Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

After the incident with the golden calf, God suggests to the Israelites that, while He will send an angel in front of them to guide them, He may not accompany them on their journey to the Promised Land.  The Israelites beg Him to remain with them and stopped wearing any sort of ornaments (as God commanded them to do while He decided what to do with them).  Then Moses spoke with God and requested that He go with them (I am unclear if the order these things are recorded in is the order in which they happened).  Then we come to what today stands out to me.  God tells Moses,

I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.

Let us claim that message for ourselves.  God knows us by name.  Think about what the means.  It is an even bigger deal than if the President of the United States, or Bill Gates, or Donald Trump, or whatever big name celebrity you might choose to name, called out you out by name when giving a speech to a large crowd.  Out of the approximately nine billion people on this planet today, you are important enough to God that He knows your name (and not only does He know your name, but the one that only those closest to you use).  But there is more to this message than that.  If we throw ourselves on His mercy so that He might be please with us, He will do everything that we ask.

Side Note: when I started this I was going to also comment on God hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock, but after writing this I think this is the place to stop.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 30-32.

Usually I skip over the the first part of this passage and write something about Aaron, the golden calf, or Moses’ reaction to it, but this time I want to touch on something else first.  God tells Moses that no one may use a perfume which smells similar to the anointing oil for the priests and no one may burn an incense which smells similar to the holy incense, aside from priests doing so as part of the priestly duties.  I never really thought of the significance of that before today.  Over the last fifty years science has come to understand that smells trigger thoughts, memories, and emotions in ways which bypass our rational thought processes.  God gave this command regarding the holy anointing oil and the holy incense because He wanted those scents to only be associate with worship of Him.  Once those scents were used for worship within the Tabernacle, those who worshiped there would unconsciously associate them with the Holy.  If those scents were used in other settings two things could result.  On the one hand, if people only smelled those scents in places of genuine worship of God, those scents would help them focus more clearly on God when they smelled them.  On the other hand, people might be given a sense of righteousness while doing that which was sinful if those scents were present there.    What all of that made me realize is that we could use scents today to aid in our worship of God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 28-29.

I have written before about how I have trouble reading passages such as this one which detail the construction of items of worship which we no longer employ.  As a result, I struggle finding things to write on such passages.  Which leads me to what I am going to write about today.  First some background which sets the stage for what I noticed.  At this point there are thirteen tribes as Ephraim and Manasseh were each a tribe (they each have their own place within the overall encampment of the Israelites).  However, when God instructs Moses on constructing the garment for Aaron (and his successors as High Priest) He tells Moses to carve the names of the twelve sons of Israel into gemstones which will be attached to those garments.  Now, I am not sure why that is significant, but I have been noticing some interesting juxtapositions of the numbers twelve and thirteen throughout the Bible.  On his death bed (not quite, but close enough), Jacob had adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his sons in place of Joseph (not to replace Joseph as his son, but in order to expand Joseph’s place as his son).  Perhaps it is significant that in that passage it refers to Jacob adopting Ephraim and Manasseh and here is says the sons of Israel.  I am writing this unsure about what it means.  I will note that the Bible does seem to use Jacob and Israel to distinguish between the earthly man, Jacob, and the spiritual heir to God’s promise, Israel (I am still working on the proper way to refer to that distinction).  However, it seems significant and I suspect that its significance is spelled out in a later passage, but that I will only see that significance if I have taken note of this juxtaposition here.

I am going to add an after thought here about what I have noticed regarding twelve and thirteen.  Jesus called the Twelve Apostles, who parallel the twelve tribes of Israel.  However, Jesus and His inner circle numbered thirteen, with Jesus interceding with God for the Twelve, just as the tribes numbered thirteen with the Levites interceding with God for the other twelve tribes (when we count Ephraim and Manasseh as separate tribes, which is done in much of the Old Testament).  There is a mystery of God here which I do not understand, but which makes me feel as if there is something about it which would improve my faith walk if I did understand it.  If my feeling is correct, the Holy Spirit will reveal it to me in God’s time.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 25-27.

I want to focus on the fact that God told Moses to build the Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according the pattern which God was about to show him.  This supports the idea written about by the writer of Hebrews that the Tabernacle built by the Israelites was modeled on a Tabernacle which exists in heaven.  The materials described here as being used to build the Tabernacle are those available to the Israelites in the Sinai desert which would most closely mimic the heavenly materials used in the heavenly Tabernacle while being practical for human beings who had to be constantly prepared to move.

Every time I read this passage I am struck by the fact that God instructed Moses to only accept the donations from those whose hearts led them to give, and that he was instructed to accept donations from everyone whose heart led them to give.  That instruction gives me thoughts about how we should finance the buildings we use in worshiping and serving God, and their décor.  Such projects should be financed by those whom God gives a desire to donate for them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 22-24.

I am never quite sure what to write on this passage, but I am also always struck by the laws of what I consider basic justice contained in this passage:

• Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner
• Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless
• Do not spread false reports
• Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong
• Do not show favoritism to the poor
• Do not deny justice to the poor

There are a few more, but the first two and the last two I listed above give us an important reminder about what true justice is.  True justice rejects the idea of using the fact that we have greater power than others to deprive them of they are due, and it neither favors the poor over the well-to-do, nor does it allow the wealthy to use their wealth to escape accountability for their wrongdoing.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 19-21.

When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, or Ten Sayings, He spoke to them directly.  The people were so terrified by hearing God speak that they asked Moses to relay the rest of His commands rather than hear them directly.  Moses told them not to fear because that God had spoken to them in this manner so that they would fear God to such an extent that they would not sin.  Which brings us to the great conundrum of faith: it is fear of God which leads us to truly desire to be made right with Him, but it is only when we truly understand God’s love for us that we accept His actions to redeem us, and when we understand that love we realize we no longer need to fear anything else.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

My thoughts about today’s passage are scattered.  My first thought was similar to my thoughts about yesterday’s passage: the importance of communicating to the next generation the ways in which God has demonstrated His power and His love for us.  The point of the Passover celebration was to remind the Israelites about how God had saved them from captivity through His mighty power, and to communicate that to the next generation.  Then I came to the song which Moses and the Israelites sang after they crossed the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds, since the correct translation of the Hebrew is ambiguous).  There they praise God for rescuing them from Pharaoh’s mighty army.  The song reflects that Pharaoh and his army thought that they could strike down the Israelites with impunity, but that God acted to protect them.  Finally, we have the Israelites complaining about the absence of drinkable water at Marah, despite having experienced God’s power to save and care for them twice just before this.  This last reflects on our human nature to forget how God has cared for us in the past in the face of our latest struggle.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 10-12.

There are two aspects to the way in which we generally understand the Exodus from Egypt which are not exactly supported by the passages.  The first one I want to point out is rather minor.  We generally read the account about the plagues as Moses leaving Pharaoh’s presence after Pharaoh refused to let the people go, then returning to warn Pharaoh of the next plague.  However, after the Plague of Darkness, Pharaoh warns Moses that if he ever sees him again, he will kill Moses (or have him killed) and Moses agrees that he will never appear before Pharaoh again.  As I read the passage today, I realized that after telling Pharaoh that he would never appear before him again, Moses told him about the Plague on the Firstborn before leaving.  It occurred to me that you would structure the account this way if you were telling each plague as a night time story to children that would be continued the following night.

Now the other mistake we make when thinking about Exodus is a major mistake.  It partly results from movie adaptations.  We think that Moses came to Pharaoh and demanded that he free the Israelites, but that is not what Moses did.  Moses came to Pharaoh and requested that he allow the Israelites to go into the wilderness for three days to make an offering to God and then return to their slavery.  After the death of the Egyptian firstborn, Pharaoh told Moses to take all of the Israelites and their flocks to worship God “as you have requested”.  This suggests that Pharaoh intended for the Israelites to go into the wilderness to worship and then return to their slavery.  However, other parts of the passage suggest that the rest of the Egyptians wished for the Israelites to never return.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 7-9.

I first noticed that Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s advisers when they were all snakes when I watched the animated movie, “The Prince of Egypt”.  In the movie, Pharaoh does not notice this, but I believe the passage intends for us to understand that Pharaoh was aware of it happening yet chose to refuse God’s command anyway.  Pharaoh’s advisers were able to reproduce the signs which Moses and Aaron performed up until they produced gnats.  At which point, Pharaoh’s advisers warned him that he was going up against God (or, at least, against a god).   I want to note that even though God told Moses before he performed his first sign for Pharaoh that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart, the passage describes Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go in a manner which suggests Pharaoh making a choice until the sixth plague, the plague of boils.  The Egyptian people believed that the Pharaoh was a god, or perhaps better phrased as they believed he was the incarnation of a god. Thinking about that makes me wonder if this Pharaoh believed that he was a god and that his advisers were duplicating the signs Moses and Aaron performed using his power.  Or, did he know that his advisers were performing tricks and assume that the signs performed by Moses and Aaron which his advisers could not reproduce were also tricks which his advisers did not know the secret to perform?  In any case, Pharaoh had all of the evidence he needed from when the staffs turned into snakes to know that he should listen to what Moses and Aaron had to say.  Of course, I write that as if there is no way I would have made that mistake.  And I know that there is a good chance I would have made the same mistake.  How many times have we failed to listen when God was speaking to us?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.