FROM THIS WEEK’S TORAH PORTION – BO

Darkness

What kind of "darkness" is it that can be “felt?”

“Look, the hand of YHWH has not become too short to save, nor His ear too heavy to hear. But your crookednesses have separated you from your Elohim. And your sins have hidden His face from you, from hearing. For your hands have been defiled with blood, and your fingers with crookedness; your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters unrighteousness. No one calls for righteousness, and no one pleads for truth. They trust in emptiness and speak worthlessness; they conceive trouble and bring forth wickedness. They have hatched adders’ eggs and they weave the spider’s web. Whoever eats their eggs dies, and when one is broken an adder is hatched. Their webs do not become garments, nor do they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of wickedness, and a deed of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness, wasting and ruin are in their highways. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no judgment in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves, whoever treads in them shall not know peace. Therefore, judgment has been far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in thick darkness! We feel for the wall like the blind, and we feel as without eyes. At noon we stumble as at twilight, in deserted places, like the dead. All of us growl like bears, and moan sadly like doves. We look for judgment, but there is none; for deliverance, but it is far from us. For our transgressions have increased before You, and our sins witnessed against us. For our transgressions are with us, and as for our crookednesses, we know them: transgressing, and being untrue to YHWH, and turning away from our Elohim, speaking oppression and apostasy, conceiving and pondering words of falsehood from the heart.”

“For what partnership has righteousness and lawlessness? And what fellowship has light with darkness? And what agreement has Messiah with Beliya’al? Or what part does a believer have with an unbeliever? And what union has the Dwelling Place of Elohim with idols? For you are a Dwelling Place of the living Elohim, as Elohim has said, ‘I shall dwell in them and walk among them, and I shall be their Elohim, and they shall be My people. Therefore, Come out from among them and be separate,’ says YHWH, ‘and do not touch what is unclean, and I shall receive you. And I shall be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says YHWH the Almighty.”