Category: BIBLE EVENTS

Chapter 2

We remember a baby boy was born in Egypt to two non-descript people. Unfortunately, he was a boy with, as we would say today, a price on his head. The Pharaoh had ordered all baby boys of the Hebrews to be thrown in the Nile. His mother kind of obeyed. She didn’t throw him into the Nile but she did put him in the Nile in a woven, waterproofed basket.

As we know, the boy was found by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Praise the Lord, the Pharaoh’s daughter was not much like her father. She saved that baby. All the while that baby’s sister had been watching all the action and she was brave enough to offer her mother, as a wet nurse, to nourish that boy. Pharaoh’s daughter was very amendable to that plan.

That young sister, Miriam by name, went to retrieve her mother and to bring her to meet the Pharaoh’s daughter. When they met there was no conversation as to the why and how Miriam’s mother would or could be a “wet nurse”. Of course, no Egyptian woman would ever consider nursing a slave’s baby but there were plenty of Hebrew women whose infant boys were killed and they would be able to wet nurse a child.

Upon meeting the Hebrew woman, who was willing to nurse this child she had found, the Pharaoh’s daughter said, (2:10) “Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will pay thy wages.” Pharaoh’s daughter was nothing like her father. Not only did she save a Hebrew boy baby but she was paying a slave money to nurse it for her.

Can you even imagine how very caring and generous this young woman was? When that baby boy grew up, we assume somewhere between three and five, his own mother took him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses explaining, “I drew him out of the water.” In Hebrew the word Moses is derived for a word that means “I drew him out.” But Moses is also an Egyptian name, the name Moses (Hebrew Moshe) is derived from Egyptian mose (“is born”). We have to assume that even though Moses was raised as an Egyptian he recognized he was also a Hebrew because Scripture says, he went out to his kinfolk and witnessed their labors and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own.

When you consider that Moses had been given the best of both worlds you have to wonder why, he was chosen and even willing to be the exceptional man chosen by God to deliver the Israelites from bondage. Put yourself in his shoes: his younger years were spent with a mother who was willing to break the law to keep him alive and then to give him up to another mother and family where he lived a life of luxury and ease with an adopted mother who gave him every advantage her world had to offer.

Moses was exceptional when you consider: Moses fights evil. He is instinctively intolerant of suffering and injustice. He does whatever he can to stop the evil. Later, Moses will command the respect of the Israelites because he was not raised with them. He was far worldlier than his own people, who were raised as slaves. He actually chose to be a Hebrew when he could have led a completely charmed life as an Egyptian prince. Moses was not demoralized, he does not just cry out, he takes action.

We see his character in action when we go back to the time he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Scripture says, “He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” There are two ways that verse can be interrupted. One is Moses looked around to make sure there was no one to witness that illegal act that he is about to commit.

To determine this, it would require judging his actions: It was a fact of that time that to protect a slave -let alone to kill an Egyptian, was a major transgression of Egyptian law and if he were caught, he would be executed. Or, the other possibility is he checked to see whether there was “a man,” someone who would intercede on behalf of the slave? The Hebrew word that means MAN is ish. Moses’s question was would there be a MAN who would intercede?
We use that word ish in English, also. It means “a morally upstanding individual”. We use that word when we say man-ish, which means acts like a man.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 5
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Chapter 1-2

Because Pharaoh wanted to eliminate all males born to the Hebrews, and because nothing else, to this point, had eliminated boys; the king of Egypt, ordered all babies born boys were to be thrown in the Nile. Once again baby girls could live, boys could not. Remember girls were great! They did not cause uprisings or fight wars. What is surprising is Pharaoh said all boys born from this date forward should be thrown into the Nile River.

The majority of translations of Scripture makes it clear that it was every boy. Quoting from Scripture (1:22) “And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, every son that is born you shall cast into the river.” There are a few translations that say that it is every boy from the Hebrew tribe that should be thrown in the Nile.

It was confusing because why would Pharaoh kill off his own future army. While searching for that answer it was easy to realize all that is necessary is to go back to Exodus 1:16 where the Midwives were instructed to “kill all baby boys of the Israelites”. The only difference now is Pharaoh is no longer expecting the midwives to commit infanticide on all Israeli baby boys, but he is now instructing ALL the Egyptians to participate in this practice.

Going on to chapter two we are told “A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.” We are not given their names, evidently God wanted us to focus on the result of this union and not on the people. That woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw how beautiful he was she hid him for three months. Moses’s birth was in no way miraculous. Later we learn Amram and Jochebed were the parents of Moses.

God chose Moses to lead the Jews out of Egypt because of his exceptional moral and leadership traits. He was not preordained to lead and he was a normal mortal. It was Moses’s mother who played the critical role in saving him and the whole story plays out like a beautiful fairy tale. We’ve all heard the story before.

When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. The same substances that were used on Noah’s Ark. She placed her child in it and placed it among the reeds, by the bank of the Nile River. His older sister, Miriam, sat nearby so she could see what happened to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile. Her maidens gave her privacy and walked down the Nile. While going in to bathe, Pharaoh’s daughter spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to retrieve it. She opened it and saw it was a child. Actually, a crying baby boy. She took pity on it and said “This must be a Hebrew child.” It’s rather ironic that we are told she knew it was a Hebrew boy baby and yet she took pity on it. Her own father set out to annihilate the Hebrews and yet she was going to save one of them.

This is a lesson for all of us. It doesn’t matter what your lineage, it matters who and what you are. You can be moral and good even if you are raised by bad people. It doesn’t even matter what your past has been – you can still act moral and good. Another figure in this story who is moral and good is Moses’s sister who was brave enough to speak up and ask, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse.” Here she was, being bold enough to make herself known and to offer assistance to the daughter of the king when she herself was only a slave girl.
Being moral and good has nothing to do with our station or situation in life. It solely depends on our own character.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 4
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Chapter 1

Exodus opens with the listing of Israel’s sons and then tells us his family numbers seventy in the land of Egypt. We are then told Joseph died along with all his brothers and all of that generation.

Deduct that entire generation and you have a mighty small nation of people that have been the focus of the world ever since their beginning. But the Israelites were fertile and prolific, they multiplied and increased very greatly. In the writing of Exodus, with all it contains, we see God’s great attempt to make a moral world.

God’s first attempt to make a good world was creating human beings with a conscience. We know that didn’t work because Adam and Eve’s first child Cain killed his brother Abel. After that episode, and some following events, God came to regret creating human beings. It was then that God sent the flood, destroying all mankind except for one particular good man and his family. God knew that human conscience did not work, so he set up a few rules in Genesis chapter nine. He then revealed some basic moral laws and principles. The first was to not murder. In fact, they were to take the life of those who deliberately murdered.

Next, they were to have children, and they were not to consume the blood of any creature, and He reminded them every human being is created in the image of GOD. But that didn’t work either. People murdered and plundered and engaged in other evils. Then God made a third effort to morally improve mankind by revealing Himself to one specific group “who would be charged” with spreading ethical monotheism in the world.

That group was first known as the Hebrews. The word which meant to cross over or to pass through. Next, they were known as Israelites. The new name given to Jacob by God which means “to wrestle with God”. And then they got the name Jews, which is retained to this day, from Jacob’s son Judah, the Lion of God.

The question, of why God had to keep trying different ways to make man good, may have crossed your mind. It could make you wonder, “Doesn’t God know the beginning from the end”? Or don’t you even wonder why He didn’t just begin the world with The Ten Commandments or with a Chosen people who would obey?

But as you are led off in that path you have to remember God created the human with free will. We have the freedom to believe God – or not. And then with hindsight we know that God dealt with different people, in different times, and in different ways. That is what we call dispensations.

When the unbeliever stands before God, he cannot blame God for not covering all the angles. God can only say I tried all these different methods to convince mankind and yet “you would not believe in spite of all My efforts”. Scripture continues with “and the world was filled with them.” This statement implies that the Egyptians perceived that the Jews were everywhere. They ignored the fact that the Jews only occupied the land known as Goshen. The Jews evidently made a large impression.

The Jews presence throughout the centuries and throughout the world has always been overstated. Today (2021) there are about fourteen million Jews over all the world and the entire world has approximately 7.9 billion people. But back in Egypt there was a change, a big change. A new king, who did not know Joseph, arose over Egypt. We all tend to have a short memory when it comes to anything good. That new king did not know that Joseph actually saved Egypt from the famine.

But maybe it is not a short memory that plagues us. Maybe it is a lack of gratitude that does the most damage. Human beings tend to much more quickly forget the good others have done.

It is human nature for people to remember vividly the bad that has been done to them but it is so much harder for anyone to remember the good that has been done to them. This is one of the very good reasons why it is so difficult to be a good person. Being good actually is only accomplished by fighting our prominent nature.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 3
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For those of you who have read through the Bible more than once, this may be a great repetition for you. But I have to admit I have never read through the entire Scriptures. I am not a fan of reading. I need a purpose to get my nose into a book. And that purpose is never just satisfaction of reading. My Bible reading has been limited to reading passages on specific subjects about which I am trying to learn or confirm.

The first five books of the Bible, which the Jews refer to as the Torah, reveals the God of the universe to us. Those first five books when translated to English mean ‘teaching’ or ‘law’. The central message we find in just those first five books is that God is good and demands we be good. Those first five books tell us all what we need to know concerning the wisdom that is contained therein.

God’s wisdom that He shares with us far outweighs any wisdom taught in any University or any place of higher learning. It’s sad when we study the occupants of our world and learn that most people value knowledge and intelligence but not wisdom. The Bible is the greatest repository of goodness and wisdom in human history and the greatest book ever written, because it comes directly from God.

In the study of the book of Exodus we will find The Ten Commandments, which is the most important moral code in world history. Exodus is, in equal parts, narrative, laws and theology. Another unique element is the only national history ever written that begins with the creation of the world. It is the story of all mankind and not just the Jews.

Exodus opens with the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob. The total number of that family was seventy. The Israelites are referred to as the “sons of Israel”. We remember that Israel was the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel. We are reminded that the name Israel means “wrestled with God”.

It’s amazing how the story of one of the smallest nations in the world holds such worldwide appeal. The Israelites gave to us the detail of two of the most important events in world history: the Israelites Exodus from Egyptian slavery and the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

Even an atheist who believes neither event occurred would have to acknowledge that the Western world – and those parts of the non-western world influenced in the West – has been largely shaped by the belief that these events did occur.

It’s really interesting to note that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, two of the founders of the USA, neither of whom believed in a literal reading of Scripture, commissioned a design for the Great Seal of the United States of America which depicted the Israelites leaving Egypt and was surrounded by the words, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God”. They also believed the founding of our land was a second Exodus in as much as people were leaving Europe and establishing the United States.

Our country truly had great beginnings when you consider that America (outside of Israel) was the most Bible based country ever founded. At one time the Bible was the best-selling book in our country. When I tried to confirm that it still is, I queried google, asking “what was the number one best-selling book in the USA in 2020” and found it was “A promised Land” by Barack Obama. So I refined my search to how many homes own one or more Bibles. Nine out of ten homes have a Bible BUT they don’t read it!

I don’t think my answers surprised me. The results by a Christian organization were 16% of the Population never read the Bible, and only 14% read it every day. They reference or read portions of the Bible three to four times a week.

Another fact about the creation of our own Nation is: Truth and Liberty are the two pillars of the Bible, as seen especially in the first five books of the Bible, and Truth and Liberty are the two main pillars our Nation was founded on. Our founding fathers gave us a great heritage because they read and believed the Bible. We can see all around us the degeneration of our Nation because the majority of our leaders do not depend on God and so do not read or believe Scripture.

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Anyone, anywhere, or even everywhere, people who call themselves believers in God, know the story of the manna. It was a miracle way to feed the wandering Israelites.

I’ve always imagined or heard it was a bland tasting food that was not very interesting and was boring to eat.

But that is not what Scripture says. Scripture actually says, “It was like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey.”

God told them the protocol of the manna, which is about three point seventh of a quart, or one tenth of an ephah, or about thirty five liters.

The instructions were quote, “let one omer be kept throughout the ages, in order that they may see the bread that I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out from the land of Egypt.”

We all know they gathered manna for six days but had leftovers to eat on the seventh.

But just like today many of those believers didn’t believe. Remember, you didn’t work on the Sabbath. This was God’s orders.

The Sabbath was the Lord’s Day, set aside for only Him.

Moses of course, told them what God’s orders were, and he told them more than once! They should not and would not collect the manna on the seventh day.

But what did they do? Some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather their daily manna – but they found nothing.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Remember, it only took one month for the Israelites to disregard the fact that God had planned and accomplished their complete escape from the Egyptians.

You remember, God annihilated the entire Egyptian army for them.

Humans sure tend to have very short memories.

We certainly know that none of this took God by surprise. But for man’s sake God asked the question, “How long will you men refuse to obey My commandments”?

To this point God has given the Israelites very few commandments. They were to circumcise all males, remember and keep the Passover, and now to observe the Sabbath.

Yet, even after all God has done for them, they keep forgetting to do what God asks.

It’s interesting because, after all this time and all that God’s Word teaches us, man still does not do it God’s way. Humans tend to think they are smarter than God.

But, finally the Israelites learned their lesson on gathering food on the Sabbath. They then remained inactive on the Sabbath.

The Israelites ate manna for forty years
until they came to a settled land,
they ate the manna until they came
to the border of the land of Canaan.

Think about it, God had to be patient and teach the Israelites the lesson of His complete care of them for forty years until they came to the borders of Canaan.

But while they were still wandering they had their third crisis.

They had just left the wilderness of Sin, they encamped at Rephidem, where once again there was no water.

Those Israelites, with their short memory were mad again. They forgot that God gave them water for all their kin. And now they are as mad as a hen. Now they were mad at Moses again. He of course was the one to blame cause once again they forgot God’s name. But let’s not be proud, let us not be smug or we’ll bury ourselves in that hole we dug.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 44
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Exodus to this point has been all about God extricating the Israelites from under the cruel hand of Pharaoh.

God performed the greatest miracle when he parted the sea for the Israelites to walk between walls of water and then destroy the entire Egyptian army.

And only three days later when the Israelites hit a glitch in the road they forgot all about God’s miraculous works.

We would love to say how dumb they were and that we certainly would have never turned our backs on God but sad to say not many of us have a good enough memory to just believe God. We get led astray just as easily as the Israelites but our turning way doesn’t normally have critical physical life or death concerns.

While weeping and moaning they said, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread.

Wow!  Their memories are enhanced, and their exaggerations are enormous.

It may overwhelm us at times but liberty does come with a price. It’s the price of self–reliance, not the free handouts that eventually enslave us.

But because they encountered a few days of discomfort they stated, You have brought us out into the wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.

But God has an answer.  He told Moses He would rain down bread to you from the sky and the people should go out each day and gather that day’s portion. We of course know that bread is Manna.

God explained to Moses that this test was to see whether they will follow my instructions or not.

There two different thoughts as to why God chose to gift them with their sustenance.

One thought is God was testing to see if the people’s faith will trust God to provide them with enough food for every day or God may be testing them to see if they will believe in Him when they are doing well.

It’s sad to say but some people only seem to need God when their life is on the downturn and not when they are doing well.

In this age of Grace our test is whether we believe our salvation is strictly tied to our faith in Christ’s ability to save us by His death on the cross.  But there are those people who only turn to God when they are down on their luck.

The instruction for the manna were they would collect it for only six days but when they gather the days portion on the sixth day they will find they actually got double portions for that day and they will not have to collect on the seventh day, the Sabbath.

And the Moses reminds the Israelites that even though they are directing their grumbling to Moses and Aaron they are actually grumbling against the Lord.

And now, once again, the Lord is taking responsibility for all the miracles that have happened to the Israelites.

And now, once again He has heard their grumbling and He is going to take care of the Israelites so they may know His is the Lord.

The Lord told them in the morning you will have your bread and in the evening you will eat flesh.

Here we thought they were just getting bread and  we probably would quote them and say, “man cannot live by bread alone, we need jelly for that bread”.

But God did not wait for then to say they could not just eat bread. He was now supplying them with meat.

Every evening quail would appear for their evening meal.

In the morning there was a fall of dew in the camp and when the dew lifted there was a substance, a fine and flaky substance, and this was the bread which the Lord had given.

They were commanded to gather as much of it as each required to eat.

When the Israelites gathered the manna they were not consistent. Some gathered a little, some gathered a lot.

But when it was measured the person who gathered much ended up with no excess and he who gathered a little ended up with no deficiency.

Moses told them they could not save any of it until morning.

I suppose some wanted to gather a weeks worth and store it up so they didn’t have to go get it each day.

And of course, even though they heard Moses instructions, they disobeyed them.

When it was left until morning it became infested with maggots and stank.

And Moses got angry with them.

They finally got the point, and only gathered enough that they would eat.

But on the sixth day they were told to gather a double portion so they would not work on the Sabbath.

And low and behold it did not turn rancid, it did not get maggots and it did not stink.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 43
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God parted the sea and allowed the Israelites passage on dry land to escape the Egyptian army. Only three days later, the Israelites couldn’t find water and began to doubt Moses and the Lord. They found a water source, but its waters were bitter and undrinkable. For this reason they called that place Marah. Immediately, the people began to grumble against Moses. They had just walked through walls of water, on dry land through the sea yet they doubted God. He did not provide good drinking water for them.  “Oh, woe is us!” But did they ask for God’s help? Oh no, they cried and whined and blamed Moses. Moses cried out to the Lord, and God told him to find a certain piece of wood and throw it into the water. He obeyed, and the waters of Marah became good. It’s easy for us to be critical of the Israeli’s choice to turn from God because they were disappointed.

But did you ever stop to consider how short our own attention span is. Sometimes it’s easy to complain about a situation when we’ve only had problems for three hours or less! Do we ever stop to think what could be written about us if we were in Scriptures? When we stop trusting in the goodness of God and see only our own limited resources, we can become bitter and even blame God.

We are no different than the Israelites except in our own minds.

What does God say? “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”.  It’s pompous when we think we are better than others.

After finding the wood that made the bitter water sweet they continued their journey.

They came to Elin, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and there they camped beside the water.

Next they came to the wilderness of sin. This is between Elin and Sinai. This was the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.

This means that it was only a little over a month since they sang that song of gratitude at God’s triumph over the Egyptians. And what are they doing? Well, they are loud and vocal complaining that they would rather be back in Egypt.

I guess it was easy to forget what captivity and making bricks was really like!

And it wasn’t just a few people who complained, it was the entire group!

We all like to think if we saw a miracle it would bring us closer to God.

Remember, we are just as bad as the Jews and miracles don’t necessarily convert to faith in God.

Think about it:  We live with miracles everyday. The birth of a baby, love, music, a body that heals itself! What isn’t a miracle? And yet these don’t bring people closer to God. They just call it nature and expect it! Quoting the Israelites, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread.”​

It’s obvious by these statements that the human mind can make up its own stories.

This wasn’t the situation in which the Israelites were living.

The problem is their short memories and the fact that they did not have to provide for themselves in Egypt, no matter how meager the rations.

It seems most people prefer to be taken care of – even at the price of losing their freedom.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 42
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God’s victory over the Egyptians in the Red Sea provoked men and angels to sing a song of God’s victory in protecting His chosen people.

The verse that follows the song then talks about Moses’s sister Miriam.

It tells us Miriam took a timbrel in her hand.

But it does not just describe what she did, it describes who she was. This is the first time in Scripture that Miriam was described as a prophetess.

A prophet or a prophetess is actually a spokesperson for God.

All we knew about Miriam previously is the fact that she was the sister who watched over baby Moses when he was placed in a basket in the Nile River.

Actually, Miriam is the only woman who is described as a prophetess in the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible.

So this prophetess took that timbrel in hand to dance and then others went out to dance with her, with their timbrels.

Think about it, the Israelites were leaving Egypt to follow Moses and Aaron and they took their musical instruments, supposedly for such an occasion.

They were confident they would have a reason to celebrate victory – and they did!

If you wondered, as I did what a timbrel is, it is nothing more than a tambourine. I imagined this was what it was, but I had to check because I just could not imagine a woman older than Moses dancing with a tambourine.

But Scripture goes on to say Miriam chanted for them:

She chanted the words “Sing to the Lord, for He was triumphed gloriously”.

It was after this that Moses instructed the Israelites to leave that area. Out they went into the wilderness of Shur.

They traveled for three days and found no water.

That’s when the complaining began.

What short memories human beings have. They were given a gigantic miracle with their enemy destroyed and now they lost all faith in God’s desire to take care of them and make them His people.

This was only three days away from the most inspiring miracle they had ever seen in their lives and now they are complaining about an inconvenience.

In fact, on this short journey to Mt Sinai they complained four different times for four different situations.

Human nature is amazing, and sorry to say, we are not exempt.

They get a miracle and the next day they forget about what has been done and they cry concerning their next inconvenience.

They are, and we do, basically forget what God had done and say, “none of that is impressive, what are you going to do for me now.”

Their next stop was at Marah, where there was water, but they couldn’t drink it.

Marah is actually the word for bitter and that word described that oasis to a ’T’.

Because of all the complaining and frustration Moses cried out to the Lord and once again the Lord provided a miracle.

The Lord showed Moses a piece of wood and when Moses threw it into the water, the water became sweet.

This is miracle number two during the freeing of the Israelites from slavery.

It was at this site where Moses built a statute and a law.

It was there that God told the people, “If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, Giving ear to His commandments, and keeping, all  His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord are your healer.”

It is important to take note here. God did not say the Jews would have no diseases. He said He would not bring upon them any of the diseases He brought upon the Israelites.

And as much as people want to read what they would like into that verse, We cannot hold God to what he did not say.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 41
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If we could read and understand  the Hebrew language we would read and understand and probably really enjoy the first 19 verses in Chapter 15 of Genesis. These verses were written in beautiful Hebrew language.

In fact, this is one section from the Bible sung in Hebrew. This, according to verse one states, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord.”

In the Talmud, there is a passage that says, “The angels too, broke out in song when the Egyptians were drowning in the sea.

But then the Talmud says God rebuked them for singing songs while the Egyptians died.

Do we or should we rejoice in the destruction of our enemy? The Jews check the Talmud to know the answer to that question.

God does not rebuke Moses and the Israelites for singing, He only rebukes the angels for singing. God evidently does not hold people to the same high standards the angels are to possess.

But the Talmud is not direct revelation from God  as our Scriptures are.

The Talmud is a collection of writings that covers the full gamut of  Jewish law and tradition.  It was not compiled and edited until between the third and sixth centuries.

The main text of the Talmud is the Mishnah, a collection of terse teachings written in Hebrew, redacted by Rabbi Yehudah the Prince, in the years following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Over the next several hundred years, the rabbis continued to teach and expound on these teachings. 

Many of those teachings were collected into the Jerusalem Talmud, which contained the teachings of the rabbis in the Land of Israel.

The Talmud was therefore, not direct revelation from God as the Holy Scriptures are. It is a compiled list of what is appropriate for the general population of the Jews.

The Jews believe there is the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old  Testament, and also the Oral Torah that helps us understand the Torah.

They believe that just before the giving of the Torah God tells Moses that He will give him “the stone tablets, the Torah and the commandments.”

This leads us to wonder, what is the difference between them?

On Mount Sinai, Moses received both the law of God and a precise set of instructions for the sacrificial system. These were to form the basis of the religious ceremonies of the Israelites.

Both sets of instructions were called the law, but they were different in that the law of Ten Commandments defined what sin was, whereas the ceremonial law contained the solution to the sin problem. God wrote the Ten Commandments, and Moses wrote the ceremonial law, or book of the law.

Exodus 31:18 says, “And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”

Then Exodus 32:16 says,“And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.”

Then in Deuteronomy 10:1-2 we read: When Moses returned from meeting with God on Sinai he found that the Israelites had made for themselves a golden calf to worship. Moses was so angry that he broke the tablets of stone. Then God said to him, “Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.”

Moses commanded the Levites to take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee

The Ceremonial Law of types and ceremonies was written by Moses in the book of the law, and was placed beside the table of stone in the Ark.

These two sets of laws, the one moral and the other ceremonial, were thus entirely different and served different purposes.

And then there is The Oral Torah. It is like an owner’s manual and or a companion guide to the Torah.

With it we can understand what the Torah mean, and determine the details of the various commandments.

They are convinced that just before the giving of the Torah on Mt Sinai, God tells Moses that He will give him “the stone tablets and the Torah”.

By adding the word “commandments” in addition to the Torah, God implies that there are commandments not included in the Torah.

These are the oral commandments that were passed down from generation to generation, from Moses to Joshua and then down to the leaders and sages of each generation until eventually, after the destruction of the Second Temple, they were written down in what is known  as the Mishnah.

How much easier life is in this “age of Grace”. We have Paul’s writing telling us what God will do for us and what we are encouraged to do for Him.

For by Grace are we saved…
We don’t have to study all the books telling us what to read or how to live.

Praise to God for accepting our simple faith.

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I was surprised when I saw in Scripture that God made the east winds to blow all night long to divide the river.

I had always been exposed to the movie version that had Moses hold up his arm to separate the waters.

When I learned it was the wind through the night it didn’t seem so much of a miracle from God as it would have been if it parted on Moses’s command.

We can’t blame the movie producer for the misrepresentation because verse 21 in chapter 14 of Genesis says, “Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split.”

God was capable of splitting the sea at any time in any way. He did not need winds to do it.

But God chose to send the strong winds to part the waters.

Like most of God’s miracles He chose to use the manipulation of nature to do this miracle.

It seems likely that God chose to manipulate nature to prove that He was in charge of nature. He was God.  Nature was not a God.

And we all know just how important Mother Nature is today. She actually gets more credit in the world than God does.

On the other hand by using nature God allowed and allowed skeptics to not believe God but to believe nature is in charge.

When we study God’s miracle it is easy to see that God is allowing free will.

God is allowing people to either believe Him or find reasons why they don’t want to believe Him.

By using nature to do His miracles He is allowing people to have free will, the freedom to accept or reject  the God of the universe.

It’s interesting to think of those who  would reject the God of creation when you consider this east wind dried the ground to walk on but also built a wall of water for them, both on their right and their left side’s.

And it worked, after the Israelites passed through the sea, the Egyptians confidently entered on that dry ground to follow the Israelites just as God had previously  predicted the event to Moses.

We are then told it was at the morning watch, which lasted from about 2:00am until to about 6:00 am.

Then we remember that pillar of fire and the cloud, which then threw the Egyptian army into a panic.

God locked the wheels of their chariots. This is when the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt”.

Obviously the Egyptians are beginning to believe the Israelites really did have a God who cared for and protected them.

And though they believed, they believed too late. Alas, it was too late they drowned with that knowledge.

Then once again the Lord told Moses, “Hold out your arm over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, and upon their chariots and upon their horsemen.”

Moses did what the Lord instructed, and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal status.

At that time any Egyptians who thought they had a chance to escape the sea, were hurled into the sea by God.

All this is done in a three hour period and daylight breaks at the perfect time for the Israelites’ to see the Egyptians drown.

Pharaoh’s entire army were all swallowed up in the sea. Not one remained.

The Israelites were delivered from the Egyptians. They could be certain of that because Israel saw the dead Egyptians  on the shore of the sea.

And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptian army, the people feared the Lord. They now had complete faith in God and in His servant Moses.

Well at least in this moment they had complete faith.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 39
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