Tag: genocide

Parashah Ki Tissa 2020 (When you take) Exodus 30:2 – 34

Leave a comment

In today’s Torah reading we are told about the 1/2 shekel that every male of fighting age had to pay in order to ransom their souls. God then gives instructions regarding the laver (Mikvah), preparing the incense, and assigning Bezalel and Oholiab over the manufacturing of all the articles needed for the Tabernacle. He also instructs Moses about the Shabbat and gives some of the Kashrut (Kosher) laws.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

The Sin of the Golden Calf happens in this parashah, as well as God describing his very nature to Moses, which in Judaism we call the 13 Attributes of God.

The parashah ends with God forgiving the sin of the people (thanks to Moses’ intervention) and Moses receiving the second set of tablets.

When I started to read this parashah, I knew immediately that what I should talk about today was not the really big topics, meaning the Golden Calf sin or God’s nature, but the very first thing I read about- the ransom.

Many people are confused over the fact that God says we should not kill, yet he orders us to entirely destroy men, women, and children, whole societies. How can a God that hates killing order genocide?

The Torah is more than just a list of commandments. One of the things it does is to establish a penal code, and there is one penalty for murder and another one for accidental homicide. For a murder, meaning a premeditated and purposeful act of killing someone, the penalty is death. However, if someone commits an accidental homicide, they are allowed to pay a ransom for their life.

As an example, if I wait in hiding for you and when you come, I attack you and kill you, I am a murderer and the penalty is death.  However, if I lend you a bull that is known to gore people and it kills you, then I have committed the sin of causing someone to die and my penalty is death. However, because this death was unintentional I am able to pay a ransom for my soul and stay alive.

Of course, I may have to deal with the blood avenger at some point, but that’s not relevant to today’s message.

As I mentioned, the very first lines of this parashah say that everyone who is older than 20 years of age must pay a half-shekel ransom for their souls.  The reason for this payment is because God IS against people killing other people, which always is a sin. However, when a soldier kills while in battle, God does not consider that the same as intentionally murdering someone. As such, a ransom is able to save their soul from the penalty of sinning.

We read in other places how the soldiers, upon returning from a battle, would dedicate some or all of the spoils to the Sanctuary. This was their ransom payment, which they gave in order to avoid the penalty for having taken a life.

God hates anyone dying, and we read in Ezekiel 18 that he doesn’t want anyone to die, and wants only that those who sin would turn from their sin so they may live.  The ransom for one’s soul is how God allows for killing while still maintaining his overall commandment about not killing. The sin of killing is still a sin, but when done under orders by God or unintentionally, there is a means to avoid the immediate penalty (death), and that will also allow for forgiveness of the sin on a spiritual plane.

Ultimately, when we sin on earth we must suffer the consequences of that sin, even if we repent and are forgiven because forgiveness of sin is a spiritual event and secures our place in eternity. It does not let us avoid the consequences of that sin while we are still alive. The ransom for one’s soul when the killing is unintentional or a result of being in a war, is a “legal device” which will countermand the penalty.

There is a story in the Babylonian Talmud about how the angels, upon seeing the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea, sang praises of joy for the salvation of the Israelites, but God rebuked them, saying, ‘The works of My hands are drowning in the sea, and you would utter song in My presence!”

The point is that God hates it when someone kills another person, but as a fair and perfect judge, he will take into consideration the cause and motivations behind the action. When killing is done by God’s command, we are not really going out on our own volition and killing someone, we are acting as God’s executioners. The slaughter of the people we read about in the Bible was not genocide, as much as it was punishment for the sins they had committed. Considering the thousands of innocent people, of all ages and gender, who were sacrificed to the pagan Gods, these people were all guilty of murder and when God sent the Israelites to destroy those cities, he was not murdering innocent people but was actually using the Israelites as his means of executing criminals. But even though they were killing under orders, so to speak, the people doing what God commanded still had to pay the penalty for taking a life.

God hates murder and hates the act of taking a life, but he is also a fair and righteous judge who knows and accounts for the motivation behind our actions.  That is good news for those who try to do right but fail and repent, and bad news for those who think they can go through the motions of being worshipful, righteous and repenting, but whose hearts and minds are really ruled by sin.

You can’t fool God.

Amen!

Thank you for being here and please subscribe to this website, and share these messages with others. Help this ministry grow so that people will have the opportunity to make an informed decision about God and his Messiah.

Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!

PS: And wash your hands!  🙂

Parashah Sh’mot 2020 (the Names) Exodus 1 – 6:1

Leave a comment

This second book of the Torah begins with the history of Moses. He was born at the time when the Pharaoh wanted all male children killed, but his mother hid him until he was three months old, then she sent him down the Nile trusting in God to save him. He was found by Pharaoh’s sister, who took pity on him and saved him from being drowned.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Miriam was following her brother, who the Egyptian named “Moshe”, and offered to get a Hebrew woman to nurse the child, bringing him back to his own mother. She raised him as a Hebrew child until he was weaned (back in those days that could have been until he was a toddler), and then he was raised by the Egyptians as one of the royal family.

As an adult, one day Moshe saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and in anger, he killed the Egyptian. That became known and Moshe fled for his life, ending up in Midyan, marrying a Midianite woman and working for her father, a priest of Midyan.

When Moshe was 80 years old, he saw the burning bush and God told him to go lead the people out of Egypt. Moshe made any number of excuses, each of which God handled by giving him miraculous signs to perform, and eventually even allowing Aaron to act as the mouthpiece for Moshe. In the end, God had to order Moshe to go; yet, on the way, Moshe still did something that made God so angry he was going to kill him, but Zipporah saved him by circumcising Gershom, his oldest son.

Moshe comes to the people and shows them the signs, and they believe him. Then he and Aaron go to Pharaoh to ask to let the people go three days into the desert to worship Adonai, but Pharaoh refuses, and to make things worse, he orders that no straw be given the people but they must still make their quota of bricks, forcing them to work day and night, gathering stubble from the fields.

This parashah ends with Moshe asking God why he has made things worse, and God explains that this is so that he can now show all his wonders.

Of all the possible lessons, both historical and spiritual that can be found within this one parashah, I want to talk about something that is, essentially, social.

The reason the Israelites become enslaved was not due to riotous actions, rebellions, or anything criminal. It was that they were blessed by God and grew strong. Their numbers grew, and the absence of any reason to enslave them, other than what the Torah tells us, i.e. the fear of the Egyptian leadership that these people may one day turn against them, indicates that they were living peacefully and separate from the Egyptians. The Israelites did their thing, and the Egyptians did their thing, and neither bothered the other. In the end, it wasn’t what the Israelites did that caused them to become slaves, but what the Egyptians were afraid they might do.

God promised Abraham that his descendants would be a blessing to the world, and since we know that God gives us blessings in order that we can share them, the blessings to the world were first found within Israel. And throughout history, every time Israel shares their blessings with others, it is turned against them.

In Egypt, they were enslaved for being prosperous. In Isaiah 39, we read that after Hezekiah shows the emissaries of the King of Babylon his riches, the king of Babylon decides to take them for himself. In Spain, the riches and business success of the Jewish population led to their persecution and exile during the Inquisition. Even the Pope at that time told Isabella not to exile the Jews because they were beneficial to the Spanish economy, but she refused to listen.

And we all know what happened in Germany.

Even today, many (if not most) of the technological and medical advancements that have benefitted the world came from Israel: did you know that Israel is the leading technological contributor to the world today? Yet, despite all the wonderful blessings Israel has given to the world, the world supports the enemies of Israel!

Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!

God chose the descendants of Abraham, who the world knows as “the Jews” to be the way he, God, blesses the world. He has given us the gifts that have made the world better, but this blessing came with a curse: in a world that is sinful, egocentric and full of fear and jealousy, the gifts that the Jews share with the world have made them the targets of the world.

I have written before about the number of Nobel prizes given to Jews compared to the rest of the world. Currently, Jews represent .02% of the world’s population, which is 2 out of every 100 people. Yet, of all the Nobel prizes awarded, those won by Jews represent nearly 24% of all prizes, across the board.

Just as the King of Babylon wanted the riches that Hezekiah had, the world wants what God has given to the Jewish people. But, what the world doesn’t realize, is that these gifts from God are to be given to the world through the Jews. In other words, the Jewish people are the distribution means for God’s blessings; destroy the Jews, and there will be no more blessings.

God has certainly blessed us, but this blessing has also been the bane of our existence; God wants his people to bless the world, but in doing so the world has turned against his people.

Over and over we read in the Bible, and also see in human history, that the more the Jewish people bless the world, the more the world hates us. Even the greatest of all blessings, the Messiah, who came from the Jewish people, has been turned against us and under his name millions of Jews have been tortured, persecuted and murdered.

Yet, we persevere. God will never allow his people to disappear from the earth, and despite the terrible and unappreciative way the world treats us, we will continue to share our gifts and blessings with the world. Why? Because we fear God, and we want to do as God has told us to do.

When we obey God, he is on our side, and no matter what the world tries to do, we will NEVER be destroyed.

As Shaul said to the Jews in Rome (Romans 8:31): “…when God is with us, who can be against us?”

Thank you for being here and please subscribe, as well as share these messages with everyone you know. Check out my website and help this ministry to grow.

Until next time, Shabbat Shalom and Baruch HaShem!