Jacob will not consent to be buried in Egypt. He makes Joseph swear an oath that he will
take him to the place where his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, are buried. Why does he not simply request and believe that
Joseph will do as he promises? When Jacob
is dying Joseph comes to his father and brings his two sons, Ephraim and
Manasseh with him. In that encounter,
Jacob decides to adopt the two boys as his own, they will receive blessing and
inheritance with his children, further dividing the inheritance, cutting into
the portions the natural born children will receive, but effectively increasing
the share that will pass to Joseph and his descendants, and also they will
receive his blessing. The family is now
complete, the tribes are set and Israel from now forward will be numbered
according to these men and the descendants who will come after them. They will all receive not only the
inheritance from Jacob but also the Land will be apportioned according to these
same tribes.
Handwashing may seem a minor thing to you but it was a very
big issue with the Jews of Jesus' time. They
were in the Land but they didn't rule over it and the law wasn't their
Law. They had much contact with Gentiles
with whom they shared the Land. Because of
this constant contact with "the world" there was a constant need to
wash the hands because of defilement. Those
with whom they traded and conducted other business were ritually unclean so
there was a cultural problem that required frequent washing. The disciples of Jesus were not keeping this
law and the Pharisees wondered why not. The
problem, Jesus said, is not the world that defiles us but that which is in the
heart. Sin isn't a contagious disease in
the sense that we catch it from others, it is more a part of our DNA and that
must be dealt with in some other ways. How
do you cleanse that? Nothing but the
blood of Jesus.
Paul says that "these things took place as examples for
us, that we might not desire evil as they did." These things are the failures of the nation
in the wilderness. When he says they
desired evil he mentions two things, idolatry in the making of the golden
calves, and sexual immorality (a Jewish understanding of the episode of the
golden calf is that the people were "playing" in worship, and that
play was essentially sexual play). In addition,
he speaks of putting God to the test, the sin of unbelief, and grumbling or
murmuring. For all these sins, the
people suffered God's judgment in one form or another and Paul says we are to
learn from that example. How do we understand
the giving of the Spirit? Living by the
Spirit requires discipline, vigilance on our part to avoid temptation and when
we face it, to be strong in our decision to withstand it. For that, we need to have that inner
cleansing to allow outer obedience.
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