February 10

OT – Per my Stone Chumash, “The Torah teaches that it is forbidden to count Jews in the ordinary manner, and that when it is necessary to conduct a census, it should be done by having the people contribute items, which would then be counted.” The Stone Edition of the The Chumash p.484.
Click here to read the scriptural notes.
Okay, I have heard the Christmas story ALL MY LIFE. I think at one point, I memorized the Christmas section in Luke for a Sunday School prize. Never, never, never have I heard that it was forbidden to take a ‘normal’ census. Think about what that statement in Luke 2:1-3 means knowing that a census is forbidden.
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.”
Think what this must have been like to have been an inheritor of the Moses tradition to be oppressed. To have to deny your religious teaching and conform.
To come from this incredible, elaborate, super Tabernacle with its coverings of gold, special smelling incense, oil that is only usable by the priests to being counted like a cow. We put tags in cows’ ears these days. Hitler branded the Jews with numbers in his day.
We cannot read the story of Moses without the background of oppression. Oppressed in Egypt. Freed for a little while, then a series of oppressions by the Philistines, Amorites, Hittites, and Jebusittes. If I have forgotten someone, sorry. A brief period of freedom under Saul, David and Solomon and then a series of really bad kings that gave away the glorious pieces and parts of The Temple. Oppression and deportation by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians and Persians. Another brief period of relative freedom then oppression by the Greeks and ultimately the Romans.
Is it any wonder that we have these elaborate, detailed descriptions of all the goodness and glories that Moses concocts for the worship of the Lord? Or that Moses, with all his impediments, arrogance, murder one history, and problems is the uber leader of the Israelites and every generation afterwards. Moses LED THE ISRAELITES TO FREEDOM.
Knowing that, peek back at Matthew 17 and tell me who Peter, James and John saw when they went up on the ‘high mountain’.
They saw Moses, the ultimate leader, and Elijah, the ultimate prophet.
I have reread today’s OT scripture with new eyes, thanks to Kim and her comment and thanks to Rashi and his illumination.


NT -



Psalm -- If you despair in your reading, post this on a notecard on your desk:
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you. (32:8)
The instruction that the Psalm is referring to is our scriptures.
Read, question, research, take counsel, pray.
Blessings to you and yours.