Torah: Bamidbar (Numbers) 19:1 – 25:9; Haftarah: Micah 5:6 — 6:8
The Red Heifer
This Parashah contains one of the mysteries of rabbinical Judaism, the Parah Adumah - the Red Heifer. It is described by the Sages as the quintessential decree of the Torah, meaning that it is beyond human understanding. But since all teachings of the Torah are the products of God’s intelligence any human inability to comprehend them indicates the limitation of the student, not of the teacher. There is nothing meaningless or purposeless in the Torah, and if it seems so, it is only a product of our own deficiency. The misunderstanding arises from the seeming paradox: the ashes of the red heifer purify people who had become contaminated, and yet those who engage in its preparation become themselves contaminated.
“This is the Chukat (decree) of the Torah which the Lord has commanded, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without spot, and upon which never came yoke; you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may bring it forth outside the camp, and one shall slay it before his face; and one shall burn the heifer in his sight; its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall he burn; and the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer. And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and lay them up outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the people of Israel for a water of sprinkling; it is a purification offering. And he who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the evening; and it shall be to the people of Israel, and to the stranger who sojourns among them, for a statute forever.’” Bamidbar 19:1-10
The conclusion of the Sages was that it was not the corpse that caused contamination or the ashes of the heifer that caused purity, but they had no answer what caused either. Accordingly, the ritual cleansing with the ashes of the red heifer must have a different meaning beyond the obvious. Also, this commandment is to be for a statute forever. But how can it be carried out today without the sacrificial system of the Temple in Jerusalem? And to throw in another dimension, verse 13 of Bamidbar 19 says that a person not cleansed by the sprinkling of the ashes of the red heifer will contaminate the Temple of God. Therefore, the paradox that we have today is that without the sacrificial system - the Temple - we cannot have a red heifer, and without a heifer the Temple cannot be rebuilt. The ultra-orthodox Jews not stepping foot on the Temple mount without being purified by the ashes of the heifer is based on this verse which says that the one who defiles the Temple will be cut off from Israel. Does that mean that the Jews have not been able to be cleansed from their sins for 1939 years? The quest for finding an answer to the Red Heifer mystery is thus in earnest.
The tradition says: “Nine red heifers rituals were performed from the time the Jews were given this mitzvah, until the destruction of the Second Temple. The first heifer was performed by Moshe, the tenth will be performed by the Moshiach - may he speedily be revealed" (Ramban). It is said that today in Israel all is ready for the rebuilding of the Temple except the red heifer. Hopes were raised as early as 1997 with the birth of Melody, a red heifer that became blemished with the appearance of a few white hairs - a heifer needs to be three years old before it can be sacrificed. In February of 2002 another red heifer was declared kosher only to be disqualified in November of the same year.
For rabbinical Judaism the quest remains even though the answer has been given almost two thousand years ago. In the book of Hebrews 9 and 10 we read: “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have become unclean, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Moshiach who through the eternal Ruach haKodesh offered Himself without defect to God, purify our conscience from dead works in order to serve the living God? For the Torah, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come can never by the same yearly sacrifices make perfect those drawing near. Otherwise, would these not have stopped being offered, because the worshipers, having experienced purification even once, would no longer have had consciousness of sin? But by those sacrifices there is a remembrance and a reminder of sins year after year. For it is impossible for the bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire but a body You prepared for Me; burnt offering and sin offering You have not desired. Then I said, ‘Look, here I am, I have come, it is written about Me in the scroll. I desire to do Your will, O God’" [Psalm 40:6-8]. He takes away the first system in order to establish the second. It is by this that we will have been set apart through the offering of Yeshua HaMoshiach, once and for all. Every kohen stands daily ministering and offering again and again the same korbanot that can never take away sins; but He, having offered up one korban for sins for all time, "Sat down at the right hand of God," [Psalm 110:1]. For by one korban He has perfected forever the ones being set apart; and the Ruach haKodesh also bears witness to us; for after saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put My Torah in the mind of them and I will inscribe it on their heart" [Jeremiah 31:33].”
Man’s failure to understand the truth does not make it untrue. If we truly understand the Biblical Judaism we find that Yeshua is the answer. He fulfilled the requirement of purification of the red heifer as well as of all other sacrifices of the Temple system. His sacrifice is the only one that can remove the condemnation of sin once and for all. The red heifer ritual was performed outside the walls of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives - Yeshua was also crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem on the opposite side of the Temple. The people who handled the red heifer were unclean till evening after they washed their clothes, so, too, the ones who crucified Yeshua were unclean until they believed and made clean by His shed blood. And just as the ones who were unclean could not enter the physical Temple so, too, one must be cleansed by Yeshua's shed blood in order to be part of the new spiritual Temple, the body of believers, the ekklesia.
And God, as to give us another clue of the mystery, continues in the Parashah by describing another incident in which that which is humanly viewed as unclean can make one clean. “And the LORD sent venomous serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many people of Israel died. Therefore, the people came to Moshe, and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against you; pray to the LORD, that He take away the serpents from us.’ And Moshe prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moshe, ‘Make a venomous serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live.’ And Moshe made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of bronze, he lived.” Bamidbar 21:6-9. In this Torah passage Israel is confronted by God to look to that which was an object of hatred and receive healing from the very thing they had despised. Verse 4 says that ancient Israel, which had been so miraculously and powerfully redeemed from Egyptian bondage, had become weary or impatient on their journey toward the Promised Land. In verse 5 we read that they had become miserable and ungrateful. They said that God was an abandoning Father - implying that He was unreliable, abusive, disinterested, distant and expected too much of them. When God heard their distorted view flowing from their hearts, He decided that the nation needed to have their viewpoint challenged and corrected. Verse 6 tells us that He sent fiery serpents among them which bit many of them so that many died.
Throughout the Diaspora experience, the Jewish people have received a distorted image of their Messiah. When we look back over these last two millennia of dispersion, we see that Jewish people were slain by the thousands by some of those who named the name of Christ - these too were fiery serpents. Consequently, the Jewish people came to despise the very Messiah that loved them so much, that He was lifted upon a pole and died for the forgiveness of their sins. In a wonderfully explicit depiction of what would happen to Israel in the future we see what instruction Moshe received. He was told to take the very thing Israel hated and to lift it up on a pole, as verse 8 relates, so that whoever is bitten may look to it and live. During the so-called “Christian” persecution of the Jews, the people of Israel were told to look to the one in whose name they were bitten and to receive healing, as the above scripture says in verse 9.
In a fulfillment to take place in the future, Isaiah 49:7 writes: “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, His Holy One, to Him whom man despises, to Him whom the nation loathes, to a servant of rulers Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD who is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” The Redeemer of Israel speaks to "the despised One, the One abhorred by the nation" (in Hebrew, 'Goi' - singular, which is, in context, a reference to Israel), and He promises in verse 8 that this One despised by the nation is the very One that God gives to the Jewish nation as a covenant, “to restore the Land, to make them inherit the desolate heritage.” At this time in which we see that this very Land is surrendered, we realize all the more that it is not until Israel looks to the One they have despised and abhorred - who seemed a serpent because of those who misrepresented Him and used their twisted theology to destroy them - that it is not until they look to Yeshua of Nazareth as their Messiah, that they as a people will come into the fullness of life that God has promised them ages past.
May God give us wisdom and courage to present Yeshua, the One who is viewed as the One who contaminates and who is abhorred, to our Jewish friends as the only One who can give them hope, freedom and Shalom from the condemnation of sin; the One whose love knows no depths in spite of how much He is despised and persecuted. "BALAK - The Teaching of Balaam"
This next Parashah is an example of how God sees the Israelis in spite of their shortcomings, because of the promise He made to the forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov, that the nation of Israel will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation; a light to the Gentiles. This parallels the view that God has of the believer because of the covering of the shed blood of Yeshua. The previous Parashah ends with the Israelis beginning their wandering in the wilderness and their arrival at the plains of Moab. Balak, the king of Moab, is not very pleased with the situation and hires Balaam the son of Beor to come and curse the Israelis so that they will be weakened in battle. But who was Balaam to supposedly have such a power? He was the son of Beor, an Edomite, and, according to Joshua 13:22, a sorcerer: “The sons of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the diviner.” Balak, a heathen himself, believing that the sorcery of Balaam will work to force the hand of God, takes Balaam three times, each time to a different place, in order to curse Israel. But God turns Balaam words into blessings: “And he (Balaam) took up his discourse, and said, “Rise up, Balak, and hear; listen to me, you son of Zippor. God is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and shall He not do it? or has He spoken, and shall He not make it good? Behold, I have received a command to bless; and He has blessed; and I cannot reverse it. He has not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen perverseness in Israel; the Lord his God is with him, and the trumpet blast of a king is among them.” And Balak said to Balaam, “Come, I beg you, I will bring you to another place; perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there.” And Balak brought Balaam to the top of Peor that looks toward Jeshimon. And Balaam said to Balak, “Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven bulls and seven rams.” And Balak did as Balaam had said and offered a bull and a ram on every altar. And when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he went not, as at other times, to seek for enchantments, but he set his face toward the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes; and the spirit of God came upon him. And he took up his discourse, and said, “The speech of Balaam, the son of Beor; the speech of a man whose eyes are open; “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, and your tabernacles, O Israel! Like winding brooks, like gardens by the river’s side, as aloes which the Lord has planted, and like cedar trees... Blessed is he who blesses you, and cursed is he who curses you.” Numbers 23:18—24:9
Was Israel perfect? Certainly not! We have previously read how many died in the rebellion of Korach – besides 250 leaders of Israel – we have read about the 14,700 who died by the plague in the rebellion against Aharon, and we have read in last week’s Parashah that people were again rebelling against Moshe and God, and because of it many died bitten by the fiery serpents. And even after this beautiful blessing, uttered by Balaam, we see that people sinned again and 24,000 perished by another plague, and yet, God “perceived no iniquity in Ya’akov and saw no perversity in Yisrael.” So, is there a contradiction between the words of the blessings and the actual behavior of the Israelis? Not from God’s perspective. Surely the people of Israel were not perfect and without sin, but instead of cursing them God placed words of blessing in Balaam's mouth and each time he ended up blessing them. God is outside of our time constraints and instead of seeing the temporary kvetching, He sees the potential good things that the nation will bring to the world culminating with the coming of Moshiach. Taking this godly example, our sages have always tried to find the good in another person, because there is good in each and every one of us. They were able to look beyond the person's external acts and see into the essence of the soul. As a result, rather than judging their brethren for their shortcomings as acts of sin, they were able to find the good and the positive hidden within that act, a challenge for us all, for we serve a God that requires of us to do good, to do justice and to love kindness.
Yeshua taught us by example. He was God in human flesh and yet He did not judge anyone but had compassion for our human condition. One of Matthew’s characterizations of Yeshua is compassion; he uses this word more than any other Brit Chadashah writer. In chapter 12 verse 7 he records the words of Yeshua: “But if you had known what this means, 'I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,' you would not have condemned the innocent.” Who were the innocent? The poor and the hungry who in order to feed themselves were not complying with the religiosity of the time. Yeshua told His disciples, “he who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (Yochanan 14:9) This was and is in God’s heart, compassion, for He said through the prophet Micah: “O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab planned, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim to Gilgal; that you may know the righteousness of the Lord. With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with one year old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:5-8)
Positional, we are without sin in Messiah and this is how God sees us. But we live in this world in the flesh who is pulling us towards sin and this we have to fight in order to be Messiah-like and please our heavenly Father, for He will reward us or not, according to our deeds. “For we are fellow workers of Hashem, you are Hashem’s field; you are Hashem's building… Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, the work of each man will become evident, for the day will make it evident, because by fire it is revealed; and the fire itself will test the quality of each one's work. If anyone's work he built on the foundation will remain, he will receive a reward; if anyone's work will be consumed, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:9-15)
May we all learn to have compassion for our shortcomings and build each other up so we will not suffer a loss of rewards when we will come into His Divine Presence. May we resolve to see the good in each other instead of looking at what divides us, for none of us is perfect. Yet sin has to be recognized and confronted, but how we go about doing it is what makes our work worthy of reward.
So what was the sin of Balaam? In the Torah reading we get the feeling that it was more to the conversation between Balak and Balaam, and indeed we read in the Brit Chadashah in the revelation given to Yochanan the words of Yeshua: “But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit {acts of} immorality forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the {son} of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.” (Revelation 2:14)
Balaam’s sin was teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before Israel, to forsake God’s commandments, by enticing the flesh with the age-old words of Satan, “Indeed, has God really said this?” planting the seed of doubt about God’s authority, His sovereignty and His power. Did God really say not to eat un-kosher foods? Did God really say not to covet, or not to steal, or not to lie – to live a moral life? Why is it so difficult for us to just obey God’s commandments? As believers we know that there are no such thing as idols, but we find excuses because of our desires, our lust which we do not want to keep under control. Yeshua, “being found in appearance as a man, humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” - Philippians 2:8. Yeshua was obedient to the Father until the end, and if we say that we are His disciples we should follow His example and also be obedient. One of the commandments that He gave us was also to love one another. So let’s love one another by humbly putting each other above ourselves and encourage each other with uplifting words.
The teaching of Balaam was intended to destroy Israel and because of that Yeshua has strong words for it. He is against any believer who, by this teaching, becomes a prototype of the assembly of Pergamum. Thus, Yeshua tells us that this teaching can also destroy the fellowship of the believers. We are also warned by the apostle Shaul of the consequences of following the teachings of Balaam: “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For through your knowledge, he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Moshiach died. And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Moshiach” (1 Corinthians 8:9-12).
I pray that none of us will be found sinning against Moshiach “therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this — not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way” (Romans 14:13).
Shabbat joy, peace, and blessings! Shabbat Shalom!
