Torah 101:
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
To many people the Torah seems very complicated, but if we look at it in the right order, and see the big picture behind it, we will find that its many aspects are actually all connected and rather straightforward.
So let’s start at the beginning: creation. When we get past the questions whether the creation account is literal or figurative (and the best treatment we have seen on this question is from Gerald Schroeder), the lesson in the creation account is about bringing order out of chaos. This aspect of creation is not limited to one point in historical time. YHWH wants it to continue every day.
YHWH gave us the Torah as a short-cut to solving the problems we encounter every day, especially in regard to interpersonal relations. It describes the most effective ways to restore order when things get out of balance. If we follow its directions, all of creation can be brought back into line.
The Law of First Usage
Early on in Genesis, we see dust associated with the descendants of Avraham, so when we encounter references to dust, we can ask ourselves whether we should draw some connection with Avraham’s descendants.
The best light on the meaning of a particular word used in the Scriptures can come from how it was used earlier in Scripture itself. Avraham is the first one called a Hebrew. He is also the first said to pray for someone else. So he sets the tone for how we view these concepts later in Scripture.
The very first usage of a word in Scripture especially sets the tone for a specialized meaning it may have throughout. We read in Exodus 28:35 that a certain kind of garment with bells on it
“shall be upon Aharon in order to officiate, and its sound shall be heard when he goes into the Holy Place before YHWH and when he comes out, and he will not die.”
In Hebrew, “sound” and “voice” are the same term. The first time we encounter this word is when Adam and Chawwah heard the sound of YHWH in the Garden. (Gen. 3:18) So this would remind him that he was in YHWH’s presence, so he would act accordingly.
When interpreting the Torah, if you can validly tie the theme all the way back to Genesis 1, do so.
When Y’shua was brought a question about divorce (Matithyahu 19:3-8), he won the argument by appealing to this principle. Moshe allowed it because of our stubbornness, he said, but “from the beginning it was not so”. If we want the best answer, he refers us back to the original ideal, back when YHWH said there was nothing wrong with His creation.
The older the law, the more weight it carries; creation law is the most authoritative. This principle saves us from interpreting anything in the New Testament to mean the Torah was abrogated. There is a widespread belief that Y’shua did away with the kosher laws, which also highlights the very real danger inherent in building doctrines based on English translations, especially when the lesson we are meant to extract from a particular passage is explicitly stated.
One popular version of Mark 7:18-19 reads, "...whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated. (Thus he declared all foods clean.)"
Yet what the text from which it was translated simply says, "...because it does not enter into his heart, but into his stomach, and goes out into the latrine, purging all foods."
The word for "purging" is the word from which we get "catharsis”. In other words, the body cleans itself out naturally. The whole phrase "thus he declared" is nowhere to be found in the original! If he did mean to contradict YHWH's earlier instruction, then he was, by his own measure, someone of very little consequence:
"Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:19a)
YHWH did not change His mind. When speaking of the latter days, He still calls eating swine's flesh disgusting. (Isa. 65:4; 66:17) And Y’shua was not even talking about kinds of food in Mark 7.
Shim’on Kefa (often called Peter), one of Y’shua's closest followers, had a vision in which a sheet full of all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, was lowered from the sky. He was told, "Arise, Kefa, kill and eat!" (Acts 10) When he objected, he was told, "What YHWH has cleansed, do not call common." So that means we can now anything without being concerned about those old-fashioned regulations, right?
That's not the message Kefa got from this vision. In fact, after the same thing had occurred three times, he was still very puzzled. (v. 17) He knew Scripture well enough to know what it could not mean, but what did it mean? The answer came right away. Some Gentile men came to the door of the house where he was lodging, and when Kefa told them this story, the only meaning he drew from it was:
"Now I understand very well that YHWH is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him." (v. 34)
It was people, not food, that YHWH was concerned about! The sheet of unclean animals was just an allegory, not a change in the rules. It was a vision; he never actually ate those things.
Eating blood has indeed been found to cause many types of cancer. The danger of trichinosis from eating pork is well known. Shellfish are actually poisonous several months out of the year. All they retain in their bodies is the toxins they filter out of sea water. And we could go on and on. So yes, there are definitely hygienic reasons to eat clean foods as the Bible defines them:
"If you will listen very carefully to [and obey] the voice of YHWH your Elohim and do what is right, and give ear to all His commandments and carefully preserve all His prescribed limits, I will put none of the diseases on you that I brought on the Egyptians, because I am YHWH who makes you healthy." (Ex. 15:26)
But YHWH is less concerned about what we eat as with what we learn from it. The main point of the dietary laws is what they teach us.
YHWH constantly reiterates that we must both "do AND observe" the things He commands—i.e., not just "jump through hoops", but as we carry out His instructions (which is all “torah” means anyway), we need to examine them closely to find the deeper meaning behind them. Yes, do them, but then let them teach you broader principles. Learn the patterns they exemplify.
In Y’shua's "sermon on the mount" (Matthew 5-7), he gave examples of how commandments that seem relatively easy to follow outwardly really require a heart attitude behind them. They are just a few examples of a whole frame of mind with which all of our actions must be consistent.
Of course, this does not cancel the literal commands:
"...Hypocrites! You tithe mint, anise, and cummin, but neglect the weightier matters of the Torah--justice, mercy, and faithfulness! These are what you ought to have done--without neglecting the others." (Matthew 23:23)
Y’shua said to get to the heart of the matter, but we can't learn much from what we aren't doing.
So what can we learn from them?
Pictures
"We are what we eat", so YHWH allows us to eat the animals which have the characteristics that He desires for us. Clean animals must both have a divided hoof and chew the cud (Lev. 11), like the cow, sheep, goat, or deer. These were not chosen randomly; they hold detailed pictures that are meant to teach us what to be like.
A divided hoof makes an animal sure-footed—even a cow, although its body shape and relatively thin legs make it appear as if it would be somewhat clumsy. Likewise, we are to walk a sure-footed “walk” so we will not stumble:
"You shall walk in all the ways which YHWH your Elohim has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess.” (Deut. 5:33)
How does an animal chew the cud? The grass goes into the first of the cow’s four stomachs. It is partially digested and the rest is formed into small balls called cud. The cud is then returned to the mouth, where it is chewed at length. After being swallowed a second time, the cud returns to the first stomach for further digestion. It then moves on to three additional stomachs, which digest the proteins and nourish the body.
There is much to learn from this process. Chewing the cud is a picture of meditating on YHWH's Word "day and night" (Joshua 1:8)--i.e., over and over, until it goes deep into our hearts. Once we read or hear of the Word of YHWH, we begin to digest it, but it is impossible to fully understand the depths of His Word from only one encounter. We, therefore, must regurgitate the Word and chew on it some more. We are to turn it over in our minds, pray about it, consider it from different angles, see what it is connected to, study it in it’s original context and so forth.
But no human has multiple stomachs. This is why we must be joined to other Torah students. We need everyone’s digesting abilities. We must be in unity with others, each serving the other, joined together and using our gifts in order to properly “digest” and process the Word of YHWH.
The truths that we learn from digesting the Word then become “milk” for us to feed the young with sound teaching:
Laying aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babies, desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby. (1 Kefa/Peter 2:1-2)
A pig, on the other hand, has a cloven hoof and therefore looks clean on the outside. Its "walk" may look wonderful, but it will eat anything and cannot pass impurities from its body since it cannot sweat. It is a picture of indiscriminately taking in any and every "wind of doctrine", whether from YHWH or men. Therefore,
“the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.” (Lev. 11:7-8)
The pig has the correct external sign, and yet it is what is inside that prevents him from being clean. How we walk avails nothing if we take the wrong things into ourselves. A pig will even eat another pig. It doesn't matter if our table is kosher, if we devour each other.
Learning to Make Distinctions
YHWH tells us the reason He gave Israel the kosher rules is so that we would learn to make a distinction between holy and unholy:
"I am YHWH your Elohim, who has made a distinction between you and other peoples. Therefore, you must make a distinction between clean animals and unclean, and not make your souls abominable by means of any animal ...which I have separated from you as unclean. Then you will be set apart unto Me, because I have set you apart from other people, to be Mine." (Lev. 20:24ff; compare Lev. 10:10; 11:46-47)
This does not just refer to food. The kosher diet is just one form of a larger idea—things that are “clean” and “unclean”.
We cannot see ritual impurity (tumah) or purity (taharah), but particular actions bring us from one unseen state to the other. Things we do physically can affect unseen realities. We may not look or smell any different. One might even have just stepped out of the bath, yet be ritually unclean, or be covered with mud, yet be “clean”. Nothing appears to change, but it does.
Sometimes this whole area seems almost like a game of “freeze tag”. And maybe if we think of it as a fun way to learn a lesson, it won’t seem like a heavy burden.
It is easy to see how beneficial it is to wash our bodies after the types of bodily secretions that render one ritually impure. We could just leave it at that and think it is enough to be obedient, but there is much more we can learn from it.
One of the most poignant examples of being unclean is the disease of leprosy. Every time in Scripture that we see someone specifically stricken with this affliction (Miryam, Elisha's servant Gehazi, and King Uzziah), he or she was desiring a position he or she had not been allotted. Thus, being ritually "unclean" is a picture of being selfish.
Other types of ritual uncleanness involve activities necessary in this world but which somehow touch death or corruption. (Lev. 5:2; Lev. 11-15; Numb. 19; Deut. 23:14) Likewise, a selfish choice may not in itself be a sin, but it is a path that leads us away from love for one another, which is life as YHWH defines it. So it is something to be avoided--a plague to our souls.
YHWH tells us how to avoid it:
“These words which I command you…teach them diligently to your children, and bind them as a sign on your arm, so they can serve as totafot between your eyes.” (Deut. 6:6-8)
“Lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, that they may be as totafot between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut. 11:18)
What are totafot? Another ritual: something bound onto our bodies as a reminder—much like the proverbial string on one’s finger.
Why between your eyes? The Hebrew word for “between” (beyn) comes from the word for “discerning”, i.e., “distinguishing between”. We may not always know which eye is which, since generally we look through both at once and they are hard to separate. But in Hebraic lore, the right eye (also called the “single eye”) is an idiom for generosity and the left eye (the “evil eye”) an idiom for stinginess. If we hold back from those who need our help today for what may or may not really be a need tomorrow, our eye becomes “double”, in Y’shua’s terms. It is the Torah that enables us to discern between the two by making the parameters of each eye distinct from the other. It teaches us to make the right distinctions:
“Be diligent to show yourself approved unto Elohim, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)
What does it mean to "divide" the Word? It means that when we read, "No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper", we need to ask who it is speaking to. Not every command or promise is for everyone. Some are for men, others only for women or priests. Others are directed only to Judah or to the Northern Kingdom.
Context
The most common way Scripture is misinterpreted is taking particular verses out of their intended context. Many innocent people have died because religious fanatics have done this. So when interpreting a given Scripture, we need to be sure we know what it is actually talking about.
No verse of Scripture just appears out of nowhere, unconnected with what is around it. Every thought or emotion depends on or is influenced by something else. Why is this situation a reality? Approach it analytically as a detective. Look for clues. Find the thread and retrace the path backward to find out where a particular saying came from.
How does what you are reading relate to what came before it? What was going on or had just occurred that might color what someone said? If there is a famine and they are hungry, what they say may relate more to their stomachs than to some profound religious idea. If they were enslaved or downtrodden, was someone trying to take advantage of their neediness?
How do outside events affect this? Who was ruling in other nations? What empires were current? What were their prevalent attitudes? Who were their enemies, traditional and current? Were the “characters” in a position where they were free to question and to really tell the truth, or did they have to couch their words in careful political circumlocutions?
Try to put yourself in their frame of mind. Imagine yourself in their situation. What did it smell like? What was it about the taste of raisin cakes that won David’s heart when Avigail made them? How would someone be dressed to be able to conceal a dagger? What weapons had just been invented that threatened or frightened these people? What technology did they have to arm themselves?
And consider the source! Who was speaking? What family or nation or belief system does this “character” come from? Are his opinions likely to be based on truth? Do his experiences incline him to be biased or prejudiced? How do the responses of those around him to what he said help you understand the angle from which he intended his words to be taken?
Who were they spoken to? If a prophet is talking to a king living in his own time, why connect the promises he gives to a future figure like the Messiah?
Might the topography, terrain, or distances have affected the events being described? There is no better way to gain this understanding than to visit the Land of Israel.
If you can’t (and even if you can), read all you can about archaeological finds, especially the reports from those who made the finds. What did a fishhook look like 2,000 years ago? How did they get around? What were their houses built from?
Learn about their culture. How did they cook? What kinds of jobs did people have? What did they do for entertainment? What was their drink of choice? What constituted marriage—or divorce—for them? How many wives were considered appropriate? What was valuable to them, and what was not? What was most expensive, and why? Who wore cosmetics and why? What did they make clothes from, and how did they dye them? What did they not have that they had to trade for? How close were they to trade routes? How did they bury their dead? What were their taboos? What animals did they keep? What were their superstitions, and what did they worship? What were their medical practices? Their hospitality traditions? How did they adapt to their climate?
What light might other passages of Scripture cast on the verse you are trying to interpret? Especially in parallel accounts like the Kings and Chronicles, where the same stories are told by different scribes. if one verse gives one detail and another verse tells us something else, what’s the difference? What nuances do we catch from one that we did not see in the other? In Hebrew there are two words for “speak”; to begin your study, ask yourself what the difference is.
Nothing is to be interpreted in isolation; that has led to some bizarre doctrines. When Y’shua said, "What goes into the man from outside cannot defile him" (Mark 7:18), if we had that verse and nothing else, we could surmise that it doesn't matter what we eat. But if we check the context, right in the very next verse he explained what he meant: men don't have to eat unclean foods in order to be defiled if they already have unclean hearts. Getting a little dirt from unwashed hands into one's system (which is what started the argument in the first place) is so minor in comparison to that, that it is basically a joke.
There’s nothing wrong with washing your hands before eating, but it is not Torah, yet it had become a test of one’s righteousness in the eyes of some, so Y’shua had to put it back in its place.
He was careful to warn that we must not understand anything he would say or do to mean that he was abolishing the Torah. (Mat. 5:19) When Paul says things like, "Nothing is unclean in itself" or "One man has faith that he may eat anything", we have to remember that the broadest context is that every Scripture must be taken within the parameters set by the earlier Scriptures. Most of what Paul said about foods had to do with meat offered to idols, not unclean meats. Those are not even considered food to start with, so they are already excluded from the question. Whatever he said has to fit with the rest of Scripture, especially the Torah.
A major foundational principle is: "To the Torah and to the Testimony! If they do not speak in agreement with this word, they have no light..." (Isaiah 8:20) Romans, Hebrews, and Galatians are especially often taken to say that YHWH cancelled certain commands He'd given earlier. But if we've read Isaiah, we know that if that were the case, we could not trust those writings. We must never take a verse (or whole book) out of the context of the rest of Scripture. If there is no way to make them square with Torah, we have to ask whether it is right to include them in our canon. At least we cannot take these as authoritative on the same level as the Torah or even of the writings of people who actually studied with Y’shua.
One of those men, Kefa, said that Paul’s writings are easily twisted by unstable and unlearned people (2 Peter 3:16), so until you have a very solid working knowledge of the Torah, we don’t recommend spending much time reading Paul. He was writing to particular people, making rulings about specific situations. Should we even be reading their mail? He probably did not intend some of the things he said to be taken as universal principles.
And that brings up another point: It is only “YHWH’s word” when it says so; otherwise it is the writer’s viewpoint, and it will not necessarily agree with every other Scriptural writer, because people have opinions and develop viewpoints based on different experiences. If we think it is all “holy writ”, we will be afraid to analyze it, and we will miss much of what is really there. What is true for one person may not be true for another. But this is not an excuse to form no conclusion, because there are some universal truths; if I throw water on you, you will get wet. Do not be lazy and let other interpreters lead you around by a rope; be brave and study for yourself so you will not just accept every yoke that others want to put on you.
Read it in Hebrew
Just because some of the New Testament was written in Greek doesn't mean it should be read with a Greek system of logic. Greek was simply a trade language that made it easier to get the message of the restoration of the "lost sheep of the House of Israel" to those scattered into many lands.
It is much more helpful to consider how the equivalent phrases were used in Hebrew than to study the ways words or phrases in the New Testament were used in other Greek writings. Bivin and Blizzard cite many examples of this in Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus. The Gospel of Matithyahu (Matthew) was originally written in Hebrew, so we should trust that over the Greek, because Hebrew is the context of the Scripture.
Nehemia Gordon pointed out that the Hebrew Matithyahu clears up some confusion that results from the Greek version. In the Greek, Y’shua, while berating the Scribes and Pharisees about how ineffective their take on Torah is, says they “sit in Moshe’s seat, so do what they say and not what they do.” (Mat. 23:2-3) The Hebrew version, however, says, “Do what he [Moshe] says, not what they do.” That makes much more sense.
In the Torah, YHWH describes the garments the high priest is to wear. A picture is worth many words, and seeing how the Temple Institute has interpreted the wording can clarify many things. But until recently, we have not had the actual garments to look at again; all we had were the words, and YHWH had a purpose in that. Even if someone saw the garment, there are many things he would miss if he did not know what the terms for the components were in Hebrew, for there are many deeper lessons to be learned and many connections to be made through how they are described in Hebrew. For example:
"You must make a pouch of judgment… its length a handbreadth and its width a handbreadth.” (Exodus 28:15-16)
This word for “handbreadth” comes from a word for “winnowing”, so this defines it not as the width of a hand with the fingers tightly together, but with them spread out as far as possible, like a winnowing fork (somewhat like a long-pronged rake). But it is the measure of an accessory that deals with judgment (decision-making): it hints that our judgment must be like winnowing—tossing the facts to the wind (the same as “spirit” in Hebrew) so that what is heavy (important or authoritative) remains with us, but what is useless and without profit is blown away. It also suggests that judgment must be done with an open hand. It should include the right measure of mercy. Like a slap, it should sting or get someone’s attention, not like a closed fist which might kill instead. But an open hand is also speaks of generosity; if one is not giving of himself, he is unable to bring proper judgment either.
See what we can learn just from the root words in Hebrew? And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Every Hebrew letter has a numerical value, and therefore each word adds up to the total of the values of its letters. When another word has the same numerical value, we can find connections between the two words and their themes.
For example, Yaaqov (Jacob) had a dream of a stairway to YHWH’s throne (Gen. 28:17), and it turned out that in this very spot, the Temple was built, and YHWH’s messengers, the priests and Levites, ascended its many steps to approach YHWH, then descended to teach the people. Supernatural? In a way, but these were ordinary messengers he saw, not “angelic” as we think of that term today. But it is fraught with deep significance. Mount Sinai is another place He has put His ladder down. It too, like Moriyah, is called the “Mountain of Elohim” (Ex. 3:1) There is a connection visible only in Hebrew, for the numerical value of the words for both “stairway” and “Sinai” is 130. Both were places of coming higher than we were before and getting closer to YHWH’s presence. Another word with this value is moadi (“my appointed time”), and indeed His appointed times are when He would meet with Yaaqov’s descendants on this mountain. And under each ruler of a thousand, there would be 130 other rulers (of 10, 50, and 100).
YHWH’s word endures forever (1 Kefa 1:25). It is never out of date. The Jews have often taken Solomon’s statement that “what has been is what will be” (Qoheleth/Eccles. 1:9) as a principle for studying prophecy. Based on this, we might deduce that things have to take place in the same way they did before—even the bad things. When we read “They gathered against (‘al) Moshe and Aharon”, must we resign ourselves to the hopeless conclusion that nothing will ever change and Israel will go on being as stiff-necked as ever?
No, because the same Hebrew words can have different meanings. The same phrase could read, “They gathered as a congregation in regard to (or about) Moshe and Aharon.” That is, on the basis of Moshe and Aharon. Most often ‘al means “on top of”, because its root meaning is “to ascend”. Thus we could say, “the congregation took a step upward, by standing on Moshe’s and Aharon’s shoulders.” Thus the same wording allows for a different outcome. Which way it is taken depends on what they do or say next.
Staying in Season
And that leads us to one form of context that often gets left out of most hermeneutical textbooks.
One of the biggest problems with religion is that it defines a particular action as always right and another as always wrong. But the Torah cannot all be followed at the same time; it is not about nailing down doctrines, but acting appropriately in each season. Only people who do not have YHWH’s verdict about specific situations need ethics and morals to guide them. We have the Torah. It is simple; it tells us what is right and what is not right.
While not inseparable, there is a difference between Torah history and Torah commands. You need to ask if what you are reading is historical, instructional, or both. The two are connected, but not the same.) Rulings were often made based on particular incidents and became permanent laws. But not everything that the Patriarchs did is necessarily meant to be imitated. All of it applies in certain seasons; it would not be in Scripture if there was nothing to learn from it. There are hidden patterns; find the cycles and you will see much more clearly.
The view changes with every season, and as Israelites we inherit the role of shepherds, who have to be very much in touch with all the seasons. There is no other way we will be able to keep the balance that comes with keeping all of the Torah, each part at the right time:
To everything there is a season, and a time for each thing to be a delight unto Heaven. (Eccles./Qoheleth 3:1)
This is seen in a Hebrew idiom that would otherwise be quite confusing:
If any man come to me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife… he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
“Hate” in Hebrew is a comparative term: i.e., you choose someone else over them, when a choice between one and the other must be made. Which one will you favor? That is the one you “love” in Hebraic terms, even if you would otherwise say you loved both. At certain times we would pick one; at different times, the other, and we would be right in both cases.
There is “a time for war and a time for peace”. Avraham showed that when his brother was taken captive, it was a time for war; otherwise he was a peaceable man, from what we can gather. But he had 318 “trained men” so he could be ready when that one exception was in season.
There is “a time to build up and a time to tear down”. Although most of the time we want to be constructive, no one who cannot also be destructive of the right things when necessary can be well-rounded or complete.
Understand YHWH’s Festivals (Leviticus 23 et al) and you will get a handle on His seasons. It is fairly simple because they are agriculturally-oriented, and line up with the natural seasons, but they have deeper lessons to learn from each.
The Level of Normal Life
When it comes to how the seasons are defined, we take the simplest approach that would be recognizable by any farmer or shepherd in ancient times, when Torah was written, and is not dependent on complex calculations or modern instruments: the visible sighting of the moon. "Rosh Chodesh" ("new moon") in Hebrew means "first or beginning of the renewing". In ancient days it was when the moon was sighted that the new month was declared. Then signals were relayed to other locations to announce it.
Jerusalem and the Land of Israel are where instruction goes forth from,
according to Mikha (Micah) 4:2, so we do not consider it a new Hebrew
month until it is sighted in the Land of Israel, unless there is no visibility
there and 30 days have already passed since the last sighting, because that
is the maximum duration there can be between new moons. The modern contribution is that we can now instantly communicate that sighting to the whole world, and because this is possible we no longer rely on pre-calculated calendars. We know approximately when it will come, so we prepare, but still must be ready to be flexible and flow with what YHWH actually presents to us. This way we can get closer to the ancient pattern and operate like Israel in the wilderness, which waited until the cloud above the Tabernacle moved before breaking camp and moving on.
The Tabernacle is a picture of the Kingdom of the Heavens. It is not in the heavens (Deut. 30:12), but established on the principles brought from the unseen realm. Understanding comes from a dimension we do not usually experience, but is very earthly and tangible. Moshe went up a mountain into a cloud, so he was in the sky; these laws can therefore be said to have come from the heavenlies. There is nothing magical about it, though it has deep significance. Moshe was in that unseen place; he saw what the paraphernalia of the Tabernacle meant. It had to be built in the wilderness—but so that it could be established in us and we could become what it represents.
Moshe gave us a very simple key, though one which people have had the hardest time following:
“You must not add to the thing which I command you, or take anything from it, so that you may keep the commandments of YHWH your Elohim…” (D’varim/Deuteronomy 4:2)
he Torah’s commands are meant to keep things in perfect balance, and taking one part too far will inevitably diminish another. If we insist on more than YHWH actually requires in one area, we will make it impossible to do what He wants in some other arena. Yet we have continued to manage, over and over, to make that same mistake.
If the only medication available for a given disease is made from shark cartilage, the Torah says “Choose life”; if an extracted chemical is derived at the molecular level, you are not eating a shark! The commands are not designed for knowledge that can only be gained through a microscope, but on a level which could be accessed by anyone in any age in history, because the Torah is not a mystery religion. YHWH wants us to know the truth clearly, and to know Him.
“…You must guard My customs, through which the man who does [them] will live. I am YHWH.” (Lev. 18:5)
When He says, “Do this; I am YHWH”, He is not saying, “Do it because I said so, and that’s all there is to it!” He is not interested in giving us hoops to jump through. Rather, what He means is, “Do it, pay attention to what you are doing, and you will find out what I am like.”
It is a gift He gives to help us know Him better. Do we really want to refuse such a gift?
The Greatest Treasure
Open the book looking for answers, not just high-quality drama. The history, culture, and archaeological confirmations are fascinating, but the primary question to ask is: What does this have to do with us now?
The Torah holds the answers to world peace and hunger, once we get it out of our minds that it is a religion. It gives us concrete examples, but the principles underlying them are intended to be carried over to any and every analogous situation. With just a little bit of reasoning ability, even just the ten commandments can show us how to weigh almost any decision.
King Solomon found his wisdom not in great intellectual prowess but in applying Torah commands in new settings. When confronted by a need to judge which woman a disputed baby belonged to, he didn’t have any clear answer in Torah. But he was familiar with the precedent it set of dividing an ornery bull between the owner and a neighbor whose bull it gored. So he told the women to divide the baby in two and “share it”, and their reactions instantly brought to light which was the true mother.
Torah is a lifestyle that applies every day, whether you are at a synagogue, on the job, at a concert, or anywhere. We use what we learn from it in our work, our legal dealings, even our haggling over prices.
Y’shua said his intent was to “fulfill the Torah.” That term means to set it on its right footing, to make it serve the optimal purpose for which it is designed—which he said is learning how to love YHWH with all of our heart, soul, and potential, and how to love our neighbors as ourselves.
He gave his students authority to “bind” and “loosen” (Mat. 16:19) —an ancient idiom for setting the standard of how to walk out the Torah commands that are in themselves not always as specific as they could be, since they leave room for varying interpretation according to the need of the time or of a particular community.
And putting the two together, forming a community among which YHWH is comfortable dwelling is the bottom line of what the Torah is about.
Yaaqov saw the messengers of Elohim ascending and descending on the staircase at the place the Temple would later stand. They went up to love and serve YHWH, and came back down to serve the rest of Israel. That is the Kingdom in a nutshell. As the great Rabbi Hillel said, “the rest is commentary; go and learn.”
Symbolism Used Frequently in the Bible
Here are some symbols that are not always self-evident (if we are far removed from agrarian culture) and can help you connect the themes underlying Scripture:
Blue = symbolic of heaven as YHWH's "throne"
Bread/grain = participation in community
Bronze/brass = (what can withstand) fire as judgment; stubbornness
Bull = livelihood, security, most valuable possession
Clouds = Yahweh's presence; mystery; crowd
East = forward, progress, what is most ancient
Fat = the best
Fire = Judgment, zeal, motivation
Flesh = corruptible, mortal, man-made, human strength
Gates = seat of judgment/decision-making; open access or defense
Gold = purity; heavenly perfection; the highest
(Animal) Horn = power, military threat (when sounded)
Horn (corner projection) of Altar = place to go for protection
Incense = acceptable prayer
Leaven = sin/pride (puffs up larger than life); in other cases, simply permeating influence
Lion = ruler, supremacy, greatest power
Living (Running) Water = ritual purification
Milk = basics; Torah as foundational to understanding
Meat = deeper spiritual teaching
Mountains = government, specifically the Temple Mount
and Sinai.
North = idolatrous influence; source of judgment; exile;
hidden treasure, left hand (when oriented)
Oil = the Holy Spirit's anointing
Right hand = strength, position of privilege
Rock = safety, stronghold, tactical advantage
Rod or scepter = rulership, protection
Sackcloth/ashes = deep mourning, humbling oneself, repentance
Sea = restless Gentiles; prison of demons
Serpent/dragon = Satan or counterfeit Messiah
Silver = blood; redemption or its price
South = right hand
Stones (uncut) = free from human influence, building blocks
Tent = sojourning or place of spiritual study, readiness to move
Tower = Place of security; watchfulness
Trumpet = warning of war; announcing feasts
Water = Yahweh's Word (Torah)
Wine = intense joy or stinging, burning retribution
Wing = protection, covering as with from corners of a garment
Wood = corruptible humanity (as when overlaid with gold)
Demystifying those religious words...
We so often use abstract religious terms without really knowing their meaning. But in Hebrew they're usually very concrete. Here are some of their normal meanings, which bring much more light about the intended meaning:
amen: firmly established, well-supported, confirmed, solidly reliable, steady, trustworthy, proven true
angel (mal'akh): messenger (often a human one)
atonement (kippur): covering over, waterproofing
bless (barakh): bend the knee to, or bend down to one's level
faith (emunah): trust, putting confidence in something trustworthy, reliability, faithfulness, true to one's word
glory (kavod): weightiness, heaviness (who carries the most weight?), authority, importance
holy (qadosh): set apart, dedicated, in a category of its own
hope (tiqvah): a rope dropped down to rescue you
humble (anav): close to the ground--i.e., down to earth, grounded, realistically appraising one's weaknesses--and strengths
love (ahavah): be committed to, act in someone's best interest, choose for when choosing against something else
praise (hallel): be bright, clear, rave genuinely about something unhindered by self-consciousness
peace (shalom): total well-being, completeness, maturity, perfection, a debt completely paid off
pray (hitpalel): make a request, judge oneself
righteous (tzadiq): the narrow edge (walking the fine line, balanced)
sanctify (qadosh): set apart for an exclusive use, special, in a category of its own
sin (khata'ah): to miss a target, make a mistake
soul (nefesh): life-force, drive, motivation, inhalation, aspiration, an individual person
spirit (ruakh): wind, breath, exhalation, motivation
thank (yadah): raise hands, throw, prove gratitude through actions
worship (hishtakhavot): bow down, prostrate in homage
Important Bible Study Tools to Have in Your Library:
Anderson, Sir Robert: The Coming Prince
Aramaic Targums: How some Jews just before Yeshua's day interpreted the Scriptures
Biblical Archaeology Review Magazine & Biblical Archaeologicial Society publications
Bivin, David and Blizzard, Roy. Understanding the Difficult Sayings of Jesus: New Insights from a Hebraic Perspective (Dayton, OH: Center for Judaic-Christian Studies, 1994)
Bullinger, E.W. Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968)
Bullinger, E.W. Number in Scripture. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1967)
Another important type of symbolism.
Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (Harper Collins: Wise, Abegg, & Cook, 1996)
DeVaux, Roland. Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961) Many insights into the culture and customs in Biblical times.
Edersheim, Alfred. The Life & Times of Jesus the Messiah; The Temple: Its Ministry and Services; Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Englishman's Hebrew Concordance (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006) - a cross-reference with Strong's Concordance that locates words used in Scripture according to the original Hebrew word.
Howard, George. Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995)
Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, Wars of the Jews, etc. (Various translations available) A historian who was a contemporary of Yeshua and the destruction of the Temple, throwing much light on the customs and milieu of the day.
Keller, Werner. The Bible as History (New York: Williams Morrow & Co., 1956) Archaeological insights into Scriptural events.
Lexicons of Biblical Languages: Gesenius' for Hebrew/Aramaic and Thayer's for Greek clarify the meanings of words.
Lightfoot, John. Commentary on the New Testament from Talmud and Hebraica. (4 vol., Hendrickson, 1989)
Lizorkin-Eizenberg, Eli. The Jewish Apostle Paul; The Jewish Gospel of John
Mishnah: Jewish oral traditions put into writing shortly after the Temple was destroyed (various translations available, including a one-volume, (Yale Univ. Press, 1988) casts light on the Torah text by detailing how commands were understood and ceremonies were actually carried out in Second Temple times.
Moore, George Foot. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997)
Patten, Donald. Catastrophism and the Old Testament; The Genesis Flood and the Ice Epoch; The Long Day of Joshua and Six Other Catastrophes
Peshitta: Aramaic New Testament - earlier than the Greek text and solves some of the problems in the Greek text.
Septuagint with Apocrypha. Lancelot Brenton, transl. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986). Greek translation of the Heb. Scriptures from 200 years before Yeshua's birth.
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers) has the same number key to the Hebrew or Greek root, letting you compare other ways a word is translated and see where else it appears in the Bible.
Free download of English text with Strong's numbers: Online Bible
Talmud: a detailed Jewish commentary on the Mishnah
Thiele, Edwin. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Paternoster, 1966)
Tyndale's Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Inter-Varsity Press, Downer's Grove, IL). Easy-to-read illustrated 3-volume set culled from scholars and archaeologists.
Velikovsky, Immanuel. Ages in Chaos, Earth in Upheaval, Worlds in Collision
Whitcomb & Morris. The Genesis Flood: The BIblical Record and its Scientific Implications (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961)
The Path to Paradise
How have the Jews interpreted Scripture? They're the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language! (Not that they were always right; there was as much political intrigue surrounding rabbinical authority asthere was in Christianity. But it does bring us 2,000 years closer to how the original audience heard it.) One helpful method they offer shows how Scripture can be interpreted on several levels using an acrostic on the Hebrew word for "Paradise" (P-R-D-S):
(1) P'shat: The literal, straightforward meaning is a
given. Archaeology has shown ample evidence that the Bible deals with historical peoples, not imaginary ones.
When Daniel read that Jeremiah decreed 70 years of
captivity, he expected it to mean literally 70 years, and it was--to the very day. He himself specified the exact day the Messiah would be revealed, and Yeshua held Yerushalayim accountable for not recognizing it. So unless a passage is clearly poetic (e.g., Song of Solomon's "your neck is a tower"), none of the secondary interpretations preclude also taking it literally.
(2) Remez: Hints, clues, or allusions to other
Scriptures that use the same words in the original
language. Though the contexts may be different on the literal level, the use of the same word often points to a hidden connection.
So when we see Yeshua ask a non-Jewish woman at a well to draw water for him, our minds should race back to the story of Isaac and Rebekah, or Jacob and Rachel, and see him as seeking his "Bride" among his estranged relatives (of which the Samaritans were one example). When he multiplies fish on land, we have to think back to Genesis 48:16, which says in Hebrew that Ephraim and Manasseh will "multiply like fish in the midst of the land". When he tells his disciples to go as "fishers of men", we have to think back to the promise in Jeremiah 16:16. A thorough knowledge of what came before is a crucial prerequisite to study of the New Testament; if you do not know it well, the New Testament will only confuse you.
(3) D'rash: Inferences drawn by taking the historical events of Scripture as ethical precedents for our everyday lives: "What kind of 'giants' are you facing today?", etc. This is the type of interpretation the church emphasizes by far the most often-the spiritual application. But Scripture strongly suggests that belonging to Messiah usually means one has a literal connection to Israel too, not just spiritual. (Gal. 3:29)
(4) Sowd: "Mysteries"-not things that can't be understood, but deeper meanings hinted at by certain features of the text, often with a specialized reference only discovered later, like Jeremiah's 30 pieces of silver. When Matthew saw a Messianic prophecy in the verse, "Out of Egypt I called My son" (2:15), though the original context was about Israel as a whole, he was interpreting it in a legitimately Hebraic way. Much of what Paul wrote was interpretation at this level; if it is taken as peshat, much confusion results.
So while context is paramount, if a Scripture can legitimately be taken more than one way, it should be, as long as the deeper levels of understanding do not contradict the primary meaning of the same or a different Scripture.
Hebraic thinking is "both/and", not "either/or"--over-lapping more than discrete; the Kingdom is "here now but not yet". Yeshua clarified the relationship between the covenants by saying we should indeed obey the letter, but not forget the much more important spirit behind it. (Mat. 23:23) When Paul says we serve "not in the letter, but the spirit" (2 Cor. 3:6; Rom. 2:29; 7:6), it is a Hebrew idiom for where to place the most emphasis; it doesn't exclude the other. (Acts 21:20; Rev. 12:17)
