Our Torah reading for this week, called parashat Bo, begins with God commanding Moses “to go” (i.e., bo: בּא) before the Pharaoh to announce further apocalyptic judgments upon Egypt. The purpose of this power encounter was to vindicate God’s justice and redemptive love for his people, that is, his deliverance or salvation, by overthrowing the tyranny of unjust human oppression. Pharaoh’s nightmare of “one little lamb” outweighing all the firstborn of Egypt was about to be fulfilled….
Month: January 2025
Knowing God’s Heart…
If you can’t detect God’s hand in your circumstances, then trust His heart… The heart of faith affirms: gam zu l’tovah (גַּם זוּ לְטוֹבָה): “this too is for good,” particularly when the present hour may be shrouded in darkness… Whenever I am confused about life (which is often enough), I try to remember what God said to Moses after the tragic sin of the Golden Calf: “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my Name, ‘The LORD’ (יהוה). And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exod. 33:19). God’s character does not change: the LORD is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.” The meaning of the Name, however, cannot be known apart from understanding the need of the heart…
Parashat Va’era (podcast)…
In our Torah for this week (i.e., parashat Va’era), the LORD told Moses that He was about to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by giving the Israelites the land of Canaan, and that he had heard the “groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians held as slaves” (Exod. 6:5). The LORD (יהוה) was now coming down to earth to fight and save his people! Israel would now know that He alone is their Savior and God. The “showdown” between the LORD (יהוה) and the so-called “gods” of Egypt was imminent, and God therefore encouraged the people with precious promises: “I AM the LORD (אֲנִי יְהוָה) and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgment; and I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God” (these are the “four expressions of redemption” we recite during the Passover Seder every year).
Despite these wonderful promises, however, the people were unable to listen because of their “shortness of breath” (מִקּצֶר רוּחַ) on account of their harsh slavery. The LORD then told Moses: “Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land,” and the great showdown between the LORD and the gods of Egypt began. However, even after repeatedly witnessing the series of miraculous plagues issued in the Name of the LORD, the despot remained proud and unmoved, thereby setting the stage for the final devastating plagues upon the land of Egypt and the great Passover redemption of Israel.
Parashat Va’era Podcast:
Parashat Shemot (podcast)…
The Book of Exodus (סֵפֶר שְׁמוֹת) begins directly where the book of Genesis left off, by listing the “names” (shemot) of the descendants of Jacob who came down to Egypt to dwell in the land of Goshen. Over time Jacob’s family flourished and multiplied so greatly that the new king of Egypt – who did not “remember” Joseph – regarded the Israelites as a political threat and decided to enslave them.
When the king’s oppression did not curb their growth, however, he commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn Jewish boys. When the midwives refused to obey, however, the Pharaoh decreed that all newborn boys were to be forcibly drowned in the Nile river.
In this audio summary, I discuss the first portion of the Book of Exodus, parashat Shemot, as well as the significance of the secular New Year and our approach to understanding the holidays in general.
Parashat Shemot Podcast:
Parashat Vayechi Podcast…
Our Torah reading for this week, parashat Vayechi (ויחי), recounts how the great patriarch Jacob adopted Joseph’s two sons (Ephraim and Manasseh) as his own children. When Jacob blessed the boys, however, he intentionally reversed the birth order by putting the younger before the older, signifying that the old struggle he had faced as a child was over, and he now understood things differently. And note Ephraim and Manasseh’s reaction: the older did not envy the younger, nor did the younger boast over the older. The family had apparently learned that blessing from God is for the good of all, and that there is no real blessing apart from genuine humility that esteems the welfare of others.
Following this, Jacob was ready to summon his family to hear his final words. Among other things, he foretold how the Messiah would come from the line of Judah and then instructed his sons to bury him only in the promised land, and not in Egypt (Gen. 49:10-12; 49:29-32).
After his death, Joseph and his brothers, with various dignitaries of Egypt, formed a funeral procession and returned to Canaan to bury Jacob in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. After the funeral, they returned to Egypt, but Joseph’s brothers feared that he would now repay them for their former betrayal and threw themselves on his mercy. Joseph reassured them that they had no reason to fear him and reminded them that God had overruled their earlier intent by intending him to be a blessing to the whole world (Gen. 50:20).
The portion ends with the account of the death of Joseph, who made the sons of Israel promise to take his bones with them when the LORD would bring them back to the land of Canaan (alluding to the great Exodus to come). Joseph’s faith in the Jewish people’s return to the Promised Land is summarized by his statement: “God will surely remember you” (Gen. 50:24). He died at age 110, was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt, full of faith that he would be raised from the dead in the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Vayechi Audio Podcast:
Preparing for Eternity….
The ancient Greek philosophers sought for “salvation” (Σωτηρία), which they generally understood as freedom from the fear of death… Therefore Socrates sought to dispel mythical superstition by regarding philosophy as the “practice for death,” by which he meant that reflecting upon this “shadowy world” would instill a profound hunger for the eternal (and ideal) world, and he therefore advised that, since we all must die, we ought to prepare ourselves now for eternity, by focusing the mind on what is most essential, real, and beautiful.
The Jewish sages likewise later affirmed, “This world is like a corridor before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the corridor, that you may enter into the hall” (Avot 4:21), which implies that the great commandment is דִּרְשׁוּנִי וִחְיוּ – “Seek Me and live” (Amos 5:4), as the prophet Isaiah (7th century BC) cried out, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isa. 55:6).
Therefore Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is justly named “our salvation” (יְשׁוּעָתֵנוּ), since it is by his hand that we are delivered from bondage to the fear of death (Heb. 2:14-15). The resurrection of Yeshua utterly overthrows the power of death (i.e., the devil), and eternally secures our welcome in the world to come.
Do not let your heart be troubled; have faith in God, for he “prepares a place for you” on the other side of the veil of this temporal world (John 14:1-3). “Whoever is born of God conquers the world (νικᾷ τὸν κόσμον), and this is the overcoming power that conquers the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).
As Yeshua testified: “I AM the resurrection and the life (אָנכִי הַתְּקוּמָה וְהַחַיִּים). The one who trusts in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never, no, not ever, die (οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα). Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Yeshua’s words indicate there are two distinct senses of the word “death,” namely physical death (temporal) and spiritual death (eternal). Though we may indeed die physically, that does not imply that we will die spiritually, since we are given eternal (spiritual) regeneration and life by the miracle of God’s love…
We press on in hope, dear friends: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling (2 Cor. 4:17-5:1-2).
God our Savior “is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 1:24). May God help us persevere in hope, remembering the glory that lies ahead! Amen.
