This was either the week where average Americans began to awaken to the fact that what was once their country has been successfully invaded, or that it was in fact, conquered long ago. And it is also the week where the regular Torah portion gives us a stunning revelation of WHY.
Join Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa Fellowship for a two-part look at a double parsha “Behar/Bechukotai” (Leviticus/Vayikra chapters 25 through 27), and what marks the end of one of the most “unpopular” Books in the whole Bible. Perhaps the fact that it is both so prescient, AND so ignored gives us a major clue.
The Erev Shabbat reading of the parsha begins where the narrative does “B’har” or ‘in the mount’ of Sinai, and covers everything from the sabbaths of the land, in the land, to the Yovel, or Jubilee, year, through obedience to His statutes and ordinances and the SECOND most famous set of curses for rebellion in His Torah, to things that are ‘devoted’ – and to Who.
The inscription on the Liberty Bell, which begins, “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land,” comes from this week’s Torah portion. And so do some of the curses which are so clearly playing out now in place of the liberty.
In the Sabbath day teaching this week, Mark connects the warning to “those who walk contrary to Me,” in an escalating series of curses, to things that were once unthinkable, but now undeniable: like “those who hate you shall rule over you,” but, sadly, that is only the beginning.
It is the invasion across the extinguished southern border which began to sound SO much like the ‘curse of the week,’ however. And it comes from the set in Deuteronomy chapter 28, which led Mark to suggest some comparison between those warnings. And a connection which is also an explanation.
“Behar/Bechukotai: Comparing Curses – or – did jesus Do Away With the LAW?”
The combined two-part podcast is here:
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