are told this about the promised Messiah in:
Deuteronomy 18:17-18
“Then the LORD said to me, ‘Fine, I will do as they have requested. I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites. I will tell that prophet what to say, and he will tell the people everything I command him.
The L-RD is speaking to Moses when he says this, so the promised Messiah is therefore a “prophet like Moses.” How was Yeshua like Moses? Well, God spoke to Him directly, He has become our eternal intermediary between The L-RD and humanity, and he tells us everything that The L-RD commands.
The difference is, while Moses was human and had to die for his own sins, Messiah Yeshua was without sin, and therefore could die in our place, making the atoning sacrifice for the error that separates God and man.
The parallels between Moses and Yeshua will continue to pop up as we go deeper with our study. These are not accidents or coincidences or something imposed over the Torah itself by those eager to find it. No, on the contrary, I believe that the reason so many of the patriarchs of the faith live lives that bear a resemblance to the Messiah is simply because of this:
When one seeks after God long enough and hard enough, when one obeys God in all things – or at least seeks to do so as much as possible – then the result is that their lives will indeed become a reflection of Messiah Yeshua. It’s a natural result of seeking that kind of unity with and obedience to our creator.
Our study of the life of Moses is only beginning. While I have touched on several similarities between Moses and Yeshua, I have only scratched the surface. The comparisons run deep.
Yet, as with Joseph, while Moses is a shadow of the Messiah, he himself is not the Messiah. We see in this week’s portion that Moses, in his youthful zeal, kills an Egyptian guard; fails to trust God to cure his slowness of speech; doubts whether anyone will listen to him and believe the L-RD had sent him. Moses is a man of flaws, as much as he is a man who the L-RD knew face-to-face.
As we continue on in the Torah in the weeks to come, we will discover many more ways in which Moses is a shadow of the Messiah, and ways in which he is like each of us. May his example be instructive to us as we seek to live as The L-RD would have us live.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: receipt printer, Sh'mot, Torah commentary
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Torah.
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You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
My Sh’mot Commentary
January 19th, 2009 by Craig Hansen
I wonder how handy a receipt printer would have been to the money changers in the Temple. Probably fairly handy until Yeshua broke up their little operation. Here’s my commentary on Sh’mot. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah today is Sh’mot, or Names, and covers Exodus 1:1 through 6:1. Here, we begin the story of Moses, whose journey with God and the Jewish people will comprise the last four books of the Torah. How important a figure is Moses? Well, we are told this in the book of Deuteronomy:
That is the eulogy of this man we are about to meet in our study. What believer, what follower of Yeshua, could wish for better words to be spoken about him or her at the end of their lives? Yes, it is true that no one can look on the face of God and live, as the Torah teaches, but knowing God face-to-face is a different matter; that is possible. Further testimony to this face-to-face nature of the relationship between The L-RD and Moses is given in:
Moses is declared by the Torah to be more humble than any other person who has ever lived. While Moses did indeed sin and fall short of God’s perfect standard, he came perhaps closest to any of the patriarchs living a life far above God’s minimum standard of acceptable behavior.
Now, over the last several weeks as we closed out the book of Genesis, we studied the life of Joseph and how much he and his life were a shadow of the Messiah Yeshua. This theme of being a shadow of the Messiah does not rest solely on Joseph, but on Moses as well, and the parallels begin early on in this week’s Torah portion.
For example, in the first chapter, we read that after Joseph and all his brothers died and time passed, there came to the throne a new Pharaoh who “knew nothing about Joseph.” This Pharaoh saw that the children of Israel had prospered and become numerous in the land – a significant enough part of the population that he feared that if they were to turn on Egypt during a time of war, and side with Egypt’s enemies, it could turn the tide of any conflict against Egypt, which was by this time the lone superpower of the ancient world.
So, in an attempt to control the population of the Jewish people in Egypt, the Pharaoh tries to encourage the midwives to kill all the male children born among them, letting only the girls live. When that didn’t work, he ordered a more significant and proactive measure to be taken: that all males born to the Israelites be tossed into the river and drowned.
What we have here, of course, is a slaughter of the innocents during a time when one of the most important people in the history of the Jewish people – short of Messiah Yeshua himself – is about to be born.
And in the life of Yeshua, we see the same pattern. We are told in:
This pattern is not surprising; throughout history, those who do evil have sought to destroy those who fear God and obey his commands. If this were the only parallel between the life of Moses and the life of Messiah, it would not make a good case for Moses as a shadow of the Messiah. Yet the parallels to not end there.
To save his life, Moses was hidden away in Egypt, in the house of Pharaoh himself, raised by one of Pharaoh’s own daughters. In order to escape the slaughter ordered by Herod, Yeshua’s parents, Joseph and Mary, take him to Egypt for a time, until Herod dies. And we know that this is part of the Messianic pattern because of the words in Hosea 11:1, which say, in part, “I called my son out of Egypt.” Although this passage in Hosea is directly referring to Israel as a nation, which a plain reading of the text makes clear, the Gospel writer Matthew clearly saw it also as a Messianic prophecy foreshadowed in Moses and fulfilled in Yeshua.
Now, I’d like to take a moment off my main point to address a popular misconception. Thanks in large part to the famous movie, The Ten Commandments, by Cecil B. DeMille, many people believe this period of slavery in Egypt, into which Moses was born, portrays the Israelites as being the people responsible for the labor behind building the great pyramids of Egypt. The belief that the Israelites were the labor force behind the pyramids is so wide-spread, some Egyptologists have gone so far as to dedicate studies to debunking the myth, and Torah-believers caught up in this myth then feel compelled to defend this misconception.
Well, let’s clear that up, right here and now; the Torah never claims the Jewish people built the pyramids of Egypt. What the Torah specifically claims is that they were the labor force, or at least part of it, behind building the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses. So, while the idea of the Jewish people suffering under forced labor and harsh taskmasters is indeed an accurate one, it is not accurate to associate the Jewish people with the pyramids of Egypt. The accurate portrayal has them building the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses.
Getting back to our main point, there are other parallels between Moses and Messiah Yeshua. For example, in this parashah, The L-RD tells Moses that he is to be the person God will use to lead the Israelites out of physical bondage in Egypt. Similarly, the mission of Messiah Yeshua was to lead people out of their spiritual bondage to sin… first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
Moses is the only prophet that the Torah declares communicated with God “face-to-face.” This was true in the sense that God did not speak to Moses in riddles as He did the prophets, but directly, saying exactly what he meant. Moses became the intermediary between God and man. However, as a human, as someone who did sin and fall short, Moses could not live forever.
In a passage later in the Torah, we are told this about the promised Messiah in:
The L-RD is speaking to Moses when he says this, so the promised Messiah is therefore a “prophet like Moses.” How was Yeshua like Moses? Well, God spoke to Him directly, He has become our eternal intermediary between The L-RD and humanity, and he tells us everything that The L-RD commands.
The difference is, while Moses was human and had to die for his own sins, Messiah Yeshua was without sin, and therefore could die in our place, making the atoning sacrifice for the error that separates God and man.
The parallels between Moses and Yeshua will continue to pop up as we go deeper with our study. These are not accidents or coincidences or something imposed over the Torah itself by those eager to find it. No, on the contrary, I believe that the reason so many of the patriarchs of the faith live lives that bear a resemblance to the Messiah is simply because of this:
When one seeks after God long enough and hard enough, when one obeys God in all things – or at least seeks to do so as much as possible – then the result is that their lives will indeed become a reflection of Messiah Yeshua. It’s a natural result of seeking that kind of unity with and obedience to our creator.
Our study of the life of Moses is only beginning. While I have touched on several similarities between Moses and Yeshua, I have only scratched the surface. The comparisons run deep.
Yet, as with Joseph, while Moses is a shadow of the Messiah, he himself is not the Messiah. We see in this week’s portion that Moses, in his youthful zeal, kills an Egyptian guard; fails to trust God to cure his slowness of speech; doubts whether anyone will listen to him and believe the L-RD had sent him. Moses is a man of flaws, as much as he is a man who the L-RD knew face-to-face.
As we continue on in the Torah in the weeks to come, we will discover many more ways in which Moses is a shadow of the Messiah, and ways in which he is like each of us. May his example be instructive to us as we seek to live as The L-RD would have us live.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: receipt printer, Sh'mot, Torah commentary
This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Torah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.