Mark Call

This week we see the conclusion to the ‘cliff-hanger’ story of Miketz, where Yosef has tested his brothers, and they stand before him accused, and evidently guilty, of theft.

And this week, as Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship likes to put it, Judah ‘draws near’ (Vayigash, Genesis 44:18 through 47:27) and “mans up.” And, perhaps to put it mildly, that surprises his brother Yosef. And certainly changes history. Or, more to the point, puts it on the track Yah evidently intended all along.

The Erev Shabbat reading tells the story, and IS the central teaching for our instruction and blessing.

The Sabbath day midrash this week, connected largely to the haftorah reading from Ezekiel chapter 37, and for reasons that may, at first, not seem obvious, will no doubt “offend many.”

Indeed, that was what Yahushua told us He would do. And so will we, when we “walk in obedience” to Him, and “for His Name’s sake.”

Which is why this teaching includes not only an “adult content,” warning, but more. After all, even the phrase “man up” will offend many in a world where the very concept of patriarchy, or “men being men,” and not espousing the proper PC BS, already “offends many.” How much more so, then, His Truth – as actually Written?

The Sabbath day midrash begins with the observation that there are SO many aspects of this story that are prophetic, from Judah honoring his word to his father [Father] to the promised ‘great deliverance’ (past, long past, their present, and our future) to the “ruach of Yakov” being revived…into Israel.

But why is the haftorah portion that goes with this story from Ezekiel 37, and the “two sticks?”

It is certainly obvious that this is another of those prophecies that has NOT yet been fulfilled. Just as both of the “two whoring wives,” Aholah and Aholibah, and their descendants, the Whore Church and the Whore Synagogue, are both still scattered, still in exile…they are not even remotely “echad.”

And, if that terminology is “offensive” to some (we have, after all, been warned) then how much more so that both of those adulterous bodies still call the Son of Yah, the Torah Made Flesh, and the Messiah Himself, a “liar”?

Mark suggests that a good part of that answer, and more, lies in warnings like Hosea 5:15. They aren’t even about ready to “acknowledge their offense,” against Him.

“Vayigash: Lost Sheep, but Still Two Sticks – the Whore Church and Whore Synagogue