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Lessons
Learned in the Desert
The Torah
portion for this Shabbat is called BaMidbar,
meaning “In the Wilderness”. As many of you know,
the Hebrew names for the books of the Torah are
derived from the key word in the opening sentence
of each book. This one is called Sefer BaMidbar
because it begins with these words: Adonai spoke
to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai ....
Do you
wonder how we got the name “Numbers”? It’s because
of what the Lord said Moses when He spoke with
him. God commanded Moses to take a census, tribe
by tribe, of all men, twenty years of age and
older, for the purposes of military readiness.
That verb to sum (add up) is, in Greek,
"D42:,T-number; Hence, Numbers. They came up with
an impressive total: 603,550 men fit for war.
Ironic that not one of those men, save Joshua
and Caleb, would ever be engaged in the wars to
capture the Land of Canaan. That generation of
unbelievers was destined to die in the wilderness.
We also find in this passage that the Levites
were excepted from military service, as God reserved
them to serve in the Tabernacle and at the Tent
of Meeting.
So why
were we in the wilderness? As we’ll see in the
months ahead, the book of Deuteronomy opens by
saying that it was only 11 days’ journey from
Horeb (Sinai) to Kadesh Barnea - the gateway to
the Land of Promise. So why do we read in the
very next verse of Deuteronomy 1 that forty years
later we were still out there wandering bamidbar
(in the wilderness)? Was it because the sons of
Israel were the ancient forerunners of the guy
who refuses to stop and ask for directions? Suppose
I told you the answer is a resounding YES! When
we decided to do things our own way; when we decided
to re-interpret God’s instructions, we acted stubbornly
and were consigned for a generation to Bamidbar.
The Midbar,
the wilderness, is not only an identifiable geographic
location, but serves as a motif a symbol of what
it means to rebel against God. When we attempt
to circumvent His teaching and instruction, that’s
precisely where we’ll find ourselves: in
a desolate place.
But the
Midbar can also teach us something very positive
- it can serve as a picture of complete and total
reliance on God. You don’t really suppose
we survived those forty years in a scorching desert
because of our great ingenuity, do you? No, rather
it was because God Himself saw to our needs. He
provided water from a rock, manna from heaven,
and quail from... out of nowhere! We are expected
to learn from Israel’s failures in the wilderness
as well as successes in the wilderness.
The Midbar,
the wilderness, can also teach us something about
repentance and God’s heart of forgiveness and
reconciliation. The Haftarah reading which corresponds
to BaMidbar is Hoshea, chapter 2. After having
indicted Israel for her blatant unfaithfulness,
her spiritual adultery, God speaks tenderly to
Israel, with the idea of wooing her back to Himself
in repentance. In Hoshea 2 God says, “Therefore,
behold, I will allure her, bring her back into
the wilderness, and speak kindly to her. Then
I will give her vineyards from there, and the
valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will
sing there as in the days of her youth, as in
the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
I believe
through the motif of the Midbar, God would have
us know that the doors stand open for us to enter
in repentance and seek His favor. God was, and
is, summoning men and women who find themselves
in the midst a wildernesses of their own making,
to return to Him and be healed. For my Jewish
people today, that repentance entails ceasing
to harden our hearts, and to recognize that Messiah
has come - Yeshua of Nazareth. Until such time,
our people will remain b’midbar - in a spiritual
wilderness, outside the blessings and outside
the Promise.
Shalom,
Rabbi Glenn
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