The Weightier Matters: Love Your Neighbor

Over the past two decades I have spent a lot of time discovering what it means to follow Torah. We all know that the essence of the Law is love: Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. I have tried to learn how that applies to waking up in the morning, to eating lunch, to watching television, and to building relationships.

I can follow the right calendar, keep all the biblical feasts, not keep any "pagan" feasts, and avoid all the wrong foods and still not really live Torah. I know people who have never given a thought to whether or not they should eat a seafood salad, but who follow Torah much more closely than I do. The couple who give all their time to the spiritual redemption of murderers and thieves, the man who volunteers day after day to serve hot meals at the Rescue Mission, the woman who spends her afternoons teaching art to neglected and hard-to-teach children, the child who saves his allowance all year to buy Christmas presents for everyone but himself.

For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man studying his natural face in a mirror. For he studied himself and went his way, and immediately he forgot what he was like. But whoever looks into the perfect Law of liberty and continues in it, he is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work. This one shall be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks to be religious among you, yet does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their afflictions, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world….If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and if one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them those things which are needful to the body, what good is it?

-James, the Just

The Biblical Symbolism of Seventy

Bullinger's Number in Scripture says that the number 70 "signifies perfect spiritual order carried out with all spiritual power and significance" because it is 7 (spiritual perfection) multiplied by 10 (order). I believe he's correct, but possibly not in the precise way that he thought. Look at these 70s:

• 70 nations of Genesis 10
• 70 persons of the house of Jacob in Genesis 46:27
• 70 days of mourning by the Egyptians for Jacob in Genesis 50:3
• 70 anointed elders of Israel in Numbers 11
• 70 palm trees in Numbers 33:9
• 70 kings subdued by Adoni-bezek in Judges 1:7
• 70 sons of Gideon in Judges 8:30
• 70 silver paid to Abimelech to depose the sons of Gideon in Judges 9:4
• 70 sons of Abdon the judge in Judges 12:14
• 70 men struck by God for mishandling the Ark in 1 Samuel 6:19
• 70 sons of Ahab in Samaria in 2 Kings 10
• 70 Shemitot not observed by Israel in 2 Chronicles 36:21
• 70 years of life in Psalm 90:10
• 70 years that Tyre will be forgotten in Isaiah 23
• 70 years for the days of a king in Isaiah 23:15
• 70 years to serve the king of Babylon in Jeremiah 25
• 70 elders of Israel in Ezekiel 8:11
• 70 cubits for the building wall in Ezekiel 41:12
• 70 years of exile in Daniel 9:2
• 70 weeks of judgment in Daniel 9:24
• 70 years of judgment in Zechariah 1:12 and 7:5
• 70 disciples sent out by Yeshua in Luke 10

I see two common themes in almost all of these instances, and they do seem to be associated with divine order imposed on the affairs of mankind:

First, seventy represents the delegation of authority. God delegated authority to the 70 elders of Israel, while judges and kings delegated authority to their 70 sons, and Yeshua delegated authority to 70 disciples. Several times, God assigned one people to punish another for a period of 70 years or 70 weeks, effectively delegating his authority for a period of 70 units of time rather than to 70 individuals.

Second, seventy represents the transformation of patriarchs into nations. Noah became 70 nations in Genesis 10 and Jacob grew from one man who left Canaan to four wives who bore twelve sons and finally to seventy descendants who entered Egypt. This might even constitute another kind of delegation.

Of course, these two possibilities don't explain every instance of the number seventy. For example, what are the 70 cubits measured in Ezekiel 41:12? A metaphor of the 70 elders, perhaps?

Different Priesthoods for Different Covenants

Torah portion Vayeshev (Genesis 37-40), contains one of many stories of misdeeds and poor decisions of the patriarchs. In this particular episode, Tamar, the widow of Judah's son, disguises herself as a prostitute in order to trick Judah into sleeping with her. He has no idea it was her, and three months later, when he learns that she is pregnant, he suggests that she be burned as punishment.

That seems excessive, but there's always more to the story than the bare text might imply.

Leviticus 21:9 prescribes burning as punishment for the daughter of a priest "if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father". Since Tamar was accused of "whoring", some believe that she was the daughter of a priest. Clearly she was not the daughter of a Levitical priest, because the Levitical priesthood would not be instituted until a few generations later. If her father was a priest, then he was a priest of some other order, one we don't know anything about.

Every covenant between a god and mankind requires the mediation of a priesthood. In many cases, that priesthood is as simple as the father or eldest son. In some cases, the priesthood might be large and complex with castes and compartmentalized responsibilities, like that of Aaron and his sons. The requirements, rituals, and laws that govern each priesthood are necessarily different because they have different purposes, serve different covenants, and often even different gods. 

Keep that in mind as you read this article I recently wrote for Founded in Truth: Priests, Laws, and Covenants in Hebrews 7-8.