Journeying with joshua book two by lawrence duff forbes d d d litt

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JOURNEYING WITH JOSHUA BOOK TWO

By Dr. Lawrence Duff-Forbes

Content 1.

THE DOCTRINE OF IMPUTED MERIT

2.

LIGHTS AND PERFECTORS

3.

ISRAEL'S NATIONAL ENACTMENT

4.

THE ARAB BOY'S QUESTION

5.

WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL

6.

THE PARENTS OF MIRACLE

7.

UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS

8.

CHOICE BY CHANCE

9.

THE PRICE OF A DOG

10.

THE MENACE OF MISUNDERSTANDING

11.

THE REWARDING REVELATION

12.

PASSPORT TO PRIVILEGE

13.

THE INHERITANCE OF JUDAH

14.

BREACHING THE BARRIERS TO SHILOH

15.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

16.

THE TINTS OF TORAH

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THE DOCTRINE OF IMPUTED MERIT MY DEAR FRIENDS, there is a rather quaint Yiddish proverb which goes something like this: “Don’t

be too sweet, lest you be eaten up; don’t be too bitter, lest you be vomited out.” (I. Bernstein, Jüdische Sprichworter und Redensarten, Warsaw, 1908, #1470) Now, that may sound all right but it may taste somewhat insipid.

How frequently one extreme pushes to the other extreme and the two become violent antagonists.

Then, out of the battle or controversy arises some middle-of-the-road compromise between the two extremes and, taking a pinch of each to form a “neither one thing nor the other,” frequently fails to express or achieve either one thing or the other!

Yet, is it not true that reality is found not so much in rejecting one extreme and embracing the other, not in snipping a bit off each and sewing them together with the thread of compromise, but rather in accepting the two extremes as valid?

Such a union of extremes gives birth to an equally valid offspring and the outcome is a triunity both satisfying and understandable.

Consider the concepts of individualism and collectivism so widely assumed to be antagonistic extremes. The former – individualism – advocates the liberty, rights, or independent action of the individual; the latter – collectivism – affirms the principle of control by the people collectively, or the state as allegedly representative of the people collectively.

Then, from that vast but invisible factory where ideological labels are manufactured emerge the tags that touch off the tussle.

When we turn to the Scriptures, however, we find that there is a valid and valuable individualism far too precious to be damaged by unwarranted proscription or conscription. Equally valid and valuable, however, is a collectivism far too important to be damaged by unilateral individualism.

A heavenly marriage between individualism and collectivism gives birth to the kingdom of God on earth and within that kingdom there is both satisfaction and understanding.

But, my friends, I hasten to add, be careful to note that the marriage must be performed by Heaven’s Throne and He Who sits upon that Throne must be the acknowledged King of that Kingdom.

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In my last message – you will remember – bearing upon this aspect and buried beneath the actual history of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, we unearthed two exceedingly interesting and very important doctrines.

Upon the one I ventured to bestow the title “The Doctrine of Imposed Participation”; the other was already known as “The Doctrine of Collective Responsibility.”

There is play and interplay within and between these two in all human history, and Israel’s experiences across the Jordan form an excellent illustration.

Ten direct miles west of Jericho was the town of Ai, described by Dr. William F. Albright as “the most interesting town of the age which has yet been excavated...” (The Archaeology of Palestine) Here had occurred Israel’s first battle west of the Jordan and the first defeat had resulted.

The children of Israel “went up” to Ai as instructed, but the men of Ai “smote” and “chased” them and their hearts “melted, and became as water.” (Joshua 7:5) What was the reason for a defeat in a campaign initiated under Divine command? The reason was God’s displeasure with an individual person within Israel. That person was Achan. The sin of Achan in plundering “a goodly Shinar mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight” (Joshua 7:21) had imposed upon all Israel participation in the Divine displeasure and also a collective responsibility to God for the sin committed.

The Babylonian garment was probably a gorgeous robe pattered in brilliant colours and the silver and gold so purloined by Achan worth about $70 and $250 respectively. Not a very large haul for an individual, was it? But it proved very costly to Israel collectively for it involved the loss of thirty-six men (7:5) and the defeat of the nation. Although the sin of Achan was that of an individual, or perhaps of an individual family, it imposed upon all Israel its guilt.

Let us pause for a moment right here, lest haste force from our hearts a premature judgement of unfairness is such principles of the Divine economy. There is a happy two-way traffic in these doctrines of Imposed Participation and Collective Responsibility and upon which is superimposed a third doctrine, the “Doctrine of Imputed Merit or Righteousness.”

Just as one man’s disobedience and sin brought collective guilt and collective consequent participation in defeat and adversity, so God has declared from the very beginning that one man’s obedience and righteousness will bring collective consequent participation in victory and advantage.

The disobedience and sin of the First Adam in Eden surely brought defeat and adversity upon all mankind, for humanity is consanguineous and has a common ancestry in Adam.

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It has been rather quaintly said that God could have created simultaneously two or more men at the beginning but he made only one Man so that we should learn that all men are brothers in the one human family.

Although, obviously, this individual Achan initiated the scandal in Israel at the time of the crossing of the Jordan and thus imposed upon the people a collective participation and responsibility, the Biblical record would not preclude the assumption that the immediate family of Achan connived and were accessory to Achan’s sin (compare Joshua 7:24) with Deuteronomy 24:16), and thus shared in the ensuing execution.

So it is with all Adam’s descendants. Disobedience and sin is characteristic of us all. Let us be frank about this. Surely we all have connived in disobedience to the Law of God and our very actions have made us all accessories to sin.

If we wince, therefore, under the Doctrine of Collective Responsibility let us be frank to admit our inevitable shortcomings as individuals. There is an admitted discrepancy between the standard required in man by God and the standard actually reached in man, even in manhood’s fairest flower – oh, save just One. Yes, there is one exception, and that exception is the fairest flower of all. The One promised to the First Adam in Eden, the One Whom Scripture describes as the Last Adam.

At the scene of the sin of the First Man in Eden, God gave the precious promise of a Second Man. A Second Man, a Last Adam, Whose attitude and activity towards sin and disobedience would bring an effective and eternal answer to the attitude and activity of the First Adam, the First Man. This Second Man, that Last Adam, is the gift of Grace, the gist of the Law, the gamut of the Prophets, the glad announcement of Israel’s New Covenant, and the glory of all who believe in Him. Who is He? He is the promised Messiah-Redeemer of Israel Whose obedience and righteousness is Divinely imputed to all individuals, whether that individual be Jew or Gentile, who believe in Him and trust in His atoning death for their eternal individual salvation.

So then as a single transgression led to condemnation for all mankind, so equally a single worthy action led to acquittal spelling out life for all mankind. Just as by one man’s disobedience the many were constituted sinners, so also by one man’s obedience the many are constituted righteous.

(Romans 5:18)

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If we inquire why God adopts this Doctrine of Imputed Merit or Righteousness the answer again comes from Scripture: “For God has locked up all mankind in the prison of disobedience so as to have mercy upon them all.” (Romans 11:32) The relationship between individualism and collectivism as outworked in the Divine economy may, at first, seem rather strange to us, but when we discern behind it all the sweet blend of justice and mercy we cannot but be grateful that all His ways are perfect.

Now let us return our thoughts to the Biblical Book of Joshua and the ultimate conquest of the city of Ai. God, having placed His finger on sin and by judgement and death having removed that barrier to blessing, the command to conquer Ai goes forth afresh and this time God Himself gives the detailed strategy for victory, the details of which you may read for yourself in the eighth chapter of Joshua.

An ambush was set into which fell both the men of Ai and those also of the neighbouring city of Bethel (8:17). The signal for victory was the javelin in the hand of Moses’ successor, General Joshua, Yeshua.

In the wider sphere of universal human sin God, by judgement upon it and by the atoning death of Messiah, has removed that terrible barrier, and His strategy is detailed in the Messianic redemption, a proclamation made possible by the javelin in the side of Moses’ greater successor, the Messiah Yeshua, Whose resurrection points out for all mankind the God-bestowed way to eternal life and victory.

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LIGHTS AND PERFECTORS MY DEAR FRIENDS, down the ages and among all nations, whether savage or civilized, man has

sought and initiated processes whereby he hoped to penetrate into realms supernatural.

Many and varied have been the men and methods employed, from the grotesque to the gruesome, the respectable to the ridiculous, the weird to the wearisome.

Signs, omens, trances, rods, oracles, clouds in the sky (Isaiah 44:25, 57:3, ff.), examining the livers (Ezekiel 21:26, English tr. 21:21) of sacrifices; consulting wooden images or teraphim; these, and more, were among the impedimenta associated with the army of wizards, soothsayers, diviners, magicians, astrologers, charlatans, and necromancers that have sapped and supplied the superstitious down the centuries.

It is not too widely realized that our Jewish Holy Scriptures have much to say in exposure, denunciation, and warning relative to these practices, and a Biblical collation on the subject proves to be simply packed with interest.

For instance, as a prominent and official body at the courts of both ancient Egypt and Babylon we read of “hartummin” or “magicians” (Genesis 41:8; Daniel 1:20, etc.), revealers of occult things, by secret or supernatural means.

Then there were the sorcerers who resorted to magic formulas and incantations (Exodus 7:11; Malachi 3:5); the consulters with “familiar spirits” – spiritism (Deuteronomy 18:11); and those who resorted to divination by the use of serpents.

Those who sought guidance by the incidence, flight, or fall of arrows were known as “belomants.”

For instance, the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, used divination by arrows, belomancy, to decide whether he should advance against Rabbah or Jerusalem (Ezekiel 21:26, English tr. 21:21).

By such devious, dubious, and ofttimes dangerous means has unenlightened man sought to guide his steps and decisions by means of a power unseen by him, but judged as possessing superior and supernatural wisdom.

With God’s much-blessed people Israel, however, such practices were not only prohibited (Deuteronomy 18, etc.) to view the matter negatively, but, on the positive side, the Omniscient God of the Universe had Himself initiated processes and instrumentalities whereby His Divine, unerring, authoritative guidance was constantly available to His people.

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This was so not only in the persons of His prophets, His priests, and His messengers – particularly His Messenger Supreme, the Messianic Being known as Malach Adonai – but also in the paraphernalia entrusted to those to whom the people were to look for the expression of God’s guidance.

Perhaps the most fascinating method granted by God for the direction of His people Israel was by means of the Urim and Thummim.

Oddly enough, there is not a word in Scripture to describe the Urim and Thummim. We first encounter the Biblical reference at Exodus, chapter twenty-eight, verse thirty, where we read in connection with the garments and accoutrements of Israel’s High Priest: “And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgement upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the Eternal continually. And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgement the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Eternal; and Aaron shall bear the judgement of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Eternal continually.” (Exodus 28:29,30) Here we learn the Urim and Thummim were borne by Israel’s High Priest into the Holy Place, into the Divine Presence.

From passages in Ezra (2:63) and Nehemiah (7:65) it is clear that “a priest with Urim and with Thummim” was an essential for the solution of vital matters requiring revelation from God through the priesthood.

Those of us who detect a numerical pattern in Scripture will be interested to discover that this mysterious instrument of Divine guidance is mentioned just seven times in the Tenach – the Old Testament. Four times the customary sequence of Urim and Thummim is employed (Exodus 28:30; Leviticus 8:8; Ezra 2:63; Nehemiah 7:65). Only once the order is reversed, Thummim and Urim (Deuteronomy 33:8), and twice only the Urim are mentioned (Numbers 27:21; I Samuel 28:6). Let me quote this last-named reference for the light it throws upon this most interesting subject: “And when Saul enquired of the Eternal, the Eternal answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.” (I Samuel 28:6) Moses Maimonides speaks of “every High Priest” – and here I am quoting him – “ ... that inquired by the Urim and Tumim ... and who spoke by the holy spirit ... ” (Moreh Nevukim) The actual words Urim and Thummim mean “Lights and Perfectors” and the Mishnah declares that “they were not inquired of for a common person, but only for the king, for the Court, or for one of whom the congregation had need.” (Yoma 7.5)

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Some suggest that the Urim and Thummim were “two disks within a bag, and that the answer to a question depended on which one would be drawn by the priest.” (Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, Vol. 3, p.575) Our famous Jewish commentator Rashi suggests that the Ineffable Name of God was inscribed upon some unknown material and then placed in the fold of the High Priest’s breastplate. By means of it the Divine will was revealed in terms as clear as light and its promises were made perfect in fulfilment.

Perhaps the most interesting theory is the following. Upon the breastplate of the High Priest were twelve various precious stones and upon each of those stones was engraved the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now, to write in Hebrew the names of the twelve tribes of Israel would absorb all but four of the twenty-two characters of the Hebrew alphabet. Jewish tradition has it that the missing four characters were either the Urim and Thummim or else found in the Urim and Thummim.

Whenever the High Priest sought or was the recipient of the will or guidance of God, the Divine power flashed out the message through the Hebrew characters on the twelve stones in the breastplate; but, of course, without the remaining four characters know as  associated with Urim and Thummim there could be no perfect light or unerring response from Heaven.

I have mentioned this historic boon of Divine guidance so graciously bestowed upon Israel nationally because of some possible bearing upon the Book of Joshua which we are currently studying.

In my last message, you will remember, the sin of Achan was detected by a somewhat singular method (Joshua 7:16-18) which, however, is not explicitly described in the Biblical record, hence a Midrash suggests that the Urim and Thummim were employed in the exposure of Achan (Pirke de R. Eliezer xxxviii).

In my next message, to which I trust you will be listening, we will find a possible reference to these Lights and Perfectors the non-employment of which brought about far-reaching and adverse consequences upon Joshua and the children of Israel.

In fulfilment of the amazing prophecies of Hosea, chapter three, Israel nationally has been without Urim and Thummim for long ages. The Mishnah declares that “when the First Prophets died, Urim and Thummim ceased.” (Sotah 9:12) “The First Prophets” is a term which excludes Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the later prophets.

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Are we to conclude, therefore, that Israel has been without national Divine guidance as was possessed by him in those ages and circumstances associated with the High Priest?

In a sense, yes. And national failure to achieve the measure and mission Divinely required of Israel was the prime reason for this great loss.

However, in another sense, Israel still has an infallible source of Divine enlightenment available to him. I refer to the God-inspired Holy Oracles or Scriptures of both the Old and the New Covenants which – being  – surely are a light to lighten the path and perfect for the restoration of the soul.

Our prophet Isaiah exclaims: “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? ... .To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:19,20) My friends, above all lights is the Light of Messiah Whose perfect atonement for sin will bring all Israel and all mankind, ultimately, once again into the Divine Presence.

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ISRAEL’S NATIONAL ENACTMENT MY DEAR FRIENDS, in the Hebrew language there is a very interesting Hebrew root Yarah



which means “to throw,” “to cast.” It is employed to indicate the casting forth of arrows by an archer; to cast lots by which oracular responses would produce guidance or instruction; to throw forth the finger as in pointing out the way, the direction.

With these basic ideas in mind it is easy to see the origin and development of two Hebrew nouns from this very same root. The first is “moreh”  meaning a teacher or instructor; the second

is “torah” meaning the teaching or instruction itself.

It is interesting as well as instructive to observe that this last word “torah” is used in Scripture before the time of Moses and the Ten Commandments. We discern its initial employment in connection with our father Abraham of whom the Eternal God declared: “In reward that Abraham hearkened to My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

(Genesis 26:5) Thus, the first Biblical reference relates the word to the expressed will of God as conveyed to man.

In a more limited sense, particularly when the noun carries the definite article, in nine cases out of ten it relates to the Law of Moses given four hundred and thirty years after Abraham received God’s gracious promises (Galatians 3:17).

Again, it should be mentioned that the title “The Law” can be Scripturally applied to the whole Tenach – the so-called “Old Testament” (e.g. John 10:34 with Psalm 82:6; John 15:25 with Psalm 35:19; I Corinthians 14:21 with Isaiah 28:11, 12).

Since the expressed will of God is Divinely revealed in the Scriptures we are on Biblical, and hence on safe, ground in applying the word Torah in that sense to the whole of the Scriptures both Old and New Covenants, for without doubt the New is promised and prophesied in the Old (Jeremiah 31:3135).

If, however, we unwisely extend the term Torah to extra-Biblical writings we transfer our steps from the solid rock Divine reflection to the shifting sands and dust of human opinions and traditions.

I find I cannot agree with the American educator Israel Chipkin (1891-1955) who says that “Torah represents the accumulated literary and spiritual heritage of the Jewish people through the centuries.” (Religious Education, Sept. 1953, p338)

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Behold the polished brilliance of some burnished surface, how it reflects the glorious sunlight! But each passing day brings the threat of accumulated dust to dim that brilliance and if we are not watchful the layer upon layer of foreign particles will ultimately blot out altogether the reflected light.

So it is, I am convinced, with the Revealed Truth of Holy Scripture. It reflects brilliantly for our enjoyment and guidance the expressed will of God to mankind. But if we allow the literary dust of uninspired human tradition and opinion to pour its accumulated centuries, layer after layer, upon that Divine reflector, the Bible, then we shut its light from our path and its warmth from our soul.

Our great teacher Moses knew something of the importance of impressing upon Israel the expressed will of God when, prior to his death, he commanded General Joshua to engage the nation of Israel in a national act, the like of which has never been witnessed on earth before or since.

(Deuteronomy 27) Let me attempt to describe it to you.

In the Divine battle against the darkness of heathenism, God, by the miracles of Jordan and Jericho and the lesson in the capitulation of Ai and Bethel, as it were, had handed to Joshua the keys of the Kingdom of God on earth and had invited – nay, commissioned – Israel to lay its foundations and prepare the way for Messiah, his King.

It was the accumulated dust of heathenism that was now to be removed in order that the pristine light of God’s love and God’s law might again shine upon mankind in general and Israel in particular.

There were to be three major movements in this national symphony of Divine revelation. The first related to the Law, the second to the Altar, and the third to the Obligations.

This national enactment is so rich in its spiritual fare and so brilliant in its radiance that I have devoted a whole message to it on a previous occasion entitled “Sermons in Stones.”

In the first phase, the “statutes,” and “rights,” and all the words of the Law were to be written upon great stones which had previously been covered in plaster. The climate of the country, by the way, would tend to preserve such inscriptions for reasonably long periods and certainly, in this case, for the particular generation of Israel whose important mission called for such an impression of the Divine Will.

It was the responsibility of succeeding generations to learn the Divine Revelation from the preceding one – “ ... and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children ... ” (Deuteronomy 6:7)

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It was also the responsibility of Israel to preserve the Divine Revelation against the threat of accumulated human tradition lest the light of Revelation be thus obscured. God’s command is very explicit on this point: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it ... ” (Deuteronomy 4:2; 13:1; English tr. 12:32) This is a principle we all do well to note. Personally, I am of the opinion that the progress towards, and the completion of, what is known as the Canon of the Holy Scriptures of both the Old and the New Covenants was overshadowed and guarded by the Holy Spirit of God; I am also convinced that it is the “adding to” and “diminishing from” this Divine Revelation which is responsible for so much confusion even where the light of God’s Word is so freely available.

The second phase in Israel’s national enactment under Joshua was the offering of sacrifices upon an altar.

The stones comprising this altar of God were to be unhewn stones, “whole stones,” just as God in Nature had left them. No iron tool was to be lifted up upon them to add man’s contribution in their formation. Again a reminder that the altar, as well as the sacrifices, are wholly God’s and man must have no part beyond the acceptance of that which both altar and sacrifice signify. (Deuteronomy 27:5; cf. Exodus 20:22, English tr. 20:25) Both altar and sacrifice are closely related even in their Hebrew etymology.

The Tannaitic Midrash on Exodus, usually known as Mechilta, declares – and here I quote from this ancient document – “The purpose of the altar was to preserve life (through atonement), whereas iron destroys it (by the sword).”

Now for the third phase. This was a most impressive pageantry. Whilst the priests (Joshua 8:33) with the Ark of the Covenant of God stationed themselves in the intermediate valley, six of Israel’s tribes were to stand on Mount Ebal and six upon Mount Gerazim and all were to listen to the priests recital (Joshua 8:33) and Joshua’s reading of all the words of the Law – the blessing and the curse.

Mount Gerazim is associated with the blessing and Mount Ebal with the curse. Twelve times the people were to respond “Amen” to the twelve itemizations of the curse; however, we strain our ears in vain for any recorded echo of the blessings.

Let me add just two more interesting features. Those standing on the Mount of Blessing – Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin – had all been born of the lawful wives of Israel. Of those standing on the Mount of Cursing five had been born of the matriarch’s handmaids. To these five, Reuben, on account of his great sin (Genesis 49:4) had been added.

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The second feature of interest to be observed is that Ebal, the Mount of Cursing, has both the plastered stones of the Law and the Altar of Sacrifice.

My friends, here is rich prophetic pageantry and blazing Divine illumination. Israel’s national enactment illuminates the Divine “torah,” teaching, upon LAW, ATONEMENT, and CONSEQUENCE. The Law of the Eternal is perfect restoring the soul but – and here is the point – man fails to keep it and in consequence the curses resound and the blessings fail to echo from human experience.

Nevertheless, where the curse of the Law falls, there is an altar of sacrifice, God-initiated, and Godprovided; and just as the Law points to the moral spiritual quality of the Messianic Kingdom yet to be established on earth so the Altar and the Sacrifice point to the Messianic King Who came, as Scripturally promised, two thousand years ago and made a full atonement for the sins of Israel and all mankind.

By trusting in the atoning efficacy of His blood we shall hear the echo of the blessings and the curses shall lose their sound in the everlasting hills of Divine forgiveness.

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THE ARAB BOY’S QUESTION MY DEAR FRIENDS, on the 2

nd

of August 1956, a dark-skinned Arab boy named Suleiman – Arabic

for Solomon – asked a question that caused a sensation.

It was a very simple question and it was asked in a locality having for long centuries all the outward appearance of being very simple.

Moreover, the very simple question was asked regarding an object outwardly itself so very simple that it was almost providential that it provoked the Arab boy’s enquiry.

If we set out from Jerusalem following the old northern camel-road, and if we turn off to the left at Tuleil el-Ful (Gibeah) and move slightly westward, we shall enter a land of rounded hills, more or less isolated one from the other, and rising from broad undulating and fertile valleys.

There, just where the road to the sea toward Jaffa forks off, and squatting on top of a low, oval, rocky mound that rises some hundred feet above the Judean plan, is located the unpretentious Arab village bearing the equally unpretentious name el-Jib. It was here, some eight miles northwest of Jerusalem, that Suleiman asked his very simple question.

Holding in his hand a most unpretentious object, he asked, “Is this any good?”

Now, “this” happened to be a broken handle from a pottery jar and the one to whom he tendered it with his enquiry happened to be the famous archaeologist Dr. James B. Pritchard.

That old broken handle from an old broken pottery jar has been well described as an archaeological jackpot! Inscribed upon the clay was a single word; it was written in Biblical Hebrew; it was a sensational word. That word was Gibeon!

Way back in 1838, the American explorer Edward Robinson had visited this primitive village housing some thousand impoverished Arabs and had noted then the evidences of an ancient and interesting water system.

In the second chapter of the Second Book of Samuel you will find a record of a gruesome encounter between twelve men of Abner and a dozen men of Joab: “Abner, the son of Ner, and the servants of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zeruiah ( and the servants of David, went out; and they met together by the pool of Gibeon...” (II Samuel 2:12, 13)

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Death came upon all twenty-four in the ensuing combat. This was somewhere about the eleventh century before the Common Era. Dr. James B. Pritchard had already excavated at el-Jib and had found an ancient city buried only some six to eight feet beneath the topsoil. A massive wall, twenty-six feet thick had also been struck.

This was followed by the sensational find of a tunnel extending about 170 feet through the limestone to a strategic spring of water. Soon the whole elaborately engineered and extensive water system was uncovered.

It already seemed certain that el-Jib was the ancient city of Gibeon. Now the broken pottery handle supplied the evidence; evidence confirmed by the discovery of more than twenty additional broken handles upon all of which was inscribed that word “Gibeon.”

The whole fascinating story can be read as attractively told in The Saturday Evening Post of February 8, 1958. Altogether that oval hill of el-Jib housed no less than five cities layered one upon the other.

Beneath the present el-Jib was a Gibeon built in the Roman Era about 100 B.C.E. Then appeared a city with elaborate waterworks and wall structures which may have covered a period from about 800 B.C.E. to the time when it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 598 B.C.E. Still further beneath was a city of about the Middle Bronze Age about 1700 B.C.E., whilst the primitive city buried beneath all is estimated by Dr. Pritchard to date back to the Early Bronze Age about 2800 B.C.E. Before leaving the archaeological aspect of this ancient site it would be culpable if I omitted to mention what Dr. Pritchard has described as his “high point of excitement.” He found a small handle upon which appeared the name “Hananiah”!

If you will refer to the twenty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah you will read of a false prophet from Gibeon bearing the same name as that upon the unearthed handle.

Let us plunge beneath the layers of these buried cities until we reach the time when Gibeon existed in the days of General Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. Already passing through a millennium of precarious history, we would reach a time estimated at about 1200 B.C.E. Jericho had fallen to Israel; of the town Ai we read that “Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a Tel forever, even a desolation unto this day.” (Joshua 8:28) In that land of “tels” – tel-this and tel-

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that, each tel with some other name hyphenated to it to mark a former site – there was one locality that had no designation hyphenated to it, joined to it. That site was Ai. It is known simply as et-Tel – the Tel, the heap.

Coincidentally with the destruction of Ai, the neighbouring city of Bethel had capitulated to Joshua.

Realizing the Divine hand in these conquests, Joshua had erected the altar and recited the Law at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim, as commanded by his predecessor Moses.

Joshua then moved southward to encamp at Gilgal, a locality about equidistant between Shiloh and Bethel and to be distinguished from the Gilgal which marked the site of Israel’s first encampment east of Jericho.

It was into this camp at Gilgal that there came a very strange deputation. They bore outward evidence of the toils of long journeying. Their sandals were clouted, their garments travel-worn, the sacks upon their asses were old-looking, the skins in which their wine had been transported were worn, rent and “bound up” like purses as is the manner in the East where the goatskin bottles receive temporary repair on a long journey. Moreover, all the bread of their provision was dried up and “dotted over” –  niqqudim – with spots of mould.

Surely, these were travellers from afar! From whence came they? Let us hear their story as told in the ninth chapter of Joshua: “From a very far country thy servants are come because of the name of the Eternal thy God; for we have heard the fame of Him ...(v9) ... now therefore make ye a covenant with us.” (v6) Thus, according to their own account, they came from far beyond the borders of Canaan, drawn physically towards Israel and spiritually towards the God of Israel.

This sounded too good to be true and some of Israel’s elders suspected it. They said, “Peradventure ye dwell among us (that is, here in Canaan); and how shall we make a covenant with you?” (v7) You see, Israel had been specifically commanded by God against making any league or covenant with the inhabitants of Canaan (Exodus 23:32; 34:12; Numbers 33:55; Deuteronomy 7:2) and it was just such a league securing the lives, land, and liberty of these strangers that was now being proposed by them.

Brushing aside all suspicions by the force of their protestations, and deceiving Israel by their outward appearances, they were received by Israel as guests and friends by the Eastern custom of partaking of their victuals (v14) and Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them; only to discover, after the covenant had been sealed with a congregational oath (v15), that these

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alleged travellers were from the close-by city of Gibeon where the little Arab boy had said to Dr. Pritchard – “Is this any good?”

Although deceived, Israel honoured the league and covenant with the Gibeonites, but condemned them to perpetual bondage as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the sanctuary and altar of the God of Israel. (Joshua 9:23, 27; cf. Deuteronomy 29:10, English tr. 29:11) Whilst there is no record that the Gibeonites ever betrayed their trust or led Israel into idolatry, nevertheless, the rash compact imposed upon Israel immediate difficulties and cost King Saul the lives of seven of his sons many centuries later. (II Samuel 21) In one pithy sentence the Sacred Record itself supplies the reason why Israel fell into the Gibeonite deception. Israel “asked not counsel at the mouth of the Eternal.” (Joshua 9:14) They had the Urim and Thummim on the High Priest’s breastplate but, instead, they judged by outward appearances and human assurances.

My friends, don’t let us fall into the same trap. When confronted with human traditions and assurances let us turn to Holy Scripture alone and inquire of God thereby, “Is this any good?”

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WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL MY DEAR FRIENDS, in the Science Symposium of The American Scientific Affiliation I read these

words: “The presence of miracles in the Scripture narrative is in no way a contradiction of science.” (p.252) To that quotation I would like to add the words of Samuel David Luzzatto, the Hebrew scholar, who says of Judaism that it has no future “without belief in miracles and prophecy” (Igrot Shadal, 1882, ii.633).

Regarding both miracles and prophecy there is much misunderstanding but this is not the occasion for me to elucidate it. Suffice to say that the Omnipotent God of the Universe is surely fully capable of producing what we would call a miracle. Charlatanry and demonism can also manifest the phenomenal, but that which inerrantly distinguishes Biblical miracle from mere manticism, or heathen divination, is the moral and spiritual motive and content always present in the miracles of Scripture.

We see this moral and spiritual element dominating the events associated with the Israelitish penetration of Canaan under Joshua. Basically it was the battle of God against heathenism.

Now, heathenism, carefully analysed, discloses that elemental longing of mankind to contact God, to be at peace with Him, indeed, to know Him and to have fellowship with Him. My beloved friends, do please let us wrench out of the rush and pressure of this age just one little sane moment to analyse ourselves. Is it not true that deep within you – deep within me – is an insistent and constant ache and longing after God? Many will be ready to acknowledge that ache, that awful longing, that peace-paralyzing yearning within, but not all are able to recognize it and realize that basically it is God, God Himself, after Whom we yearn, we long, for Whom we positively ache.

As these words of mine even now reach your heart can you not, too, feel and recognize that longing? I believe that ache, that yearning, to be residue of the moral and spiritual in man, the remnant of God’s image in man, that image and likeness wrecked by the Fall of Man through the entrance of sin.

Consciously or unconsciously we stretch forth our hands towards God and long to clasp Him to our breast. Let us be frank about this. That basic yearning has been recognized and expressed in vivid colouring by the Psalmist in Psalm 42, part of which I now quote: “As the hind panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.”

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This is a very telling image of the sun-scorched East where water means life and lack of it death.

God alone is the Fountain of Living Waters and He alone can satisfy our thirst and snatch us from the awful death of God-separation.

Perhaps occasionally, we have heard someone of our fellowmen declare – “But, I hate God.” I, myself, have heard such words, but I still recognize that they flow from that same basic longing after God. It is a kind of spiritual ambivalence, for love and hate are twins born in the womb of human hunger.

However, let us take another step forward in self-recognition – a comforting step forward. That very longing, that very ache, is itself guarantee that the one possessing it is capable of having it satisfied, capable of being restored to God and finding eternal harmony and peace upon the bosom of God. This is Life Eternal to know Him, the only True and Living God. Now let us take a third step forward into spiritual knowledge, for it is right here that the supreme danger threatens us. The danger of the spiritual mirage!

A mirage is an optical delusion due to atmospheric conditions by which reflected images are seen.

As we make our soul-thirsty way over life’s desert of desire towards the Living Waters we are subjected to the constant peril and allurement of spiritual mirages!

The roadway to the Living Waters is a straight one clearly marked throughout the Written Revelation of the Holy Scriptures; to either side of it, and in many cases proceeding for a certain distance along it, are the human-trod tracks inviting and alluring the thirsty one to the mirages of mere human religion, of which their name is legion, but their basic delusion reasonably uniform.

The delusive mirage is salvation by self; the real Water of Life, on the other hand, is salvation by God. This will be found to be fundamental and basic. Sin’s ugly symptoms are everywhere. Man attempts to treat this disease of sin by patching up the symptoms through religion; God, however, cures the disease itself by REDEMPTION. God is constantly active to satisfy man’s ache and longing for Him and among the most dangerous mirages of human religion in the days of Joshua was the mirage of Canaanitish heathenism.

Although doubtless like all human religion it was impulsed by that basic human hunger, yet, again like all human religions in contrast to the One Revealed Religion of Redemption, it led away from God and not to Him.

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In God’s activity to meet man’s need, heathenism, with its cruelty and moral depravity, had to be stamped out, and Israel under Joshua was granted this Divine beneficent commission and if, in the performance of it, miracle was required God would supply that miracle, and the moral and spiritual content is thus immediately discernible.

Hence the miraculous parting of the Jordan to give Israel access to the Land; hence the collapse of the walls of Jericho before the Ark of the Covenant of the Eternal; hence, now, the miracle of Joshua’s so-called “long day” in his defense of the city of Gibeon and his defeat of the five kings of the Amorites as recorded in the tenth chapter of Joshua.

First, the Eternal cast down from Heaven great hailstones upon the armies of heathenism at the descent of Beth-horon. By the way, a similar hailstorm determined the issue of the Battle of Solferino against the Austrians in the year 1859 of the Common Era. In Joshua’s battle, in nearly the same period before the Common Era, a timely Divine intervention of a similar character was clearly to be recognized.

But the work of extermination was threatened with lack of time and adequate light for its successful performance. Joshua called for further Divine intervention, a miracle of interposition for the prosecution of these moral and spiritual objective. Joshua was granted his miracle: “The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies.” So reads the Book of the Upright (Jasher) as quoted authoritively in that tenth chapter of Joshua (Joshua 10:12-15; see also II Samuel 1:18).

Now before we succumb to scepticism let us remind ourselves right here that even today we speak of “sunrise” and “sunset”; we also say the moon “rises” and “sets.” My friends, although these are admittedly unscientific terms we have every right to use them when we do not intend our speech to be criticised on scientific grounds.

So with the Scriptures. That there was miraculous Divine interposition in the prolongation of the light in response to Joshua’s plea is undeniable, for “there was no day like that before it or after it” (Joshua 10:14); but, if science be interrogated, science could point to a miraculous employment of the simple natural law of the atmospheric refraction of light.

In the polar regions, in particular, refraction is sufficient to cause the sun to appear above the horizon for several days – several days – after it has actually set below it.

It is recorded that a certain Captain Scoresby “saw the inverted image of his father’s ship above the horizon when it was nearly twenty miles below it.”

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Don’t let unjustified scepticism add to your ache and mock your longing. God has granted both Jew and Gentile full Redemption through the atoning death and justifying resurrection of the Promised Messiah-Redeemer, Whose identity is revealed in our own Jewish New Testament. Read it. It is God’s will and Way for you.

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THE PARENTS OF MIRACLE MY DEAR FRIENDS, someone, somewhere, sometime has said that “the only thing man learns from

history is that he doesn’t learn from history.”

This appears to be alarmingly true. The great rabbinic scholar Solomon Schecter (1848-1915) declared that “Ages employed in making history have no time studying it.” (Studis in Judaism, 1896, i., p.xvi) That also appears to be true; yet, if perchance they of those past ages had studied history before making their own, their own might have been different by virtue of profit and benefits derived from such study.

In any case, where do you and I come in? Are we making history today? If so, do we lack time or perhaps inclination either for the study of the history we are now making or of the history of ages past upon which to frame that history we are now making?

Will it be tragically true of you and me that the only thing we learnt from history is that we didn’t learn from history?

I agree with Leon Roth who says that “history is not merely the record of a string of occurrences.

It is an attempt to seize occurrences in their pattern.” (Jewish Thought, 1954, p.37) I like that! Pattern in occurrences! In these days it seems we find, not pattern, but chaos in occurrences. Yet, surely, even upon chaos the Eternal God of the Universe imprints pattern – purposive pattern.

Rabbi Jacob Singer, in one of his sermons, said: “To see in history a moral purpose and a task for a people on earth is a great discovery, far more important than the accounts of battles and intrigues that have plagued humanity from time immemorial.” (Buffalo Jewish Review, Sept. 9, 1926, p.58) My friends, join me for a moment in Time’s operating theatre and let us together perform a little surgery upon some historic occurrences. In thus opening them up we shall make a great discovery – the detection of a pattern, moreover, a pattern possessing a purpose, a moral purpose.

Let us, however, to quote Ludwig Boerne: “Bring the history of the past not as a gloomy memento mori, but as a friendly forget-me-not who lessons we may recall with love.” (Fragmente & Aphorismen, 1840, #161)

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Since our “TREASURE FROM TENACH” are currently coming from the Book of Joshua, let us use that Divinely-inspired historic record as our operating theatre.

Since, in addition, the twelfth chapter of Joshua marks the terminus of the second section of the Book, let us use it as our operating table upon which to stretch for surgery the historic occurrences in the chronicles of Joshua thus far.

Jordan had been crossed; Jericho had fallen; Ai and Bethel had capitulated; Ebal and Gerizim had spoken their volumes; the Gibeonites had entered the horizon and, through their dissimulation, had confronted Israel with the most powerful coalition yet encountered – that of the five-king Amorite confederacy (Joshua 10). Nevertheless, Israel’s victories at Gibeon and at Beth Horon – “the house of caves” – and the subsequent capitulation of city after city had ultimately determined the fate of the whole area.

With central and south Canaan thus subjugated, Joshua had turned his attention to the north. Israel was facing not only all the Canaanite tribes from the Mediterranean Sea in the southwest right up to Mount Hermon in the northeast, but was also confronted with a new mode of warfare – horses and chariots. The task was so formidable that Joshua had received a further divine assurance of victory (Joshua 11:6).

Yavin (Jabin), king of Hatzor (Hazor), had assumed the leadership of the allied forces of the northern opponents of Joshua. Yavin probably means “the intelligent one” and this may have been a generic title of the kings of Hatzor, in the same manner that the title “Pharaoh” was employed of the monarchs of Egypt. The location of Hatzor was proximate to Lake Huleh and Kedesh-naphtali in the extreme north.

With lightning rapidity, Joshua had fallen upon the enemy by the “waters of Merom” and inflicted a sudden and decisive defeat upon them. They fled in three separate directions hotly pursued by the children of Israel, who inaugurated a systematic policy of subjugation extending over several years.

Again, city after city had capitulated. Those located in valley areas were destroyed by fire, whilst those situated upon commanding heights were preserved, with the sole exception of Hatzor itself (Joshua 11:10-13) Joshua’s campaigns in the south and in the north must have extended over a period of at least seven years (assumed from Joshua 14:10) and Israel was placed in the ascendency over Canaan from Mount Halak, the bare mountain extending to Seir in the southeast Negev, right up to the far north to the town of Baal-gad, a town dedicated to the cult of Gad, the god of fortune, and known as Caesarea Phillipi in the New Testament.

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Thus, from the Negev to the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon (Joshua 11:16-17) Israel was in power and possession; moreover, the dread Anakim had been driven out of Canaan into the Philistine cities of Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.

However, let it not be overlooked that Israel’s power and possession were part of a great Divine purpose, a purpose which even took cognizance of the fact that not all the Canaanite cities had succumbed, neither had all the inhabitants been exterminated (Joshua 13:1-6; 17:14ff; 18:3; 23:5,12. Cf. Exodus 23:28-30; Deuteronomy 7:22).

My dear friends, it was Goethe who said: “The dearest child of Faith is Miracle.” (Faust I.1.413.)

Beyond any doubt Faith and Miracle have been hand in hand as we have followed the exploits of Israel under Joshua in the conquest of Canaan.

However, it is normal for a child to have two parents and if we are to preserve our association of Faith and Miracle with the exploits of Israel under Joshua – and I am sure we are justified in doing so – then we must name Miracle’s other parent – Obedience.

Without doubt the whole Book of Joshua points unerringly to Faith and Obedience as the parents of Miracle. Ill-fortune haunts the heels of disobedience, but good fortune accompanies Faith and Obedience and Miracle is the natural – or, should I say, the supernatural – issue.

Joshua’s twelfth chapter makes a systematic enumeration of the thirty-one kings conquered by Faith and Obedience with Divine Miracle in attendance.

If we were to imitate the principle of summarization provided by that chapter we could enumerate many “lessons we may recall with love.”

It has been truly said, “Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the Book widens and deepens with our years” (Charles H. Spurgeon); hence, the timelessness of the spiritual principles shining eternally through the pages of the Book of Joshua.

Perhaps the highlight of instruction is to be found in the experiences of Israel at Shechem (Joshua 8:30-35) and at Gilgal (Joshua 9). In the former instance the Word of God was exalted; in the latter Prayer was neglected.

There is a living connection between the Holy Scriptures and Prayer which we do well to observe; it is a sort of “two-way traffic.” Through the Word of God, the Eternal Lord of the Universe speaks to us and through Prayer we speak to the Eternal Lord of the Universe.

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Let this not be thought a platitude. It has been said that “a prayerless regard for the Word of God is of no avail, and praying which neglects the Word of God is equally unavailing.”

By the Word of God I mean, of course, the Holy Scriptures, not the traditions of man, nor even the traditions either of ecclesiasticism or rabbinism, however sincere or well-meaning these traditions may be.

Here then, is a summary of spiritual salients disclosed by our surgery on Israel’s history thus far: “Conflict will last as long as sin lasts.

Compromise with sin will not be divinely tolerated.

Conquest or defeat are the only issues.

Campaigns are not won by a single victory.

Campaigns are not lost by a single defeat.

Cause of defeat may be discovered by prayer.

Constant faith combines with human effort.”

Courageous faith in the Captain of the Hosts of God, Whom Joshua met just over Jordan, will always cause us to conquer our Canaans.

Obedience and acceptance of God’s good news that Messiah died for our sins and rose from the dead for our justification will cause us individually to experience the Supreme Miracle of Regeneration. It is all too imperfectly realized that Israel, as a national entity, is destined to learn this great lesson and, believe me, it will indeed be a lesson Israel will love.

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UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS MY DEAR FRIENDS, the great Zvi Ben Eleazar has wisely observed: “A wing in the hand is poor

consolation when the drumstick is in the pot of others.”

Which observation alerts us to the vital difference between possessions possessed and possessions unpossessed. The wing may be enjoyed; but the drumstick in the pot of others is unenjoyed because unpossessed.

If the drumstick belongs to the others, I can make, of course, no point to the proverb. But if the others are possessors but not owners, then that drumstick is in a situation and circumstance not rightly relevant to it.

If the wing and the drumstick both rightly pertain to the possessions of the one person, then here is a sorry state of affairs. Meagreness within muchness. Paucity amidst plenitude. Minus in lieu of multiplication.

So it is, I am afraid, with most of us, particularly in realms spiritual. The words of the Eternal God to the aged Joshua come to mind: “Now Joshua was old and well stricken in years; and the Eternal said unto him: ‘Thou art old and well stricken in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.’” (Joshua 13:1) The “very much land” belonged by Divine gift to Israel yet, at the time the Eternal spoke these words to Joshua, it was “a drumstick in the pot of others.”

The Geshurites, the Avvim, the Philistines, though not descended from Canaan (Genesis 10:14) were, nevertheless, in the Divine decree to be counted as such and displaced accordingly.

This “very much land” ranged from the far south right up the seacoast to territory farther north, and so far as its non-Israelite inhabitants were concerned it could not be a “live and let live” proposition, even on the wing-drumstick basis, because the continuance of unsubdued races and unoccupied territories constituted a danger and potential threat to the Kingdom of God, as represented in Israel under Joshua entrusted with the commission to overthrow and eradicate heathenism.

A land still “very much” unpossessed and a leader very much “stricken” in years was a situation calling for action, not apathy.

By the promise of God the whole land, the wing and the drumstick, was the property of Israel but, though theirs, the whole land was not the possession of Israel.

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Israel’s unpossessed possessions were “very much” in magnitude and Joshua, the great successor of Moses and the one Divinely chosen to lead them into possession of their possessions, was already “well stricken” in years.

My friends, since the Holy Scriptures, although historical, are nevertheless Divinely intended as a supreme spiritual instrument for the instruction and enlightenment of Israel and all mankind today, I confess I am profoundly impressed with these opening words of the thirteenth chapter of Joshua.

Let me tell you what I see in Israel’s unpossessed possessions and in Israel’s leader, supernaturally preserved to secure those possessions for the people from whom he himself sprang.

First, see that the land under the Canaanites symbolized spiritual darkness to be eradicated and replaced by the light and truth of Revealed Religion.

For this immense task God had chosen first Moses to receive the Divine Law and then Joshua to implant the Divine Law. When we speak of the Law we must be careful to understand that term not only as a rule of conduct, based on known truth and acknowledged authority, but also as a revelation of God’s holy character and righteous purposes.

In this sense the word “Law” became further expanded to include all the Scripture books in what may be called the Canon of the Old Testament or Covenant.

The word “Canon” is found in classical Greek (kanon) to pertain to a straight rod, such as might be used in a shield or in weaving, or perhaps as a carpenter’s rule.

‘Tis an eloquent word, this word Canon. If you want to make a test to determine if anything is crooked, just put a straight rod, a canon, alongside it. All deviations will be immediately exposed.

That the Scriptures of the Old Testament were thus employed to measure and expose human religious error is evidenced by an interesting reference in the Jewish Apocryphal Book known as the First Book of Maccabees where is recorded the acts and persecutions of the Syrian king Antiochus IV, known as Antiochus Epiphanes, in the year 168 before the Common Era. In an effort to stamp out the Revealed Religion of God we read that at the command of this king: “The Books of the Law which they found, they tore into pieces and burned.” (I Maccabees 1.56) Moreover, the mere possession of a “book of the covenant” was punishable by death (Josephus XII. 5,4.).

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Another Apocryphal Book dating from approximately the same period and known as The Book of Wisdom refers to the Scriptures as “the law, the prophets, and the rest of the books,” thus pointing to a well known three-fold division of a then completed whole which we now know as the Old Testament.

The New Testament or Covenant likewise sets its stamp of authority and recognition of this completed Canon of Divine Revelation. You will find the reference in the Gospel according to Luke where is recorded the instruction given by the risen Messiah to His followers. Here are His words: “And He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me.” (Luke 24:44. See also Luke 24:27 and compare Acts 28:23.)

I mention these details to call your attention to the fact that in that period between Israel’s return from the Babylonian Exile and the First Advent of Messiah the Old Testament Canon was completed.

Just as the land of Canaan was divided by the Holy Spirit (Baba Bathra 122a) and allotted to the children of Israel for their possession and enjoyment, so, also, the Divinely-inspired Scriptures were divided by the Holy Spirit and allotted to the children of Israel for their possession and enjoyment.

But, as with the Holy Land, so with the Holy Literature can it not be said there remaineth yet “very much” to be possessed? Can Israel, nationally, be said to have possessed himself of all the spiritual land of milk and honey of his Holy Scriptures? Would that it were so!

However, the land of Israel’s Divinely-inspired Holy Literature is even wider than the area we have so far spied out. The God of Israel is pointing unmistakably to what may well be regarded as the drumstick!

Our great Prophet Jeremiah is the index finger used by the God of Israel, the God of Revelation, to point to this “very much land” yet to be possessed by Israel nationally. Indeed, the actual words of Jeremiah are “very much land” awaiting Israel’s possession.

If you haven’t yet seen this wonderful unpossessed possession of Israel, let us view it now from Jeremiah, chapter thirty-one, commencing at verse thirty:

           3 1 “Behold, the days come, saith the Eternal, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in

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the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I was a lord over them, saith the Eternal. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Eternal, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the Lord’; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Eternal; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.”

(Jeremiah 31:31-34) Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman, B.A., Ph.D., in his excellent commentary on this passage of Revealed Truth observes that: “God will make a new covenant with Israel which, unlike the old, will be permanent, because it will be inscribed on their hearts.”

Regarding the Divine forgiveness, the same worthy commentator remarks of sin and iniquity: “This being the obstacle which prevented them from ‘knowing’ god.”

My friends, the “very much land” awaiting Israel’s national possession, and “the drumstick” so very much “in the pot of others” is that same promised and prophesied New Covenant, New Testament.

Fortunately, very many of us as individual Jewish people are already enjoying the knowledge of the removal of the obstacle, sin, under that New Testament, New Covenant, and the atonement for sin it reveals; however, it yet awaits Israel’s national appropriation and possession.

Equally fortunately, that New Covenant, New Testament, is available to all and it is still a Joshua Who is Divinely-appointed and supernaturally preserved to implant its benefits.

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CHOICE BY CHANCE MY DEAR FRIENDS, suppose we were to drop the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet into a hat

and shake them up well to mix them very thoroughly. Then suppose we were to draw six of them out one at a time and place them side by side in the very order of their appearance. Finally, suppose those six letters thus arranged spelt out the word C,H,A,N,C,E – “chance.” What would you think?

Now a dictionary defines “chance” as the “the absence of any known reason why an event should turn out one way rather than another.”

John Armstrong declares: “This restless world is full of chances, which by habit’s power to learn to bear is easier than to shun.” (Art of Preserving Health, Bk.II,L.453) But Voltaire protests: “Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.” (A Philosophical Dictionary) In my opinion Voltaire is nearer the truth. On this same subject A.S. Steinberg, quoting Hannah Arendt the sociologist, has this to offer: “It is Accident that has become decisive for the structure of Jewish history. And Accident ... in the language of religion is called Providence.”

Perhaps one of the best illustrations of Providential Accident or Chance is to be found in the Talmud in commentary upon the division and apportionment of the land of Canaan under Joshua.

You will recall that the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh had elected to settle on the east side of the River Jordan. Of course, they had promised to help the remaining nine and a half tribes in the subjugation of the Canaanites (Numbers 32); and they kept their promise.

Now the time had come to allot the Promised Land to the nine and a half tribes west of Jordan.

The territory was first divided into seven regions (Joshua 18:6ff.) and then, in order to determine the apportionment to each tribe, lots were cast “before the Eternal our God.” (Joshua 18:6) The method of casting lots is not described in this portion of Scripture, but it is here that the Talmud supplies the interesting tradition I know you would like to hear. Here it is – “Eleazar was wearing the Urim and Thummim, while Joshua and all Israel stood before him. An urn containing the names of the tribes, and an urn containing descriptions of the boundaries were placed before him.

Animated by the Holy Spirit, he gave directions, exclaiming, ‘Zebulun’ is coming up and the boundary lines of Acco are coming up with it. Thereupon he shook well the urn of the tribes and Zebulun came up in his hand. Likewise, he shook well the urn of the boundaries and the boundary lines of Acco came up in his hand ...” (B.B. 122a)

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Similarly with the other tribes.

Now this, surely, is Providential Accident, Providential Chance, for behind the fall of the lots was the Holy Spirit!

Divine direction lay behind human activity and this is a factor that should never be overlooked in human history, whether that history pertain to the individual or to the nation.

Avoiding the “blind chance” of such as Saintine and the fatalism of the philosophical doctrine of the inevitable predetermination of all events, we steer a saner course in looking to the overruling, overriding, guiding hand of God. A dove can perch where it will and peck what it may. Its unrestricted liberty is restricted only to its individual characteristic of being a dove. Its circumstances and – shall I say? – its “dovehood” are the determinative factors within which it expresses its individual liberty.

God, however, created the “doveness” of the dove and He can, if He so desire, manipulate circumstances for weal or woe to stimulate the free activity of that which He creates.

Let me employ a warmer illustration. Suppose it were to your great personal advantage to be at a certain place at a certain time. Suppose, instead, you were imperilling your own welfare, idly wasting precious moments by sitting on a metal platform in slothful indolence.

Suppose, further, that I either could not or would not interfere with your own personal liberty or choice, yet I did have it in my power to manipulate an electric switch capable of heating that metal platform on which you were sitting to a red-hot heat.

Suppose, finally, in your own interests, I pressed that switch. Is it not reasonable to assume that there would be born in your bosom – discretion suggesting the metaphor – an increasing desire to terminate your personal contact with the platform?

Of course, you would be at perfect liberty to remain there indefinitely, but I cannot escape the conviction that your choice would be otherwise. If you decided to be up and on your way, undoubtedly the choice would be yours.

To the uninformed onlooker there would be an absence of known reason why your rising or sitting should turn out one way rather than the other. Doubtless the chances, to him, would be about even.

But to any who knew of the electric switch, chance had little chance of keeping you at rest upon the platform. The choice was yours, yet there was a hand behind the choice. The illustration is,

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admittedly, imperfect yet it does go right to the seat of the subject and suggests the words of Shakespeare: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2) However, we must return to Canaan. Although the children of Joseph – Manasseh and Ephraim – were reckoned as two tribes the Scriptures never once speak of thirteen tribes. There is, I feel, a spiritual significance in this.

I have pointed out elsewhere that there is a meaningful mathematical structure discoverable in the physical sciences. In atomic science, for instance, numbers nominate, ciphers confirm, digits demonstrate. Since the Works of God possess design in numbers, why not also in the Word of God? Why, then, are the tribes of Israel always reckoned as twelve and never thirteen? Is it because the number thirteen is Scripturally associated with sin and rebellion whereas the number twelve conjures the concept of governmental perfection? So long as the sacrificial system obtained in Israel, the number of sin and rebellion could have no connection with Israel viewed nationally; hence, since the objectives of Holy Scripture are spiritual, this number thirteen is avoided.

One is reminded of the confession wrung by the Holy Spirit from the lips of the unworthy soothsayer Balaam: “He hath not behold iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel ... ” (Numbers 23:21) The blood of atonement for sin constituted, therefore, a righteous authorization for Israel nationally to share in the God-decreed territorial allotment of land under the Divine captaincy and leadership of the Messianic Being Who confronted Joshua just over Jordan.

For those who have a taste for the fascination of figures let me add that the designation of Himself which God gave to Moses at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3) has a numerical content of a trinity of sevens. Seven being the number of spiritual perfection, this is a revelation of Triune Perfection in the Deity.

It is equally interesting to observe that when Moses begins his Divine commission of inaugurating the process that led to the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage by the blood of the Paschal Lamb, God confides to Moses certain details regarding His memorial Name Ye Ho Va H, the Sacred Tetragrammaton.

The numerical content of this Sacred Name is startling. It is thirteen multiplied by two. However, a rich spiritual lesson is here also! Two is the number of perfect witness. The God of Triune

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Perfection gives a Perfect Witness to sin and discloses Himself in Messiah as the Divine Redeemer from sin.

The spiritual lessons to be drawn from this history are manifold and comforting. Surely, we are directed to behold the superlative efficacy of the Blood of Atonement shed for the remission of sin

by Israel’s Great Messiah-Redeemer. An Atonement which guarantees to individuals, whether Jew or Gentile, not only the non-imputation of all that could be associated with that number thirteen, but, on the positive side, the imputation of righteousness and a Divine allotment of adequate spiritual territory in Olam HaBa – the world to come.

If Israel will place his trust in that God-provided redemption then, no matter what be the lot, the Divine Hand is behind it!

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THE PRICE OF A DOG MY DEAR FRIENDS, one of our greatest Jewish writers, illumined by the Spirit of God, in his famous

Homily to the Hebrews speaks of those who: “ ... by faith conquered kingdoms, executed justice, won promises, stopped the mouths of lions, deprived fire of its power, escaped the devouring sword, from being weak were made strong, became mighty in battle and hurled back the ranks of the foe.” (Hebrews 11:33-34) When I turn my contemplation from this much-to-be-desired, all-conquering power of faith in search of those whose achievements gave evidence that they possessed it, I find among them a figure to whom I have referred before (“TREASURES FROM TENACH,” No. 113) He bears the somewhat provocative name Caleb

, thought by some to be what we may call a

sound-name (onomatopoetic). That is, a name the sound or pronunciation of which is an imitation of a sound produced by the object represented in the name. For example, we call a certain bird a cuckoo, thus bestowing upon it a name purporting to be an imitation of the sound the bird makes.

The name Caleb, if really a sound-name, is held to suggest the sound of a wild dog-like animal pressing forward to the attack.

However, it is not the name but the person possessing it who arrests our interest and illustrates that quality of faith which pays such very large dividends.

I first introduced Caleb to your notice when we journeyed together through the fourth book of Moses known as Numbers, or in Hebrew as Bemidbar. Then, we discerned Caleb believing; now we discover Caleb receiving.

There, in the Book of Numbers, we read of the test and triumph of Caleb’s faith. Here, in the Book of Joshua, we read of the tribute with which that faith was rewarded.

Since faith and faith’s reward reflect undying spiritual principles beneficially operative even today it will be to our advantage to explore the background, the outlook, and the activities of Caleb just a little more fully than we did previously.

Viewing him as a personification of faith let us see the following four forceful factors.

First, let it be noted that faith brought RESENTMENT. Oh, yes! The Divine Revelation of Holy Scripture swings its searchlight initially upon Caleb as one of the twelve leaders sent by Moses to reconnoitre the Land of Canaan in the second year of Israel’s exodus from Egypt.

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He and Joshua constituted the one-sixth minority who, without minimizing the difficulties, nevertheless urged a bold entrance into and possession of the Divinely-promised patrimony.

For opposing his faith against the unfaith of the majority he narrowly escaped being stoned to death by the infuriated multitude.

Faith in the promises of God will usually bring resentment from the multitude if it involves the possible discomfort or danger of leaving one well-trodden area for a new one, even though the occupied area be a wilderness and the new one a land of milk and honey!

The invitation of faith to leave the howling wilderness of mere human tradition and enter the land of Divine spiritual promise frequently gives rise to resentment.

The second factor to which I call your attention is so interesting and so illuminating that I made a passing reference to it when I first confronted you with this Caleb.

If ever Israel had an enemy that enemy was Edom! The hatred of Esau for Jacob was perpetuated and accentuated down the ages. descendants of Jacob.

The Edomites were descendants of Esau; the Israelites, the

Where what we may call national expression is concerned, the Edomites preceded the Israelites for we read of the kings of Edom that they “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” – that is, before the time of Moses, for Moses was actually a king in Israel (Deuteronomy 33:5; Exodus 18:16-19).

Where national attitude is concerned the Edomites persecuted the Israelites. They peremptorily refused Israel passage through their territory (Numbers 20:14-21). When Jerusalem was besieged

by Nebuchadnezzar, the Edomites joined in the sacking of the city and the slaughter of the Israelites (cf. Psalm 137). The hated King Herod the Great was an Edomite, and Idumean, and it was these same Idumeans who bathed Jerusalem in blood and pillaged the city ruthlessly in those days following the advent of the Messiah Yeshua and prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 of the Common Era. Where God’s attitude is concerned, the prophets of Israel pronounced dire judgements upon the Edomites for their consistent cruelty to Israel (Isaiah 34:5-8; 63:1-4; Jeremiah 49:17; Ezekiel 25:12ff; 35:3ff; Amos 1:11, 12; Obadiah 1ff). Surely Edom’s attitude to Israel has been that of a wild dog pressing forward to the attack.

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The Hebrew word for “dog” is first Scripturally used at Exodus 11:7 where the Divine attitude to Israel is again revealed – “But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue ... ” Where Israel’s national worship was concerned, the “price of a dog” in payment of a vow was prohibited as an abomination unto the Eternal (Deuteronomy 23:18).

Surely, the word “dog,” caleb, was an appropriate appellation for the persecutors of Israel and it fitted none better than the Edomites.

We are now prepared, then, for a sweet spiritual lesson as we return our gaze to this Caleb, this giant of faith, this prince in the tribe of Judah, this chosen vessel of the God of Israel.

Caleb is described as the “the son of Jephunneh (the Kenizzite” (Numbers 13:6; 32:12; Joshua 14:6, 14; 15:13; Judges 1:13), and the Kenizzites sprang from Kenaz, (are you ready for a surprise) and Edomite! Our model of faith not only bears a name associated in idea with that of a dog, but there is a strong probability – though certainty is admittedly lacking – that he bore the wild-dog ancestry of Edom!

How, then, do we find him in the Messianic tribe of the children of Israel, known as Judah? Surely, his faith brought CITIZENSHIP among the people of God. My friends, this is a Divine principle unchanged today, as true for Gentiles as for Israel. The Gentiles preceded the Jews; sadly, the Gentiles have persecuted the Jews; for this Divine judgement has been pronounced upon the Gentiles. Yet, such is the justice and grace of the God of Israel that faith in Messiah will bring the believing Gentile, as well as the believing Jew, into citizenship among the children of Israel’s Messiah, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Faith’s third and fourth factors come so fast they tread upon another’s heels.

Faith brought

PRESERVATION and faith brought INHERITANCE. Hear the stout and sturdy words of Caleb to Joshua now standing in the very Promised Land they once spied out together. “And now, behold, the Eternal hath kept me alive, as He spoke, these forty and five years...and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me...Now, therefore, give me this mountain ...”

(Joshua 14:10-12, 15) As strong as ever at age eighty-five! Moreover, note the claim “Give me this mountain”! At the time the faith-filled Caleb lodged his claim it was not merely an unconquered mountain, but it and all Hebron was back in the possession of the dreaded Anakim, the very giants who had struck terror

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into the hearts of the ten spies sent into Canaan by Moses with this same Caleb and Joshua so many years earlier.

Now Caleb viewed the same mountain and the same difficulties and dangers, but he also took full cognizance of the same faithful God by Whom the promise of possession was made and he lodged his claim accordingly.

The claim of Faith was met, the mountain conquered; yes, even from the dreaded Anakim, and so of Caleb we read: “And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of the Eternal ... ” (Joshua 15:13) My friends, what matters the resentment when the reward transforms the “price of a dog” into the possession of a diadem!

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THE MENACE OF MISUNDERSTANDING MY DEAR FRIENDS, misunderstanding is a parthenogenetic female possessing progeny the most

perverted. Among her unhappy daughters are Mischief, Misrepresentation, and Misdeed.

Let me tell you about a most pathetic misunderstanding which could have had tragic consequences.

It happened thousands of years ago but, although embedded in history so ancient, it nevertheless yields two imperishable treasures – a salutary reflection and a startling revelation. We will absorb the reflection in this message and view the revelation in that message immediately succeeding.

It all happened this way. Way back in the days of Moses, whilst the children of Israel were on the way to the Promised Land west of the River Jordan, they came into sight of some unrivalled pasture lands east of that river.

The tribes of Reuben and Gad were the most pastoral of all Israel’s children and during their wanderings their cattle and flocks had increased very considerably.

The magnificent pasture-fat tablelands of Gilead constituted an allurement far too strong for these tribes to resist.

The threatening power of Midian, east of Jordan, had been broken and all borders seemed safe from attack and the way well open to occupy and enjoy these wide upland pastures. Surely no Land of Promise could gladden the eye more than these delectable parklands.

Accordingly, the “children of Gad” and the “children of Reuben” petitioned Moses eagerly and urgently to bestow upon them this fertile eastern territory – “let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan” they said. (Numbers 2:5) Moses was immediately smitten with apprehension. Would divided interests and divided activity threaten seriously the Divine command to conquer and occupy Canaan? His concern is apparent in his prompt retort to the request; “Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here? And wherefore will ye turn away the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Eternal hath given them? Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadeshbarnea to see the land ... And the Eternal’s anger was kindled against Israel, and He made them wander to and fro in the wilderness forty years ... ” (Numbers 32:6-8, 13) Moses’ concern was undoubtedly understandable for this petition presented a problem of perilous potentiality. But did Moses understand the petitioners? I cannot say, for who knows their first intentions. However, they gave Moses a solemn pledge that their warriors would accompany and

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fight with the rest of Israel across the Jordan and not return to the eastern possessions they solicited until the children of Israel should have inherited every man his inheritance (verse 18).

I imagine it was not without misgivings that Moses granted the petition, and assigned to them, provisionally, the ancient kingdoms of Sihon and Og east of Jordan.

The point to note here is that these tribes of Reuben and Gad, together with half the tribe of Manasseh who joined with them in eastern inheritance, became suspect merely because of their choice.

After the death of Moses those two and a half tribes repeated to Joshua their solemn pledge of loyalty to Israel and wholehearted assistance in the attainment of Israel’s Divine objectives. But more. They acknowledged the Eternal God of Israel in their solemn assurances to Joshua. (Joshua 1:16-18) They kept their word and played a valiant part in the subjugation of Canaan; so much so that when the time came for them to leave the land west of Jordan and cross the river to their eastern possessions, the great warrior Joshua himself uttered words of warm commendation: “Ye have kept all that Moses the servant of the Eternal commanded you, and have hearkened unto my voice in all that I commanded you; ye have not left your brethren ... ” (Joshua 22:2, 3) What glorious commendation! Loyal not only to Moses but also to the one Divinely chosen to succeed him in leading Israel into his inheritance. Even more. They have maintained a whole hearted identity of interests with their brethren whom they had not deserted for a moment.

How sad that those who possessed such qualities and who proved themselves worthy of such words could ever have been suspect! They had not left their brethren.

But that wretched jade Misunderstanding was to inflict upon them a yet greater injustice.

Joshua had dismissed these proven and faithful warriors with his exhortation and blessing, charging them to love the God of our fathers, to walk in His ways, keep His commandments, and cleave unto Him, serving Him with heart and soul. (Joshua 22:5, 6) He had bidden them take with them their hard-earned war-spoils to share with their brethren who were guarding the women and children in the fortified cities east of Jordan.

Joshua’s heart must have been heavy as he watched them depart from the central sanctuary of God at Shiloh on their journey to their eastern possessions.

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No doubt the hearts of the departing tribes were equally sad. Theirs had been such a blessed unity with the other tribes. Perhaps impulsively, they decided to do something that would demonstrate to all generations on both sides of Jordan their continued oneness with their brethren.

Close to their line of march from Shiloh to Gilead, and about twenty miles north of Jericho, on a lofty summit towering above the Jordan valley, they erected a great altar that could be seen far and wide.

How pathetic that it was this same warm-hearted act which gave opportunity for destructive misunderstanding to spawn indignation and alarm in the hearts of the western tribes of Israel, those very people for whom this altar had been erected by the eastern tribes as a permanent monument of their identity and sympathy with, and attachment to, their brethren. It was to be a “witness” to the fact that they were co-heirs with them and was intended as a memorial establishing a link between the land of the two and a half tribes and the land of the rest of Israel.

It was nothing short of malignant misunderstanding, then, that gathered the western tribes together at Shiloh with the actual intention of going to war against those same two and a half tribes who had so consistently demonstrated their unity and trustworthiness.

They jumped to the hasty conclusion that a schismatic altar had been erected contrary to the express commands of which we read in Leviticus 17 (vv 8, 9) and in Deuteronomy 12 (vv 13, 14) and which prescribed a centralized sacrificial service the breach of which might bring Divine punishment upon all Israel in consequence (Deuteronomy 13:12-18). Hence the armed men of the various western tribes assembled for warlike action against Reuben, Gad, and eastern Manasseh.

What a terrible thing if Misunderstanding had been as blind as Prejudice and inter-tribal war had resulted!

Why didn’t those so hasty in their conclusions stop to ponder the fact that this allegedly schismatic altar had been erected on the western, not the eastern, side of the river.

Fortunately, in conformity with the same laws of Israel, before resorting to violence, a deputation consisting of the High Priest’s son Phinehas and ten chosen heads representing each western tribe was commissioned to cross the Jordan to Gilead, and expostulate with the two and a half tribes and demand an explanation of what was construed by them as apostasy, , towards the God of Israel.

The accused tribes uttered a vehement protest against the interpretation which had been placed upon their action. It was not an altar of sacrifice they had erected. Their conduct had been wholly misunderstood.

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Not as a token of separation from the tabernacle and worship of the God of Israel; neither as a symbol of disunity with their brethren had this altar been erected. On the contrary. Being erected on the western side of Jordan it was intended as a witness and memorial to all generations that the two and a half tribes formed an integral part of Israel and acknowledged none but the God of Israel!

This frank avowal not only cleared away the cloud of misunderstanding but moved all concerned with great emotion. To have been on the scene at the time would have been a very touching experience. It was a witness of unity and identification it was discovered, not the contrary.

I understand this memorial can still be seen today, projecting like a white bastion towards the river.

The Talmud refers to it as Surtubeh and the ascent is called Tal’ at abu ‘Ayd, “the going up to Ed.” The word “ed” means witness.

My dear friends, beware of Misunderstanding. There are, and from the inception have been, many Jewish people who believe not only in Moses, but also in the One like unto Moses of who Moses speaks in Deuteronomy 18, Moses’ greater successor, the Messiah Yeshua, the One Divinely appointed to lead both Jew and Gentile together into the spiritual Promised Land of eternal redemption from sin.

Moreover, those of us Jewish people who so believe are equally persuaded that we have received our inheritance by authority from Moses himself and the Heavenly Joshua, the Messiah, has surely confirmed this to us in our personal experience.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Please realize that it can truly be said of us, as of the two and a half tribes, “Ye have not left your brethren.”

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THE REWARDING REVELATION MY DEAR FRIENDS, I looked down affectionately at my dog.

He was sitting at my side in

motionless survey of the landscape framed for his gaze by the window of the room in which I laboured at my researches. Outside the magnetic morning, sun-soaked and winsome, allured with an attraction not to be denied. Suddenly I spoke to my intimate canine companion – “What about a walk, old fellow?” Instantly, that handsome hairy head was switched towards me and two lovely brown eyes flashed heir approval to the background music of a ridiculous little appendage – hardly a tail, more like a short story – that thumped the floor in rhythmic applause at my suggestion.

That started it. We journeyed together in mutual enjoyment of the morning, but, while he was busy in ecstatic exploration of those various opportune odors which captivate doggy nostrils, I began to ruminate on the mysteries surrounding the subject of the meaning of meaning. If that dog of mine did not know what I had said he certainly knew the meaning of what I had said in English!

Moreover, I knew from experience that he knew the meaning of what I had said in English! I was convinced that had I conveyed the same message to him in a language other than English I would not have had the same intelligent and alacritous response. You see, my dog only “spoke” English.

Oh yes, I’m quite serious about this.

I remember once, in my youthful days of Army service in France, back at my billet I met a shaggy little canine whose jaunty demeanour, interrogatively tilted head, and pricked up ears, combined to invite mutual acquaintance. Stretching out my hand and snapping my fingers I said, “Here, boy!

Here!” To my dismay, my gesture which had begun to win response, was instantly robbed of its effectiveness by my words. That little head tilted just a little more; a suggestion of suspicion could now be seen in that brown glance and, worst of all, the eloquent tail was silent. Why this sudden barrier between us? Then it dawned on me. The barrier between us was meaning, just meaning.

My hoped-for friend didn’t “speak” English. He was a French-speaking dog. Maintaining my posture, I changed it to “Ici! Ici!” The effect was prompt and productive. An immediate exchange of head-patting and finger-licking ensued, and that prehensile tail soon became a conductor’s baton in a symphony of merry friendship.

Without entering technically into the philosophy of symbolism and semantics, it is nevertheless obvious that in certain situations sounds are symbols – and meaningful symbols, too. Charles Pierce, pioneer in semantics, made an inventory of “symbol-situations” producing icons, qualisigns, legisigns, semes, phemes, and delomes to the tune of 59,049 types!

Avoiding 59,049 headaches, let us agree that words have meaning. But that is, of course, an oversimplification, for words can have meaning only as they conjure ideas, concepts, impressions, to the mind. But even that is not all. A single word can give birth to single or multiple concepts or it can produce ideas that differ in the minds of different individuals. Let me illustrate again.

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Imagine a circle of thin paper enclosed in a hoop. We have a paper hoop. Now let me write one word on it – the word “STERN.” S-T-E-R-N. See, bounding through that paper hoop, like a performing dog in a circus, there leaps into your mind an idea – perhaps even ideas. What is it?

What are they? If, in your lifetime, you had been under the protracted influence of a rigorous or austere parental or tutorial discipline, the representation that burst into your consciousness through our paper hoop would possess a countenance with beetling brows and severe gaze. On the other hand, you might have seen a violin and heard a melody, for who could forget the playing of Isaac Stern! Of course, I am instant to admit that if you were a seafaring individual that paper hoop would have been pierced by the hinder part of a ship and your nostrils would have inhaled the ocean’s obvious ozone.

Moreover, where words are multiplied and arranged there is added meaning. Mere multiplication will not suffice, there must be meaningful arrangement, too. Another illustration? Very well. Take your dictionary. Open at random, say under the letter “r.” Here are a few words – remonstrate, remontant, remora. See what I mean? There is a multiplication of three words, but they together have no real meaning for us; indeed, the last two of the trio may be most unfamiliar to some of us and consequently convey no picture at all to associate with or amplify the initial one.

But here’s my point. Of course, if they have been used in that order and relation INTENTIONALLY, then we would have had to understand that they had meaning even if we did not immediately grasp that meaning. It would be up to us to search for and discover that meaning by a little patient investigation.

Let us take another look at that trio of words. The first was “remonstrate.” Well, we all know that word; that word means “to protest.” What is the meaning of “remontant?” If a flower, particularly a rose, blooms more than once in a season it is said to be remontant. And “remora?” This word sounds a bit fishy, doesn’t it? So it is, by the way, for it is the name of a species of fish that attach themselves to other fish or objects by means of a sucking disk located on top of the head.

All this gives us a bit more meaning but it would not make sense unless we knew the connection of ideas between the protest about multiseasonal blooms with fishy attachments! Naturally there is no such connection between the words I have used merely because they were selected at random from the dictionary. We would just have to invent a connection out of the position in which we found them.

However, there is no inventiveness invited if we now turn to the Scripture and select another trio of words, this time from the Book of Joshua. You will remember that in my last message I made reference to the two and a half tribes who claimed from Moses their inheritance on the eastern side of the River Jordan.

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They had been in close unity with the rest of the tribes of Israel west of the river and had faithfully served with them under Joshua in the conquest of Canaan. On their way back to their eastern possessions they had built, perhaps impulsively, a memorial, a memorial to commemorate that oneness but their action was misconstrued by their western brethren and they were unjustly charged with having erected a schismatic altar.

The misunderstanding was, fortunately, cleared up but, in protesting their innocence, the eastern tribes, with deliberation and with intelligence, I am sure, twice used a trio of words which were pregnant with meaning not only to themselves but also to those to whom they used them in remonstrance.

You will find that trio of words in the twenty-second chapter of Joshua and the twenty-second verse but, as is so frequently the case, the English translation conceals rather than reveals the true meaning and significance of the Hebrew text. The English Authorized Version has it: “The LORD God of gods, the LORD God of gods, he knoweth ...” Frankly, I cannot find myself satisfied with this translation. Can it not convey the false idea that there really is a multiplicity of “gods” over which the “LORD God” is the supreme God? Our Jewish translations, I confess, are equally unsatisfactory to me. One reads – “The God of gods, the Eternal, the God of gods, the Eternal, he knoweth ... ” (Leeser), whilst another Jewish translation says – “God, God, the Lord, God, God, the Lord, He knoweth ... ” Let me give you the Hebrew text and then follow it with a bare literal translation into which we shall search with profit for deeper meaning – for that meaning must have been apparent to all concerned in the day of its original utterance. Here, then, is the Hebrew:  ...        22 Word for word the English translation is: “God Gods YeHoVaH God Gods YeHoVah He knoweth ... ” The first word is in the singular, the second in the plural, and the third is the Sacred Tetragrammaton, the Memorial Name disclosed to Israel by God, the pronunciation of which we have, as I think unwisely, lost.

That we are confronted with a phenomenon embedded in these ancient words and their juxtaposition I am fully persuaded. We encounter this alluring arrangement again in Psalm 50, verse 1, upon which Rabbi Dr. A. Cohen, M.A., Ph.D., D.H.L., observes: “Hebrew el elohim adonai, representing the Deity in three aspects: the Mighty One, the Judge, the Gracious One.”

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In my judgement Rabbi Cohen is nearer the meaning, but has not quite hit the mark. My dear friends, I am convinced that the phenomenon presented by this Biblical trio reflects harmoniously the inference derived from phenomena of similar character elsewhere in the Scriptures and which combines to point us to a startling revelation regarding the Deity. I suggest that that revelation refutes equally a unitarian, a polytheistic, and a tritheistic view of God, but does justify the concept of Deity as a PERFECT UNITY IN A TRIUNITY OF CONSCIOUS CENTRES OF PERSONALITY. I doubt if there is any definition that can afford a complete or completely accurate representation of the Deity, but the ancient protestation we have been examining could suggest that those employing it were doing full justice to the pristine revelation vouchsafed to our fathers by the Only True and Blessed God. If this is so, it makes more intelligible the bold declaration of our Jewish Talmud which affirms – “Three there are who are called by – the Tetragrammaton – The Distinguished Name.” This also unlocks the mystery of Deity incarnate as the Man-Messiah, Who offered Himself through the Holy Spirit and Who has redeemed us, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, and Who has thereby won us a ransom that lasts forever.

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PASSPORT TO PRIVILEGE MY DEAR FRIENDS, I suppose each of us is acquainted with the pathetic scene immortalized in those

superb words: “Old Mother Hubbard, she went to the cupboard To get the poor dog a bone.

But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none.”

If one’s mind should be in a whimsical mood one may be somewhat reminded of Mother Hubbard’s unfortunate canine when, in reading of the distribution of the Promised Land among the tribes of Israel, we come across these words in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 13:33): “But unto the tribe of Levi Moses gave no inheritance ...”

Yet, if we invited the tribe of Levi to share in that profusion of sympathy we feel naturally towards Mother Hubbard’s dog, our invitation would be premature and our sympathy misplaced. Not poverty, but privilege, was Levi’s bestowed inheritance. Moreover, as we shall see, that particular tribe became the subject of a most remarkable fulfilment of prophecy and, accordingly, the object of great instruction for those of us today who have a mind for profit in realms other than financial.

The cupboard opened by Divine grace to Levi was far from empty. You will see what I mean if I now complete the verse of Scripture which I only partially quoted above. Here are the words which follow: “... YeHoVah, God(s) of Israel, He is their inheritance, as He spake unto them.”

This verbal cupboard may not be large in wordy content but in treasure it is incalculable! However, we must go to the source of the story.

The figure of Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah, appears in a sanguinary silhouette against a background blackened by base behaviour in which he was joined by his brother Simeon. His sister Dinah had suffered an indignity at the hands of Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite. An honourable redress was proffered to and accepted by the patriarch Jacob. In spite of this, and in circumstances most unfair to the Hivites, Levi allowed himself to be consumed by the fires of an indignant anger which burnt up common human decency and found him standing in the pages of Scripture with a bloody sword dripping dishonour from its blade. (Genesis 34) His father Jacob never forgot nor recovered from this wound to the good name of Israel. Prior to his demise the patriarch cursed the anger of Levi and Simeon and uttered the prophecy which, I have not doubt, will be a source of fascination for us as we behold the form of its unfolding.

Quoting from the fifth and seventh verses of the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, I give you Jacob’s words: “Simeon and Levi are brethren; weapons of violence their kinship ...Cursed be their

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anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”

The use of the personal pronoun in the first person, singular number, coupled to the fact that Jacob knew that it was from his deathbed that he uttered these words – he did, in fact, expire immediately after their pronouncement – afford adequate indication that the patriarch spoke under the inspiration and impulse of the Holy Spirit and was thus giving verbal expression to an intention of Deity respecting Simeon and Levi.

If you will please add the prophecy of God to the propensity of Levi you will find that they join together not only to make a fascinating story but also to provide no small measure of personal comfort.

Levi’s disposition towards indignant anger, admittedly misdirected in the matter of the Hivites, was – if the science of genetics is to be trusted – a property apparently carried forward in the genes of his chromosomes and thus became a hereditary factor in his descendants, a characteristic which the All-Wonderful God of the Universe harnessed to His service and His glory.

Do we not, therefore, discern this same strong indignation against violation of rectitude upon the occasion of the Golden Calf? The incident is too well known to need mention here and the record can be read in full in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus. Suffice to observe that when Moses uttered the challenge, crying: “Who is on the side of the Eternal, let him come unto me” it was “all the sons of Levi” who “gathered themselves together unto him.”

If our second Biblical picture associated with the name of Levi again reveals the blood-stained sword, this time in the hands of Levi’s descendants, let it be noted that it was wielded at the command of God for the vindication of His honour and the preservation of His great Revelation.

So it appears that a hereditary disposition of character, otherwise precarious, can be harnessed by God and channelled by His power to produce expressions and outlets issuing in credit to the human possessors of that propensity and to the God Who gives them life. The name Levi means “to be attached to,” “to be joined to”; and although it appears quite clear from Exodus 19:6 that the offer made to Israel by the Eternal was that the whole nation should attach itself to Him and be a nation of priests, yet on account of the gross and culpable idolatry of the Golden Calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, this one special tribe of Levi became selected for attachment to the service of the sanctuary and the priestly office and function.

You will remember that when the Eternal delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage, He sanctified all the firstborn of Israel for Himself. Here, however, the Levites are substituted for the firstborn and God declares: “For all the first-born among the children of Israel are Mine, both man and beast;

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on the day that I smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for Myself. And I have taken the Levites instead of all the first-born among the children of Israel.” (Numbers 8:17, 18) I think you may like to read the whole record in the eighth chapter of Numbers.

The Levites were thus claimed by God in a status so special that they received no inheritance in the Land of Promise similar to the other tribes but their inheritance was, rather, in the Lord of the Land of Promise. (Refer Deuteronomy 10:9; 18:1.)

God thus placed the Levites, His ministers, in the position of direct dependence upon Himself. He did, however, command that they were to receive their sustenance from the tithes of the other tribes.

Indeed, Israel was Divinely warned not to neglect this privileged responsibility: “Take heed to thyself that thou forsake not the Levite ...” (Deuteronomy 12:19) When this creditable Levitical position is viewed against the background of their eponymous ancestor, Levi, who snorted in “anger” (root, anaph), and whose “wrath” (root, ‘avar) pushed him beyond the proper bounds – for that is the root meaning embedded in the Hebrew words – are we not justified in detecting the gracious finger of the Divine Potter upon the human clay, redirecting and refining this very same disposition?

And what of the “dividing” and “scattering” in Israel? How wonderfully and unexpectedly this was fulfilled! The curse was turned into a blessing and the original prediction modified because of the zeal and fidelity displayed by the Levites at the scene of the Golden Calf.

God had said they should be “divided” and they were. The priestly Levites, the sons of Aaron, were assigned residence in thirteen cities and the non-priestly Levites in thirty-five cities (Kohathites, ten; Gershonites, thirteen; Merarites, twelve), a total of forty-eight cities. Moreover, since these cities were widely distributed throughout the land, including two beyond Jordan, the Levites were indeed literally “scattered” in Israel – yet, you will admit, in circumstances savouring of a blessing rather than a cursing.

Before unearthing further “Treasures from Tenach” in respect of these Levites, I believe I can safely anticipate some curiosity regarding Simeon, confederate with his brother, you will remember, in that original unsavoury act of violence from which Jacob so vigorously dissociated himself, and consequently sharer in the Divine denunciation and decision.

Parenthetically, then, let me add that the tribe of Simeon was “divided” and “scattered” within the area and tribe of Judah in a manner so thorough that they well nigh lost identity as a separate unit.

Now a final word, first of instruction, and then of comfort, for those who, today, serve the Living God in sincerity and in truth and in accordance with the Revelation of His Word.

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An individual Levite was not eligible for the service of the sanctuary until he attained the age of twenty-five years; even then he was under a five year probationary period until age thirty. From which I gather that God chooses no novices for His service but points rather to proper training and instruction as a prerequisite. (Cf. Numbers 8:24 with Numbers 4:3) Now the word of comfort. Although the Levite retired at age 50, it was only from arduous and heavy manual labour; he retained attachment to the ministry of God until the end of his days.

Hence, my friends, there are no really old men in god’s service. He sustains His true ministers in strength and vitality until they continue their worship in the Promised Land above.

“The race of God’s anointed priests shall never pass away; Before His glorious face they stand, and serve Him night and day.

Though reason raves and unbelief flows on, a mighty flood, There are, and shall be, till the end, the hidden priests of God, His Chosen souls, their earthly dross consumed in sacred fire; To God’s own heart their hearts ascend in flame of deep desire; The incense of their worship fills His Temple’s holiest place: Their song with wonder fills the Heavens, the glad new song of grace.” (G. Ter Stegen)

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THE INHERITANCE OF JUDAH The Lion’s Share MY DEAR FRIENDS, you are, of course, all familiar with the expression “the lion’s share.” It is a

phrase popularly employed to denote the major portion, the larger acquisition or, to indulge in error both mathematical and grammatical, “the biggest half.”

I wonder, however, if you are aware that “the lion’s share” is a phrase that can be enlisted to clothe both prophecy and history of great antiquity.

For the prophecy we must visit the deathbed of the patriarch Jacob who, when announcing “what shall befall his son in the end of days” – that is, the Messianic era – declares of Judah, his fourth son by Leah: “Judah, thou, thy brethren shall praise thee; Thine hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; Before thee shall bow down the sons of thy father. A lion’s whelp is Judah; From the prey, my son, thou goest up; He stoopeth down, he coucheth as a lion, And as a full-grown lion, who shall rouse him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, Nor lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh come, And unto Him the peoples shall adhere.” (Genesis 49:8-10) In this great mystic Messianic prediction it seems that Heaven’s hand reached down to earth and branded the leonine imprint upon the person, the progeny, and the prophetic panorama of Judah. In describing the various standards and banners of the tribes of Israel, our ancient Jewish tradition has this to say: “Judah’s standard bore in its upper part the figure of a lion ... ” It is poetically appropriate, then, that when we come to the distribution of the Promised Land under Joshua and his co-dignitaries (Joshua 14) we find “Judah the lion” getting the lion’s share (Joshua 15:20-63).

At this time the powerful and princely tribe of Judah numbered some 76,500 (Numbers 26:22) and the area allotted to them has been estimated at 3000 square miles, computed as being nearly onethird of Western Palestine. Southwards, they were granted twenty-nine cities in the Negev; westwards, thirty-nine in the Shephelah; central, forty-four cities in the “hill country”; eastwards, six in the “wilderness of Judah.” In addition, they had the three Philistine cities of Ekron, Gaza, and Ashdod. The Scripture also speaks of “villages” but does not necessarily indicate their number.

For those with a taste for the individual gems of sparkling interest, I must add that within the area allotted to Judah were nine cities for the priests, and another, named Hebron, was famed not only as the inheritance of the great Caleb, but also noted as being one of the important Cities of Refuge (Joshua 21).

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Whilst the casting of the lot may have determined the actual situation of any particular tribe, yet it appears that tribal size was the determining factor where actual extent and boundaries were concerned. This principle, among other factors, would appear to account for the close relationship with Judah of the tribes of Simeon and Benjamin. The former was practically integrated within the Lion Tribe on the southwest (Joshua 19:9), whilst to the latter, with Judah, passed the future capital, the fair Jerusalem herself (cf. Joshua 15:63 with Joshua 18:11-28), unconquered until the time of the great King David, at once scion and ancestor of the Messiah-Redeemer, as our Jewish Midrash, Bereshith Rabba, declares of the Messiah: “Israel’s last redeemer was born before its first enslaver.” (Gen. R.85:1) In that interesting quotation the “last redeemer” is, of course, Messiah; the “first enslaver” refers to Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus. The present King David Hotel stands right within the area granted to the Lion Tribe.

The Lion’s Sceptre Turning now from the lion’s share to the lion’s sceptre, we find that the meaning of the word “Judah” – in Hebrew “Yehudah” – is full of interest and significance. Grammatically, it is derived from the Hophal, Future, and basically signified – “He (that is God) shall be praised.” (Cf. Genesis 29:35) This kingly lion, Judah, shall bring praise to God, not only from his brethren of Israel but also from the Gentiles, for such is the thought derived from the word “peoples” which, in the Hebrew, as you see, is in the plural.

Here is a very interesting summation taken from our ancient Jewish traditional literature: “Rulers shall not cease from the house of Judah, nor teachers of the law from his posterity, until his descendant Messiah come, and the obedience of all peoples be unto him. How glorious is Messiah of the House of Judah!” (Tan. Va-Yehi 10; Targumin 49.8-12, etc.)

My friends, in this instance our ancient Jewish tradition is undoubtedly correct in interpreting the Shiloh passage as relating to a personal Messiah-Redeemer and, indeed, all antiquity is in agreement on this point. Not in vain has the literal lion been termed the monarch of his domains.

So, too, this figurative lion wields a sceptre of kingship and, again, our Jewish tradition is not slow to see this feature. In describing the meeting of Joseph with his brethren in Egypt our legends remark: “When all was ready, and the guests were to be seated, Joseph raised his cup, and, pretending to inhale his knowledge from it, he said, ‘Judah is king, therefore let him sit at the head of the table...’”

My friends, I am convinced that the Kingship in the Lion Tribe of Judah is a permanent one. I say this fully realizing that some there are who interpret the words “until” Shiloh come, as meaning that there is a limitation to the duration of Judah’s kingship. The Hebrew words so translated do not, in my opinion, justify that conclusion. The Hebrew expression “’ad ki” translated “until” denotes – to quote Professor Delitzsch – “the turning point to which Judah’s greatness lasts, then not to cease, but to be enlarged to sovereignty over the peoples ... ” (New Commentary on Genesis, Vol.II,p.377)

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Outward appearances are deceptive and I am convinced a certain historian was deceived when, writing of the deposition of Archelaus, who assumed the dominion of Judea B.C.E. 3 and who was later banished to Gaul, he observes: “Thus the sceptre finally departed from Judah ... ” (History of the Jews, Henry H. Milman) The Romans may have thought the same thing, for about the year 70 of the Common Era, they issued coins inscribed with the caption “Judaea capta. Judaea devicta” (“Judea captured, vanquished”). But they deceived themselves. Judah conquered Rome, not the reverse! For One of that Lion Tribe came and branded His victory over the territory and history of that very Gentile power! Admittedly, He died on a Roman gibbet but by that very dying He crumpled the Roman Empire at His feet.

The Lion’s Salvation Once again let me quote from Jewish legend. Reverting to the ancient prophecy of Jacob, our tradition observes that the Spirit of Prophecy entered the mouth of the patriarch and of Judah he cried: “Be ye princes, thou and one of thy sons, over the sons of Jacob. In thee shall be the help of Jacob, and the salvation of Israel shall be found in thee. And when thou sittest upon the throne of the glory of thy justice, perfect peace shall reign over all the seed of the children of my beloved Abraham.”

Beyond doubt, Israel’s history discloses that Judah had the lion’s share in territorial allotment; world history testifies that Judah still wields the lion’s sceptre in Divine sovereignty; moreover, the spiritual experience of millions of Jewish and Gentile individuals down the centuries proclaims that Judah truly bestows the lion’s salvation.

Here, at least, uninspired human tradition unites with Divinely-inspired Scripture to point to one of the sons of Judah who shall be the help of Jacob and the salvation of Israel: but not only in respect of individuals – innumerable though they be – but, ultimately and gloriously, the salvation of all Israel. A salvation which encompasses all that is implicit in the meaning of the word life, spiritual and eternal. This is the day of the individual, Jew or Gentile. Tomorrow will be the day of the nation and the nations. The nation of Israel and the nations of the Gentiles.

In the Book of the Revelation of Yeshua HaMashiach, that privileged Jew Yochanan, John, was granted a superlative vision. He sees the Throne of Deity surrounded by homage and worship. An unlimited invitation is extended to all the created hosts to perform a symbolic action of vital consequence, but no one was found worthy until the cynosure of all eyes appears, and the announcement is happily made: “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah ... has prevailed ...”

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Turning his eyes to behold the Prevailing Lion of Judah, Yochanan “saw standing in front of the Throne ... a Lamb having the appearance of having been sacrificed.” (Revelation 5) The Lion holds the Sceptre because He first became the Lamb wounded for our transgressions.

Consequently and currently He now invites all, both Jew and Gentile, to join in the Lion’s share of eternal redemption and salvation.

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BREACHING THE BARRIERS TO SHILOH MY DEAR FRIENDS, there is one legendary old lady for whom I have the profoundest sympathy.

Strangely enough, I am unacquainted with her name, her nationality, or even the locality of her dwelling-place.

I do know, however, that her residence could hardly be described as falling within the classification of the usual or the orthodox. As a matter of fact, we learn from the most reliable authorities that she lived in a shoe. Of course, this is none of my business. Far be it from me to obstruct those expressions of individuality, idiosyncrasy, or even eccentricity, which contribute such refreshing variety and contrast.

No, indeed. The point at which my sympathies merge into the experiences of the aforesaid old lady is the emergence of that disclosure regarding the multitude of her progeny and the dilemma in which this situation placed her. You will, doubtless, recall the touching record of her problem: “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; she had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”

Let us not direct our attention towards the irregularity of her domicile, or of the metre in which these disclosures are made: it is the number of her children that constituted her problem; and it is precisely this feature that constitutes my own. Hence the bond of sympathy to which I have already referred.

In addition to the question of the satisfactory allocation of room space in a structure originally intended for feet rather than family, a multitude of children implies a multiform of tastes; many likes and dislikes; many wants and don’t-wants. So with the large family I have who enjoy these “Treasures from Tenach.”

It would, therefore, seem both vain and futile to attempt to cater satisfactorily for all on one and the same occasion. I will accordingly make no such effort as we bring our discourses on the Book of Joshua to a conclusion. Although admittedly interesting and instructive, I cannot feel that such messages should be the vehicle to convey to you the minutiae of the allocation of the Promised Land among the various tribes of Israel under Joshua. These details can be readily examined at your leisure in chapters 13 through 21 of the Scripture Book bearing the illustrious name of Moses’ immediate successor.

In the Divine record of the division of the Land of Canaan there are a few salient features which, unless I mention them, may escape attention and, through omissions, inflict unnecessary loss upon those who assess rightly the spiritual value of these “TREASURES FROM TENACH.” Here, then, are some morsels which, among such a multitude, will find acceptance.

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Observe these phases. Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh had had their allotments granted east of the Jordan. By the casting of lots under Divine direction, the territory which fell to the lot of the powerful Messianic tribe of Judah – from which title, by the way, is derived the word “Jews” – was a territory computed at nearly one-third of western Canaan and which ultimately included the then future capital Jerusalem.

The allocation for the remaining seven tribes was by means of a survey commission consisting of twenty-one individuals, three from each of the seven tribes. According to the historian Josephus, the survey lasted seven months during which a seven-sectioned map of the country was compiled.

This occurred after the camp at Gilgal had been disbanded and the whole multitude moved to Shiloh.

I cannot allow this inspiring name “Shiloh” to escape my lips without making further reference to it.

You will remember that it was a word uttered by the patriarch Jacob with tremendous prophetic and Messianic significance in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. Its derivation is almost universally admitted to proceed from a Hebrew root meaning “to rest.” All antiquity agrees that it is a name bestowed prophetically upon the great Messiah-Redeemer and thus describes Him as the One Who is the Source and Bestower of true rest and peace. He is indeed Sar Shalom, the “Prince of Peace.”

Little wonder, then, that the name of Shiloh was bestowed upon the city to which, in Joshua’s day, the Mishkan (the Tabernacle in the Wilderness) was moved and set up – on this occasion for the first time in Israeli territory! This visible evidence of the Personal Presence of the God of the Universe was established at Shiloh within the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, and there it remained from the last days of Joshua right through to the time of Samuel (Joshua 18:1; Judges 18:31; I Samuel 4:3), a period estimated by some to extend over 389 years.

You will be interested to know that the site of ancient Shiloh has been positively identified by the archaeologists. Its modern name was Seilun. Of it Professor W.F. Albright observes: “About the middle of the eleventh century the Philistines defeated the Israelites at Ebenezer, captured the Ark, and destroyed Shiloh.” (The Archaeology of Palestine, W.F. Albright, Pelican Books, p. 113) Before diverting our thoughts from Shiloh, I imagine the womenfolk will like me to remind them that it was here that the immortal Hannah uttered her prayer and her vow, and also it was the “daughters of Shiloh” who constituted what may well be called a mass-wifehood movement for the Benjamites.

Turning now to the children of Joseph, these were counted as two tribes because of the separation of the tribe of Levi as a wave-offering for the Eternal. The lot for the Josephites west of Jordan was an

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apportionment for Ephraim and the other half of the tribe of Manasseh. However, right here a seed of future discontent was planted which later bore distasteful national fruit.

Although Joseph’s children were granted an area of the richest and most fertile land which included the famous plain of Sharon, the Josephites preferred a formal complaint to Joshua, and clamoured for an additional “portion” (Joshua 17:14) because, they said, they were “a great people.”

However, to get at the fruit of the banana it is well to remove the outer skin. So with human beings; not, of course, by any literal process. I mean that sometimes, to get the fruit of the reasons, we have to peel off the excuses. You frequently find the reasons concealed behind that little word “besides.”

We hear the protest, “I don’t want to do this or that because so-and-so.” Now, when you hear something like that, if you are wise you will wait. Your silence will then invariably bring forth part two of the protest – the additional “and besides!” Now, we have the fruit, the reasons, with the excuses peeled off.

So, I believe, with the protest of the Josephites. You see, the principal towns of the valley allotted to them were still occupied by the Canaanites who possessed chariots of war! Moreover, the wooded heights connecting the range north of Samaria with Mount Carmel were still haunted by the formidable Perizzites and the Rephaim. I imagine the “great people” plea was the excuse for the extra “portion”; but fear and formidability were the real reasons.

How aptly the noble Joshua turned their arguments against themselves! Although himself an Ephraimite (I Chronicles 7:27) he would neither stoop to partiality nor succumb to plausibility. He refused their petition. Being a people great in quantity, they could rise up and clear the forests for land cultivation; being a people great in quality, the iron chariots of foes would not intimidate, particularly in view of the Divine bestowal and assurances.

My dear friends, if the Eternal has granted to us Jewish people a spiritual allotment in the Promised Land of His gracious Redemption through Messiah’s atonement, let not Fear nor Formidability become barriers to Shiloh’s rest and peace.

One of our most revered Rabbis, writing upon another subject, made an observation which I find applicable to my present theme. He said: “Rome ruled Palestine not only through its Pontius Pilates, but also through a small minority of royalist Jews ... Like their rulers, the resented and feared change, abhorred criticism and reproach. The like of these Romans and their puppets manifests itself in every generation and in every land ... They had thrust Jeremiah into prison in Jerusalem ... when Jeremiah ventured to preach the word of God to his people. He said to them: ‘Thus saith the Lord: If ye will not hearken unto me, to walk in my law, ... I will make this house like Shiloh, ... Then spake the priests and the (professional) prophets unto the princes, and to all the

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people, saying, This man is worthy of death’ (Jeremiah 26: 4-6, 11). And of Jesus, too, their like said later: ‘He is worthy of death’ (Matthew 26:66). And so Jesus was crucified, ...”

Speaking of the pilgrims to Jericho, this same distinguished Rabbi says: “Among the pilgrims is the Jew, Jesus, who is to become known as the Prince of Peace. His offering is to be a supreme one, the sacrifice of his life.”

The heights of truth may have become thickly timbered with the thorny trees of tradition and populated with prickly prejudices but, believe me, those heights are well worth capturing; moreover, they are part of the heritage of Israel. Even if chariots of war appear on the horizon as formidable barriers to bar the way to the knowledge of the Prince of Peace, may faith in the sure Messianic promises of God awaken glad acceptance of that Messianic invitation – “Come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

To leave Gilgal and reside in Shiloh in God’s Presence is the inheritance of all Israel. The word Gilgal conveys the thought of “rolling away” or being rolled away, and to exchange Gilgal for Shiloh, to roll away from us the false and erroneous concepts of mere human tradition and turn to the Prince of Peace, is the blessed prospect of every Jewish person under heaven today.

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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED MY DEAR FRIENDS, I am quite a lover of dogs and, as a dog-lover I remember quite vividly the

canine expressions portrayed in two delightful pictures I once saw suspended in a shopwindow.

Respectively, the pictures bore the captions “Anticipation” and “Realization.” In the first picture the family pet is seen sitting up in the orthodox manner of dogly begging, paws outstretched beseechingly and eyes surveying eloquently an alluring tidbit exhibited for his delight by his indulgent master. Anticipation simply streamed from that dog’s whole posture and demeanour rendering the superscription it self quite superfluous.

Similarly with the second picture; a title was unnecessary. Possession and enjoyment of that tidbit was depicted in a furry smugness positively provoking. swallowed up by Realization.

Anticipation had been completely

However, whatever may have been faithfully represented by these twin pictures within the realm of “dogdom,” it is a sad fact that there is but rarely a counterpart within human experience.

Anticipation and Realization but seldom meet and embrace. Promise and Possession are not always partners; the Actual and the Ideal are more frequently strangers to each other.

This dismal discrepancy is historically, territorially, and spiritually demonstrated in the annals of Israel, and particularly with that portion dealing with the conquest, allocation, and possession of the Land of Canaan under Joshua. As we bring to a close our survey of the Scripture Book bearing the name of Moses’ illustrious successor, we cannot fail to have seen this lamentable feature.

The total land Divinely allotted into its various tribal allocations is one thing – the Ideal; the realization of that Ideal is quite another thing – the Actual. So far as Israel is concerned the Ideal and the Actual never met and embraced. Anticipation was never swallowed up by Realization for Israel never fully possessed his possessions. The possessions were – and still are – his; but he did not then, nor has he since, fully possessed these possessions. This is true not only territorially, but also historically, and – particularly – spiritually.

There was, indeed, a sense in which Joshua and the people he led could say “Mission Accomplished”; the third and final section of the Book of Joshua, extending over chapters twentythree and twenty-four, and which I have designated the “Discourses and Death of Joshua,” undoubtedly reveal this element of accomplishment. Indeed, it is highly probable that Joshua himself enjoyed some eighteen years of restful retirement among the hills of Ephraim following the turmoil of the invasion and conquest.

You will recall that the expulsion of the Canaanites, and the heathenism they represented, was ordained to be a gradual process “lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field

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multiply” (Exodus 23:29, 30); moreover, the actual presence of enemies still within the Promised Land served as a means to keep Israel vigilant and also as a reminder of that other sense in which the mission accomplished was a mission unaccomplished.

Recognition of this feature was doubtless behind the final acts of Joshua when, on two separate occasions, he called the people of Israel to him and, through the “elders” exhorted them to the exercise of courage and fidelity.

Assuming that Joshua delivered his first exhortation shortly before his death he would have reach the age at which his great ancestor Joseph had died (Genesis 50:26), namely, one hundred and ten years (Joshua 24:29). Joshua’s first discourse as recorded in chapter twenty-three may be divided into two parts, the initial section comprising verses 2 to 13, and the following section verses 14 to 16. Joshua builds in the minds of the people a veritable pyramid of God’s good promises and performances, and caps it with these great words found in verse 11:

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           11 “Take heed very much to your souls to love YeHoVaH your God.” Readers of the Hebrew language will not fail to observe that the word translated “God” is in the plural form – a phenomenon of the Tenach which in context, of course, should guard Israel from the twin errors of polytheism and unitarianism. The very same word, employed frequently in chapter twenty-four, and applied to heathen deities, is correctly translated “gods,” the plural.

The following section of Joshua’s initial address dwells upon the inevitability of Divine judgements should Israel fail in fidelity, predictions which, unfortunately, future ages were to see sadly fulfilled.

The second discourse of Joshua, found in chapter twenty-four, sounded an even more sombre note.

The site of this second and final exhortation was poetically chosen. Joshua gathered the assembly at Shechem where their minds would be flooded with the memories of their first entry into Canaan and where they had affirmed the Great Covenant by oracular responses to the blessings and curses enumerated in the Law, and where the shadows and associations of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim were upon them. Thus, the departing Joshua took them to the spot where the Law had been recited and ratified; to the spot where Abraham, on entering Canaan, had received the first Divine promise (Genesis 12); to the spot where Jacob had finally settled with his household purged from the taint of idolatry (Genesis 33 to 35).

At this memorable and sacred spot Joshua rehearsed the rich record of the mercies of God and His gracious dealings with Israel, emphasizing the five signal sequences of the Divine call of Abraham,

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the great exodus from Egypt, the wilderness preservations, the miraculous burst into the Promised Land, and, finally, the conquest of that land and defeat of the Canaanites.

Using this recital as a base and background Joshua presses the people to a choice between advance into the spiritual light and bliss of the God of Israel or retreat into the darkness and detriment of heathenism, and, in placing this choice before them, Joshua reminds them that their future is inextricably bound up with the Land itself.

The people made emphatic response of their choice of the Eternal God of their fathers and of their intention of the utmost fidelity to Him and to Him alone. It is at this point, my friends, that Joshua makes a statement that it were well we should all note; he declares: “Ye cannot serve the Eternal; for He is a holy God; ... ” (Joshua 24:19) At first sight, this may seem a discouraging statement, but it was surely intended to remind the people that by their own efforts and merits they were morally and spiritually unable to reach requirements of a holy God. They would require the free bestowal of Divine grace to perform their laudable intentions.

Another Joshua, Joshua ben Hanania, who flourished over fifteen hundred years later than Moses’ successor, has stated this truth excellently when he says: “The Jews will be redeemed by Divine grace, not by merit.” (T. Sanhedrin, 97b) However, this vital verity will be understood even more fully when it is realized that Joshua ben Nun was not only a God-appointed instrument of Divine purpose, but also a God-appointed type of the Sublime Joshua, Israel’s Messiah-Redeemer, the Heavenly Joshua. The Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name “Joshua” is “Jesus” and Joshua ben Nun is so named in the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews where of him it is written: “For if Jesus (that is, Joshua ben Nun) had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterwards of another day.” (Hebrews 4:8) Joshua ben Nun gave rest neither to his own generation nor to Israel as a nation. In this sense his mission was unaccomplished because it was Divinely left to another Joshua, Jesus – or Yeshua as I prefer to refer to Him – to write MISSION ACCOMPLISHED to the Divine task of leading the people who trusted in Him into the true and eternal rest of a spiritual Promised Land made possible

by His atoning sacrifice and regenerating redemption.

The Messiah of Israel, the Heavenly Joshua, affirmed a glorious truth when He declared: “Father, the time has come. Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee, just as Thou has given Him authority over all mankind to give Eternal Life to all whom Thou hast given Him. Eternal Life consists in knowing Thee as the only true God and knowing Joshua (Jesus, Yeshua) as Him Whom Thou has sent, the Sent One, the Messiah. I have glorified Thee down here upon the

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earth by accomplishing the mission which Thou entrusted Me to do. So now glorify Me in Thy dwelling place, Father, with the glory I had with Thee before the world existed.” (Yochanan – John 17:1-5) Yeshua HaMachiach claimed to be the Sent One unique and distinct from all others sent by God; He claimed to be the Son of God as none other ever was or ever could be. As to His Mission, He declared that He had come to give His life a ransom for many, and He never interpreted His work away from the idea of SACRIFICE, and of VICARIOUS SACRIFICE. Let me quote His very words on this point – here they are: “This is My Blood of the Covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins.” (Matthew 26:28 R.V.) Only the prophesied Pre-Existent Messiah of Israel, Deity Incarnate, could truly declare – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

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THE TINTS OF TORAH MY DEAR FRIENDS, did you realize that sound and shade are related?

Yes, indeed, there is

connection between colour and concert. For instance, look in your dictionary at the word “chromatic.” You will find it defined as a word pertaining to colour and also as referring to progress by semitones in a musical scale.

Nor is the affinity between sound and colour confined merely to semantics; it is found also among the discoveries of natural science.

As you know, words are sounds, and you have doubtless heard it said that some words are more “colourful” or more “musical” than others. And, of course, where the soul of some beautiful message is embodied in poetry you have overheard the remark that it should be put to music.

But what of some beautiful message embodied, not in poetry, but in prose? Of course, we could still put such a prose theme to music; however – and here is my point – why could we not also put it to colour, since both sound and colour are chromatic.

Take, for instance, the Bible. So much of it has been put to peerless music, but is there not something rather fascinating in the thoughts of putting its superlative message to colour!

Parenthetically, let me assure you I have nothing in mind approximating the abortive “Polychrome Bible” whose motley best befits the clowns who perpetrated it than the sacred volume by which their folly is judged and exposed.

My reference is to its matchless undying message! Take, for instance, the First Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the Chumash. What would be your choice of colour for its timeless theme?

This suggests rather a bewitching project, don’t you think so?

Of course, those acquainted with the First Five Books will probably exclaim that since the message is multiple so also no single pigment could portray its purport.

Very well. What are its themes? One of our most competent rabbinic commentators, Rabbi Dr. H Freedman, B.A., Ph.D., has said that the Pentateuch possesses two central themes – “the revelation of the Torah to Israel and the promise of Canaan.”

I think we can adopt Rabbi Freeman’s dual delineation but – hold on a minute, hold on! – do not be in a rush to choose colours to represent these themes. A little meditation will persuade us that the revelation of the Torah and the Promise of Canaan are only looms upon which to weave the coloured threads of our Pentateuch.

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Now, what are these coloured threads which we shall weave upon the looms of the First Five Books? Before we can decide upon the colours, we must, of course, identify the Torah themes.

Shall we try?

In my understanding of the Pentateuch, I discern five principal Divinely-vouchsafed revelations.

Let me enumerate them.

First, there is the revelation of Deity, of God. The Eternal Being, mysteriously revealed in a Unity of a Triune coexistent relationship of Self-Conscious Deity, a concept quite beyond the power of mere human cogitation to conceive. It is a supreme revelation from which mankind and human religious have so disastrously departed, but which still remains as a golden thread of precious revelation awaiting rediscovery. Yes! I must choose GOLD as the colour of this precious thread of Torah theme.

Secondly, there is the revelation of Man. Not man as conceived in the figments of modern evolutionary hypothesises, but Man as created in the Image and Likeness of God. Strange, is it not, how human philosophies and refined religions have pushed God up and away from us with one hand by postulating Him as a mere monotheistic metaphysical abstraction whilst, at the same time with the other hand, as it were, they have pushed Man down and away from his dignity by declaring his descent from an ape or an amoeba! Here, indeed, we discover the poles of man’s folly. Since man is marked by the shadow of Deity, not the spoor of a simian, I choose the heavenly colour of BLUE to represent the Divine revelation of his origin.

The third revelation of Torah is inescapable. And the colour by which it is represented is equally inescapable. I refer to the revelation of the awful Holiness of the Supreme Being. Our great teach Moses writes: “Who is like unto thee amongst the gods, YeHoVah; Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11) God, by His holiness, is marked off from every human being; He is alone in His moral perfection; He is resplendent in the glory of unshared holiness. We think of Isaiah’s trisagion, “Holy, Holy, Holy, YeHoVaH of Hosts ...” (Isaiah 6:3) This is the only thrice- uttered perfection in scripture, and cannot be divorced from the Tenach hint of the mystery of that Triunity to which I have already referred. It is, therefore, significant that in the Jewish New Testament or Covenant, the Messiah uses the term “Holy Father”; the Messiah is Himself referred to as the “Holy Child”; whilst the Spirit of God is referred to as the “Holy Spirit” pre-eminently. (Yochanan – John 17:11; Acts 4:30; Yochanan 14:26) It is useless to deny the fact that this great attribute of Deity separates and severs God from the creaturely nature of man. It is this supernal grandeur, this blinding glory, that demonstrates that He

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must be approached only in the way He has Himself appointed, and which is reflected in the conditioned and restricted approach granted unto Israel and delineated and detailed in the Tenach.

With apologies to the pedants for referring to white as a “colour”, I am constrained to select WHITE as the symbol of the holiness of the Holy One of Israel.

Since the fourth revelation-theme of Torah is that mystery called Sin, and since the holiness of God is consistently displayed against Sin’s dark background, I must choose BLACK as the theme-colour of Sin’s sinister significance.

What, then, is the fifth great theme of final Divine revelation? Why, happily enough, the very holiness of God will suggest it if we cogitate upon it sufficiently. It is the Divine holiness which justifies the human hope that the separating distance between God and Man shall be done away.

Indeed, His holiness, being the expression of His perfect goodness, guarantees that God cannot have one moral standard for Himself and another for His moral creatures. Our Prophet Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:13) exclaims of God: “Thou that art of eyes too pure to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness ...”

By what means, then, has the Holy One, Blessed be He, banished the distance to behold sinful Man and his great moral need? By the Divinely-appointed means of REDEMPTION. Redemption by atonement, and that atonement not of man’s decree or doing, but only by God’s purpose and provision. Our exalted teach Moses was also Divinely entrusted with this great truth. Hear him again as he speaks as the very mouthpiece of God: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.” (Leviticus 17:11) Blood is the Divine Recipe for Redemption, the Divine Remedy for Sin. Because Holiness and Love are the fundamental moral attributes of God, the full and final revelation of God that He has granted us is not that He is Holy, neither that He is Love, but rather that He is HOLY LOVE in REDEMPTIVE ACTION TOWARDS SINFUL MAN. The consummation of this redemptive action of God is disclosed in the vicarious, penal, and substitionary sacrifice of Israel’s MessiahRedeemer, Yeshua HaMachiach, when He shed His atoning blood in the Holy City once for all, thus opening up a righteous approach to the Holy One and making possible the sweet affirmation of David, “I shall dwell in the house of the Eternal forever.” Our final colour, my friends, must be RED as the symbol of that Blood-Redemption wrought and bought by the One Whom God sent to save sinners from eternal death and bestow upon them, instead, the Life that knows neither end nor fading.

The Gold of Deity; the Blue of Humanity; the White of Holiness; the Black of Sin; the Red of Redemption: these are the colour-themes of the Pentateuch. Now, back to our looms with these threads of revelation, the revelation of the Torah to Israel and the promise of Canaan. The Law, the

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Torah proper, emphasizes the Black and the White; the Promised Land of Canaan emphasizes the Gold, the Blue and the Red. The Law discloses the Holiness of God and the Sinfulness of Man. The Land discloses the Promise of God’s dwelling-place in the midst of His people as shadowed forth by the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. But, supremely, by the hint of Immanuel, “God with us,” the Gold become Blue to redeem us by the Red Blood of Atonement. That is why the Book of Joshua, the study of which I conclude with this message, is tied in and related to the Five Books, the Pentateuch. That which is promised in the Law is performed in Joshua.

This statement and relationship is a precious spiritual truth for those of us who hunger and thirst after righteousness, after God, after the peace that comes through righteousness, and whose hope rests in the Heavenly Joshua, the Messiah, the Gold become Blue, Who will perform to us and to all who believe all the redemptive promises of God.