Episode 179: What Yom Kippur Can’t Fix

There are many misconceptions about Yom Kippur but the most grievous is the lack of understanding of exactly what is cleansed and what is forgiven and what is not. Yom Kippur was good news for the community but not necessarily for the individual so this week we will talk about why.

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People get some strange ideas about what Yom Kippur is and isn’t about, so I want to talk about what it is very briefly before teaching what it most definitely is not. And I also want to talk about those social media blanket statements of remorse because someone asked me about them the other day, and I believe I have a better and more honest alternative.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have years’ worth of blogs at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on Amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link) I also have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for adults and kids. You can find the links for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com, and transcripts for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

So, what is Yom Kippur? Well, apart from being the tenth day of the seventh month on the religious calendar of the Bible (there are actually four separate calendars necessitated by or mentioned in Scripture), Yom HaKippurim is translated into English as the Day of Atonements or Coverings as Kippur is a hard to translate word. We don’t have a perfect word-for-word substitution in English because the concept is foreign to our language. We have no equivalent.

Yom Kippur was the day that the Temple or Tabernacle was ritually cleansed with blood all the way into the Holy of Holies. In the ancient world, blood was recognized as a cleansing agent. Of course, we know all about blood stains, right? But sin was seen to leave an invisible and more durable stain. Sin was a form of death, and so only lifeblood could completely cleanse an offense. The stain of sin infected people, homes, communities, nations and (if they were terrible enough) could even penetrate the Temple itself—meaning the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. If the sin was extensive enough then the Holy of Holies could become so defiled that Yahweh would have to leave—which we see He did in 586 BCE, leaving the city of Jerusalem spiritually undefended against the Babylonians who did God a huge favor by destroying a Temple that had become an abominable center of idolatrous worship and oppression so He didn’t have to do it Himself. Okay, so maybe not a favor, but you get the gist.

It was on Yom Kippur that the High Priest carried out these complex rituals which cleansed the Temple from the outside in, stopping with the cleansing of the Ark of the Covenant, which was hidden from the High Priest by a cloud of incense. Of course, when Yeshua/Jesus performed His own blood manipulation, that final blood cleansing penetrated all the way into the Heavenly Tabernacle. This is why His sacrifice was better and more effective than the sacrifices of the High Priest carried out with the blood of bulls and goats, which needed to be redone each and every year—after he also made atonement for Himself, something Yeshua never needed to do. The cleansing took care of the sins of the entire nation that had gone unknown or unaddressed (some sins weren’t able to be covered by sacrifices) and made the habitation of Yahweh uninhabitable. But what I don’t want you to assume is that there is any change in the requirement for repentance.

For example, if someone got away with murder, the cleansing of even the Holy of Holies wouldn’t pardon that person—it would just remove the offense from the community in terms of the stain it left in God’s House. The community wouldn’t suffer for it, and Yahweh’s House would return to an undefiled state, but the murderer wouldn’t get off scott-free with God. Yom Kippur was never a “if I can just go undetected until Tishri 10, I will be completely forgiven, and all will be right with the world.” If that was the case, then sanctuary cities wouldn’t have been necessary and unintentional murderers wouldn’t have to remain in those cities until the death of the High Priest. All would instead be forgiven by royal command, if individual slates were truly wiped clean. Yom Kippur was about maintaining the presence of God within His Temple by doing a yearly housecleaning with the sprinkled blood of goats and bulls. It was also about cleansing the community from their collective guilt. This is why, when you read Leviticus 16, you will see the repeated references to the consecration of this or that location in the Temple, the Temple furniture, the priests, and the people of the community but not for personal forgiveness.

As such, this was a day for the righteous to breathe a sigh of relief and to celebrate. The unrighteous had reason to fear because they hadn’t repented, made restitution, or made themselves right with Yahweh. Just think of the rape of Bathsheba by David and the subsequent murder of her husband when he wasn’t willing to go along with David’s poor attempt at a cover-up. Nathan the Prophet wasn’t sent to David until after the baby was born—which means that David likely went through Yom Kippur without repenting, and in fact, he must have because when he raped Bathsheba it was spring, the time of year when other kings were off fighting. That requires dry roads and wadis. The community was cleansed, the Temple was cleansed, and so were the priests—but not David. When Nathan came to David, he was still held responsible for everything that he had done, and the horrifying consequences lasted until the end of his life and beyond. It’s an important thing to remember.

Yom Kippur, when carried out properly, guaranteed God’s continued presence within His Temple. But Yom Kippur, unlike the Cross, didn’t change anyone. A murderer before Yom Kippur was still a murderer after Yom Kippur. A thief before Yom Kippur was still a thief afterward. We can obviously say the same for every sin there is. The community didn’t bear the collective burden, but the offender most certainly did. Same goes for us. We can’t lie all year, harm people, etc., and then perform a cut-and-pasted blanket apology on social media and have it mean anything. Repentance is and has always been required—even after the Cross. When we swear allegiance to Yeshua as King of kings and Lord of lords, our Savior, it is empty without also owning our offenses and making them right when we become aware of them. We are required to live as people who have been forgiven much and not as people whose sins no longer have consequences in the lives of others. God forgave David, but the ripple effects of His crimes far outlived him.

I think that, instead of blanket Yom Kippur apologies that don’t actually fix anything or show true remorse, perhaps we ought to have an invitation to a reversal of the Festivus ritual of the airing of grievances. And if you haven’t seen the Festivus episode of Seinfeld, it’s the only one I ever watched, and it is hilarious. What if, instead of people saying, “I am sorry if I did anything that I don’t remember,” people said, “What did I do to you so that I can say I am sorry and we can deal with the fallout?” I see a lot of people out there who are constantly venting about having been wronged over this or that, but I have never, ever, seen an invitation to accountability at the expense of their own pride. Blanket apologies ring hollow when someone has actually hurt you, and they don’t even remember. And sometimes, they don’t even know. A lot of people are out there slandering other folks as vile and evil over unknown offenses. Why is it more embarrassing to actually talk to a person who has hurt us than to go around speaking hate about them? Goodness, I have people out there who detest me, and when I ask them why, they say, “You know what you did,” except I don’t. I don’t know if I hurt them, or someone they know, or if there was a misunderstanding or what. They have no problem telling people I am terrible, with no details given. I mean, if you are going to gossip then go the whole hog and provide the details, right? At least then, the charges can be addressed. I don’t know about you, but I am not sorry for stuff that I don’t know I have done to hurt or offend people. How can I be? I haven’t been given the opportunity if the charges are withheld, and I am ignorant of them. I am upset at the concept of potentially damaging someone, but how can I truly repent without specifics? We would be better off to be more out in the open about those things that make us bitter in our hearts.

I talked to the kids this year about why God hates lies so much, but I want to touch upon it here as well. Some things are the complete opposite of how the Kingdom of God operates—death, oppression, violation, and lies. The first three, pretty much everyone agrees that those are wrong, but lies are tricky. Lies are useful, and usually for all the wrong reasons. For every person righteously lying to Nazi soldiers about harboring Jews in their attic, there are millions upon millions of people and especially professed believers, who lie without an ounce of remorse for their own personal benefit. I am going to give you an example, and I am sure you have seen this done, but I hope you haven’t done it yourself. Here goes—when we strongly believe something or have a cause to promote, it is easy to become morally compromised on behalf of said cause. We are quick to believe and pass on as “verified and true” anything that fits into what we already believe or want to believe. And I am not just talking about forwarding that Neimann-Marcus cookie recipe hoax (I am so, so very embarrassed to admit I fell for that one in the 90s). Anyway, when I was informed it was a hoax, I was super embarrassed and apologized. It was easy because I wasn’t emotionally invested in any cookie recipe war against Neimann-Marcus. But what happens when we are passionate about the content of a lie? What happens then?

Say you really truly believe something—meaning you have an agenda that you want to promote and therefore want people to accept as their own agenda so that they will act how you want them to act or stop doing something or believe this or that. In other words, it isn’t enough that you believe it—you feel compelled to go out recruiting and might even believe that it is the Holy Spirit telling you to do it. But the problem is that it is only a belief, no matter how desperately you believe it or have aligned yourself with it. Or maybe you have a little bit of proof, but it isn’t enough to convince people— people who might also have proof of the opposite position being legitimate. This happens a lot—sometimes we are both partially right, and sometimes we are both entirely wrong. But then, you see the post or video of your dreams—a claim tailor-made to prove your claims and even “signed” or at least attested by an anonymous source who got the information from their cousin’s boyfriend’s music teacher. You just know it’s true because it fits so perfectly with what you already believed, and you go ahead and hit that share button. Besides, you agree with the person who posted it and just know that they did their homework to make sure it was true before they shared it, so you don’t have to. (Unfortunately, they had the same attitude about the person who shared it with them, so no one has checked it out.)

So, you post it. “Eureka! The smoking gun! My point is proven! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Okay, so that last Ozymandius quote was a bit over the top.

Only, it isn’t proven. It’s just a claim that you believe because it confirms your biases and you threw your brain out the window. And we do it because we like to think that people who agree with us are all good and honest people—like we assume ourselves to be. Plus, the Holy Spirit would tell us if it was a lie, and that didn’t happen so, it must be true—but the Spirit doesn’t protect us or save us from our own intellectual laziness or smugness. Honesty is hard work. Gossip and spreading dubious stories is easy. God isn’t going to reward us for that by forever pricking our conscience, and when we repeatedly shut Him down because we like what we are reading, we sear that portion of our conscience.

More often, God will communicate with us in such a situation by sending others to reason with us. Someone, for example, might inform us that we just posted an old hoax where someone lied and put someone else’s name on it. I see that a lot. They might even prove it by providing a credible statement (say, on said person’s website) denouncing the message as not being from them at all but falsely written in their name. Someone else might point out that the facts don’t line up with what the post is claiming—perhaps claims about scientific studies that do not exist or lying about the contents of actual studies. I see this often as well. Or someone may claim that such and such a teacher gave them permission to do X when the teacher teaches against X. I will never forget the time that a friend of mine was credited with giving people permission to perform ritual sacrifices in their backyard when that is the opposite of what they would ever teach in a million years. Or the congregation that assures everyone that I am telling people that we need to live in an honor/shame culture simply because I teach about that cultural mindset and tell folks all the time that I would hate living like that and am glad I don’t! But we are quick to believe claims without investigating them because outrage and condemnation are an addictive combination. In fact, the majority of the lies that many people tell are simply in the form of passing on stories that they chose to believe without any first-hand proof or due diligence to verify.

And so, what do people do when confronted with their error? This is what separates the honest from the mistaken from the actual liars. I would hope that most people (when they have spread an untrue story about someone else) would feel sick about it. Gosh, I know I do. I know what it is to be on the receiving end, and finding out that I have done it myself makes me literally want to vomit. Even after I get it fixed; doing so at least as publicly as I harmed them. Vindication is essential to God, and it should be important to us.

What if we double down and refuse to accept anything as proof that we are wrong? What if we accuse those whom God sent to us to reason with us of being naïve, or of doing this just because they disagree (and often assuming disagreement when it doesn’t exist), claiming cover-ups and persecution, assuming that the person really did say it but they retracted it later due to pressure (when there is no proof whatsoever that they said it in the first place—and nothing on the internet is ever truly deleted), or that the study they claim existed was erased from existence by whoever. And we could call it wishful thinking, to be generous, but what it really amounts to is lying in the form of presumptuous accusations. Well, this person must have done such and such because this information can’t be wrong. Do you see the dangers inherent when we are so determined to be right that we are willing to make liars and villains out of everyone else?–what we are capable of when we are so determined to defend our discernment that our response to correction is a scorched earth policy?

This isn’t Kingdom work but the work of the evil one in our lives. Instead of growing in humility, we sidestep and become accusers of the brethren. Yom Kippur doesn’t undo this or the damage caused by it to others and to our own souls. What’s more, it is an insult to God when we do not believe we can trust Him enough to work in ways that require integrity—when we think He needs us to compromise and become liars in His service. But lies stain the Kingdom in ways that non-believers aren’t blind to, even if we are. When we allow someone’s name to be attached to something they never said just because it fits our beliefs and will make us look more credible, we are guilty of slander and manipulation. In the ancient world, people feared having spells cast on them or drinking potions that would manipulate their thoughts and actions. It was called sorcery, our modern translation of Pharmakeia, and it was actually a crime in the Greco-Roman world. Now, we don’t do that anymore and don’t take it seriously, but we do lie and manipulate using our words to produce the same effect. In Galatians 3, Paul is so incensed about the circumcision group withholding table fellowship from the converted Gentiles unless they become formal, circumcised proselytes that he calls their words and pressure witchcraft.

The deepest and most profound law in the Torah, apart from the complete love we owe to God, is the kind of absolute love of neighbor that we wouldn’t ever do anything to anyone that we know would be harmful to ourselves. I have never met anyone who wanted their name attached to something they never said and never agreed with in the first place. I know that no one who finds out that they were wrong and issues a retraction out of the integrity of their heart wants to be accused of simply buckling to peer pressure. I know that no one wants to fight a battle where they are compromised because they can’t prove that something that never happened, never happened—which is just generally not possible. For example, I can’t prove that I have never committed a murder. You cannot disprove a negative, as the expression goes. And liars, opportunists, and manipulators take advantage of it.

They know that more people will hear the lie than the retraction or rebuttal.

As believers, we can’t do that and fast on Yom Kippur, call it good, and go back the next day to business as usual. You know, one of the most painfully embarrassing experiences of my life is when I found out that “what everyone knew about the Babylonian origins of Christian holidays” wasn’t actually true at all. I found out by accident when I actually began to study everything we know about Tammuz and Ishtar and the historical figure of Semiramis, who lived around the time of David–not Nimrod. And this was like back in 2015. I have found that there are people who will listen to corrections, check out your sources, and change their views accordingly and people who won’t. There are people who will look at the source material we now have and then look at unsubstantiated stories and will realize that if something can’t be proven, no evidence whatsoever behind it, then we can’t claim it with any sort of integrity. Geez, I had to rewrite a book over the paragraph I wrote about that. I am still apologizing for claiming to have “done my homework” when all I did was trust others who hadn’t done their homework either.

Honesty is essential to the Kingdom. Without credibility, our witness to the truth of the Gospel is worse than absolute silence about it. Better for people to think we aren’t associated with Yeshua at all than for them to see us as unrepentant liars, willing to say whatever we think we need to say to get people to agree with us on our agendas. Liars lie—it’s a fundamental truth of the universe. When we lie about one thing, we will lie about other things, and we cannot expect people to assume that we only lie “for a good cause.” Liars lie for selfish reasons; we all know that. Liars lie because they have no respect for the person they are lying to—all they care about is that the lie is believed. Of course, there is a difference between lying and not being open about our opinions. And we can give wrong opinions without being liars—we are all uninformed about stuff. But when we claim ourselves to be truthful, we had better not be compromising on the truth at all.

 



Episode 164: Purim 2023—Honor, Shame and Two Brave Queens

The book of Esther is a thrilling story to read about and yet we rarely look into what this would have been like to live through for the two very brave and virtuous (yes, both of them) Queens who had to walk a knife edge within the world of honor/shame dynamics where a shamed woman could easily wind up a dead woman.

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Purim is next weekend, the celebration of the deliverance of the Jewish people throughout the Medo-Persian Empire (which was pretty much all of them at that point) from certain annihilation. Esther is a tale of honor, shame, pride, downfalls, foolishness, and wisdom. However, for me, it is about two women stuck in an impossible situation, how they handled it, and how much our own culture colors how we see them. One of only two books in the Bible which don’t mention God at all, it is nonetheless where we see Him working behind the scenes in delightfully deliberate and even hilarious ways. However, the stories of these two women aren’t funny at all, and reflect the throw-away status of women in the ancient world. Nonetheless, I see them as two women of dignity and honor who were doing the best they could despite the attempts of the men that surrounded them to use them for their own purposes. To one extent or another—for good or for evil. One thing that is often missed in reading Esther is that honor was a game men played, but it was a woman’s express job to avoid shame at all costs for not only her sake, but for the sake of her husband and family.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have seven years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kid (affiliate link) and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

First of all, it is interesting how Veggie Tales handles this book of the Bible. Vashti is portrayed as a woman woken in the middle of the night to make a sandwich for her husband, which she refuses to do. King Xerxes kicks her out of the house and holds a beauty pageant for all the beautiful young women and the winner “gets” to be the Queen. I know that we can’t be that explicit with kids but wow—history hasn’t been so whitewashed since King George wanted Uriah’s ducky and even tried to kill him to get it. Or something like that—my kids will be 22 next month and I have to admit that it’s been a long time. I still know the words to every song however. The Biblical story, however, is entertaining in retrospect but in terms of honor/shame culture and the ancient Near Eastern historical realities, also a very disturbing one.

We begin the story with the tale of Vashti, who I believe has been unfairly vilified when placed in an impossible situation where she had to choose between the lesser of two shames. Either way, she was going to lose. Although this has been classically interpreted in some circles as a matter of a prideful wife refusing to submit to her husband, rabbinic and scholarly commentaries are more mixed in how they treat Vashti—with some praising and defending her virtue and others at least acknowledging the complexity of the situation, given that we are not given very much information about what exactly happened. Regardless of what happened, we have to admire her courage in refusing the King’s command. Perhaps, with the ongoing nature of the drunken festival, she underestimated the danger of his impulsivity when he was in the company of the men of the city and his own honor seemed to be threatened.

I always like to imagine how thrilling it would have been to visit the five-month Great Exhibition in 1851, organized by Prince Albert, and home to ten thousand exhibits of the greatest technological wonders of the time, as well as a display of the goods produced by the territories of the British Empire. We can imagine how amazing it would be—or, if you are a fellow Marvel fan, imagine the year-long Stark Expo. Events like these brought honor to whatever institution was in charge; in the case of Ahasuerus’ 180 day display of wealth, greatness and power, followed by a seven day feast for everyone within Susa where everyone from richest to poorest could eat and drink whatever and however much they wanted in the presence of the King, well, let’s just say that this was excessive. And it indebted everyone to him, great and small, and he would be celebrated for it. Which was the whole point.

Vashti, on the other hand, was sequestered within her own quarters and was giving a feast not for all the women of the Kingdom but for the women of the palace. As the wife of the King, she was somewhat sacred and inaccessible to the general public. She was incredibly beautiful but she belonged to the King alone and could only appear before him if he called for her, which limited her interaction with any save himself and the palace staff. This would have given her an air of mystery and elevated honor among his subjects. She wasn’t a concubine or a prostitute to be on display. Her body was sacred as the body of the Queen mother to the next generation needed to be. Therefore, she was jealously guarded and she couldn’t live her life as a normal woman could, nor could she follow the same social rules. She lived in a precarious situation where to be shamed meant her ruin and perhaps the ruin of her children as well.

In honor/shame societies, it was the job of a man to gain honor for himself and his family. As the king, one would think that he had nothing to prove but the book of Esther shows him to be rash, impulsive, and even naïve. Not to mention very hard to please. His wife Vashti, on the other hand, walked a razor’s edge trying to avoid anything that would bring shame to herself or to her husband. Her life depended on it in more ways than one. And so, after seven days of feasting and drinking heavily, when Ahasuerus sent his seven personal eunuchs to Vashti—she was faced with a terrible dilemma. The Bible says only that she was commanded to appear before the gathered people, all of them likely intoxicated, wearing her royal crown “because she was very beautiful to look at.” Esther Rabbah, compiled somewhere between 700-900 years ago, was a collection of midrash (what if stories) about the Book of Esther, filling in the blanks in order to expand upon the text and teach ethical and moral lessons. Judean in origin, it paints Vashti in a very positive light—as the more virtuous spouse by far. According to this legend, Vashti was commanded to appear in her crown and only in her crown before, literally, the entire city of Susa. Bear in mind that if this was the case and if any man even accidentally touched her, she would be not only shamed but also defiled. If this was the case then Vashti was in terrible danger that her husband would only come to fully grasp after he had sobered up. The Rabbis who penned the materials saw Vashti, therefore as a model of wifely virtue in refusing to dishonor either herself or her husband. The Babylonian Talmud, on the other hand, in tractate Megillah 12b, agree that the was commanded to come naked but described her as a wanton who actually wanted to do this but God inflicted her with curses of leprosy and growing a tail and whatever else to keep her from going. Dang. Harsh.

What exactly happened? We really don’t know much more than the fact that Vashti found herself in a Catch-22. There was no optimal answer to her dilemma. But we do know that she refused to go to him and display herself. This is something that she would have had drilled into her since infancy, the importance of avoiding shame at all costs. Surely when her husband came to his senses he would see her wisdom. And he did but by that time it was too late because, impulsively, while drunk and angry he allowed himself to be influenced to depose Vashti. And, they were all drunk and engorged at this point after seven days of this, so they were in no position to give wise advice either. Instead, they acted in their own best interest in order to make sure that their wives lived in mortal fear of saying no to them, no matter what. Women in the ancient world lived precarious lives where they could be destroyed and even murdered over an unsubstantiated accusation. And when men of one family wanted to shame another family, the easiest way in the world was through making a plausible accusation against the women of the family. If virtue couldn’t be proven, then the shamed woman often had to die in order to restore the honor of the family. In the case of Vashti, she wasn’t killed because there was no question of sexual impropriety and any children he had with her would need to have their own honor protected, but she herself was never to be seen by the King again. She would have been shut away for life. She was still sacred and no other man could touch her, marry her, whatever. She was less than a Queen, sort of a wife, and perhaps a mother. Welcome to the “privileged” life of women in the ancient world who didn’t have to go to war but had to live in a constant state of stress over their reputations and who did not have the power that men had to recover from being disgraced.

And because Vashti is out, a new Queen is needed. And so, a suggestion was made that no ancient Near Eastern king would ever object to (and too few men today, for that matter). “Hey, let’s have all the beautiful virgins in each of the 127 provinces (which would have included Judea) rounded up and put in a harem so they can be cleaned up and beautified and the King can try them out one by one until he finds one he likes.” No surprise, this suggestion made the King really happy and so they just went around and took all the beautiful girls from India to Cush. Among them was the “beautiful of form and figure” Hadassah, a descendant of the royal line of Saul whose ancestors had been exiled from Judah about a hundred years earlier. She was an orphan being raised by her cousin Mordecai. And the King’s people came and took her and placed her into the harem under the care of the harem eunuchs, particularly Hegai. She gained favor with him and he supplied her with all sorts of honors, including special food, seven female servants from the palace, and placed them in the best rooms of the harem. Although, presumably, she was taken during the third year of the reign of Ahasuerus, it wasn’t until the seventh year that she was presented to the King. Her age might have been a factor, or perhaps Hegai was protecting her. We just don’t know. But after four years of living like a queen, she had no trouble whatsoever impressing Ahasuerus and he made her queen instead of sending her to where the concubines lived.

Can we just stop and remark on how gross this is? The beauty treatments took a year and so that means that the King has been “trying out” potential queens for three years—perhaps a thousand women unless he took nights off. These women were trained and then used for one night only to be rejected as not good enough to be queen and then dumped into the quarters for the concubines and would never be permitted to be married to anyone else either. Remember that as with Vashti, women with whom the King had slept were considered somewhat sacred. Any man who would approach one would be guilty of not only shaming the king but also of treason and making an attempt to seize the throne. Which should sound familiar to those who have read the I Kings 1 and 2 account of King David’s virgin bed-warmer who he took on as a pseudo-wife when he was too old to keep himself warm. In David’s final days, his oldest surviving son Adonijah attempted to seize the throne with the support of Joab, the general of Israel’s armies, and Abiathar, the priest. However, Nathan the prophet and Zadok the priest found out and David made Solomon king instead—before his death. Although Solomon spared his life, later Adonijah attempted to gain Abishag, David’s bed-warmer, as his wife. Perhaps because she was a virgin, he thought he could get away with it but Solomon saw it as an attempt to gain the throne and he had his older brother executed.

The other time we see this is when Absalom revolted against his father David in 2 Kings 15 and once he had secured the palace in Jerusalem, he openly bedded his father’s concubines on the roof of the palace—furthering his claim to the kingship by taking what was only to be touched by a king. It wasn’t about sex so much as it was about taking his father’s honor away and thereby gaining it for himself. That’s how honor worked in the ancient world, if I shamed you and took away your honor, that honor would be added to mine. Even though, nowadays, I would probably just be seen as a jerk. But it still works in High School. Boy was I glad to get out of that place. Taking the king’s palace, taking the king’s throne, and taking the king’s concubines was the same as taking the kingship. And what David didn’t understand but the men fighting for him did is that Absalom had to die—there was no way of keeping him alive while maintaining David as king. And dang, these poor women. David never touched them again and they were kept hidden away for the rest of their lives. We would hope, as we would with all the concubines of Ahasuerus, that they had been lucky enough to get pregnant so that they could at least be mothers. The situation was bad but I would imagine that it would be far worse in that culture to be childless for life. It would certainly be a very lonely and somewhat meaningless existence as they would have limited options for how to spend their lives and probably the overwhelming majority were uneducated.

But Esther was not shamed by being resigned to the life of a concubine. Instead she was honored as Queen, whether she wanted that life or not. Remember that in today’s society, all of these women would be considered the victims of sexual trafficking and rape. Living in luxury doesn’t change that. And there are people who are very harsh on Esther for marrying a non-Jew but let’s take a step back and think about what Scripture commands. The Jews were only ever forbidden to intermarry with the Canaanites, the people of the land. She wasn’t forbidden to marry Ahasuerus and probably the reason Mordecai asked her to hide her identity was because if she displeased the king, he might take it out on her people. There were no checks and balances. If the king was angry, even his own wife couldn’t trust him. But socially, in the eyes of the community, Esther had been exalted not only to the role of queen but also as having a sacred status and the wife of the king. Whether she liked him or not, whether he was good looking or not, whether he was a good lover or not or had terrible breath or was unkind, he was her husband, by force, and all she could do for her own sake and for the sake of her people was to play the hand dealt to her. But it was no sin for her to be a concubine in that culture or according to Moses. It was a fact of life in those days. And there was no marriage ceremony for concubines, you were just taken to bed. Wives were contracted for legally between two families and had certain protections but life for concubines was far less secure—just look at what happened to poor Hagar! Really Abraham? Some bread and a skin of water? But I digress…

I am going to skip all the stuff about the men, might do a second part next week or maybe next year, but a time comes when Mordecai offends her husband’s right hand man, the wicked Agagite Haman. And Haman schemes and takes advantage of the King’s over-baked pride and manipulates him through a series of claims and actions into agreeing to a plan to commit genocide against the Jews in all 127 of the provinces. So, like everywhere that Jews were at that time. And they were going to make it worth everyone’s while to do it by allowing them to loot the homes and businesses of the Jews they slaughtered. And so, Ahasuerus, without fact checking Haman’s meme claims, effectively signs the death warrant on an entire people group. This guy is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but his right hand man is a whole lot more clever and conniving and takes advantage of the king’s weaknesses. Weaknesses that were used by his councilors against Vashti and weaknesses that were used to rob young virgins of the chance to get married and have families, and weaknesses that are now being exploited to extinguish the Jews—the historical enemies of the Amalekites. Saul, if you will remember, destroyed all of Amalek except for their king Agag—who Samuel killed later when he found out that Saul had spared him. I dunno, professional courtesy I suppose. Actually, having a vanquished king for a pet was quite popular in the ancient world. And you may protest that the Bible said that they were all slaughtered, but we see that sort of language a lot where they were “all” this or that but then we see later that it was a literary exaggeration. Which ancient authors used for effect and not to be deceptive. All that is to say, there is some history and really bad blood here.

Esther becomes the only person with any ability to fix this issue because of her relationship with the King but there is a problem—we know that virgins have been gathered again for the harem and that the King hasn’t called Esther into his presence for a month. It doesn’t take a genius to read the writing on the wall. Esther’s position is anything but secure, and this is a mere five years into their marriage. Had she failed to provide an heir? Did Ahasuerus consider wives somewhat disposable? Does he simply miss the good old days of bedding a new virgin whenever he wants? We can’t be sure, but Esther was on thin ice and she knew it. She also knew that she could not, for fear of her life, go to the King without being summoned. If he didn’t welcome her into his presence when he saw her, then she would be executed. But if she didn’t then she might end up being the only Jew left on earth. She was probably only about twenty years old, and this was a very scary thing. As it was, she hadn’t seen anyone from her family or her people in nine years! None of the girls who were taken ever saw their families again. I don’t know about you, but being wealthy and pampered for the rest of your life isn’t worth that unless you had an awful family!

But Esther decided to help her people, even though she was very scared. She knew that one way or another, something horrible was going to happen—but fortunately God had different plans. She and her servants and all of the Jews prayed and fasted for three days and on the third day, Esther went to see the King. He surprised her by being happy to see her and asked her what she wanted and promised to give her just about anything, and she invited him and the evil Haman over for a big feast. Haman was thrilled because when someone invites you to eat with them, they are treating you like an equal or at least like you aren’t pond scum. But eating with a person in the ancient world was the same thing as accepting them. This was a great honor for Haman and after the feast he went back home and bragged to everyone he knew. The next day, however, things started going very badly for Haman and his plans started to really fall apart. But that’s for another broadcast. But he was looking forward to a second feast that Esther had invited them both to, one where she promised her husband, the King, that she would tell him what she wanted.

Haman was shocked to find out that Queen Esther was a Jew, and that her cousin Mordecai had saved the life of the King before he ever came to court. The King was also shocked, and very angry. He stormed out and Haman was so desperate for forgiveness from Esther that he fell down close enough to touch her and when the king came back, he thought that Haman was raping her and trying to take his Kingdom! Now do you see why it was so important to understand the stories of Absalom and Adonijah? Haman was executed, and Esther was given everything that Haman had ever owned. Mordecai became the Prime Minister and together, the two of them came up with a plan to save the Jews—a plan that God blessed so completely that the Jews were able to kill all of their enemies. And because of the great deliverance of their people, they instituted the Feast of Purim and the Jews honor God’s miraculous deliverance of His people even today.



Episode 161: The Advent of John the Baptist in Luke

Sometimes we forget that the Gospels contain three, and not just two, advent accounts because the arrival of “Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord” was anticipated almost as much as the coming of the Messiah Himself! And it’s an exciting story full of angelic visitations, a barren older mamma, a prophetic unborn child, and a dad who is quite literally speechless!

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As I am writing this, it is the first day of Hannukah 2022 and as such it is the day that I personally celebrate the arrival of the angel Gabriel to Mary to inform her of the miraculous nature of what is about to happen to her. And as much as I would love to talk about that today, as we are in Luke’s advent chapters, the advent of John the Baptist comes first and is extremely important to understanding the context of the promises to Mary. Advent, and I am not talking about the liturgical season, is a word that means “the coming of a great person, thing, or event.” And the coming of Elijah, the forerunner, the one who would make straight the way of the Lord—and we talked about this a lot when we studied Mark—was where it all begins, related to us by Luke according to the ancient genre of narrative (which means storytelling) and specifically historical narrative. Very different from other Biblical accounts, however, is Luke inviting us into the thoughts of people and most especially Mary the mother of Yeshua/Jesus. So, as much as I wished I had done my studying earlier and was telling her story today, John comes first. I am going to take some artistic license and make some assumptions of things that are not spelled out in Scripture, but I really want this to be impactful so that we can understand the larger story. Plus, I want to keep it in narrative, or story, form as much as possible as that is how we received it. And even more importantly, how the original audience would have received it. But maybe a bit funnier in some spots.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have seven years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link) and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. For those of you who got used to the ESV when I was teaching Isaiah and Mark, this is a good chance to get acquainted with another really terrific translation.

During the last years of King Herod the Great, who ruled all of the Land of Israel as a vassal king to the mighty Roman Empire and was known as much for his terrible brutality as his magnificent building projects, there was a priest from the line of Abijah named Zechariah. Now, the House of Aaron had been divided into twenty-four divisions by King David so that all of the priests could share in the work of the Temple. By families, they would serve two weeks a year, but they would all come to serve during the festivals but it was determined by lot which priests would be in attendance on any one day as there were far too many sons of Aaron in the Land of Israel in those days to fit them all in the Court of the Priests at the same time. And as it was the eighth week of the cycle, he and his male relatives and even extended relatives had been called to serve in the Temple at Jerusalem, one of the ancient wonders of the world, from Sabbath to Sabbath. He rose early from his sleep in the Beit HaMoked, the huge building at the Northwest corner of the Azerah which served as, among other things, the dormitory for the priests on duty. He descended the spiral rock steps down below where he could relieve himself and immerse in a Mikveh before the younger men woke up and beat him to it. Ritually cleansed, he emerged and readied himself for the duties of the day, hoping that after all these years he would finally be chosen by God to perform the coveted, once in a lifetime opportunity to perform the incense ceremony in the Holy place, standing before the Parokhet, the beautiful veil that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. Zechariah was running out of years of eligibility and his time as a priest was coming to an end. Soon, he wouldn’t be strong enough to perform the laborious work of the Temple. But each day he served was another opportunity to hope that, even though he and his wife had no children, that this dream at least, would be realized.

The priests gathered in a large circle at the southeast corner of the Court and were instructed to each hold up one or two fingers. The chief priest in charge called out a number and began counting fingers, and whoever’s upheld finger or fingers was at the end of the count would be chosen for this job or that job—removing ashes from the altar, replacing the wood, tending to the lamps on the Menorah, and finally—the one chosen for the most coveted duty of all, the lot reserved onto for those who had never performed the ceremony before. Zechariah held his breath as the priest announced the number and began counting fingers and his heart raced as he realized that if it wasn’t him, it would be someone close by him. When the chief priest placed his finger on Zechariah’s upraised finger and smiled, there was great gladness from all the rest of them—Zechariah being the oldest in the circle and greatly respected among the people. Five had been chosen to perform the duties in the Holy Place—and they would perform these duties quietly and reverently. The bread of the presence was only changed out on the Sabbaths but the work of the Menorah and the Incense services daily was quite complex.

Coals were brought in from the outer altar and arranged carefully on what was called the Golden Altar, and it was Zechariah’s job to place the special incense upon it as an intercession for the people of God. One by one, the other priests finished their jobs and went out to wait upon the steps leading up to the Heikal, and they waited for Zechariah, and waited, but he didn’t emerge. The elders from the communities around Israel were gathered for the Amidah prayers. Zechariah’s absence would have been more and more alarming as time went on, but no one dared go in to get him. So, what was happening? After all, everyone agreed that despite Elizabeth’s failure to conceive, Zechariah was above reproach and blameless—and very deserving of this honor at long last. Had they been wrong? Had Yahweh struck him dead over some secret sin?

As the last of his four companions left the sanctuary, Zechariah was shocked to see a strange man, dressed in white, standing to the right-hand side of the Altar of Incense. Struck with terror and fearful of the overwhelming presence of this man who was obviously far more than just a mere man, unable to turn his back on the Holy of Holies to run and yet frozen in place, the figure’s words confirmed what he hardly dared to believe, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord and will never drink wine or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb.  He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to make ready for the Lord a prepared people.”

Zechariah, being a righteous and blameless man who knew the Scriptures from his youth, realized that he was standing in the presence of an Angel of the Lord. “Do not be afraid,” the angel had said and for the first time in his life, he understood exactly why the angelic encounters with the great men and women of the past had been the cause of such desperate need for this reassurance. Indeed, nothing could have prepared Zechariah for the overwhelming awe that he felt in the presence of the angel and how easily it would be to fall down in worship before him. A thousand thoughts filled his mind as the words shook him to the core and became part of his deepest awareness. His prayers had been heard—God was not deaf to his crying out after all. After all these years, when he had reached the age of being required to step down from his priestly duties in the Temple, he was being promised a son and not just any son but a son through his aged wife Elizabeth, who was not only barren but long past the time of women to become pregnant at all. Elizabeth, a mother! Himself, a father! And a son to be named Yochannan—meaning “God is gracious” and a name unknown to his own family, and so a name they would have never chosen for a child. But what could be a better name than this pronouncement of the graciousness of God in giving an elderly couple a son! Like Abraham and Sarah, who were also given the name of their miraculous son Isaac, by the Angel of the Lord. And of course, nothing would give him more joy but why would others rejoice? And many, at that! Many—a word laden with so much meaning by the prophet Isaiah who spoke of the Messiah and the many who would be saved and not only from Israel but also the Nations would come to worship the Lord! A son of his at all, but a great son? Great in the eyes of God Himself? And he mustn’t drink alcohol—was his miracle son to be a Nazirite for life as Samson was—another miracle child born to a barren woman! What is happening?

Zechariah’s mind could not stop racing as he considered the implications of this strange encounter and even stranger message—who was he but an elderly priest and who was his wife that they should have this honor? And this child, John, would be filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb? Certainly, the Spirit fell upon Kings and Prophets and the artisans who carried out the work of the Tabernacle but from the womb? Nothing like this had ever been heard of in Israel! Why would any child have such a calling as to be filled with the Spirit which guided the prophets before he was even born—is this why he is being compared to Elijah? Didn’t Malachi prophesy that Elijah would come again, and that the Lord whom they sought would come to His Temple—in judgment against the wicked of His people and specifically against the priesthood? Was the Day of the Lord suddenly to come upon them? And would this child be the promised forerunner who would prepare His way and make His paths straight? What will he do to cause the “many” that Isaiah spoke of to turn back toward their God after so many exhausting years of occupation, war and oppression? What message would John bring? What hopes will he restore to his people? And the power of Elijah—will he be a miracle worker? Or a bold preacher? Or maybe both?

The elders at the city gate were always grumbling about how the children are straying from the right path and needed to return to the faith of the fathers but this angel was telling him that it is the heart of the fathers that needed to return to their children? Zechariah, like every other person in the ancient world, had barely known his father until he became a man—he was expected to honor his father but the idea of fathers being drawn to their children was a foreign idea. And with the angel’s very next statement, the disobedient would be turned to the understanding of the righteous—why was the angel equating the fathers with the disobedient and their children with the righteous? What was about to happen with this upcoming generation that would put his generation to shame? Zechariah’s head was spinning trying to process the information and it just didn’t seem possible—was he hallucinating? It seemed as though he had lived a lifetime over the past thirty seconds, and he stammered, “How can I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.”

The Angel looked at Zechariah and we can only guess at what he was thinking but perhaps something like, “Dude, I just materialized beside the Altar of Golden Incense in the Holy Place, are you serious??? Do you think I came here on a whim just to get your hopes up? I mean, that’s the question you ask because the logistics are more unbelievable than everything else I just told you?” But, he answered, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. Now listen. You will become silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their proper time.” In other words, “Oh my gosh dude, are you kidding me? I am not just any run of the mill messenger boy, I am Gabriel—yeah, that Gabriel—and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me at the moment, God sent me to tell you this, you know, super fantastic news that really should have you leaping for joy and hollering even though you are in the Holy Place and I am really not used to being doubted, okay? So listen up and listen tight—not one more word out of you until all of this comes to pass. You won’t be able to say anything else or hear anything else. I just can’t even believe you right now.” Or something like that. It’s the TDR version of the Bible. Gabriel is clearly irritated. Yes, Zechariah is righteous and blameless but I think he is also related to Peter, James and John because he sure put his foot in it.

And the people and his fellow priests have been out there all this time, waiting, and the silence and anxiety must have been palpable. People shuffling from foot to foot, agitated and confused and really wondering what was going to happen and what should happen when all of a sudden, Zechariah finally backs out though the outer curtain and past the massive, opened doors. When he finally turned to look at them all, he must have looked absolutely alarmed but he couldn’t even tell them why so they knew he must have had a vision while he was inside—which was amazing because it was general knowledge that such things just didn’t happen anymore as they did in the days of the kings and prophets. Zechariah completed the week of his service, as there were no disqualifications for either being deaf nor mute, and then he returned home. Was he even able to tell his wife what had happened? We know that he could read and write but it was very likely that she couldn’t as she would have no need to do so and girls were rarely educated in anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. All we know is that whatever happened, Zechariah was the talk of the town and a legitimate mystery.

As for Elizabeth, after learning that she was pregnant, she secluded herself for the next five months. People wonder why and so this is a time for seriousness here coming from me as a barren woman who has been pregnant a lot. We know that she wasn’t simply barren but had never been able to conceive before either. And that’s a big difference—she has never been pregnant before and at her age simply being out in public pregnant would have exposed her not to awe and wonderment but perhaps ridicule and a compounding of her shame if she was to miscarry. And you need to know how heavily that possibility weighs upon the mind of every woman with fertility issues—we don’t just get pregnant and assume everything always works out because we, more than anyone else, know better even when we are deliriously happy. In the sixth month, Elizabeth emerged and said, “The Lord has done this for me. He has looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace among the people.” What an announcement, showing up outside for the first time in five months, six months pregnant and unmistakably so. There would have been whispers, murmuring, joyous laughter, disbelief, and a great many comparisons to Sarah. After all these years, it was finally Elizabeth’s turn in the spotlight and she was finally seen as both a true woman and a true wife because, sadly, a woman was defined by the community by her ability or inability to bear an heir for her husband. Her pronouncement wasn’t anything that everyone else wouldn’t have thought and understood.

A short time later, or perhaps even before the announcement, a young teenager named Mary traveled from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea in order to investigate her own angelic claim that her relative Elizabeth was miraculously pregnant. Coming to the door and speaking a respectful greeting, as was proper for a younger person in the presence of an elder of higher social status, and Elizabeth was shocked by the sudden violent action of the baby within her womb. As she turned to look at who was addressing her, she saw her young relative Mary and Elizabeth was immediately filled with the Holy Spirit and she cried out in prophetic utterance, “Blessed are you among women, and your child will be blessed! How could this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her!”

Mary, as well, broke out in joyful song and praise extolling the great works of God in her life despite her lowly status and of His faithfulness in remembering His covenant people with salvation at long last. As Elizabeth was very far along in her pregnancy and as Zechariah wasn’t much for conversation lately, the presence of Mary must have been an incredible blessing and, as she wasn’t showing her own pregnancy yet, she was able to safely live among their community without fear of scandal or being discovered by her own family, fiancé, and friends. We can hardly even imagine the long conversations shared between them and I imagine that Mary was very happy to have someone to share her experiences with. Although there is nothing said about Mary after the birth of John, it would not be unlikely that she would stay to help her relative for a short while after the birth—at which time she would have returned just beginning to show the growing evidence of her own miracle.

When Elizabeth came to full term and gave birth to a son, the entire village and all of her relatives would have been abuzz with awe and excitement. An old barren woman gave birth to a son, why, it was positively Biblical! Nothing of the sort had happened in so long that even their great-great-great grandparents would have been in disbelief. Speculation about the child would have reached a fever pitch by this point, what with the geriatric pregnancy, the mute-deafness of the father since his mystery encounter within the Holy Place, and with the child being a boy. Could he be the Messiah? Many in that time period believed from looking at the Scriptures that there would be a priestly Messiah in addition to a Davidic Messiah. John would certainly qualify as a priestly Messiah and the signs certainly suggested that it was more than possible. Perhaps, at the bris, the circumcision ceremony where the boy would be named, there would be another sign and no one wanted to miss it.

The priest performing the ceremony, with the father still unable to speak, said that he would be named Zechariah, but Elizabeth stepped in to stop him. “No. He will be called John,” she corrected him, much to the confusion of the gathered crowd. They muttered among themselves in shock because there were no children named Yochannan in their family and the custom was to preserve family names in order to honor relatives. Certainly, she must be out of her mind and so they informed her that there were no relatives of that name, because obviously she would have no idea, right? And they were obviously miffed about it because they went to Zechariah to try to override her and he wrote on a tablet confirming that she was quite correct (how did she know?) in the naming. And suddenly he was filled with the Spirit and began to sing and prophesy (because this chapter is rather a lot like a musical):

“Blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and provided redemption for his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, just as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets in ancient times; salvation from our enemies and from the hand of those who hate us. He has dealt mercifully with our ancestors and remembered his holy covenant—the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant that we, having been rescued from the hand of our enemies, would serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days. And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s merciful compassion, the dawn from on high will visit us to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And the people wondered even more who and what this child would grow up to be.



Episode 160: Special Teaching #1–The Advent of the Messiah in Matthew

As this is the time of year when a third of the world is focused on the birth of Immanuel, and many believe that Hannukah was the time of His divine conception, I wanted to spend a few weeks learning about the account that Matthew and Luke dedicated two chapters each teaching us. This week we will learn Joseph’s story in the Gospel of Matthew. What better time of year to become educated about the answer to so many Jewish prayers for so long?

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Hey there, this is Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and I just wanted to talk about what I am about to teach because I have had some unfortunate pushback. Advent is the time of year when most Christians prepare themselves for the celebration of the Nativity, generally in the form of Christmas, but not always. Truth is that we have no idea what time of the year our Savior was born but for me and my family, we believe that this is the time of year of His conception and so we choose to spend these weeks learning the nativity stories of Joseph, contained in the Gospel of Matthew, and Mary, shared in the Gospel of Luke. Both authors dedicate a whopping two chapters each to their treatment of this answer to Jewish prayers and both accounts are just chock full of context, character lessons, miracles, sadness, and most of all—joy. So, if the entirely heavenly host gathered to rejoice in the incarnation of Immanuel, God with us, then it is definitely something we should focus a few weeks on each year. The Advent and the Resurrection are both times of great joy, to all people whether they know it or not, and as the world is now focused on the birth of the Savior, what better time to be teaching it, in context, so that we have a fuller answer for those who ask us the reason for the hope within us?

Advent is the Old English word that means “the arrival of an important person, thing, or event” according to the Oxford dictionary. It comes to us from the Latin word adventus, with ad meaning to and venire meaning come. Certainly no greater arrival has ever occurred than the birth of Yeshua the Messiah, who you may know as Jesus or Yesu or Isa or many other iterations of the Name. So, over the next three weeks or four, haven’t decided yet, I will be pulling out my Matthew and Luke commentaries and diving into the Gospel accounts of one of the three most pivotal events in human and salvational history, namely the Advent of the Messiah. Although scholars and theologians understand that He wasn’t born in December, the truth is that all we can do is to come up with theories as to when He was born so now is as good a time as any to be learning about this. After all, most of the world in one way or another is focused on the birth of the Savior of the world. I have actually been studying angels lately and any event celebrated by angels, shepherds and possibly pagan sages just has to be the very definition of good news for the world. Of course, it was only the beginning but without a beginning there is no end—and without an end there can be no new beginning. Death requires birth just as surely as resurrection requires death.

I am going to take some artistic license and make some assumptions of things that are not spelled out in Scripture but I really want this to be impactful so that we can understand the larger story.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have seven years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link) and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. For those of you who got used to the ESV when I was teaching Isaiah and Mark, this is a good chance to get acquainted with another really terrific translation.

Let’s begin with the Advent in Matthew, which tells us the story of the birth of Yeshua from the point of view of Joseph. Joseph was a direct line descendant of the kings through Solomon which was cut off with the exile, leaving what Isaiah describes as the “stump of Jesse”. In chapter 11 of Isaiah, we see that a shoot, also called a branch, will rise from the stump of Jesse which is also later described as the root of Jesse—so the prophet is describing one who is not only the offspring of Jesse but also the source. This is clearly more than a man. He is not descended through Solomon because that tree has been cut down to a stump but He is the biological seed of David, the son of Jesse. David’s line is the stump of Jesse and so any shoot that would grow out of it (if you are familiar with how hard it is to kill certain kinds of trees) would be from the side and not from the site of the cutting. This is why Scripture gives us two genealogies—one in Matthew and one in Luke. Matthew’s genealogy gives us the line that goes through (almost) all of the kings of Judah (edited a bit in order to communicate to us the three groups of fourteen which represent the name of David) and Luke’s, which records the genealogy from David to Yeshua through his son Nathan. Nathan is the path by which the shoot or branch comes into being.

Because David’s royal line is cut off, the Messiah can’t be a descendant of all the kings biologically but as the Son of David, Israel’s King, and the Lion of Judah, he must have his biological roots in King David. As the adoptive son of Joseph and the biological son of Mary, Yeshua is strategically placed to be uniquely the only man who could ever be the heir to the throne of Israel, according to the prophets.

And so, Matthew chapters one and two give us the Advent through the eyes of Joseph, who totally rocks. I love this guy. We know from the Gospels that Joseph is a tekton, a builder of some kind—perhaps a carpenter or a stonemason who would have been able to make a decent living as a craftsman in nearby Sepphoris which was being rebuilt during his days. Artisans were looked down upon in a world where honor was achieved through being a landowner working their own land (or paying others to do it) or by being a priest and hardworking craftsmen like Joseph weren’t really thought very highly of. Just try hiring a stonemason or a carpenter cheap today, boy howdy, and it ain’t gonna happen! Nor should it. And he was engaged to a young woman named Miriam, a girl who was probably around fifteen. And, you know, Joseph is minding his own business, being a righteous man, and discovers that his young fiancé, who has been off helping her elderly cousin Elisabeth during the final three months of her pregnancy, has come home pregnant. Joseph is a good man and this had to be devastating news—and there was much to consider, living in an honor/shame society where young Miriam’s life was in danger even apart from the Torah commandments concerning adultery. How many men would have been so jealous—righteous or not—and would have chosen to publicly expose her to her ruin? In those days and even now, most. He was probably not in love with her, as few marriages were based on what we moderns would call love in those days, but what he did have was compassion—an amalgam of the fruit of the Spirit.

Putting his own feelings of betrayal aside, he decides to deal with this without wrath and without demanding satisfaction for the shame this would bring him, and he seeks some way to put her away quietly as they were not yet sharing a home together. To keep her would be to subject Himself to rumors that he seduced her and dishonored her father before the wedding but to cast her off publicly would be disastrous both for herself and the child. Joseph had quite the dilemma on his hands and I can assure you that he prayed about it endlessly while wrestling with this difficult situation. Can you say patience and self-control? Most people wouldn’t even wrestle but in the Bible, all great men and women do. In the dictionary, beside the word mensch, is a picture of Joseph—or there should be!

So, Joseph came up with a plan to quietly divorce her although how one would do that in such a small town as Nazareth in the Galilee is a mystery but he seemed determined to be both kind and faithful to her. And evidently, after seeing that he had made up his mind, Yahweh sent an angelic messenger to him in a dream, comforting and consoling him that he had no reason to fear taking Miriam to be his wife and that far from being betrayed, the child conceived in her was from the Holy Spirit. I ask you, would a man so gentle and loving that he was willing to protect Miriam when he thought she had been unfaithful, hesitate for a moment to take her into his home as his wife? Not a chance. I imagine that he was still troubled and confused but He obviously was trusted by Yahweh to fulfill an incredibly important role. Although the language is not obvious to us, when the angel informed Joseph that he was the name the child “Jesus” or more accurately, Yeshua, because He would save His people from their sins—that is something Joseph would have understood very well. You see, ancient law was a lot more decent about the adoption process than we see in modern times where it can be harrowing in the extreme. I know this personally. But in that time, all a man had to do was to take the child onto his knee and name him or her. Joseph was being given the privilege of being the adoptive father of the Messiah—and so Yeshua would 100% qualify as a potential heir to the throne of David in the eyes of the Jewish people.

People focus on the faith of Miriam and well we should but Joseph is often overlooked—and he shouldn’t be. He was chosen every bit as carefully by Yahweh as Miriam was. Joseph wasn’t just a random fiancé, meaning that whoever was betrothed to Miriam would step in and get the job done. Not all men’s characters are created equal. He was absolutely chosen and trusted to be faithful in his calling. And as for the language of saving His people? Joseph would be keenly aware that this must be the long expected Messiah—although he probably would have assumed that his son would be the military Messiah most everyone was looking for. But a man so pious, self-controlled, and trustworthy could also be trusted to believe that without turning his son into a brute—as I suspect Adam and Eve might have with Cain. Of course, that’s all just speculation. But as a righteous man, is it too much to think that the Spirit brought this verse to his mind?  “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.” (Is 7:14) Joseph had the power over life and death for Miriam and her unborn child—believe me, he is no small part of the advent of our Messiah. If Immanuel, meaning God with us, was going to happen, Joseph needed to see to it that they were protected and safe. What other reason would a man travel with a very pregnant wife when he could have left her at home with the midwives?

So Joseph took Miriam into his home but had no marital relations with her until after the birth of the child. And, as commanded, Joseph took the boy from birth and named Him Yeshua, claiming Him as his own firstborn son.

After the birth of Yeshua, some wise men from the east (which is defined as anywhere to the east of the Jordan River) who had been watching the signs in the stars noticed what we call a cosmic event. Cosmic events were believed in those days to be the sign of a significant birth, death, calamity, or victory. In this case, for reasons that are not made clear, these men follow the star they saw to the land of Judea, at the edge of the Roman Empire. Believing that great men are born in palaces and having the social status to request an audience with the king, they approached King Herod and inquired about the child who was born the “King of the Jews.” They had seen the star when it first appeared and left home in order to bow down before the child, to pay homage to him.

King Herod, having murdered a bunch of his own kids, was privately terrified—being at this point in his life quite insane. As the story got out, the people of the city, the religious leaders and the mothers with babes in arm, the artisans, slaves, and priests, were whispering about this rumored new king. Could it be possible, had a child been born who would usurp the brilliant but unpredictable tyrant who had ruled over them for the last thirty years as the brutal puppet king of the Roman Empire? Would they have a Jew to reign over them again at long last? Would the Edomite dynasty end before Herod Archelaus would take his father’s place? Herod the Great was a terrible villain, but a villain they were at least familiar with and for all they knew his remaining sons would be even worse. Herod had killed all of the male descendants of the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty that had devastated the region through family infighting, atrocities toward the party of the Pharisees, and outright civil war. Some must have been asking, in hushed tones, if this might be the Messiah because everyone had heard the story of old Zechariah the priest who had received a visitation from Gabriel announcing the birth of a special child to his barren, elderly wife Elizabeth. That baby was born some time ago, but not in Bethlehem—the House of David, where everyone knew the Messiah would be from.

Herod called the religious leaders to his palace in Jerusalem and asked them one question: “Where will the Messiah be born?” And the leaders, being very smart, neglected to say something like—“Well, as King of the Jews we would expect that you had been in a synagogue at least a few times in your life and this is like common knowledge.” That would have been very bad. But instead, they replied, obviously not really thinking through the ramifications of their admission—” “In Bethlehem of Judea,” they told him, “because this is what was written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah: Because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” (Matt 2:6).

After all, what could go wrong in telling a man who killed at least two of his own kids already that a threat to his throne had been born and even where he would have been born. After dismissing the religious leaders, Herod quietly called in the wise men and asked them exactly when they had seen the rising of that star. After they told him, he pretended to be very excited and told them not only where to find the child but also to come back to let him know where he is so that he could go and prostrate himself before this mystery child as well. They bowed before the king and left his presence, very excited, and when the sun went down they looked to where the star was and followed it south until they came to the town of Bethlehem. The star that was leading them on stopped over the house where Miriam, Joseph and Yeshua were staying. They cried out and Joseph came to the doorway, shocked to see men in foreign garb approaching his home. After telling him their purpose, Joseph invited them inside and offered them the hospitality of his home after their long journey. Seeing Miriam with the baby on her lap, they prostrated themselves before the babe in adoration. When they were told to rise up again, they opened and presented the gifts they had brought from their homeland—gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Joseph was taken aback—he had never seen gold this close in his life, except for that which decorated the Temple so abundantly. He knew the smell of frankincense from the offerings at the Temple, and frankincense and myrrh both perfuming the wealthy women in Sepphoris. These were the gifts that someone would reserve for the birth of a King, and these men obviously weren’t paupers. This was something that Joseph had only ever heard about in the synagogue in the stories of David and Solomon—these wealthy men were bowing down before the son of a common artisan and treating him like a king, paying Him tribute as the sycophants of Herod were famous for doing. They offered expensive gifts in order to court favor, but what favor could these mysterious men ask of his son? Joseph knew what the angel had revealed to him, but they were still a poor and powerless family who weren’t in the position to grant them anything. This was a gift for the sake of giving, it was a pure gift. Riches beyond what Joseph could even imagine.

Joseph was of humble means but he knew his responsibility to offer the men the protection of his home for the night, as well as food, and perhaps they remained but regardless of where they spent the remainder of the night—once they stopped asking questions about the miraculous birth and what had brought them to the house of this poor couple and their child—they had a dream that warned them not to return to their homeland by way of Jerusalem and Herod. We can only imagine their conversations on the way home, about the encounter with Herod that had led them to the home of Joseph and Mary and they would have talked with one another about the child, wondering how on earth such a child in that tiny town could ever rise up to become a king but that’s what the gods were like. They were very fickle, showing favoritism to whomever they desired. One thing they knew for sure, that they had been part of something very special, very mysterious, very strange, and quite wondrous. Perhaps, on their arrival back home, they proclaimed to all who would hear this strange story of a King who wasn’t born in a palace but to a teenage girl and a hard-working artisan.

As Joseph pondered the gift and undoubtedly hid it away, his home filled with the rich perfume of frankincense resin and myrrh gum from southern Arabia, he must have drifted off to sleep more puzzled than ever about this child of his wife Miriam and about his future fate if his beginnings were already so full of odd occurrences. But just as soon as Joseph drifted off the sleep beside his wife, his dreams were once again visited by an angelic messenger. The angel appeared to Joseph and said, “Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.” (Matt 2:13) Immediately, he woke up Mary and they gathered what belongings they could as well as the gifts of the wise men and left town, traveling the trade route down into Egypt. Did they end up in Alexandria, where the large Jewish population had gotten permission from Jerusalem to build a second Temple? The Jews made up about a third of the city and so that definitely would have been a safer place than other cities. And God had provided the money they needed to get there and to find lodging, to eat and care for themselves. Could Joseph even find work? How long did they stay? We just have no idea.

Well the brutal and paranoid king Herod just flew into an absolute rage when the wise men never came back and he did a horrible thing—he ordered his soldiers to go down to Bethlehem and to kill all the babies in town. All of the children who were two years old and under were slaughtered that day. Out of the probably three hundred people who lived there, probably about twenty children were murdered—in fact, they were the first people to die for the sake of Yeshua. And it might seem hard to believe, but this was a man who, before he died, killed his favorite wife Miriamne, both of her sons, and one other son. The world was such an incredibly horrible place in those days that it wasn’t even important enough for historians to mention. It was just life—and Herod was such a terrible man that the Emperor Augustus said that it is better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son. I guess the only good that came out of it was that Herod and his sons all thought that the child born King of the Jews had been eliminated.

When Herod finally died, an angel appeared again to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, because those who intended to kill the child are dead.” And just as before, he got right up, and they left the land of Egypt and started on their way back home to the Promised Land. But, as they came to the Land, they heard that the wicked Archelaus had been made the ruler of Judea, so they moved to Miriam’s hometown of Nazareth and probably had enough money to find a place to live and Joseph was able to get back to work on rebuilding Sepphoris. And so ends the Advent story from the point of view of Joseph, the man who was incredibly faithful and good and must have made a wonderful father to Yeshua. He and Mary then had at least six more kids—and next week when we talk about Mary’s advent story, I will explain to you why it was so important that she had kids besides Yeshua.

Matthew told this story of Yeshua’s father in such a way that we see that Yeshua is the greater Moses and the Greater Israel, and throughout this Gospel, we see many parallels. Herod plays the part of Pharaoh, and the wise men sub in for the midwives. Yeshua is saved from death while other babies suffer the wrath of the Beast system that was the Roman Empire. Like Jacob and his family, they went down to Egypt to save their lives and returned when Yahweh called them back.



Episode 154: Sukkot and the Mystery of the Eighth Day

What do the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, the eighth day, the pilgrimage festivals, and the Fruit of the Spirit all have in common? Everything.

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He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug out a pit for a winepress, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and went away. At harvest time he sent a servant to the farmers to collect some of the fruit of the vineyard from them. But they took him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent another servant to them, and they hit him on the head and treated him shamefully. Then he sent another, and they killed that one. He also sent many others; some they beat, and others they killed. He still had one to send, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenant farmers said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill the farmers and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this Scripture: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes?” They were looking for a way to arrest him but feared the crowd because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So, they left him and went away. (Mark 12:1-12, CSB)

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have many years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link)and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah. All Scripture this week is from the Christian Standard Bible.

So, why on earth would I associate Sukkot with this parable? Because it occurs at harvest time and that is the focus of this next week’s celebrations—beginning tonight for me and perhaps at another time for you based on your calendar and I am going to give you a heads up here; I don’t even remotely care what day you do this on. I just don’t. Been there, done that, played calendar and name police and it never bore anything in me except horrible, prideful, elitist fruit. So, I care about IF you keep it and not WHEN. And even with that, I care about the reasons WHY you are or aren’t keeping it. I never did until the Lord spoke to me about it—and I don’t place human voices on par with His so just because I am saying something and teaching something, just doesn’t rise to the same level as God placing it in someone’s heart. I will never forget the time I was kicked out of a congregation because I had the audacity to wish people “Chag Sameach” on, *gasp*, the wrong day. Got an earful publicly and privately from the leader of the congregation and the people who were commenting on my post were treated deplorably. I got blocked by him and his wife and I never went back. And so, what was gained, folks? Nothing. What was lost? Unity over the big stuff. And with that, I will segue into the whole point of having a harvest festival—the presentation of the best of our fruit to Yahweh.

Each of the three pilgrimage festivals involve the presentation of or celebration of the harvest to honor Yahweh. During the Passover week, on the day after the weekly Sabbath, the first sheaf of barley was presented at the Temple by the priests from their own fields. This occurred on the first day of the week—or it could also be seen as the eighth day aka shemini atzeret. Shavuot, or Pentecost, celebrates the wheat harvest but was also a day when the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, along with the Bikkurim, which was a presentation of the best of the early harvest in baskets, to the priests at the Temple. This also occurred on the first day of the week, or the eighth day. In the Fall, after all of the harvest was in and the tithes presented, the seven-day festival of Sukkot was celebrated—also called the Festival of the Ingathering at the beginning of the agricultural year. This festival was followed by an additional day called, you guessed it, Shemini Atzeret, or the Eighth Day.

The harvest festivals always feature either a prominent (or hidden) eighth day—symbolizing New Creation, new life, new beginnings, and resurrection. It is the presentation of what belongs to Yahweh, being given over to Yahweh. The eighth day was the day of Yeshua’s/Jesus’s resurrection, the falling of the Holy Spirit upon the gathered followers of Yeshua on Shavuot, and the very day when Yeshua cried out, “On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.”  He said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7:37-39, CSB). Luke tells us that the Transfiguration occurred on the eighth day. The initial priesthood was inaugurated on the eighth day and the fire came down from heaven, consumed the sacrifice on the altar, and the glory of God rested on the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. Solomon built the Temple in seven years but it was completed in the eighth month. John tells us that the eighth day is the most important day of Sukkot. And with the Scriptural focus on the historical and spiritual events of the eighth day, now we know why. The eighth day of a male child’s life was the day of circumcision—which was a pointer to the promise of a coming Messiah from the seed of Abraham, through a woman. Which might seem odd but we know from ancient writings that it was believed that a woman’s uterus was considered to be a field and that the man’s sperm was a “baby seed” that needed nothing except a fertile field to grow in. It wasn’t until the 1660’s that they figured out that wasn’t true and that women produced eggs that were a needful part of the process. And that it was a man’s contribution, and not women, who determined gender. If I was to keep going, we could just talk about the importance of the eighth day all through the Bible. But I want to talk about the harvest.

In the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Yeshua hearkens back to what was just an unapologetic, in your face parable based on Isaiah 5:1-7: “I will sing about the one I love, a song about my loved one’s vineyard: The one I love had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted it with the finest vines. He built a tower in the middle of it and even dug out a winepress there. He expected it to yield good grapes, but it yielded worthless grapes. So now, residents of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did? Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes, did it yield worthless grapes? Now I will tell you what I am about to do to my vineyard: I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland. It will not be pruned or weeded; thorns and briers will grow up. I will also give orders to the clouds that rain should not fall on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah, the plant he delighted in. He expected justice but saw injustice; he expected righteousness but heard cries of despair.”

This was rich in meaning to any agricultural society—to work hard all year and to be rewarded with a bad or insufficient harvest. To plant hedges in order to keep out foxes and walls to keep out thieves and wandering livestock. This is a vineyard that was given every advantage—from the vinestock to the excellent soil to the care it was provided. But the grapes were worthless and were to be left vulnerable. In context, this was spoken to a people who were not only idolatrous, which is bad enough, but also oppressive. The vulnerable were crying out because the powerful were exploiting them, enslaving them, and robbing them. They were misusing the bounty that the Lord had provided and were trampling on “the least of these.” They cried out, and Yahweh heard their cries and decided to act. And of course, the wealthy ended up slaughtered and exiled while the poor were allowed to remain in the Land when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, both of which had been defiled and violated through idolatry, oppression, treachery, and the shedding of innocent blood. The Jews of the first century decried these terrible sins and felt that due to their Torah observance, that they were nothing like that generation. They were wrong. You can legalistically keep Torah and still act corruptly—all you need are loopholes and creative arguments and proof-texting and cherry-picking of Scripture. You know, like we still do now when we want to get out of Yeshua’s really difficult commands in the Sermon on the Mount and we want to overrule Him. Or ditch Paul when he echoes that we shouldn’t act like jerks?

Now, this was a well-known parable from Isaiah and Yeshua is going to build His own, counting on His audience having heard it before and especially the literate elites. If you remember from my series on Mark, Yeshua spoke in parables when He (a) didn’t want the hardhearted to understand what He was teaching, and (b) when He wanted to be clear enough to be understood yet obscure enough that the subjects of His parables wouldn’t be able to say anything for fear of admitting it was about them. This is both.

He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug out a pit for a winepress, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and went away.

This was very common during those days, for an absentee landowner to be nowhere near their land in Judea and Galilee or to even be foreigners. Oftentimes, tenant farmers were actually the former owners of the Land who had lost it due to the severe taxation they experienced from Rome, the Temple elites and Herod’s corrupt tax collectors. It was sadly normal to work your own land, for someone else, to whom you owe a large portion of the harvest. Right off, the crowd would have felt hostility toward the nasty colonizing landowner profiting off their oppression. They are not thinking about Yahweh as the owner yet.

At harvest time he sent a servant to the farmers to collect some of the fruit of the vineyard from them. But they took him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.

There was doubtless a collective smirk and nodding in approval from the gathered audience. “Yeah, that’s how you treat those danged Romans!” What they couldn’t say was “those danged chief priests” who had grown incredibly wealthy from owning and taxing the businesses around and even on the Temple Mount. They were buying up the land of people who couldn’t burden the tithe and the taxation together. They are totally thinking about Romans taking advantage of their poverty by demanding produce, the Temple elites doing the same, and taxation at this point. Social banditry was on the rise (think if Robin Hood was Jewish) and these bandits were very popular because of the revenge they took on the wealthy.

Again, he sent another servant to them, and they hit him on the head and treated him shamefully. Then he sent another, and they killed that one. He also sent many others; some they beat, and others they killed.

Of course, in retrospect, we see the treatment of the prophets in pre-exilic Israel and Judea—the audience is just enjoying the vicarious violence that they could never get away with perpetrating against the villains among them.

He still had one to send, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenant farmers said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So, they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

This wasn’t as strange as it sounds to our modern ears. You’ve heard the expression, “Possession is nine tenths of the law” right? An owner from far away might not have the means to send soldiers and with so many dead servants to show for all this—if he hasn’t sent them yet, he probably can’t. And if he gives up on getting anything from the land, he may give up. But they had to be thinking, “What a colossal idiot this guy is, sending his son when they killed all the servants.” Unless the son was a Roman citizen, even the government wouldn’t much care. Unless they got a really big bribe or something.

What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill the farmers and give the vineyard to others.

Okay, it just stopped being fun and subversive, darnit. That fire sure got doused in a hurry. Yeshua has stopped being entertaining and now He has shocked them back into reality. There will be consequences. No gain. He isn’t talking about a revolution where they all take back their land. The tenants would have been better off just parting with the harvest due their landlord instead of leaving their wives and children widowed and orphaned. The fairy tale is over and Yeshua has just totally doused all of the crowd’s hopes that He would be leading such a revolt against the powers that be. Their collective hopes are dashed. He is not the revolutionary Messiah they are looking for. And if it had ended there, that’s how everyone might have perceived it. Except Yeshua buried the lede and is now going to change the entire meaning:

Haven’t you read this Scripture: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes?” They were looking for a way to arrest him but feared the crowd because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So, they left him and went away.

Oh yeah, He went there. First, He talked about reading that Scripture so He isn’t talking to the overwhelmingly illiterate crowd. He’s talking to the educated Temple elites. Most everyone else had only heard that Scripture. We have to be really attentive when reading the Bible because it was (all of it) given to a culture that transmitted and received information orally. Writing and reading was rarely needed and not being able to read or write wasn’t a disadvantage until quite recently—after the development of the printing press, really. Authority was vested in the original speaker and not in the written word (I am talking about this a lot in the study series that I will continue with next week). So pay attention when the word writing is used, make sure it isn’t a mistranslation of simply something that is being communicated—because we consider the written text to be best but they knew that the words were only truly authoritative because without the proper tone applied to them, they could be completely twisted. Just like on Facebook when people see something they disagree with and assume that the tone is hostile. Yeshua, for example, being the logos is the spoken word of God. It wasn’t just what He said but how He said it.

Anyway, the landlord is suddenly Yahweh, the servants are the prophets, and even someone called “the Son” isn’t safe. Yeshua is quoting Psalm 118:22 and hinting at Isaiah 28:16, where what the people have rejected was the most important thing of all. And they all know it now—but the reference to reading wouldn’t apply to more than a few of them. They wouldn’t have missed it. It would be like if I said something to a crowd like, “Well, when YOU voted that person into office,” and anyone who wasn’t a citizen or too young, or a convicted felon would perceive that comment differently than someone who could legally vote. What we hear is different depending on what is normative for us. When we hear read or write, it doesn’t register because it is normative and assumed that everyone can.

But what does all this have to do with Sukkot? It has everything to do with Sukkot. Getting back to the beginning, each pilgrimage festival was about presenting Yahweh’s portion of the harvest to His representatives. He is that landlord in a faraway land. We are the tenants—just as they were. We have an obligation to recognize and honor His right to the fruit of our harvest and so we must labor for good and bountiful fruit to present Him with the best of it, with what He deserves. We are still an agricultural people, spiritually, even if we live in high-rise apartments in cities and can’t even see the ground, much less grow anything in it. Our harvest comes in the form of good spiritual fruit that is nothing if it is only “spiritualized”. Becoming meek, peaceable, humble, loving, joyful, patient, generous, gentle, self-controlled, considering others as more worthy than we are, merciful, trustworthy, just, and serving the least of these as though they were Yeshua Himself—it isn’t optional, it is a condition of truly following the Lamb wherever He goes.

We cannot go where He goes if all we produce is the fruit of the flesh– sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar (Gal 5:19-21, CSB). Let me tell you what these things look like out there now in the “Torah observant” community. Widowed and divorced people promoting the idea that abstinence is only for virgins so that they can have sex while they are dating—I had to unfriend a guy who was pushing that, in private, to women he was interested in. A guy who, get this, was saying that eating the wrong cut of beef was a worse sin than idolatry. Teaching lies after you know it is in error because you don’t want to lose the audience and money you built off it. Idolatry nowadays mostly comes down to greed, sex, and Christian Nationalism—where the state is promoted and politicians are worshiped and the nation is seen as a savior, which requires turning a blind eye to oppression and historical evils. Hatred is rampant over the smallest of disagreements (which goes back to idolatry). Fighting, manipulation, divisiveness, undermining of others in order to build personal kingdoms in service of personal ambition. Porn use, a desire for multiple wives (sex partners), more and more cheap stuff supplied through domestic and overseas slave labor, dependence on military power, alcohol abuse, etc.

Are we presenting rancid fruit, or are we withholding it altogether? Do we have wealth but refuse to share it with the vulnerable? Do we have skills that we refuse to use for the good of the Kingdom? Do we have power and influence but refuse to help the oppressed? There are a great many ways to deny our Lord His harvest. We need to be very mindful of how we handle our own share of it.

Oh look, Yeshua isn’t the only one who can bury the lede…