Dr Hollisa Alewine – Footsteps of Messiah Part 59 (Living on Credit)

The Song of Songs describes how beautiful the Children of Israel were when they came up from their washing of the Reed Sea like a flock of clean sheep:

Although the Israelites were in the middle of a “holiness sandwich,” nevertheless they were unharmed. They were walking on credit in righteousness they hadn’t personally attained. Instead, they walked in the righteousness of Yeshua, the living Word. They believed Adonai, which means they believed His Word as spoken to them through Moses, a metaphor for the Torah. At that moment that the Israelites came up from the washing of the Sea unharmed, the Midrash says that the following from our Song was said of their uprightness:

The pomegranate is a symbol of the Torah’s 613 commandments, for the number of pips in a pomegranate is around that number. The symbolism of the pomegranate pips as the 613 commandments suggests the doctrine taught by the apostles:

Salvation comes with the potential to fulfill the righteous and holy commandments.  We are given mercy and grace while we walk and learn in the wilderness, preparing to ascend to the Promised Land. Drop down a couple of verses, and the Song reads: “Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle that graze among the lilies.”  One the applications of the two breasts is the milk of the Word, demonstrated by the two tables (tablets) of the Ten Commandments. If those two breasts represent the two (twin) tablets of the Torah given at Mt. Sinai, then their formation into something mature (613) would come through further instruction from Moses in the wilderness.

Ezekiel 16:6-14 rebukes the Israelites who later rebelled and walked in the very sins from which He’d delivered them. Adonai reminds them of how He found them struggling in their birth blood, twelve tribes now a nation in the midst of another nation, struggling to emerge from Egypt. He describes how He waited for them to grow up and to meet Him at Sinai to receive the Words of their promise at betrothal:

Of note in Ezekiel 16 is: “…11 I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck. 12 I also put a ring in your nostril, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.” (ibid)

What are these ornmaments to Israel?

Like children, the Israelites were guided from Egypt to Sinai by Moses, Aaron, and “mom” Miriam (Micah 6:4; Ex 15:20). The children walking in the credit of Yeshua’s righteousness were given the Big Ten at betrothal, which hang on the Big Two, and eventually Moses would teach them the fullness of the 613 so they could be “married” and enter the Land of their Promise. The two tablets represented how the Israelites would grow in respect to their salvation from Egypt, the realm of sin and death. Why were the commandments written on two tablets?

The sages asserted that each brother of the twelve sons of Jacob had a twin sister.  Half of the commandments focus on our relationship to Elohim, so they are the “father” commandments. As Paul taught the Corinthians, the man’s head represents the glory of Elohim restored to the groaning Creation:

The other “twin” tablet is the “mother commandments,” which teach us the human relational Torah. The female “twin” head represents the glory of mankind restored in the Creation, which groans for human beings to walk in the revealed righteousness of Yeshua, the Word of Elohim:

The Creation is groaning because like Israel, who had the potential to mature into 613 seeds of the pomegranate from the Big Ten, the Creation, too, is encoded with a greater potential than has ever been realized outside of the Garden of Eden. It is groaning because it wants to be growning! I know. Bad pun. Most puns are.

Let’s identify some bullet points related to our study:

At Mount Sinai, the Israelites promised, “We will do, and we will hear.” They were again credited for righteousness they hadn’t yet learned or earned, but Adonai would give them time to grow in their salvation beyond the milk of the Big Ten.