Mark Call

Join Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship for a two-part look at parsha Naso (Numbers 4:21 through all of chapter 7 – the longest in the Torah).

The Erev Shabbat reading and outline of the parsha begins where the ‘numbers’ in the previous portion left off, with the clan of Gershon, among the Levites, and follows with the others that complete that set. But that is just the beginning. This parsha includes THE single commanded procedure in the whole Book which REQUIRES a ‘miracle’ for its completion, and then concludes with what is almost without question THE most ‘repetitive’ (literally, word for word in major sequences) description in the entire Bible. Which leads to the really important question: Why?

The Sabbath Day teaching literally begins where the reading leaves off. The level of redundancy in the longest chapter in the Torah certainly tells us that there is SOMETHING important in that message, and probably more than one element of it. Mark suggests that it’s clear there is literal, detailed CONFORMITY in that each of the twelve gifts on those successive days is apparently identical, yet offered by unique individuals who are not only each a leader of his tribe, but acting in unison for a reason. That Scripture records both that, each and every time, and their names, tells us just home important that is.

Working back through the parsha, there is another message here that connects not only the most significant events in the Bible, and thus all of history, but prophecy as well.

Not surprisingly, some of these are elements ‘overlooked by most of xtianity,’ for the reason that they are anything but “done away with.”

“Naso: From Levites and Nazerites to ‘Voluntary Conformity'”