Parashat Ha’Azinu THIS WEEK’S PORTION DEUTERONOMY 32 תשרפ זֲאַה ִ וּני / Parashat Ha’Azinu

In this week’s guide…

Rabbi Jason’s COMMENTARY delivers a special surprise: an excerpt from his brand-new book for the , Aligning with God’s Appointed Times: Discover the Prophetic and Spiritual Meaning of the Biblical Holidays. We’ve included his work on (the Day of Atonement) because, while Parashat Ha’Azinu is read on September 26th, this holy day begins at sundown on September 27th. We know you will be blessed and enriched as Jason unpacks the wisdom and insights available to us as we journey deeper into the Feasts of the Lord!...... 1

This week’s NEW TESTAMENT TIE-IN dives into the “Song of ,” which comprises the actual Torah portion. This grand and poetic (prophetic!) passage reminds Israel of the Lord’s faithfulness, but also exposes the scandal of their . There is a hint, however, that suggests there is true faithfulness in Israel’s DNA…that One may come and walk uprightly before the Lord. We trust you will grow in your knowledge of the Lord as well your love for Him as you study these Scriptures with us...... 2

BY THE NUMBERS reveals the myriad connections that exist between Yom HaKippurim and its associated themes based on the number 412. And in a serious, “But wait…there’s even more!” moment, Jason expands this teaching to include similar connections that center around the numerical value of Yom Kippur: 362. Break out the notebook and get ready to dive into the deep end of the proverbial pool this week—so much information here!...... 3

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OVERVIEW

Our journey has brought us to the second-to-last Torah portion: Ha’Azinu. The bulk of this reading is comprised of what is known as the “.” The word Ha’azinu literally means “give ear,” an expression meaning “listen to this.” Ha’azinu is the first word of the Song of Moses, which begins with the words, “Give ear (Haazinu), O heavens, and let me speak” (Deuteronomy 32:1). After the conclusion of the song, Moses is told to ascend and overlook the Promised Land before dying. This portion is read between the fall feast days of and . This year, Ha’Azinu will be read the day before Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement. FUSION GLOBAL WITH RABBI JASON תשרפ ִזֲאַה וּני / – Parashat Ha’Azinu Deuteronomy 32

COMMENTARY by Rabbi Jason Sobel

For the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the LORD. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible. -Leviticus 17:11 NLT

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is followed by ten days of repentance and awe, culminating in Yom Kippur. Whereas Rosh Hashanah focuses on the repentance of the individual, Yom Kippur shares this focus and goes one giant step further: this holiday atones for the nation’s sins. Yom Kippur is called the Day of Atonement.

The word atonement means “to make reparation for wrongdoing or injury.” However, for reparation to take place, forgiveness must happen first. We can look upon forgiveness as the topsoil in which reparation can take root and flourish. A leading secular psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Menninger, stated that forgiveness is one of the critical needs of humanity. He went as far as to say that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent could walk out the next day.i The power of forgiveness is unbelievable.

Being forgiven and forgiving others is the only way we can truly be free—free to love, free to connect and enjoy relationships with others, with ourselves, and with God. When we don’t forgive, we might as well be physically bound to a dead weight that we drag around into everything we do and everywhere we go. Remember that movie Weekend at Bernie’s, where two friends find the dead body of their boss and, for their own purposes, drag the body around pretending that he is alive? This dead weight physically burdens every move they make, which adds emotional and situational strain. Unforgiveness is like the dead body—it doesn’t get any easier but becomes more burdensome as time goes by, wearying the bearer.

In the Old Testament on Yom Kippur, the Hebrews achieved forgiveness and atonement in the form of animal . It was an exchange of life for life. This Day of Atonement was the single most hallowed day of the year when the Kohein HaGadol, the high priest, would enter into the Holy of Holies and say the sacred name of God. His focus and the focus of all Israel was on repentance and redemption.

Of the various Day of Atonement , the most central was that of the two he-goats. They were to be equal in height, weight, and cost. Next, lots were cast to determine which he-goat would be sacrificed as a sin offering upon the altar to the Lord and which one would be designated as the scapegoat “for Azazel.”ii

-1- The high priest laid his hands upon the head of the sacrificial goat in a gesture symbolizing the transference of sins from him, the nation’s representative, to the animal, who would bear the burden. The priest would then fasten a scarlet, woolen cord to the horns of the goat and tie a second scarlet cord to the entrance of the kodesh section of the temple. Next, the high priest would lay both hands upon the scapegoat again, reciting a confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness.

After all those present responded to this prayer, an individual was chosen, preferably a priest (kohen), to take the goat to the precipice in the wilderness, where the scapegoat would be thrown over a steep and jagged cliff, so that its body would be completely torn apart before it reached the bottom.

Once the sacrifice was complete, a supernatural phenomenon occurred. The red cords that were tied to the horns of the scapegoat and placed at the entrance of the Holy Place supernaturally turned from red to white to symbolize that although Israel’s sins were as crimson, God has washed them as white as snow (Isa. 1:18). When this occurred, it publicly bore testimony that Israel had been forgiven.

In Leviticus 17:11 God states that life is in the blood. Without the shedding of blood—in Jewish thought—there would be no remission of sin. God sent the Messiah to pay the interest and principal in full.

The scapegoat represented the sins of the nation; Yom Kippur points to the ultimate redemption of the world, the fullness of redemption. A redemption is paid for, not by the blood of an animal, which still leaves a deficit, but by Yeshua’s blood, marking the debt PAID IN FULL.

As the sacrifice of the goat supernaturally turned the crimson cord white, this supernatural phenomenon STOPPED after the sacrifice of Jesus. According to the central text of rabbinic Judaism, the , forty years before the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the scarlet cord stopped turning from red to white. This would be around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. This lack of color change is proof that the Yom Kippur sacrifices were no longer effective (Talmud, Tractate Yoma 39b). The he-goats offered by the high priest could not compare to Yeshua’s ultimate offering.

This commentary is an excerpt from my latest book, Aligning with God’s Appointed Times: Discover the Prophetic and Spiritual Meaning of the Biblical Holidays, now available from our FusionGlobal.org website. NEW TESTAMENT TIE-IN

Deuteronomy 32 contains the “Song of Moses.” For forty-three verses, we read the epic account of God’s loving care for Israel, Israel’s idolatrous reject of the Lord, and prophetic hints of the exile. In it, Moses presents glimpses into the heart of God Himself—the “jealousy” He feels in response to Israel’s unfaithfulness, as well as the shameless intensity of His wrath. For example: “See now that I, I am He! There are no other gods beside Me. I bring death and give life, I have wounded but I will heal, and none can rescue from My hand" (Deut 32: 39).

-2- There is some significant tension in this passage. We see a God who not only heals but wounds (and brings death). And…there is absolutely no rescue from Him! It’s safe to say that not many kids memorized this passage in Sunday School.

Carefully reading the Song of Moses, you will notice the creative and poetic references to the nation of Israel in a singular sense. Consider, “Adonai alone guided him” (v. 12) and “He suckled him with from a rock” (v. 13). We may wonder who this person is, and we finally see “his” name: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—you got fat, you grew thick, you gorged! He forsook God who made him. He mocked the Rock of his salvation” (v. 15). Jeshurun is a proper name, used exclusively for the nation of Israel, in four passages.iii The meaning of Hebrew names is often essential to a faithful understanding of a given passage. This passage is an excellent example of that. Jeshurun means “upright, law-keeping, upholder of justice,” and it comes from the word yashar, which means “to go straight” or “to make a way straight.”iv

There’s so much that we could examine, but let’s focus on two fundamental points for this brief moment. First, the context of the passage makes it all but certain that the use of Jeshurun is deeply ironic. God is making it clear that time and again, Israel has been anything but upright and “straight.” Second, the use of singular-masculine grammar (rather than plural-neutral) is provocative—could this have significance or meaning regarding Yeshua?

We know that Yeshua fully-embodied the meaning of Jeshurun. He was without sin (1 Pet 2:22) and is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) in whom there is “no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17). Yeshua is the embodiment of uprightness and straightness. AND Yeshua stands in sharp contrast to Jeshurun’s depiction in the Song of Moses, which describes him as the one who got fat on “the kidneys of wheat, and blood of grapes” (v. 14). Yeshua’s bread was His broken body that He gave to establish a covenant with His disciples. The cup our Lord drank from was one of death. Yeshua asked His Father if there was any way for “this cup” to pass, yet “He had come to drink it for everyone, in order to cancel, through this chalice, everyone’s debt, a debt that the and martyrs could not pay with their death.” (Ephrem the Syrian in Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: 20.2)v Jeshurun’s ironic failures are no cause for finger-pointing, but they do make Yeshua’s faithfulness shine that much brighter. Though Jeshurun rejected the straight path with indulgent pursuits, Yeshua successfully endured every kind of temptation (Heb 4:15) for our good. He lived an upright life, and through His death and resurrection has opened up the “straight” way for us: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt 7:14/KJV, emphasis added).

BY THE NUMBERS

The Day of Atonement in Hebrew is called Yom HaKippurim (Lev 23:27), which means “the Day of the Atonements.” The numeric value of “Yom HaKippurim” is 412, which is significant because there is a connection between 412 and the Fall. After all, sin is the first and foundational reason why there needs to be a Day of Atonement.

-3- God created man and saw that it was not good for him to be alone, so the Lord “made for him” (412) the woman. Eve, who was tempted by the serpent, saw that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was good for eating and was “a thing of lust (ta'avah/412) for the eyes” (Gen. 3:6). This lust led Eve to eat the tree’s fruit and give some of it to her husband, which resulted in the Fall and the need for atonement.

As a result of the Fall, God pronounced judgment, saying: “I will curse the ground” (Gen. 3:17). In Hebrew, “I will curse” (arurah) adds up to 412. Man and woman were now naked and afraid, but God provided a covering for them: “and the Lord God made for man and his wife garments of skin to clothe them” (Gen 3:21). The phrase the “Lord made” (vayya'as YHVH) equals 412. The Hebrew word for “garment” (ketonet) is the same word used to describe the tunic that every Levitical priest wore when ministering before the Lord (Ex. 28:39). The fact that God shed the blood of an animal to make the garments which covered Adam and Eve’s shame foreshadows the blood sacrifices that would be a central component of Hebrew worship.

But of course, there is even more! The number 412 is the numerical value of the Hebrew spelling of the letter beit, which is the Bible’s first letter. The letter beit has the numerical value of 2 and is the letter that represents the “Son.” Now consider that the first letter in Genesis (beit) and the last letter of the Bible found in the book of Revelation (nun) spells “Son,” Ben in Hebrew. From the first letter to the last, the Bible points to the Son! It is even more significant that the Day of Atonement (412) finds its fulfillment in the beit (412), which is the letter and the symbol of the Son—the one who makes atonement for us.

The number 412 is also the value of the Hebrew words for:

“the ark” (haTevah—as in 's Ark), “the sign” (ha'ot), and “house” (beit).

The ark (412) was the sign (412) of God's salvation; only those found in the ark escaped God's judgment on the world. Noah's “ark” (412) functions as “the sign” (412) that points to the salvation that the Son brings. For only those found in the Son, those in the Lord's “house” (412), find salvation and deliverance.

“In his holiness” (bekodsho/412), “God will divide between the light” (vayavdeil Elohim bein haohr/412) and the darkness and will judge “many nations” (ammim rabbim/412). But those who believe in the Son (symbolized by the beit/412) will find “favor from the Lord” and “will dwell” (412) in God's “house” (412) which Yeshua has gone to prepare for his bride “for the Lord supports the righteous” (412). They will be “delivered by the great strength” of the Messiah from sin and death.

-4- But there is still a little more! Today the most common spelling of the Day of Atonement is not Yom Hakippurim, which is in the plural, but Yom Kippur in the singular, which adds up to 362. The Hebrew word “to clothe” (lilbosh) as well as “garment” (himatia), “blood” (haimati), and “glorify” (doxasthe in Greek) all add up to 362. Messiah shed his “blood” (362) in fulfillment of “the Day of Atonement” (362) so that whoever believes in him might become “a new person" (Adam HeChasash/362) and be “clothed” (362) in a new and even better “garments” (362) than those that the Lord gave Adam and Eve after the Fall.

When this day comes, Yom Kippur will finally be fulfilled prophetically and God “glorified” (362). May this happen soon!

Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are in the Tree of Life Version.

-5- THOUGHTS for REFLECTION Take some time this week to prayerfully consider and discuss with friends: § Rabbi Jason briefly mentioned the connection between our health and forgiveness. Do you struggle with forgiveness (either giving or receiving it)? We have the power to live in the freedom of forgiveness. Yeshua—as He fulfilled the scapegoat symbol on Calvary—cried out, “Father forgive them!” As we surrender to Him, we receive the grace to do the same. Let’s walk-out this freedom (and health!) this week.

§ Do you struggle to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects” (Col 1:10)? Do you fall short of the uprightness of Jeshurun? Take time to thank the Lord for His victory over temptation, for His selfless giving of body and blood. Celebrate the forgiveness we have in Him, and celebrate Him this week and all the beauty of His life.

תוֹכּוּס / NEXT WEEK’S READINGS: Sukkot 5781

TORAH Sunday / Leviticus 22:26-33 Monday / Leviticus 23:1-3 Tuesday / Leviticus 23:4-8 Wednesday / Leviticus 23:9-14 Thursday / Leviticus 23:15-22 Friday / Leviticus 23:23-32 Saturday / Leviticus 23:33-44

Prophetic Reading (): Zechariah 14:1-21

New Covenant Reading: Luke 2:1-20

i Dr. Elu Akpala Onnekikami, The Divine Cure for a Broken Heart (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 11. ii From Harper’s Bible Dictionary, “A demonic figure to whom the sin-laden scapegoat was sent on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:8, 10, 26). The Hebrew word has been traditionally understood as a phrase meaning ‘the goat that escapes,’ giving us the word ‘scapegoat.’” iii Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., & Waltke, B. K. (2004), Theological wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press), 418. iv Ibid, 417. v Arthur A. Just and Thomas C. Oden, eds. Luke. Vol. 3 of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. ICCS/Accordance electronic ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 341.

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