SERIES D --- YHVH’S TABERNACLE --- LESSON 15

REMINDERS OF YHVH

LINEN GARMENTS FOR THE PRIESTS

From Exodus 39

As Adonai Elohiym had instructed Moses, the craftsmen made beautiful garments for Aaron and the priests, using blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen. These garments were to be worn when the priests ministered in the Holy Place of the tabernacle. The same material was used to make the ephod. Bezalel hammered gold into thin sheets and cut it into threads then wove the golden threads into the linen with beautiful designs. The top of the ephod was fastened by two shoulder straps. A beautiful sash, made of the same blue, purple, gold and scarlet fine-twined linen, secured the ephod at the bottom. This was done exactly as Adonai had told Moses. Adonai Elohiym had also instructed Moses concerning the shoulder straps of the ephod and the onyx stones on the straps. These stones were set in gold, with the names of the tribes of Israel engraved upon them, as one would engrave a signet ring. The purpose of the stones was to remind the people of Israel that they belonged to Adonai. The breastpiece, like the ephod, was a work of art, made from beautiful fine-twined linen of blue, purple, gold and scarlet. It was a double piece of cloth, nine inches square, which formed a pouch or pocket. Four rows of stones were set on the breastpiece. The first row had a ruby, a topaz and an emerald. The second row had an emerald, a sapphire and a diamond. The third row had a piece of amber, an agate and an amethyst. The fourth row had stones of onyx, beryl and jasper. All of these stones were set in gold filigree mountings. They were engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, as the engraving on a signet ring. The ephod and breastpiece were fastened by two strands of golden cord, made of pure gold. At the top, the cord was fastened to the ephod by two golden rings and to the breastpiece by two golden clasps. At the bottom it was fastened to the ephod by two golden rings on the shoulder straps, near where the ephod and sash joined. The bottom rings of the ephod and breastpiece were joined with a blue ribbon at a point just above the woven sash of the ephod. All of these instructions were given to Moses by Adonai. The robe for the ephod was blue, skilfully woven, with an opening for the neck like the opening of a garment, reinforced around the opening so that it would not fray. On the hems of the robe were pomegranates and bells of blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen. All around the robe the pomegranates and bells alternated, first a pomegranate, then a bell and so on. As Adonai instructed Moses, this robe was to be worn by the High Priest while serving Him in the tabernacle. Tunics or robes of fine-twined linen were made for Aaron and his sons. The same linen was used to make the turbans, caps and underclothes. The sash also was made of the same linen, with blue, purple and scarlet embroidery, as Adonai had told Moses. A plate of pure gold was fastened by a blue ribbon to the front of the turban, as Adonai had instructed. It was engraved like a signet ring with the words, {Holy to Adonai.} The work of the tabernacle was finally completed. The people of Israel did exactly what Adonai had commanded Moses. They brought the tabernacle to Moses, with all of these pieces and furnishings: the tent, with its clasps, boards, bars, pillars and sockets; the covering made of rams’ skins dyed red; the covering made of tanned goats’ skins; the entrance curtains; the Ark with the tablets of stone in it and its carrying poles; the mercy seat; the table with its utensils and the Bread of the Presence; the golden lamp stand with its lamps and utensils and oil for the lamps; the golden altar; the anointing oil and fragrant incense; the veil for the tabernacle; the bronze altar and its bronze grating as well as its poles and utensils; the laver and its base; the curtains for the courtyard with their pillars and sockets; the curtain to cover the opening of the courtyard with its cords and pegs; and all of the utensils used in the tabernacle services. They brought to Moses also the beautiful garments which Aaron and his sons would wear when serving Adonai in the Holy Place of the tabernacle. The people of Israel made the tabernacle exactly as Adonai had told Moses. When Moses saw their work and realized that it was exactly as Adonai had Commanded, he blessed them.

COMMENTARY

THE HIGH PRIEST’S CLOTHES

Israelite priests wore clothes that were distinctly different from those of the people around them. All priests wore some of the same things, but the clothing of the high priest was more elaborate. The basic garment was a long-sleeved robe that fell to the ankles. Made of silk-like fine linen, it was bleached a dazzling white. A sash or girdle fastened this robe at the waist. Underneath, the priests wore a loincloth made of the same white linen as the robe. It was their one article of underwear, like present-day shorts. The colour white meant cleanliness and purity to the Israelites, just as it does today. The high priest’s robe was embroidered. He wore a dark blue sleeveless tunic over it that reached to his knees. The tunic was held together by straps at the shoulders. Onyx, a beautiful milky stone with stripes running through it, was fastened to the straps at the top. They were engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Tiny gold bells hung from the hem of the tunic. People believed that bells warded off disaster and the jingling was thought to preserve the high priest’s life when he stood before the presence of YHVH. Pomegranates made of blue, purple and scarlet linen dangled on the fringes between the bells. The fruit may have stood for fertility and growth. Another piece of clothing special to the high priest was the breastpiece or ephod. Twelve precious jewels, each set, in gold, were attached to the front. Every jewel was engraved with a name of one of the tribes of Israel. The breastpiece was attached to the blue tunic with blue ribbons strung through gold rings. All priests wore a cone-shaped hat, but only the high priest wore a tall headdress made of linen. Strapped across the front of the high priest’s forehead was a gold band two fingers wide. Called a {ziz,} it was fastened to the headdress with blue ribbons. Gold was used because the metal was a symbol of splendour and light. The ziz was engraved with the words {holiness to Adonai} or {the sacred Name of Adonai.} Because the Name of YHVH was so Holy, the Israelites were forbidden to say it aloud or to write it. It was engraved on the ziz as YHVH. Those letters have come down to the modern world pronounced as {YAH-VEH}. When the high priest wore the ziz, he was said to bear the sins of all to Adonai. He was instructed always to wear it when he went before the altar. No one knows the meaning of all the articles of clothing worn by the priests and the high priest. Whatever they meant, they were considered so special that absolutely nothing else was to be worn; not even a bandage. They seemed almost to have a power of their own. Unless he wore all his special garments and nothing else, the sacrifices and prayers performed by the priest were not considered valid. When the clothing wore out or became too dirty to wear, it was never thrown away. The regular priest’s garments were cut up and made into wicks for the holy lamps. Those of the high priest were considered too sacred to damage in any way and they were carefully kept in permanent storage.

Did the #sabbath move to Sunday?
Isn't #jesus our Sabbath now?
Does the Sabbath even matter?
How do we know that the seventh day today is the same seventh day from Creation?
Isn't the Sabbath just for the Jews?
What about #romans 14? #colossians 2? #galatians 4? #hebrews 4?

I cover all of this & more in A Sabbath to YHWH at

A #chiasm in #exodus 4:14-31 focuses on faith, obedience, and God's love for Israel.
#biblepatterns

https://soilfromstone.blogspot.....com/2017/01/a-chias

Moving into another topic that comes up rather often when digging deeper into the Bible: The Name of God. There will be a lot of things we will cover in this topic. I wanted to start off with my experience when it came to the Name. During the time I was looking into the Sabbath, my pastor had done a sermon on the Names of God in the Bible. He printed off a sheet and passed them out. One Name stood out to me on that sheet. He said that this was the Name of God and what was the word behind every LORD when reading. That Name was Adonai.

I had been a Christian for almost 30 years at this point. I had never been taught that there was a Name behind LORD. Sure, I had heard the usual "El Shaddai" and "Jehovah Jirah" and the like. I had never heard the word Adonai. I thought it sounded beautiful. I started praying to God asking: is this your Name? I started looking for a Bible that used Adonai instead of LORD and got one.

Let me give a little history of myself for some context. Names were important to me. All of my life I had been on guard about my name. From a very early age I had been told to not let people call me "Josh", my name was "Joshua". Later on as I observed how people interacted with each other, I learned that people who respected each other tried to say each other's names as correctly as they could. Especially if the name of one of the people was something foreign to the other. As a late teen and onward, if someone would in fact call me "Josh", I would correct them. If they got flippant about it, I would find a way to shorten their name. No matter how ridiculous it sounded.

So, when I found out that I had been calling God by something that wasn't His Name my whole life, it hit me hard. I then went and studied to confirm. These next comics on this topic will be the results of that study.

https://thestraightandnarrow.cfw.me/comics/566

#bible #bibleverse #bibleverseimages #biblestudy #biblestudynotes #church #christian #webcomic #webcomicseries #cartoon

On this date in history, 01/09/1793: Jean-Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in America from Walnut St Jail, Philadelphia. #otd #tdih #aerospacehistory

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Vrede vir jou

SMALL STRAWS by MARSHA BURNS
You might not be able to depend on others to help you in your times of need, but you can depend on Me, says the Lord. I see you, know you and know what you are going through, and I am your source of help. I hear and answer your prayers for assistance. Never doubt it. Just be quiet inside and come to Me. Psalm 41:1-4 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling. There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.

Beards maketh the man.

A belief is common within some parts of our movement that hold beards are compulsory for men. It is not an uncommon belief for a religious person to take. In Islam shaving is generally considered haram (forbidden) or makruh (undesirable), depending on one’s position, on the basis that the prophets of Allah sung the praises of beards and their associated manliness. In Sikhism, growing a beard is a central tenant of the faith. Hair, being a creation of God, is regarded as sacred. So sacred are beards considered that in 1699, the Sikh spiritual leader Guru Gobind Singh declared, “My Sikh shall not use the razor. For him the use of razor or shaving the chin shall be as sinful as incest”.

There have been similar sentiments in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Ancient Israeli art depicted Israelites as having beards, while the hated Philistines were clean-shaven. In the Bible, the Ammonites humiliated the emissaries of King David by shaving their beards. This Judeo love affair with the beard did not cease in antiquity, with Orthodox Jews banned from shaving, to what extend depending on their level of Orthodoxy. The Hasidic Rabbi, Aron Moss gave the beard a mystical essence. He said, “The beard is hair that grows down from the heard to the rest of the body. It is the bridge between mind and heart, thoughts and actions, theory and practice, good intentions and good deeds. So we don’t cut the beard, but rather let it flow freely, to open a direct flow from the ideals and philosophies of our minds into everyday lifestyle”. Just how a beard did this was not, to my knowledge, extrapolated, but the point was made nevertheless.
Christianity has had an on and off again relationship with the beard. Around 1000 A.D, it was stated in the Canons of Edgar, “Let no man in holy orders conceal his tonsure, nor let himself be misshaven nor keep his beard for any time, if he will have God’s blessing and St. Peter’s and ours”. The Franciscans however disagreed. For them, “The Friars shall wear the beard, after the example of Christ most holy”. The Franciscan constitution praised the beard as “something manly, natural, severe, despised and austere”. The debate then was not settled in Christendom, however, I did stumble across a blog dedicated to Christian men’s beards and, unsurprisingly, it was full of incredibly handsome men which, though this was not their intention, nevertheless provided a very positive contemporary argument for the beard.

Unlike our Christian brothers, the pagans have had no such quarrel with the beard. One such pagan in the US Army was allowed to grow his beard due to it being an essential component of his pagan, Norse, beliefs. While I would never condone, and neither would HRM, the practice of pagan beliefs, if one where to practice such a belief, it would of course be prudent and moral to urge them to grow a beard as no Viking worth his axe should ever be without one.
Within our movement, the issue has again not been so clear cut. Many have adamantly denied that free flowing locks of male face hair are required by God, while others have taught that men, particularly men that lead congregations, must, at all costs, grow their whiskers to magnificent manly lengths in obedience to the Torah. Having spent zero time examining this issue in any substantial detail, and yet invested in it due to my own possession of a beard, I found myself turning to my own lived experience, and that of my father’s, to settle this most pressing issue.

My atheist father over the years mirrored the Christian relationship with the beard – while he has for the most part of his esteemed life had a beard of varying degrees, at times he did not. According then to the Torah commands beards advocates, I would be forced to conclude that his manliness dropped when he did not have a beard, he probably become somewhat weaker and forgot how to mow the lawn. On reflection however, I found that the quantity of facial hair he graced the world with had no impact on his manliness or moral character in general, and that he remained the same man who could out drink anyone, made things and fixed things around the house, loved football (the AFL – the only type), and at times, displayed his physical prowess through the odd show of strength when dealing with drunk, rude supporters – which in my younger days going to the football in the western suburbs of Melbourne was not at all uncommon. In this I learnt that there was no correlation between a man’s level of manliness and the degree of beard he adorned.

To some, this conclusion may be shocking, but there is more evidence that suggests there exists no such correlation between a manliness and beards. The argument that the beard maketh the man was dealt a severe blow with the rise of the hipster. The hipster male emerged from the city fringes somewhat in response to the general repulsion many men and, importantly, many females felt towards metro-sexual men when they were a thing. While the hipster sought to reclaim some sense of masculinity via the power of beards, primarily to attract females, the hipster has typically adopted ideologies that run contrary to the church, for example, the idea gender exists on a spectrum and other things like that and therefore proved that the presence of beards could in fact signify the type of masculinity at odds with Biblical teachings.

Noting that the above findings where not arrived at via a proper research methodology and neither not peer reviewed by any relevant authority, it is still proven, to some degree at the least, that the presence and or absence of a beard has no demonstrable bearing on a man’s inherent manly qualities and whether he can or cannot fulfil his duties at home or at work or leading a congregation. We can of course debate the theology – but in this instance maybe we shouldn’t, after all, it is just a beard.

SERIES D --- YHVH’S TABERNACLE --- LESSON 14

ISRAEL’S TREASURE

TABERNACLE TREASURES

From Exodus 38

The work of constructing the tabernacle and its furnishings had been given to Bezalel and his skilled craftsmen. After he had constructed the tent itself, the Ark, the table and the golden lampstand, he made the altar to be used for burnt offerings. It was made of acacia wood and was seven and one-half feet square by four and one-half feet in height. At each of the four corners of the altar there was a horn, formed from the same piece of wood as the altar itself. When the altar was completed, it was covered with bronze. Bezalel also made the utensils for the altar, casting the pots, shovels, basins, forks and firepans from bronze. He made a bronze grating which was placed on a ledge halfway down on the inside of the altar. The altar was hollow inside, with rings on the sides through which the carrying poles were placed. These poles were made of acacia wood and covered with bronze. The great bronze laver and its pedestal were cast from bronze mirrors which had been melted down. These had been given by the women who ministered at the door of the tabernacle. The south wall of the courtyard was a hundred and fifty feet long. The curtains which formed the walls were made of fine-twined linen. These were fastened by silver hooks and rods to twenty posts, set in bronze sockets. The north side was the same. But the west side was seventy-five feet long with ten posts set in bronze sockets. The curtains on the west side were fastened to the posts by silver hooks and rods. The east side of the courtyard was seventy-five feet long, with twenty-two and one-half feet of curtains, supported by three posts, on each side of the entrance. These curtains were fastened by silver hooks and rods to the posts, which were set in bronze sockets. All of the curtains or draperies, of this courtyard wall were made of fine-twined linen, fastened with silver hooks and rods to the posts. The sockets for the posts were made of bronze and the tops covering the posts were plated with silver. The curtains covering the entrance were made of fine-twined linen with blue, purple and scarlet thread and decorated with skilful embroidery. These curtains were thirty feet long and seven and one-half feet wide and they were hung by silver hooks and rods on four posts which were set in bronze sockets. These posts had silver tops like those of the other posts. The pegs or nails used in building the tabernacle were all made of bronze. Here is a list of the workmen and materials involved in constructing the tabernacle to house the Ark which Moses commanded to be built. It was in this tabernacle that the Levites would minister to Adonai. The work was supervised by Ithamar, son of Aaron the priest. The craftsman who supervised the skilled work was Bezalel, son of Uri and grandson of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. His chief assistant was Oholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. He was a craftsman who was skilled in engraving, designing and embroidering in blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen. Altogether, there was about thirty-five hundred pounds of gold used in the tabernacle and about ten thousand pounds of silver. The silver was collected as a tax imposed on the 603,550 men over twenty years of age. Most of the silver was used for the sockets in which the posts were set, about a hundred pounds for each socket. The rest of the silver was used to plate the tops of the posts and to make the hooks and rods. The people also gave about seven thousand pounds of bronze. With this the craftsmen made the sockets for the entrance to the tabernacle, the bronze altar with its grating and all its utensils, the sockets for the posts surrounding the courtyard and the nails or pegs used throughout the tabernacle.

COMMENTS

ALTARS AND LAVER

In one way, the Israelites were like their neighbours, for they were people who shared many customs of their times. But as YHVH’s chosen people, they were distinct from their neighbours. Much of that distinction lay in their worship of YHVH, especially at the tabernacle. The altars and laver give an example of the uniqueness of the tabernacle as a place of worship. The Canaanite altars were made of plastered stones, bricks and rubble. But the Israelites had to make theirs only with earth and fieldstones. The stones were not to be shaped or trimmed in any way, because using a tool on the stone would make it unholy {Exodus 20:25}. Unlike the altars of their neighbours, the Hebrew altars had four horns, one on each corner. No one knows what the horns meant to the Israelites. Since they were supposed to be from the bull, which is such a strong animal, it is possible they were meant to remind the Hebrews of YHVH’s power. No steps were ever built to lead to the altar. It was always level with the worshipers. This was to prevent any accidental exposure of the priest’s body; if he didn’t have to walk up steps, the robe would be less likely to shift and uncover him. Such modesty was completely unlike the Canaanite priests, who conducted fertility rites entirely naked. Pagan altars were often places for the display and sacrifice of the human body. Hebrew altars, on the other hand, was places for spiritual communion with the invisible YHVH. Even long before the tabernacle, Noah, Abraham and Jacob had built altars to YHVH. The tabernacle had two altars. The smaller of the two was the incense altar. It stood in front of the veil to the Holy of Holies. The larger one was the altar of burnt offerings. The sacrificed animal’s body was placed on a bronze grating set halfway down inside it. All other altar utensils were made of bronze too. The laver was a large bronze bowl that stood on a pedestal. It was made of the melted-down mirrors donated by the women who ministered at the tabernacle door. Filled with water, it stood between the tabernacle and the altar. Moses anointed it with oil to make it sacred and there the priests washed their hands and feet before they performed any ritual.