I have another one coming up this weekend, by the way. The Torah portion in question this time is a double portion: Nitsavim and VaYalech, which mean “You are standing” and “And he went,” respectively. it’s a great pair of portions that will yield a rich commentary, I’m sure. Hopefully the insights God gives me will be a blessing to folks.

After that, it’ll be time to concentrate on my upcoming sermon in October. Woo!

Here’s the streaming video version of my commentary on the Torah portion known as Ki Tetse! Enjoy!

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Shabbat Shalom

Today’s Torah portion is called Ki Tetse, a Hebrew word that means, “When you go out.” The reading covers Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 10, through chapter 25, verse 19. You know, upon first glance, this week’s portion seems to have little to no unifying theme. It feels like an almost random collection of laws and decrees that the LORD, through Moses, is reviewing for the people before they enter the Promised Land.

It feels random because so many commands are covered in such a brief amount of space. The topics vary widely, ranging from how to properly acquire a bride who is the widow of a defeated foe, to the proper burial timing for bodies hung on trees, to looking out for your neighbor’s property, to what clothing is proper for a man or a woman to wear.

The rulings come rapidly, and in the barrage, barely even thematically arranged, and one can become a bit lost in the riches of so many commands. Yet is it a true observation that Ki Tetse, this portion of the Torah, is without a theme?

To be honest, I think that would be overstating it, because there is a theme, if you pay close attention, and it’s one that’s repeated after many of these commands are given. We read in:

Deuteronomy 22:22
If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

The key is found in that last sentence. “You must purge the evil from Israel.” It is a phrase that is repeated over and over again in this week’s reading. My count may not be perfect, since wording varies from translation to translation, but I found this phrase, or minor variations on it, no less than five times in this week’s reading alone.

“You must purge the evil from among you.”

It is an important message for the children of Israel, because they have just lost an entire generation wandering in the desert, because that generation did not purge the evil from among them, but allowed evil to grow, take root, even flourish to the point of rebellion – not only against God, but even against their chosen mediator, Moses.

With Moses now at an age where God is about to call him to his ancestors, Moses will no longer be with the people. In the short term, Joshua will take his place; but no mediator who came after Moses matched the dedication to, and intimacy with, God that Moses enjoyed. As the generations spin out from Sinai, those who sit in Moses’ seat will drift further and further away from God’s very words, his very instructions.

So it is heavy on the heart of both God and Moses that the people be warned to avoid the same pitfalls that befell those who came before them, to avoid allowing evil to grow and dwell among them. That is the purpose of this review of the commands; God is reminding them of all sorts of things that can lead to a rebellious spirit. Some of these are dramatic and obvious; others are subtle. Yet they are all important.

Also, many of them have links to the mistakes of those who came before them! To prove this, let’s take a look at one such command. We read this in:

Deuteronomy 21:15-17
If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.

Now, this is the command the LORD gives, but does this ring any bells for anyone? Does it seem contrary to anything we’ve encountered earlier in the Torah?

Well, the example of Jacob comes to mind. We all know the great love story of Jacob and Rachel. Jacob was so taken with Rachel that when he agreed to work for Laban seven years to earn her hand in marriage, the Torah says that those years of hard labor “seemed like only a few days” because he loved her so. Of course, Jacob is betrayed by Laban, who switches Rachel out for his older daughter Leah at the wedding supper. Laban eventually allows Jacob to have Rachel as well, in exchange for another seven years of labor, but the troubles have just begun.

Even though Jacob accepts Leah as his wife, as a necessary requirement to get the wife he truly loves, he never seems to love Leah. Seeing this, the LORD blesses her with far more children, to give her honor in place of the love Jacob withholds from her. In fact, Jacob gets six sons from Leah – half of the six tribes of Israel – while his beloved Rachel only bears him two sons – Joseph and Benjamin.

Yet despite having ten other sons from Leah, Leah’s maidservant and Rachel’s maidservant, most of them older than Joseph and Benjamin, who does Jacob favor? The sons of Rachel! That favoritism is what leads to the intense jealousy of Joseph’s other brothers toward Joseph; the special coat Jacob made for Joseph was symbolic of that favoritism.

You see, the actual first-born of Jacob was Reuben, the son of Leah. He is the one Jacob should have been favoring, by birthright standards. Yet Jacob did not do this, and it brought much trouble into the lives of both Jacob and Joseph, as well as the lives of his brothers.

Now, God can work miracles, so it is no surprise that Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt becomes the very instrument by which the LORD rescues Jacob and his sons from a deadly famine in the land, ensuring their survival.

Yet, through this command, the LORD is re-establishing the correctness of the command concerning the rights of the first-born, especially in the case where one wife is loved, the other unloved, and the first-born son comes through the unloved wife. God is a God of justice, and those who are unloved are shown love and given justice by God.

The example of Leah and Rachel’s bitter rivalry for favor in the eyes of Jacob is also believed to be an inspiration for why God commanded, in:

Leviticus 18:18
‘Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.

What God is showing us here is that while the patriarchs are to be admired for trusting the LORD, they were not without sin; they were, like us, merely people, as vulnerable to falling short of God’s standard as any of us.

While some of the commands may remind us of the poor choices of some of the patriarchs, other commands are clarifications of how justice is to be carried out in Israel. Israel is meant by God to be a reflection of the World to Come.

For example, we read of commands where farmers are told not to pick through their harvest fields and vineyards a second time, but to leave what remains for the poor, the widow and the orphan, as well as commands not to charge interest on money loaned to a fellow Israelite.

Why do these commands exist? To show us that in God’s kingdom, no one will go without, no one will go hungry, everyone will be provided for, and no one will be cheated or made to fall into a trap of debt from which there is no escape. As a picture of God’s kingdom, these commands demonstrate in concrete ways what God means by His justice.

Purging evil from the land comes up especially in the commands regarding sexual crimes such as adultery and rape; the penalties are stiff and severe because the LORD wants those who enter into marriage to remain there and to treat their spouses with respect and justice and faithfulness.

Yet there is at least one command that deserves special attention in this week’s reading, because the biggest purpose of the command seems to be a shadow of the future. You’ll see what I mean as I read this passage from:

Deuteronomy 21:22-23
If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

On its own, this commandment does not seem to fit, even in a portion as varied in topic as this week’s reading. Whenever the Israelites are commanded by God to put someone to death, it was most commonly by stoning; they were not in the habit of putting people to death by hanging them on a tree.

This, of course, is where God shows His sovereignty, uniformity and consistency over all of Scripture. Now, dates for the Exodus and the entry of Israel into Jerusalem forty years later vary widely, anywhere from 1200 to 1600 years before the time of Yeshua.

However long it may have been, the point is that this command was offered up by the LORD well before His promised Messiah arrived on the scene. And yet, it is because of this command, in part, that Yeshua was able to fulfill his mission as Israel’s Messiah.

You see, to complete His Messianic mission, Yeshua needed to be buried three days and three nights in the earth before rising again, in order to fulfill the sign of Jonah. Yet taking criminals off an execution tree was not the way of the Roman rulers of Yeshua’s time; they preferred to leave such criminals hang there for long periods, the bodies rotting and decaying, to intimidate anyone considering defying Roman rule.

Exceptions, however, were made during Jewish high feast days. Rome was more lenient toward Jewish customs than the Greeks before them had been, and one of the concessions made prior to important feast days like Passover was that they would allow the Israelites’ laws to be observed in deference to the Roman laws on purity matters, mostly because it kept the peace in an occupied territory.

Such was the case when Yeshua was placed on the execution stake; if Passover had not been imminent, it is likely his body would have been left up for days, in accordance with Roman rule. Yet because of Passover, the Jewish law was given deference and the body of Yeshua was allowed to be buried before sundown.

What Jewish law created this provision for Yeshua? This one, given 1200 to 1600 years before Yeshua even arrived, and long before the Roman Empire, which regularly put criminals to death on a tree, even existed.

God knew what was coming, and so we have this command. “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day.”

We can now clearly see that even in this seemingly random collection of rulings for entering the Promised Land, we can find a shadow of God’s plan Yeshua the Messiah, who was in God’s mind and plan from the time of the giving of the Torah, and even from the very beginning of time. And it is ultimately Yeshua who can fully and finally purge the evil from among us.

Shabbat Shalom.

In fact, I may have so much writing to do that if I were to print it all out, I might need stainless steel drums to hold it all and keep the paper dry. (Hey, what can I say? This has been a soggy summer in Minnesota.)

I have two Torah commentaries coming up; one this weekend on Ki Tetse, and one two weeks after that on the double-portion of Nitsavim and VaYelech. That will be nice.

However, I’ve been invited by Rabbi Stan to do one of the two fill-in sermons at Sar Shalom while he is on his Israel trip. That’s quite an honor, and tells me I must have done OK filling in for him back in July. That will come up in mid-October, so there’s plenty of time on that one.

Of course, I have a children’s curriculum I need to finish writing, and then I have six or seven eBooks I’m working on, based on past Torah commentaries and sermons I’ve written, but deeply expanded from what one can find for free here on my blog.

This is in addition to the fact that I’m working on a novel as well. So yeah; I have a LOT of writing to do.

Shabbat Shalom.

Our parashah for today is R’eh, a Hebrew word that means, “See.” This portion covers Deuteronomy chapter eleven, verse twenty-six through chapter sixteen, verse seventeen. You know, this week’s reading contains what I think is one of the most important passages in the Torah, especially as it applies to believers today. Before I just read it for you, however, allow me to set the scene.

As we have learned the last few weeks, the Book of Deuteronomy is sort of a history lesson, a review of the entire Torah. It is basically an address by Moses to the children of Israel as two eras in their journey are about to come to an end. The first era that’s ending is their time of wandering in the desert, being supernaturally kept there by God. The wicked generation that rebelled against the LORD and against Moses have all died off, just as the LORD promised they would. Those left are a new generation with little to no memory of life in Egypt. Nearly all they’ve known their whole life is being supernaturally kept by God in the wilderness, where all their needs were met by God directly.

The other era that’s coming to an end is Moses’ time as the sole mediator between the LORD and the Israelites. Remember, their fathers had rejected hearing the voice of the LORD directly at Mount Sinai, asking that God use Moses as their mediator.

But Moses was just a man, and now, at nearly 120 years of age, his time with the people of Israel is drawing to a close. Moses has been told by God he cannot enter the Promised Land with his people because of what he did when he struck the rock, rather than speaking to it as God instructed to bring forth water for the people.

And so now, Moses is standing before the people of Israel and addressing them for a final time; that’s what this book of Deuteronomy is all about. He is teaching this generation all that has come before them and brought them to this momentous day, as they are about to inherit a land first promised to them hundreds of years earlier, by God to their father Abraham.

Now, the land they are about to enter, the land of Israel, may be promised to them, but it is not vacant. There are others living in this land, a people God has decided to cast out of the land because they have done detestable things while living in it, as well as because it is promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Part of entering and taking over an occupied land, of course, is that even after the military battles are won and they begin to take possession of it, they have a further problem: the land will still be filled with the possessions of the previous inhabitants, and that includes shrines, temples and memorials to the false gods worshiped by the people there that God is casting out of the land.

As our parashah opens, God, through Moses, is offering instructions on how they must tear down all these shrines, temples and memorials and start from scratch, and God shares His reason for this as we pick up in:

Deuteronomy 12:4-5
You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go;

Let me read verse four again: “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”

What did this mean to the early Israelites? It meant exactly what God was instructing them to do in the verses before this statement; they must tear down all the temples, monuments and memorials made to other gods, to completely destroy them and start from scratch. In other words, they were not to come into the land and say, “Oh, here’s a nice little monument to Ba’al. It’s here already. Let’s rededicate it to the LORD, rather than building a new one.”

God makes it clear here; that’s not what he wants the children of Israel to do. “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”

If there’s any room left for possible doubt as to the LORD’s meaning, he restates it again in:

Deuteronomy 12:13-14
Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.

What this verse teaches us is that not only were the children of Israel being instructed not to recycle temples and monuments constructed for other gods, but that God was going to choose a specific place where He wanted to be worshiped in unity by all the people, and they were not to perform their worship just anywhere they pleased. And there are promises and blessings God goes on to make, if they follow his instructions and obey him in this.

And to really underline His point, God repeats this wish a third time, this time with more detail, as we read in:

Deuteronomy 12:29-31
The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates.

So is God being vague and speaking in riddles here? Clearly not. He is expressing a very clear wish: He does not want the people who fear and love Him to worship Him in ways that other gods are worshiped, at places and facilities and times that other gods are worshiped. He repeats over and over His desire: that those who love Him obey all His instructions and observe everything He has taught them. That includes where, when and how He is to be worshiped. This includes all the instructions that have come before, which encompasses the Sabbath He created, the monthly New Moon festivals, and all his yearly feasts and festival days.

God asks us to do just a few simple things. When you consider all He has done for these Israelites; bringing them out of bondage in Egypt, giving them the commands and the Torah, supernaturally keeping them in the desert for forty years and delivering them to a land promised to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… or even by extension all God does for us today, through the Messiah Yeshua… considering all of this… is God really being unreasonable and demanding? Is God really asking too much of us, placing a burden on us we cannot bear? Or are his expectations reasonable? Could it be that simply asking us not to worship Him in the way other people worship their gods is really not that overwhelming a request?

Is it too much to ask the Israelites not to use temples to Ba’al as places of worship to the LORD, the one true God? Is it too much to ask that we worship God on the occasions he asks us to, rather than doing “as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit,” as it says in Deuteronomy 12:8?

Perhaps we can begin to understand why God was so opposed to being worshiped in the same places, times and ways as other gods if we look briefly at the practices of one of the chief false gods of those who inhabited Israel whom the LORD was evicting through the children of Israel.

I want to read you a portion from an article I found about Ba’al worship on the:

Jewish Encyclopedia.com
The noxious elements in such Ba’al Worship were not simply the degradation of the LORD and the enthronement in His place of a baseless superstition. The chief evil arose from the fact that the Ba’als were more than mere religious fantasies. They were made the symbols of the reproductive powers of nature, and thus their worship ministered to sexual indulgences, which it at the same time legalized and encouraged. Further, there was placed side by side with the Ba’al a corresponding female symbol, the Ashtoreth and the relation between the two deities was set forth as the example and the motive of unbridled sensuality. The evil became all the worse when in the popular view the LORD Himself was regarded as one of the Ba’als and the chief of them (Hosea 2:16)

So what do we learn here? They memorials, temples and other places of worship are full of what? Statues and carvings depicting male and female genitalia! Walking into the land of Israel when it was under the control of these Ba’al worshipers what probably not vastly different from walking into the average adult bookstore! Can a person dedicated to God lead a life of holiness and obedience to God’s instructions when surrounded by such things? It would be like trying to hold an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar! And just as successful, I’d imagine.

You see, God is not arbitrary. He always has reasons for everything He does, everything He asks of us. We may not always understand it, or know what those reasons are, but he does have reasons!

Yet there are some who demand to know what God’s reasons are for each and every command; it’s like they feel God owes them an explanation for everything. And it’s not an uncommon sentiment; the book of Job revolved around such questions.

In the end, though, does God really owe us reason upon reason upon reason for each of his commands, until we finally run out of questions and agree to obey?

For example, this week’s Torah portion also covers God’s commands for which animals are clean to eat, and which are forbidden as food. For example, as we read in:

Deuteronomy 14:3-6
Do not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.

And what do we often hear? We are trained and taught that this simple instruction of God is part of what Yeshua did away with, something that no longer applies. Or we hear the other side of the coin and come up with all sorts of rationalizations in favor of observing it. We talks about benefits like a longer life, better health and fresher breath! (OK, maybe not fresher breath.) Or we discuss about the lack of refrigeration back in Moses’ day and how the meat of unclean animals spoiled more quickly than the meat of clean animals, which is pure science fiction. You can leave a smorgasbord of clean and unclean meats out in the hot desert sun, and they all start to stink pretty quickly.

I mean, if you can imagine any possible made-up reason why God might command people not to eat unclean animals, someone out there has claimed to figure it out: this is the secret wisdom behind God’s command!

I hope I’m not being too presumptuous if I suggest a simpler reason. The reason we shouldn’t eat unclean meat, the reason we shouldn’t worship God in the same way other people worship false gods, the reason we should worship God on the occasions and in the places He has asked rather than times of our own choosing, all boils down to one simple reason:

The Creator of the Universe, who as done so much for us, has asked us to do these few, simple things. He’s asked us to follow His instructions and obey His commands; not anyone else’s. That’s it. That’s all. It’s that simple.

Shabbat Shalom.

I have text, audio and video all on the way, with the text coming sooner than the audio or video. Stay tuned!

I completed my commentary for R’eh (a Hebrew word that means “See” and is the name of this week’s Torah portion) in only a few hours last night; Stan even got his feedback to me shortly after I emailed it to him this morning and I immediately incorporated his suggestions.

It’s becoming really comfortable to write Torah commentaries these days; that’s because I’ve been through all the parashahs several times now as a reader, and at least once each as a commentator, so I’m more at ease with finding my way around each parashah, isolating something of interest, and teaching it as best I’m able.

We’ll see how it goes over this Shabbat; look for it to get added to this space on Sunday or thereabouts.

Fortunately, I don’t need any scanning software to look up source material these days; my OnlineBible.net software fills the bill most of the time, and there’s always BibleGateway.com. There are some things that are still handy to scan in, but fortunately most print stuff is digital these days. Makes research a lot easier.

We looked at several brands including the Linksys router and other options. I won’t say which we settled on, but I will say the results are much improved. It seems like things get better every time we upgrade.

Our router is now Wireless N and even though my WiFi dongle is only Wireless G, I’m still getting better results and I’m sure sure I need to upgrade the dongle any time soon. Besides, I tried a cheap one I found, and it was DOA and I had to send it back. Plus, I don’t like the “push-n-connect” button most Wireless N dongles seem to feature… what ever happened to sticking it in a USB port and forgetting about it? Yeesh.

It’s tough to say no to a close relative, but since it’s a long drive away to boot, I can understand why she wants to maybe just send a wedding gift instead of attending. After all, it won’t be just any ordinary service; it’s the Day of Repentance.

It’s never fun to miss out on someone’s happy day, though. At least a gift shows that we’re praying for the couple.

The parashahs in question are R’eh and Ki Tetse, so that ought to be fun. I’m always honored to fill in for other Torah commentators when they can’t be around. I’ve only tackled these two Deuteronomy portions once before, so there’s plenty of material to mine, definitely some diamonds in the rough.

Plus, since I am now working on a collection of my commentaries into expanded essay for for eBook release, the more time I spend pondering any parashah, the better.