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Hidden Treasures

The First Century Jewish Method for Understanding Scripture

loseph shullam

AMES 1* Edition - January/2013

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• Copyright 2013 Nettvymh BtbW Instnictton Ministry

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Osarifiriyin 1Mo|k MMrub. Hermeneutics. Messianic Judaism

THAT IMIMRDMVl

I dedicate this book to Márcia, my wife of forty years.

Márcia is my helper and my inspiration!

Joseph Shulam

index
Introduction
Unusual textual features as a catalyst for midrash

The main Jewish rules of interpretation of

Scriptures in the first century
The question of mitzvot (commandments)
The Jewish-Messianic Halacha
The Principles of Jewish Education
Selected bibliography

ConnliM MU - Aaadttto MtaMtrt» EMiMndo de SUo tfwmmyidMewdwfwtf ihw

n>wm«prt»to«u>Drinçlo do editar
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index

145

Selected bibliography
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Introduction

Netivyah Bible Education Ministry is located in the heart of Jerusalem. A

quick glance at the city today might give the right impression of a thriving
cosmopolitan metropolis, filled with red-roofed homes and the indispensable cell
phone for every person. However, to look at the Jerusalem of today would be to
miss the entire history of civilization, conflicts, hopes, dreams, losses,
aspirations and prayers that have been part of the city’s life from the beginning.
Jerusalem was conquered by King David and made the religious and political
capital of the Jewish people. Jerusalem is home to the first Temple built
by King Solomon, as well as the second Temple. Jerusalem has been ravaged
by civil wars, conquered by the Babylonians, Romans, Crusaders,
Muslims, British and many others. It was divided at the beginning of the modern
State of Israel and reunited in 1967. Jerusalem is now a pulsating and vibrant
metropolis. It is the home of three great world religions and the stage upon which
the Lord Yeshua has changed and will continue to change history. No city in the
world is more beautiful and more steeped in controversy than Jerusalem.
To ignore the cultural, religious, historical, and prophetic implications of Jerusalem
is to miss the heart and essence of salvation history.

Similarly, to read the Bible and be content only with traditional Christian
theological understanding is perhaps to miss the root and essence of God's
revelation in the Scriptures themselves.

The traditional way Christians have understood the Bible has brought division
and sectarianism to the world. In this book, Joseph Shulam provides the reader
with tools to delve deeply into the foundations of the first-century Scriptures.
This book will allow the reader to piece together the layers and hidden
meanings contained in the sacred texts.

This book is divided into two parts. The first provides a basic introduction to the
topics of hermeneutics and biblical interpretation, explaining how Jewish
interpretation helps us better understand the text of the New Testament.
The book contains chapters that explain the exegetical principles of
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Rabbi Hillel, a famous first-century rabbi who was president of the Sanhedrin, also
explains the concept of midrash and the four rabbinic levels of interpretation. This book will
provide the reader with useful tools for personal study, academic work, and biblical exegesis.
The reader will find many examples of how the New Testament authors used traditional
Jewish exegetical methods to construct their arguments from the Torah, the Prophets, and the
Psalms.

The second section contains articles on contemporary issues of importance to disciples of

Yeshua. Some of these topics address how we can restore an authentic Messianic
hermeneutic. The solution to many problems that plague Christian theologians
can be found by viewing the New Testament as a Jewish book. The problem of balancing the
observance of God’s commandments with the grace we have in Yeshua the
Messiah can be resolved by reading Paul’s letters in the context of their Jewish rabbinic
background. Finally, there is a chapter on the importance of continuing education in Jewish life.

The title of this book comes from Isaiah 45:3, which says: I will show you hidden treasures and
hidden riches, so that you may know that I, the Lord, the God of Israel, call you by your name.
9

May you be enriched and strengthened as you embark on this journey of discovery.

The Editors

Preface

The Bible is an ancient collection of literature. It was written over a period of a thousand years by
many different writers under many different circumstances. Naturally, if such an ancient
document fell into the hands of a modern reader, he or she would find it difficult to
decipher, read, or understand. In order to understand the Bible, the science of
hermeneutics developed in both Christianity and Judaism. The New Testament was
written almost
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exclusively by Jews in a Jewish historical context reflecting the ideas and concepts of the Jewish
people during the first century after Yeshua.

This book, although small in volume, is a collection of articles that will allow you to take a
significant step in improving your understanding of the Bible, giving you tools to better understand
God's Word as the writers themselves intended it to be understood.

In a way, these eight chapters are a synthesis of the teachings and talks I have given
over the past few years. Rabbi Paul states in 2 Timothy 2:15 that we are to rightly handle
the word of truth. What does this mean? If we put Paul's statement, "rightly handle the
word of truth" in simple terms, it means reading God's Word without making a salad of it. This
means that we must discern the difference between poetry and narrative in the Bible. That is, we
must put things in their historical context as best we can before we produce doctrines that divide
the body of believers based on ignorant opinions. This means that we must discern
between the things that

are eternal and the things that are ad-hoc (only for a specific purpose).

The apostle Paul declares in the New Testament: What advantage then has the Jew? Or
what is the profit of archuncision? Great in every way.
Mainly because the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”
(Romans 3:1-2) I believe that understanding how the Jewish people interpreted and related
to the Bible, as well as the historical and cultural context in which it was written, will increase
your awareness of the methods that were used by the authors of Scripture.

Many of us have literally risked our lives for what is written in the Bible. Especially in Israel,
we have been marginalized, rejected, persecuted, and slandered. It is up to us,
therefore, to truly understand the precepts within the Scriptures and, when we are questioned,
we must give an answer that demonstrates the hope that is within us.
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Rabbi Paul studied under the great teacher Gamaliel who was the grandson of the famous
Hille. The first principles of hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) in Judaism, contained in this
book, were codified by Rabbi Hille. The rules of interpretation that were used by the writers
of the New Testament are the same rules that were used by all Jewish interpreters of the Torah
and the Prophets. For this reason, we must make a special effort to understand these rules and
to use them in order to better understand the Word of God.

The attitude of the rabbis towards the Torah (the Law of Moses) and the commandments
seems to be always questioned by Christians and Jews. As part of this preface, I would like to
present an interesting midrash that will take you into the world of the rabbis and demonstrate

the spirit of the Torah and a unique way of relating to the Scriptures.

The Lord pondered how He could know which of His servants served Him out of fear and which
out of love. He devised a method that would reveal this knowledge. He built a cubic room,
four by four, with only a small four by four peephole. The Lord placed all His servants inside
this room. Those servants who served Him out of fear were in that room. They said, “ If the Lord
had wanted us to leave this room, He would not have built it and put us inside.”
However, the servants who loved the Lord said, “We want to get out of this room and join the Lord
outside!” However, the peephole was tiny, and they would have to suffer and lose a lot of weight
to fit through the hole in the door and join the Lord in the open spaces. They loved the Lord so
much that they could not stay shut up in the room, even though they knew that the Lord had
built it and placed them there. They wanted to “get out” by force and violence from the room and
join the Lord who was seated on His throne in the open spaces.

This midrash is very interesting in many ways. The first important truth is that it is based
on the text of Micah 2:12-13: “I will surely gather all of you, O LORD; I will surely assemble the
remnant of Israel; I will set them all together, like sheep in the pasture, like a flock in the midst
of their pasture; they will make a great noise because of the multitude of men. The one who
opens the way will come up before them; they will break through, they will enter through the
gate and go out through it, and their flock will be destroyed.”
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The king will go before them, even the LORD before them.” The use of the expression
“makes way” or “poretz” in Hebrew (which also means “violent man”) takes
us to the words of Yeshua in the Gospel of Mapheras

11:12: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered
violence, and violent men take it by force.”

The prophet Micah says that God will bring Israel into the “sheepfold.” Then the one who “clears
the way” will “break through,” and “ their King will go before them, even the LORD before
them.” The entire story of the midrash is here in the words of the prophet Micah. Yeshua
captures this story, describing entry into the Kingdom of God as a forced and violent act of
going out and entering the realm where the King is, outside the sheepfold. He rabbinically
uses the text of Micah in the context of a “parable,” demonstrating the prophet’s words regarding
the “King and Lord who goes out before” the entire multitude.

This text from the Midrash of Tana Debi Eliyahu is a good demonstration of two major
themes: 1) God is not legalistic. Those who love Him are those who want to be with Him in the
open spaces much more than to be under the legal protection of the confines of the Torah's
Commandments. 2) It is more important to love God than to be enclosed by the Halacha
(legal system) of the Torah.

The study of “how to understand and interpret Scripture” is a challenge for every student of
Scripture. This book is written to help the reader understand and immerse themselves in the
world of Yeshua and the first-century methods of understanding the oracles of God.

May God strengthen your faith, understanding, wisdom, and courage as you strive to
know the Lord more deeply and serve Him in spirit and in truth.

Joseph Shulam

Pnmeira Answer:
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Jewish Methods for Interpreting Texts

Sacred
Chapter 1

An Introduction to Hermeneutics
The subject of hermeneutics is very important because it determines how we understand
the Bible. It could be classified as either an art or a science. Either way, it refers to the methods
we use to study and understand a text. According to the Anchor Bible Dictionary ,
hermeneutics is “the art of understanding (...). It can refer to the conditions that make
understanding possible and even to the process of understanding a text as a whole.”

Every time we read the words someone has written, we have to “translate” them in our own
brain so that we can understand their meaning.
Any kind of “translation” naturally also requires interpretation. Thus, good hermeneutical
methods should allow us to understand the meaning as closely as possible to the author’s
original intention. This process becomes much more difficult with the Bible because we
have to try to discern the intentions of both the divine and human authors in the original
context, applying the text to our lives and in our own modern context as well.

The way a person understands the Bible is often greatly influenced by his or her
religious and cultural background. The way a Jew understands the Bible is not the same as
the way a Jew understands the Bible.

The same way a Christian would interpret the same text. Furthermore, the time period in which
people live has an impact on their interpretation of God’s Word. Even with all the difficulties
involved in trying to correctly interpret parts of the Bible that are sometimes difficult to
understand, we should be grateful that we have easy access to God’s written Word.

Thus, His guidance and help will be “at our fingertips” daily.
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In Old Testament times, someone who wanted to know God’s will had to do much more than
simply open a Bible. Since people did not have Torah scrolls in their homes, they had to
go to their prophets and priests, who were the means of communication between God and
the people and the people and God. They did not have access to the text. Either the prophet
would give them God’s answer, or the priest would use the instruments of the “urim” and
“thummim” to tell them “yes” or “no.” There was also a way to use the priest’s breastplate
with the twelve precious stones to get God’s answer to questions.

I live on a hill outside of Jerusalem, and just below my house is a natural spring of water. This
is exactly the same spring in Ramah in biblical times, where Saul and his servants went to
look for their lost donkeys in 1 Samuel 9. Verse 6 of that chapter says that after searching
in vain for some time, Saul’s servant said to him, “There is a man of God in this city,
and he is highly esteemed; whatever he says comes true. Let us go there now; perhaps he will
show us the way we should go.” This is an example of people going to the prophet when
they needed supernatural help for their problems. The Tanach never mentions this.

It says nowhere: “Whoever wants to know God’s will must read a text from the Bible”

Disciples of Yeshua today are influenced by a very Protestant worldview. Martin Luther and the
Protestant Reformation changed the way we understand communication with God. Like the
Pharisees of the first century B.C. and A.D., the Protestant Reformation really focused on
communicating with God through the text of God’s Word. This is generally not true for people
of Catholic faith. The primary communication in the historic churches (Catholic and Orthodox)
between people and God is through the priest (or priest). This position is
changing and being modified all the time, even in the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican
Council reversed the earlier resolution that recommended that people not read the Bible. In
many parts of the Catholic world, however, many people still rely on their priests to tell
them God’s will. In fact, reading God’s Word is not considered a way to discern God’s will for
the general public.
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It may come as a surprise to many Bible students to learn that the first group of people who
began to study the text of Scripture to know God’s will were the Pharisees in Jerusalem.
They caused a revolution in the understanding of God’s will because they said that
the Bible was for everyone, not just for prophets and priests. The concept of an individual being
able to read the Bible and discover God’s will by analyzing the text with his or her
mind, with logic and with an emphasis on grammar and language, was a great and wonderful
revolution that the Pharisees started.

Today, almost everyone has a Bible, and most languages even have multiple translations
as well. In biblical times, however, people did not have the books of the Bible, not even the
Torah. This was kept in the Temple and studied only by the priests. The typical farmer in
Galilee would never see a Torah scroll. Only the priests and members of the school of the
prophets could study God’s Word, and most of them probably did not even have the entire text
of the Bible at their disposal. It was only after the Maccabean revolt against the Greeks and
the first Chanukah in the second century B.C. that the Pharisees came up with the
revolutionary idea that the Bible “is for everyone!” But why did personal interpretation, Bible
study, and midrash formation become popular at this particular time in history?
Dr. Michael Fishbane of the University of Chicago explains it this way: “The closing of the
canon of Scripture (at the beginning of the common era) fundamentally changes things. It
is a transformative event, for with this closing there can be no new additions or additions to the
biblical text from outside…; the result is that the extensive (but delimited) discourse of
Scripture is recast as the multiform expressions of divine revelation beginning with the
individual letters of its words, and including all the phrases and sentences of Scripture. All of
these become the constituents of possibility in the opening of Scripture from within
itself. ” 3

There has been a tradition of biblical interpretation since the 3rd century BC. Everyone has a
tradition of understanding the Bible, whether they learned it formally from a teacher or from a
teacher.

or not. This rich tradition of interpretation can be very helpful when we encounter a
difficult text, but it can also close the mind of a
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person to the possibility of an alternative interpretation that he or she has simply

never heard before.

The PaRDêS method

No matter what the origins of a text are, each text has many interpretation options. For example,
when most people read a newspaper, they understand its simple meaning. Most people do not
try to read between the lines of a simple news story. On the other hand, anyone who
knows the writers personally or who has experienced the events behind the written news story
understands what is not said in the text. They can understand what is only hinted at in the text.
Every text has both a clear meaning and a hidden, implied meaning, which can sometimes only
be discerned between the lines. Lawyers are experts in this area. They see the hidden meaning
that the average person (who does not understand legal texts) cannot perceive at first glance.
Average people have to concentrate and read the texts many times to understand their nuances.
Every text has both a clear and obvious meaning, as well as a hidden, implied meaning.

Some texts even have secret messages embedded in them. One of my cousins was a lawyer
in Bulgaria. Although I had not been in touch with him for four or five years, one evening I
received a phone call from him directly from Bulgaria. He said, “I have a birthday soon
and I would like you to buy me a present. You can buy me a plastic airplane or a plastic boat.” I
am sure

that the former KGB was listening to him, and he knew it too! I immediately understood what he
meant, so I asked him if he wanted to celebrate his birthday in an Italian or Greek
restaurant. Since I knew him and knew when his real birthday was, I understood what he meant
in this conversation. He was telling me that he wanted to leave Bulgaria, so I asked
him if he wanted to escape via Italy or Greece. The entire conversation was encrypted,
so anyone who didn't know him personally couldn't have understood what we were
talking about.
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So far we have examined three methods of interpretation. One method studies the
biblical text using the basic grammatical meaning of the words. This method is
called p'shat> , which means “simple” or “literal.” Second, there is the sense in
which the texts allude to something, even though it is not explicitly stated. This
indirect method is called remez in Hebrew. Third, there may also be a secret
meaning that only the initiated can understand. The Hebrew refers to this
meaning as sod, which means “secret.” There is also a fourth type of understanding
called drash, which means “association.” Drash takes into account not only what
is written, but also what is remembered by the reader when the text is read. The
drash method examines not only the main text that is being studied or
interpreted, but also any other sacred texts that are associated with the main text.

When you associate these texts, you can learn something that you didn't
understand before. Drash is the most difficult method to conceptualize, since it
requires understanding the connection between the texts.

Here is an illustration of this fourth method. When Yeshua was born in

Bethlehem, and Herod heard the news, he wanted to eliminate the possibility of
any other king reigning in Israel. Therefore, he ordered that all the babies up to
two years of age be killed in Bethlehem. An angel appeared to Joseph in a
dream and warned him of this danger, so Joseph and Mary took Yeshua and fled to Egypt.
Some years later an angel told them that Herod had died and that they should
return to Israel. When Matthew describes this event, he says that it
happened to fulfill a text in Hosea that says, “Out of Egypt I called my son!” Many
interpreters have trouble with this quote because the original text in Hosea 11:1
has absolutely nothing to do with Yeshua. In fact, the text has a very negative
context when it is used in Hosea.
What happens is that Yeshua was called out of Egypt and the children of
Israel, who are also referred to as “sons of God,” were called out of Egypt
as well. Matthew associated an event with the words of another text, which referred
to a previous text, making a midrash (associative logic).
Relating the expression “coming out of Egypt” with the text in Hosea that has the
same words, was useful to connect the two historical events and show their
parallels.

A common psychological test is to give patients words and ask them what they
associate with these words. They test the associations people make
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with different emotions. Everyone uses associative logic because different

triggers cause different associations in each mind. The same thing happens with texts. Each
biblical text contains certain elements that trigger associations in us. For example,
when I read about Elijah the prophet,

When I eat locusts, I immediately remember all the wonderful times I had eating locusts. It is a delicious
kosher food (allowed for Jews) and reminds me of certain events in my life. When I read about the circumcision of John
the Baptist, I remember when I circumcised my son. However, there are not only experiential associations. There are
also textual associations, in which a word in one text reminds the reader of another text.

Thus, there are four basic levels of Jewish hermeneutics, which together are called “PaRDêS”
- diid (orchard, in Hebrew). The “P” is for pshaty , the “R” is for remez, the “D” is for drash,
and the “S” is for sôd. This term is the basis of Jewish hermeneutics. Every text,
whether in newspapers, novels, or the Bible, is composed of these elements.

Association and allegorical interpretation

Christian seminaries typically teach only Protestant hermeneutics, which focuses exclusively on
the most literal and simple understanding of the text. Sometimes they also use a Greek
method, in which they spiritualize the text and make it an allegory. In doing so, the text loses its
historical importance and meaning and becomes an empty cup to be filled with whatever the
teacher/interpreter wants. At this point, the text becomes a homily of associations that are
entirely external to the text.

For example, when Jews speak of “crossing the Jordan River,” this simply means
that we actually cross a physical river from one side to the other, as in the days of Joshua son of
Nun. This expression relates to the entry of the children of Israel into the Promised Land. On
the other hand, many
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Christians sing about crossing the Jordan and “going to the Promised Land” as a metaphor for
death. This association does not come from the Bible, but from a pagan Greek mythology that
says that a dead person has to cross the River Styx and “get to the other side.” By
associating the biblical text with an external pagan myth, they have created an associative
allegory that has nothing to do with crossing the Jordan.

One time when I was in high school in the United States, a teacher asked the
students in chapel, “What does Jesus mean to you?” It was a very good
question, and different students gave different answers. One student
raised his hand and said, “Jesus means my dog Rover to me!” Everyone
started laughing! However, years later when I thought about this event, I
realized that the student was very sincere. He loved his dog, and the dog comforted
him. When he thought about Yeshua and how Yeshua comforted him
or related to him, he associated that relationship with the one
he had with his beloved dog Rover. That was his personal and private association,
and there is nothing wrong with that.

The problem arises when people start associating without rules, because this can
turn into an exercise without limits. The idea of association, the drashy, has
to have rules and reasons. You can't go around taking things out of their context
to make a text say what you want.

A few years ago I ministered at a church. After the talk, together with the elders,
we went to the pastor’s house for coffee. I was quite shocked when one of the
elders said, “I am so glad that Israel is the wife of God and the church is the wife of
Yeshua!”

I didn’t know how to respond! So I said, “That’s an interesting idea, but that
means we can’t be brothers! We both believe in Yeshua, but if we have different
mothers and fathers, we can only be cousins.”

Then he opened his Bible and, reading a text from the book of Leviticus, said:
“See here, there were two barley cakes anointed with oil offered on the Sabbath day.
One is Israel and the other is the Church.”
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I asked, “How did you get that from this text? Where does it say that one cake is Israel, and
the other is the Church?”

The elder calmly replied, “Only spiritual people can understand spiritual
things.”

This kind of problem happens all the time, and people want to talk about the
“spiritual meaning” of the text. In fact, using the levels of PaRDêS can lead to
good “spiritual” conclusions and interpretations, but they have to make
sense with the literal meaning as well. There are four types of understanding,
but they cannot be applied frantically or without rules.

The Jewish Mentality of the New Testament

In Romans 3:1-2, Paul asks, “What advantage then is there for the Jew? Or
what is the advantage of circumcision? Great in every way, especially since
the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.” Even today the
Scriptures belong to Israel because both the Old and New Testaments are
Jewish texts. If the Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul, says, “God gave them the
texts,” it is time for the Church to learn the Scriptures from the perspective of
the Jewish people, through the historical context in which the Scriptures were created and

in its original language. The language of the New Testament is Jewish! When
Greek people read the Gospels, they think they were written in horrible Greek.
Much of the Koine Greek of the New Testament contains Hebrew expressions
that were simply written in the Greek language. It is the Greek language
with a Hebrew mind.

There are phrases in the Gospels that make no sense in Greek because
they come from Hebrew. Luke 9:51 says, for example, that Yeshua “set his
face to go to Jerusalem” (literal translation of the original Greek). This is not
a Greek expression at all, and a Greek-speaking person would
miss the meaning entirely, since in Greek it literally says, “He turned his face
and set it toward Jerusalem.” It sounds as if Yeshua twisted his neck and
turned his face toward Jerusalem so that he could
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look in that direction. This expression is actually what we call “Hebraism,” and
simply means that He began to go toward Jerusalem. Only by applying a Jewish
hermeneutic to these Jewish texts is it possible to explain some of their textual problems.

Inspiration and Scripture

The concept that will be addressed now is one of the most complicated and controversial.
Let’s study the concept of “inspiration.” 1 Timothy 3:16 says without hesitation, “All
scripture is given by inspiration of God...” Clearly the text is inspired, but we must ask
ourselves, “What does ‘inspired’ mean, and how was it ‘inspired’?”

The traditional fundamentalist view, in both Judaism and Christianity, is that God dictated the
text to the writers.

This highly conservative view of inspiration says that every word in the Bible comes from God.
This creates a problem because the original manuscripts no longer exist. No one alive
today has seen the text that Moses wrote or anything in the original handwriting of Isaiah or
Paul’s original letter to the Corinthians. Those who believe in the dictation theory must
believe that the final inspired text is the “original autograph” that the writers received from
God. The problem is that none of the ancient texts were written in English, German, or
Portuguese. So the Bible that most people read in their native language cannot be
“inspired” according to this understanding. Since most languages have multiple translations
of the Bible, which one was inspired by God? This creates a difficulty.

In other words, the whole “dictation theory” is problematic because no one has the original
scrolls, tombstones, or papyri. No one has them; no one has seen them. There is nothing to
compare them to.

What actually happened in the writing of the Bible was something completely
different. What we have today is an inspired record of events. There were reliable eyewitnesses
who saw what happened and reported it all.
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2 Peter 1:16-18 says, “For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to
you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His
majesty.
Now this voice we heard from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

The Bible is an inspired record for several reasons. First, the events themselves were
inspired by God. They are the record of the works that God did among men. God did these
works, and men

witnessed them. So these men wrote them down accurately, according to what they saw and what
they experienced. When they wrote them down, the Holy Spirit gave them the “seal of
approval,” so to speak, allowing the Church to confirm and use these records as authentic.
In my opinion, this is how inspiration works.

This is important because we cannot ignore the fact that there are a number of problems
with the biblical texts. The Bible contains four gospels, so it is important to ask why. One
gospel would be sufficient, but three of them are synoptic (meaning they tell basically the same
story).
However, these three synoptic gospels sometimes differ from each other in the details they
tell and the words they use. Each tells the story from its own angle. To add to the confusion, the
Gospel of John has all the accounts in a completely different order and with a completely
different emphasis. If they were dictated by God, then God should have dictated a simple and
true story and not caused all this confusion.

The fundamentalist view of inspiration simply does not make sense. It is far more logical to
believe that the Bible is a record of God-breathed events that were recorded by honest,
truthful, and inspired men. This is a very different approach. The God of Israel works in history
among human beings and has helped to record those events for posterity. Since He worked
through human beings, each person may, however, witness and record the same event in
a different way.

When someone reports a case, he interprets it from his point of view.

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I know how this works from my relationship with my wife. We can go to the same places
and have the same experiences. We can eat at the same restaurants and talk to the same
people. But when she tells us about these events, it sounds completely different than
when I tell her. Plus, when I tell her, she always corrects me, because we are different people.
We each bring our own baggage to that event, and different aspects of what happened there
are more important to me than the points that stood out to her.

This is why there are four gospels in the New Testament. The “synoptic problem” does
not exist only in the New Testament. The Tanakh also contains several synoptic books. For
example, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are synoptic with the book of
Deuteronomy. The books of Samuel and Kings are parallel to the books of Chronicles.
Isaiah chapters 6-37 are parallel to 2 Kings chapter 8 to the end. There are many other
examples of synoptic accounts in the Bible. This principle applies not only to the
historical books, but also to the visions and dreams that the prophets had. When a prophet
says, “I had a vision in which the Lord said to me…” I accept that his quotation of the Lord in
the vision refers to a saying. However, sometimes even cases like this can be rendered as
synoptic texts. For example, Isaiah 2 is parallel to Micah 4, but there are still some differences.
God spoke to Isaiah and to Micah. Almost every word in these texts is the same.

A particularly interesting example of synoptic texts comes from a text where God spoke and
everyone listened. All the people of Israel heard the Ten Commandments. God spoke
to them from the mountain and everyone listened. Yet

Thus, there are two synoptic records of the Ten Commandments in the Torah, one in Exodus
20 and the other in Deuteronomy 5. The classic illustration is of the commandment
concerning the Sabbath, which appears in Exodus 20:8 and Deuteronomy 5:12. In
Exodus it says, “Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy,” while in Deuteronomy
it says, “Keep the Sabbath, to keep it holy.” Remembering is not the same as
keeping! So what did God actually say? This is the most “dictated” text of all the texts in the
Bible. It begins with the words, “These are the words that God spoke!” Some would say that
Moses may have grown a little old and forgotten exactly what God had said.
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said, while others would say that an entirely different person, at a much later time, wrote
Deuteronomy. A traditional Jewish solution to this problem is to say that God miraculously said
“remember” and “keep” at exactly the same time, which is the reason for lighting two candles on
Erev Shabbat, one for “remember” and one for “keep.”

If one continues to examine both texts, one will see that the Sabbath commandment in the
book of Deuteronomy is longer than in the book of Exodus. Furthermore, the reasons for
keeping the Sabbath are different. Deuteronomy says that the reason for keeping the Sabbath
is because the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, but Exodus does not say this at all. What did God
really say?

Even if a person cannot resolve these issues, there is no denying that these are serious
problems. We base our lives on what is written in the Bible. People want to kill me in Israel
because of what is written in the Bible! I have suffered a lot because I believe that Yeshua
is the Messiah because of what is written in the Bible! Many days

and hours of our lives are spent in study, teaching, praise, songs, and prayers because of this.
Therefore, we have to take the Bible very seriously.

These kinds of problems prove that inspiration is not “dictation” but rather a record. God did not
use the prophets as robots or typewriters.
When God spoke, they repeated what He said within the individual character of
the prophet, according to their own styles and viewpoints.
God expressed His feelings, and the Bible is the correct expression of those feelings
and opinions. This is one of the differences between the Greek and Middle Eastern definitions
and views of “truth.” In the Western or Greek view, truth corresponds only to facts, but in the
biblical and Middle Eastern definition, truth includes not only facts, but also
feelings. Feelings are as true as facts. Here is a demonstration:

“Two weeks ago I had a car accident at exactly 1:25 p.m. I was driving my car down Gaza Street
in Jerusalem. As I stopped at the red light to turn left, a car came toward me from the other side
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80 kilometers per hour. He hit the back of my car and broke the rear axle. There were two
children in the car and an American friend sitting next to me. The car spun and stopped in the
middle of the road.”

Well, this really happened and these are the facts. That's how it was recorded for the insurance
report, but it wasn't the whole truth. This report doesn't tell how I felt or what emotions I
experienced during that event.
If I told the same story as a typical Israeli Jew, it would sound like this:

“I was driving along, taking some kids home from church. I was minding my own business. I
stopped at a red light. When the light turned green, I started driving toward my friends’ house.
Suddenly, like a demon, a devil, this guy came barreling toward me from the other side. He
didn’t look or see a thing! He didn’t care if we died! He came straight at my car! The car turned, and
I didn’t know if I was going right or left because he came at me unexpectedly. The devil himself
attacked me!”

This is the same story, except that in the first version I modeled myself after a Swiss engineer, and
in the second, I modeled myself after a typical Middle Eastern Jew. Which one was more
truthful?

The facts are true, but there is more to the biblical text than just facts. God’s word is meant to evoke
feelings in us. To do this, it sometimes uses different techniques. Middle Eastern language
sometimes sounds like an exaggeration. “All Galilee came to hear Him” is not strictly true; it is an
exaggeration. There was probably at least one elderly grandmother who did not
come to hear Him. If there was at least one person who did not come, then not all Galilee came
to hear Yeshua. The Bible is a Middle Eastern Jewish document. Therefore, it should be
understood in these terms. “All” does not always mean “every person,” but rather a
representative majority. There are many such examples, and this will become clearer later in
our study.

Again, the definition of “inspiration,” as understood in Jewish terms, is “the record of God’s inspired
events, recorded by men .”
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inspired” This

helps in confronting a textual problem because it means that every little issue should not shake
a person and make him lose his faith.

One of the best examples in Scripture is Stephen’s speech. He was an inspired man who was
close to God. He was a servant of God and one of the deacons who was appointed to feed the
Jewish and Greek orphans and widows. Although he was a man filled with the
Holy Spirit, he made mistakes. For example, in his speech in Acts 7:16, he said that Abraham
bought a cave to bury his dead in Shechem. However, the text in Genesis clearly says that
Abraham bought a cave in Hebron, not Shechem, and they are not the same place. So, is this
text inspired or not? Yes, it was inspired! Stephen’s words were recorded. The Holy Spirit
recorded what he said through the ears of those who heard him, and they recorded the truth.
Stephen made a mistake, but the record is true. This is a very important point.

Acts 7:14 records another error Stephen made in his speech. He said that 75 souls went
down to Egypt, but Exodus 1:5 says that 70 people went down to Egypt. This is what Stephen
actually said, and someone inspired faithfully recorded his words. What is inspired here
is the record of Stephen’s speech and how he stated it.

When the Gospels or the books of Chronicles and Kings record two different accounts of the
same event, one should not assume that there is a “synoptic problem.” Different people
wrote about what they saw and heard from their different points of view, which is a perfectly
natural human phenomenon.
God's purpose in allowing both texts

exist is to teach things that are not written in the pshat, using for this the comparison of the
two texts, the drash method. Associating the texts allows an understanding of something new
that is not explicitly written in either of them. Putting all these elements together is like
taking flour, water, eggs and butter and putting them together to make a cake. Although all
these ingredients can be eaten separately, they will not taste as good as the whole.
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of a cake. Using only the pshat is like eating butter by itself, but God allowed
all the synoptic texts and the problems found in them to exist so that
the reader could make a very tasty “interpretive cake” by putting all
the “ingredients” together.

Tana Debi Eliayahu, Ish Shalom Edition. p. 82.

Lategan, Bernard C. “Hermeneutics.” ABD. Vol. 3. London: Doubleday, 1992, p. 155.

Fishbane, Michael. “Midrash and the Meaning of Scripture.” The Interpretation of the Bible:
International Symposium in Slovenia. Ed. Joe Krasovec. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998, p. 552.
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Unusual textual features as a catalyst for midrash

An unavoidable issue when discussing synoptic accounts is the problem of apparent “errors” and
odd features in the text. But they all have a reason for being there. Numbers 10:35 records the
words the Israelites used to say whenever the Ark of the Covenant was to travel.
Today, Jews all over the world say these same words whenever the Torah scroll is taken out
of the ark in the synagogue to be read publicly. “Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered; let
those who hate you flee before you.”

What is unusual about this verse can only be noticed by examining the text in the original Hebrew.

When one reads this verse either in a Hebrew Bible or in a Torah scroll, one feature immediately
stands out. The text contains two inverted nun (3) letters,

which are larger than all the other letters. These letters frame the verse, but are not associated
with any word. Obviously, the questions arise: how could this strange phenomenon be translated
and why is it there?

ftHH \T] * ** name pj t

Ti* i nop ntfb

"
I don't know * :í|'íbd ípjotwa ' to be

r TI • r : - v -I r

Text of Num 10:35 in Hebrew.

Note, at the beginning and at the end of the verse, the letter “nun” inverted.
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Anyone would say this is a mistake because that's what it looks like at first glance.
On the other hand, a rabbi who sees the same feature would say, “What does God want to teach
us with this strange thing? Everything has a reason.” The scribes copied this text by
hand for thousands of years with these inverted nuns and did not “correct the error,” since the
existence of these nuns is simply an invitation to a midrash. To a rabbi, any textual “problem”
is an invitation to a midrash.

These kinds of midrastic opportunities are also taken up by the New Testament writers when
they are interacting with the texts of the Torah. Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered to
God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous,
God having approval of his offerings. Through it also, even after he died, he still speaks.” How
did the writer of Hebrews know this? Let’s look at Genesis 4:8: “And Cain talked with Abel his
brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his
brother and killed him.” (literal translation of the original Hebrew text). This verse, in the
form

as it stands in the Masoretic text, it shows that something is missing, for there is no record of
what Cain said to Abel. This missing information is an invitation to a midrash, and has led many
different Jewish commentators to speculate about what the conversation between them was.

Philo of Alexandria said they had a philosophical discussion, and other Jewish interpreters
say they argued over who owned the earth and the air. Another rabbinic interpretation says that
Cain and Abel argued over which sacrifice would be best, which seems to be the view taken
by the author of Hebrews.

There are mechanical problems with the letters of the text that seem to jump out and say,
“Explain it to me!” If there are unusual spots on the letters or letters that are printed larger than
others, a good rabbi will tell you that this is not an error, but rather a part of the inspiration of the
text. God gave these traditions as symbols so that we could think deeply about what He is really
saying to us. These are the characteristics that make a midrash happen.

Another interesting textual anomaly occurs in Isaiah 9:6-7, in the famous

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passage about the birth of the Messiah. It says: “For unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace: that
his government may increase, and there may be no end of peace, upon the throne of
David, and upon his kingdom; to order it, and to uphold it with justice and
righteousness from that time forth, even for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.”

What is strange in Isaiah 9 is that the word 'Tmarbeh” nD"\cb (for increase)
contains a final mem (c), even though the mem

occurs in the middle of the word and not at the end. 1 To find out why there is a final or
closed mem in this word, the rabbis tried to examine the context of the passage, which
is clearly talking about the Messiah and redemption. The Radak (Rabbi David
Kimchi) wrote comparing this closed mem in the middle of the word with a place in
Nehemiah 2:13 where there is an open mem at the end of a word in the passage about
the walls of Jerusalem being broken down. He said: “Lamarbeh ha-misrah- For the
increase of their power: the mem is written closed, although it should be read
as an open mem . The opposite happens in Nehemiah in the mem of lahem prutzimy
(they were torn down), in which the mem at the end of the word is written open.
There is a drash in this matter that when the walls of Jerusalem, which remained broken
down throughout the time of the exile, are rebuilt, then at the time of salvation the broken
down places will be rebuilt and the power that had been closed will be opened for the
2
King Messiah.”

The rabbinic explanation for this closed mem in the middle of a word, which occurs
only once in the entire Bible, teaches that rather than a printing error, this text ends
up containing a midrash. In fact, it is the “problems” in the text that motivate
the midrash to occur. In the Jewish view of inspiration, God continually uses the Bible
with all its abnormalities to make us understand His revelation.

Text families

One potential cause for some of this “confusion” is the existence of families of texts.
Texts were copied by hand for hundreds of years, and each family
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textual had somewhat different traditions for how to copy the text. The short Talmudic
tractate Soferim 37b tells a story about the discovery in the Temple of three Torah scrolls
with different readings. Let us look at the account of what the sages did with those
readings: “Three Torah scrolls were found in the Temple courtyard: the Maon scroll, the
Zaatutey scroll, and the Hu scroll . On one of them was found the word ‘maon, and on the other
two it was written, ‘the Eternal God is meonah (dwelling place)’, so they adopted the reading of
the two scrolls and discarded the other. On another of the scrolls they found it written, ‘And
he sent the zaatutey (nobles) of the children of Israel’, and on the other two they found it
written, ‘and he sent the naarey (young men of) the children of Israel’, so they kept the
reading of two and discarded that of the other. On one of the scrolls, ‘hu’ (he) was written
eleven times, but on the other two, ‘hi’ (she) was written eleven times, so they 3 Although
all of these they adopted the reading of the two and discarded that of the other.” textual
differences were minor, the sages still had to decide which scrolls had the “correct” and
“official” reading.

In some cases, scribes would find a different word and write it in the margin, or when the scribe
misspelled a word he would write it in the margin or in a tiny space between the lines of
text. So when

When another scribe was copying that parchment hundreds of years later, he had to decide
whether to put those words back in the text where he thought they belonged or to keep
them in the margins. Anyone who looks at the original copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls can see
that this problem happened very often. The texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls often prove to
have originated in a different family of texts than the Septuagint or the Masoretic texts (the
officially accepted biblical text within Judaism and most of Christianity as well). The oldest
surviving manuscript of a Masoretic text dates from the 10th century AD.

These differences within textual families sometimes cause interesting textual variants such as
the following: Amos 9:11-12 says, “In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which
has fallen down, and will repair its breaches; and I will raise up its ruins, and will restore it as it
was in the days of old; that they may possess the righteousness of the LORD.”
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the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the
Lord, who does these things”

On the other hand, the text in Acts 15:16-18 that quotes these verses says: 'After these things have
been accomplished, I will return and rebuild

the fallen tabernacle of David; and , raising it from its ruins, I will restore it.
That the rest of mankind might seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles also, upon whom my name
is called,' says the
Lord, who makes these things known for centuries”

The Masoretic Text (MSS) of Amos says, “the remnant of Edom,” but in the quotation from James
in the book of Acts it says, “the rest of men” or “the rest of mankind.” The reason this occurred
is that the vowel marks were only added

to the Biblical text much later by the Masoretes, after the 7th century AD. Without the vowel points,
the word could be read as either adam (man or mankind) or Edom. In other words, no
one made a mistake here. Since the text left the door open for ambiguity, James felt he could
approve of the entry of the Gentiles into the communion of the saints without their having to
officially convert to Judaism (without the need for circumcision), since this was God's prophetic
promise. Exactly contrary to James' reading, the rabbis later read the same text as Edom instead of
adam because they used Edom as a code word to represent the evil Christian empire
dominating them from Rome. Since they could not speak openly against Rome, they made a midrash
of this text that referred to the eventual domination of the Jews over Edom (the Roman Empire).

By the way, the reason Edom refers to Christianity in rabbinical literature is because the name Esau
(WJ) in Hebrew contains the same letters as the word Yeshua (:»5B'). Both contain the Hebrew
“
letters “i> = ayirí\ “ o = shin” and vav” but Esau is missing the letter “ ' = yud\ which symbolizes 1 =
God/Lord and is the first letter of the “Tetragrammaton” (mrr). Therefore, when the rabbis read about
the restoration of David's tabernacle, they tried to attack or refer to the Church by calling it Edom.
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On the other hand, James quoted the passage from Amos in a completely different context. There
was a debate about whether Gentiles had to convert to Judaism before becoming followers of
Yeshua. Paul came from Asia Minor to Jerusalem to represent the Gentiles. Peter
and James were already in Jerusalem with the other leaders. In contrast,

Contrary to what is taught in most Christian universities and seminaries, a close examination of
the text actually shows that Peter sided with Paul. It is common to characterize Peter and Paul
as constantly fighting against each other, but what Peter said in Acts 15:10 was very
sensible. He said, “Now therefore why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the
disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” In fact, Acts shows that Paul
remained completely silent during this discussion.

James wanted to base the decision of the council of apostles on a passage from the prophets,
so he quotes the passage from Amos: “Later I will restore the fallen tabernacle of David, and
I will rebuild its ruins.” Then verse 12 gives the reason for God making this promise as a way to
gather and restore the rest of humanity. Verse 13 explains further. The tabernacle of David
would be restored so that all nations could receive salvation.

This prophecy is not only for Israel, but also for the world. James made his point by giving
a midrash based on his understanding of Amos. His reasoning was as follows: Since the
prophets promised that the rebuilding of David’s tabernacle would include the Gentiles (the
nations), let us not force the Gentiles now to take upon themselves the Law of Moses,
since this was already promised by the prophets. God has already taken upon Himself the
responsibility of including them in His covenant. So let us ask the Gentiles to do the
minimum and keep the four laws given to Noah before the giving of the Torah at Mount
Sinai.
These Noahide laws say to abstain from idolatry, sexual immorality, the shedding of blood, and
the eating of blood. Since God commanded Noah and his

sons concerning these things, logically they apply to all humanity because all humans descend
from Noah. James arrived at his opinion by using his reasoning to interpret the passage in
Amos.

James' method in Acts is called halachic midrash or “ legal midrash,”

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from which laws can be made. There is another type of midrash called midrash aggadah,
which is based on stories rather than legal material, from which theological teaching
can be drawn. While halacha means “walking” (the practical result of our faith), aggadah
is a story or statement.

To summarize what we have just explained, the text of the Tanach was transmitted by
different families of scribal traditions. Only three of these families of texts have survived.
First, the rabbis transmitted the Masoretic text, which is the standard
biblical text in the Jewish world today.
Second, the Greek-speaking world transmitted the biblical text by translating
the Greek Septuagint from the Hebrew, and both the Syriac Bible and the Latin
Vulgate (including its derivatives) are based on this Greek textual tradition. The third
textual tradition was only discovered recently, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found
in 1948. There is also another textual family within the Samaritan tradition, but
they have only the Torah and not the rest of the Bible. Each of these traditions has passages
where one reading of Amos is better than the other. The Septuagint reading of Amos is
better than the Masoretic text, but the Masoretic text is better in some places
such as Psalms 8, 16, and 22.

Qumran is still so new that most people are not familiar with any alternative readings from
the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Commandments and examples

Today, we are all part of the Pharisaic revolution that says we can discover God’s
will from the text of the Bible. However, the text of the Bible contains different levels of
practical revelation. For example, “love one another” is a direct command, and there
is no question as to whether we should obey it or not. Yeshua
commanded His disciples, “Go into all nations and make disciples, teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you.” This is also a command about which there can
be no doubt.
Direct commandments do not usually require a sod, a remez, or a midrash to be
understood.

There are, however, other ways in which God communicates with us through His Word.
Sometimes He communicates through positive examples and
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Negative. By reading about what the early believers did, we can learn some important
principles for today. Ananias and Sapphira are negative examples in Acts who
show us how not to behave, while Dorcas is a positive example of the
importance of helping the poor and how God rewards those who care for those in need.

One case of learning by positive example is the issue of tithing. There is no place in the entire
Bible that commands tithing to one's church.
Yet most believers are firmly convinced that we are commanded to tithe. In the
Tanach, God commanded the people to give tithes to the Temple in Jerusalem to support
the priests and Levites who served there. One might rightly ask how this commandment
relates to a modern church or synagogue. The Temple does not exist.

more, and the pastor is not the High Priest. What right do modern pastors have to take
something that had been designed for the Jewish people in the context of the priests
and Levites in Jerusalem and apply it to their local congregations?
How do we know that we should pay a salary to the pastor, preacher, or evangelist?

Paul addressed this problem in 1 Timothy 5:17-18 by writing a midrash from the Torah.
He said, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially
those who labor in the word and in teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle an
ox while it is treading out the grain.’ And again, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’”

His first proof text is from Deuteronomy 25:4, and the second comes from other verses in
Deuteronomy that say an employer should not withhold wages from his employees. This is
a classic midrash . Paul took verses from an agricultural context and applied them to
someone working in the Body of Messiah. In other words, we take the needs that the
congregation has and make the necessary inference. We learn through midrashic
methods to justify means and actions. There are many examples of this, so let’s
complicate things a bit.

When people today tithe in their congregations, who does the money go to? In the Tanach,
if someone had a lamb and wanted to give a gift
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When he received the lamb from the Lord, he would take it to the priest and burn
it on the altar. The priest would take his share and burn what was left. However, the
lamb was given to the Lord. In the New Testament, Paul said that he was collecting
money for the poor believers in Jerusalem (Romans 15:26). He never said that it
would be an offering to the Lord.

However, in the Torah, when people gave money to the poor, it was also considered
an offering to the Lord. The Torah commanded the people to bring sacrifices and give
several different types of tithes. They had a tithe for the priests and Levites
and they also had to leave some of their crops in the field to feed the poor. The
ancient Israelites had different types of giving, but the New Testament never
commands tithing. Therefore, for a pastor today to ask for tithing, he must form a
halachah from an example rather than a commandment, since there is no such
commandment in the New Testament. Remember, halachah means “to walk,” and
we want to know how to walk by faith in our daily lives.

In addition to the example of the Israelites donating money to the Temple, there are
examples of giving in the New Testament that can be used to support the concept of
tithing. Romans 15:27 says, “This seemed good to them, and indeed they
are debtors to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the spiritual good of the
Jews, they ought also to minister to them in material things.” This verse
essentially says that non-Jewish believers should be just as grateful for the spiritual
blessing of knowing

The Jewish Messiah who should be motivated to financially “give back” this
blessing to the poor among the Jewish people.

1 Corinthians 16:1-2 says, “Now concerning the collection for the saints, do as I
gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of the week, each one of you should
set aside something in store for himself, as he may prosper, and gather it up, so that
when I come no collections will be taken up.” These two examples deal
with the same context in which Paul was raising money from his congregations to
help the poor in Jerusalem. The only

authority, therefore, by which today's pastors collect tithes, is by taking the

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example of what the early believers did, applying it to today's context.

Both the church and the Jewish people do many things that are not directly commanded in
Scripture. One of these is meeting on the weekend. The New Testament never commands
the church to meet every Sunday. There are only examples of believers meeting
together. In Acts 20:7, we see that the disciples met on Saturday evenings: “Now on the first
day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul, intending to
depart the next day, kept on speaking to them until midnight.” From there, Christians
developed a tradition of meeting together on the first day of the Western week, which is
Sunday. Hebrews 10:25 instructs us not to neglect our meetings, but it never specifies how
often these meetings should occur. Orthodox Jews gather for prayer two or three times every
day based on the example of the three daily offerings offered in the Temple.

On the other hand, Christians base the idea of a weekly meeting on Sundays on the
example of this passage from Acts 20.

Another current practice that we take from biblical examples is the question of what we
do when we gather together. Acts 2:42,46 says: “And they devoted themselves
steadfastly to the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.”
Daily they continued steadfastly in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, and eating
their meals with gladness and singleness of heart! y Based on this passage, we pray, have
fellowship, break bread, and study the words of the apostles together when we meet. We do
not play bingo or have

lotteries because we have no order or example of it. The great current fad of having praise and
worship with music, bands, dancers and tambourines does not come from the New
Testament. In fact, the New Testament tells us only to sing and never mentions anything
about instruments. The current custom of using instruments is taken from examples in
texts in the Old Testament.

Another thing we do by example is the Lord’s Supper. Yeshua commanded His disciples
on Passover night, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” referring to the breaking of bread. He
never said how often we should celebrate it, but we know we should celebrate it because
He commanded it. That’s why some churches today have communion every day, some
once a week, some once a week.
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once a month and sometimes only once or twice a year. All we have are examples of
the way the first-century church operated. The examples interpret the
commandment. The examples constitute a simple midrash .

The difficulty arises today because we live in the 21st century, in a different culture,
and we have different needs than they did in the first century. We must continue
to do midrash and use biblical examples to meet the needs of our own cultural
context. To do this properly, we cannot ignore the Torah. When Christian leaders who
oppose the Messianic faith say, “We don’t need the Torah,” or, “The Old
Testament should not be normative for Christian life,” they should stop asking their
members to tithe, since the only place that talks about tithing is in the Old
Testament. If a person rejects the Torah, then he would have to reject the Old
Testament as well.

principle of tithing. Why do so many Christians take praise and worship or tithing and
prosperity from the Old Testament, and reject everything else? It is hypocritical to
say, “The Torah is already finished and does not apply to us,” and choose to keep
only what is “interesting” from the Torah, throwing away everything else. When
Jews see Christians pick and choose, it is a poor testimony to religious integrity and
consistency.

Midrash aggadá

Let us now examine the concept of midrash aggadah, the midrash that tells a story in
great depth. Hebrews 11, the famous chapter on faith that tells the stories of God’s
faithful children, is based entirely on midrash aggadah. A classic example comes
from verses 8 through 10. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out to a place
which he was to receive as an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing
where he was going. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a
foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the
same promise, for he was looking forward to the city which has foundations, whose
architect and builder is God.” What made the author of Hebrews think that Abraham did
not want to inherit Jerusalem, Hebron, and Shechem in the way God
instructed? God told him, “Go to the land which I will show you, and I will give you the land which I will g
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land! Wherever you set foot, it will be yours!” Consequently, it is surprising when, suddenly,
according to Hebrews, Abraham was not even interested in the land of Israel. The author of
Hebrews gave a midrash in which Abraham was interested in another country based
entirely on his words to the children of Heth in Genesis 23:4, when he wanted to bury Sarah. In
saying, “I am a stranger and a resident among you, he left

Of course he was not interested in owning any land in Israel except the cave in which he
would bury his wife. What the author of Hebrews says is not explicitly stated in the Torah, but he
gets this idea from unexplained concepts that are written in the Torah.

This chapter has provided some information regarding the concept of hermeneutics and the
importance of using Jewish methods of interpretation to understand difficult texts. We
have used many illustrations and examples of how people use different levels of
interpretation all the time.
We have explained the Jewish view of inspiration and shown that synoptic accounts should not
be a “problem.” We have also discussed the concept of midrash and how both the rabbis and the
New Testament writers used this important tool of interpretation. The remainder of this book will
deal more specifically with Jewish exegetical rules and specific methods of interpretation.

Chapter 2

It is essential to understand this concept that, in Hebrew, there are two types of mems: one that is “open” ( G ) and
can occur at the beginning or in the middle of the word, and another that is “closed” (0 ) and occurs only at the end
of words.

Radak's Commentary on Isaiah 9:6

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Portuguese translation taken from The Minor Tractades of the Talmud. Rev. Ed.

Dr. A. Cohen. Socino Press, 1971.

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The main Jewish rules of interpretation of

Scriptures in the first century

There are those who say that they “believe only the Bible and nothing else.”
The problem with this idea, however, is that the Bible is a book, and as such
it can only be understood by applying the normal rules of logic and language
that apply to the interpretation of any literature. The truth is that the Bible
contains many different types of literature, and each genre has its own
rules of interpretation. You do not read a newspaper as you would read poetry.
You do not read a law book as you would read a personal letter or a novel.
Time, place and circumstances affect the way all written texts are read and
understood.

The Bible was written over a period of approximately 1,000 years, and
contains words and passages written in several different Middle Eastern
languages. About forty different authors participated in the writing of the
biblical text. All of these issues complicate the question of interpretation.

In Yeshua's time, the Jewish world interpreted Scripture using seven

important rules that were

1
formulated by Hillel the Elder (60 BC - 20 AD) summary of Here's a little one
these seven rules with some examples from both the Tanach and the New Testament:

1. "oven"

Kal Va-homer

(Light and heavy or afortiori)

Let's start with the first hermeneutical principle, known as kal va-
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homer, an argument described in Latin as afortiori, or in English as “from less to

greater.” Although at first glance this may seem like a confusing concept, it will
become clearer when we examine it more closely.
The Scriptures are full of this principle, so it is up to us to understand it.

One practical conclusion that can be drawn from the use of kal va-homer in general is
the fact that there are different levels of sin. This concept has been widely
misunderstood, but the Torah teaches the difference between “major” and
“minor” sins. Of course, God in His holiness cannot turn a blind eye to any
sin, but the Torah teaches which sins are more serious based on the punishment
imposed for their violation. If the punishment is death, then the person has committed
a sin.

very serious. Committing a sin that requires the death penalty is obviously more serious
than committing a sin for which the penalty is simply the sacrifice of two doves.

For example, many Jews and non-Jews are under the mistaken impression that if a
Jew eats pork, he has committed a very grave sin. The reason modern Jews view eating
pork in such a grave light is because it became a mark of identity for members of
the Jewish community during times of persecution. On the other hand, although the
Torah forbids it, the only punishment for violating this commandment is that one must
wash one’s clothes and remain unclean until evening, which prevented one
from worshiping in the Temple or Tabernacle on that particular day. No sacrifice or
payment was required, and the next morning one would be clean again. Therefore,
the Torah teaches that eating unclean food was not such a grave sin, compared to
many other prohibitions.

Yeshua actually also taught that some sins are more serious than others. He also
said that some commandments are more burdensome than others. In Matthew
5:17-20, Yeshua says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you,
until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a pen will by any
means pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever breaks one of
the least of these commandments and teaches others so will be called least in the book of the law.”
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kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom
of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This passage proves that

There are lesser and greater commandments and lesser and greater sins. The same
principle applies to understanding the concept of midrash. We learn about big things from
small things.

The following passage further demonstrates how kal va-homer works. Matthew
6:25-33 says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what
you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the
body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or gather into
barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more anxious than the birds?
Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his span of life? And why do you
worry about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they
neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like
one of these. Do you worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or
‘What shall we wear?’

This entire passage is a classic example of kal va-homer. If God cares for the birds (the
smallest), how much more will He care for the human being (the largest)? People are
far more important to God than birds, so if God feeds the birds and clothes the flowers
of the field, then we can deduce from the midrash that He will certainly care for the

humanity. Likewise, we should not worry about what we will wear. If we look at the way
God takes care of nature, He will certainly take care of man, because man is the crown of
nature!
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The essence of kal va-homer is that if this commandment or principle is true, then
it is obvious that the main commandment or principle connected to it will be true
as well. Yeshua used this form of midrash repeatedly in His teaching. Let us
examine how Yeshua uses this principle elsewhere.

Luke 23:28-31: “But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem,
do not weep for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days
will come when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women who neither bore nor
nursed.’ In those days they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’”
And to the hills, Cover us! For if they do this in green wood, what will happen in dry
wood?” The part of this example that fits the method of kal va-homer is the phrase, “If
they do this in green wood, what will happen in dry wood?” Although the exact phrase,
“the more,” does not appear here, the logic is present in the comparison
between the two types of wood. If terrible things occur in the midst of peace
and prosperity, how much more will they happen during times of turmoil and
war? Something small is compared to something large, and conclusions are drawn
from the small thing to the large thing.

Yeshua is also telling the young women of Jerusalem: Do not weep for Me, weep for
yourselves and for Jerusalem. How much more will they suffer if He is suffering?
The “green tree” is a symbol of a righteous person. In Psalm 1:3, we see the
example that the godly man “will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.”
In Psalm 92:12

It also says, “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree.” In other words, the
righteous is equated with the green tree. Yeshua drew His analogy about the
destruction of the green and dry trees from Ezekiel 20:47, “Behold, I will kindle a fire
in you, and it shall consume every green tree in you, and every dry tree; and the
flaming flame shall not be quenched.” So Yeshua was saying, “If I, as a righteous
person, must suffer, how much more will all you wicked people who are living in
sin in this city of Jerusalem suffer?”

In 2 Peter 2:4-9 we have a similar observation: “Now if God did not spare angels when
they sinned, but cast them down to hell and committed them to pits of darkness... then
the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptations and to reserve the
unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” The implication is that if God can
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punish even the angels, who are greater in strength and power than human beings, so He
will certainly punish the evildoers among men, who are even worse than the angels. (Peter
similarly indicates that the godly can expect deliverance from temptation because of
God's faithfulness; just as He is faithful to punish, He is also faithful to reward.)

Within Jewish tradition, the use of kal va-homer to interpret Torah commandments
has resulted in the important halaic ruling that a Jew who dies must be buried on the same day,
if possible. Burial takes place as soon as possible because of a kal va-homer
interpretation of Deuteronomy 21:22-23: “If a man has committed a sin worthy of death,
and is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree overnight,
but you shall surely bury him that same day,

so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for
he who is hanged is cursed by God .” We see in this passage that a criminal who has been
executed by hanging cannot have his body left on the tree overnight. He must be buried the
same day.
The sages held the kal va-homer: if a criminal, an evil person, is not allowed to have his
body left hanging overnight without a proper burial, then how much more does someone
who is righteous deserve to be buried quickly and honorably? This halachah is the
reason why Yeshua was buried on the same day of His death, and why it was not allowed for
His body to be left hanging on the cross overnight. This is a classic case of using the kal va-
homer to make a judicial ruling based on a midrash.

The principle of kal va-homer is very important in Western society as well, although we may
not be aware of its origins. In particular, lawyers use it when they need to make a strong
point in court. It is also a very significant principle of hermeneutics for understanding the
mechanics of midrash.

2. but? mine

Gzerah Shavah
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(Equivocal expressions - Lit. “equal cut”)

G zerah shavah is “the application, in one matter, of a rule already known applied to
another situation, on the basis of a common expression used in connection with both

2
situations in the Scriptures.” In other words, once a similar word, phrase, or root is found
in two different passages, an analogy can be drawn between them. Drawing this analogy allows
the interpreter to apply the same principles, conclusions, and applications to both texts and
situations. G’zerah shavah is especially useful for making halachah if the situation
in one of the texts is very clear but not in the other. The same halachah will then apply to both
situations based on the similar words and expressions. Even a cursory glance at the Talmud
reveals numerous discussions in which the rabbis use gzerah shavah to establish halachah in
uncertain situations.

In the book of Hebrews 3:6–4:13, the author compares equivocal expressions in Psalm 95:7–
11 with Genesis 2:2 to prove his point. These similar expressions are the words “works”/“rest,”
and “day”/“today.” The fact that both passages contain these words means that the ideas
within the verses can be applied to each other. The author of Hebrews uses the g’zerah shavah
to draw attention to the pattern of God’s work of creation. The entire analogy is based on the use
of the word “day” or “today” (one). But encourage one another, as long as it is called Today,
so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we become
partakers of the Messiah, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the
end, while it is said, “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as they
provoked Me...” (Heb. 3:13-15). (This is a short excerpt from the passage, but a full reading
of chapters 3 and 4 of

Hebrews is recommended for better understanding). The author implies that “today” carries
two significant implications, which are a beginning and an end.
Using Psalm 95 and the story of creation, he concludes that there is a future Shabbat to
which we all look forward. This concept, which is also found in rabbinic writings and other
Jewish books from the Second Temple period, attests that history will be 6,000 years
long, and the seventh millennium
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it will be a “Sabbatical Year” - the Messianic era. Therefore, we must take the opportunity now
while it is “today” to repent and walk in faithfulness and obedience to Yeshua.

Another example that is often mentioned is the quote from Hosea, the prophet
that Matthew uses in the birth narrative: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea
11:1). Since “Egypt” is mentioned in both instances, there is a connection and
similarity between the Exodus from Egypt and Yeshua’s departure from Egypt with
Joseph and Mary after Herod’s death.

3. In» mroD than in

Binyan with mikatuv echad

(Composing a “family” of a text)

The essential meaning of binyan av mikatuv echad is that when an idea is found
in several different passages, one can draw conclusions from the cumulative effect
of putting them together.

Risto Santala explains this principle as the “classification of biblical verses, opinions,
and facts into a family. In midrashic literature, there may be hundreds of verses in
a chapter

from different biblical passages. It was enough for someone to mention just the
beginning of a verse followed by the word Va-gomer (and so on), for each person to
repeat the entire verse in his mind(...). Furthermore, it was permissible to
borrow only the main idea of the verse or to combine; in the name of a prophet, ideas
belonging to the same family', slightly modified in their own unity.” 3 One cannot
combine verses using this method simply on the basis that they both contain a
common word, such as “then” or “kill,” for example. The word or phrase that
connects the “family” of texts must be the main idea in all the verses.

For example, Hebrews 9:11-12 applies the ideas of “blood” from the contexts of
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sacrifice and covenant in the Torah (such as Exodus 24:6-8, Lev. 8:15-19,
17:11, 16:14-16, and Num. 19:4-18 among others) and the idea of
“covenant” in Jcicmiss 31:31-34 to his discussion of how Yeshua’s death
atoned for our sins. The writer of Hebrews links the blood of the sacrifices with
the establishment of a covenant through the blood that Yeshua shed. He then
connects the whole issue of blood with the New Covenant.

uTherefore if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer
sprinkled on the defiled sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, much more
will the blood of the Messiah, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself
without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the
living God. For this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, so that
by means of death we might be redeemed from the transgressions that were
committed under the first covenant.

covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the
eternal inheritance. For where there is a testament, there must also be the
death of the testator; for a testament is not established except by the dead,
since it has no force of law while the testator is alive. Therefore even the
first covenant was not established without blood. For when
Moses had spoken every commandment according to the law to all the people,
he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet dye and hyssop,
and sprinkled the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood
of the covenant, which God commanded for you.” In the same way he sprinkled
the tabernacle and all the utensils of the divine service with blood . And so it
is said that almost everything is purified with blood according to the law,
and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” (Heb. 13:22)

The author's conclusion from combining all these texts together is that
without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness in the covenant
relationship between God and His people. Therefore, Yeshua's own
sacrifice allowed our sins to be forgiven and gave us access to the New
Covenant. There is nowhere in the Tanach that actually says that sins
are only forgiven with the blood of sacrifices. Rather, this idea is
the conclusion the author draws from the application of a passage that speaks of blood
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alliance to other places that speak of blood. This is a clear example of how
a MfamiliaM is composed of a text with the emphasis on one or two words.

4. CT3TO TDD 3M JTQ Binyan av mish'nei ketuvim

''Compose a “family” of two or more texts)

This principle is similar to the previous one, binyan av mikatuv echad. The difference
is that the application comes from combining two different texts, using concepts
from both to a “family” of other passages.

Let’s use another passage from Hebrews as an example of how this works,
although there are many other places in the New Testament that use this as well.
Hebrews 1:5-14 uses this principle to prove that the Messiah is greater than the
angels. It combines the texts of Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14 and then combines
them with many other psalms with a Messianic context.

“For to which of the angels did he ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’? [Psalm 2:7] And again, ‘I
will be his Father, and he shall be my Son’? [2 Samuel 7:14] And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he
says, ‘Let all the angels of God worship him!’ [Psalm 97:7] And to the angels he says, ‘He who makes his
angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.’ [Psalm 104:4] But to the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is your throne.’”
God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved
righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness
above Your companions! [Psalm 45:6-7] And: 'In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth, and the
heavens are the works of Your hands; they will perish, but You remain; yes, they all will grow old like a
garment; like a cloak You will roll them up, and like a garment they will be changed; But You are the same, and Your
hands will be changed forever and ever.'

years will have no end.' [Psalm 102:25-2] But to which of the angels did he ever say, 'Sit at My right hand, until I make
Your enemies Your footstool?' [Psalm 110:1] Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for those who
will be heirs of salvation?'

In this sequence of texts in Hebrews 1, the author uses both binyan av mikatuv echad
and binyan av mish 'nei ketuvim in a helpful way to identify biblical principles
and prove that Yeshua is superior to the angels. The writer makes it relevant to his
situation by applying the “son” principle to all texts that speak of God.
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and angels, whom he lists to prove his point. Bible teachers use this principle all the time
when constructing a sermon and connecting different texts by associating a phrase or
principle that appears in the main text with the other texts, then weaving in a conclusion.

5. DTB1

IClal Ufrat

(From general to particular)

In k'lal ufrat, an important principle is stated. And then it is expanded and listed in greater detail.
Sometimes this principle works in the opposite direction as well, meaning that one
reasons from the particular to the general. In this second option, we have a 0“© {frat uk'lal),
i.e.

initially you have the details and then, in the end, you create a principle of details.

In 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 it says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For
what fellowship have righteousness and wickedness? Or what communion has light with
darkness? What agreement has Christ with the evil one? Or what part does a believer have
with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the
temple of the living God, as He has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I
will be their God, and they will be My people.’”

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” is the general principle. Paul then expands
and details this principle in a series of explanations of what the principle implies in the rest of
the paragraph.

The Torah also uses this method in the list of Israel's feasts in Leviticus 23:2.
In verses 2-6 he says, “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: ‘The feasts of the
LORD that you proclaim to be holy convocations, these are my feasts. Six days you shall
work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD.’”
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a solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on that day; it is a Sabbath to the
LORD in all your dwellings. These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations, which
you shall proclaim at their appointed times.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, is the LORD's Passover.
And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the LORD's Feast of Unleavened Bread; seven
days you shall eat unleavened bread..!"

The general principle in this passage is the phrase, “The feasts of the LORD, which
you proclaim to be holy convocations, are My feasts.” Then, beneath this general principle
follows a list of the feasts and how each of them is to be observed.

6. "irm mpM *ÿ KTÍO Kaiotze bo mimakom acher

(Analogy made from another passage)

In this principle, the expositor compares two passages that seem to contradict each other with
a third passage that contains some of the same general ideas to resolve the apparent
contradictions. Here are some examples:

There is a numerical discrepancy between 2 Samuel 24:9 and 1 Chronicles 21:5 concerning
King David's census. 2 Samuel says, " In Israel there were 800,000 mighty men who drew the
sword, and in Judah there were 500,000." On the other hand, the account of the
same census in 1 Chronicles 21 says, "In all Israel there were 1,100,000 mighty men who
drew the sword, and in Judah there were 470,000 mighty men who drew the sword." Some
critics might consider the inconsistency between the two texts to be very serious, for even
if the numbers in an ancient text are not exact, one would expect the census accounts
to be somewhat consistent with each other. However, it is only by reading 1 Chronicles 27:1-22
very carefully that this numerical discrepancy can be explained.

This passage explains that two of the tribes (Gad and Issachar) were not even counted in
this “census.” The number in 2 Samuel probably does not include these tribes, but they are
included in 1 Chronicles 21. It is only through analysis of the third text that the contradiction
between the numbers can be resolved.
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The rabbis use this principle frequently in the Talmud to resolve apparent contradictions in the
Torah, and the New Testament does the same thing. 1 Peter 2:4-8

explains the apparent contradiction between two passages in the Tanakh that speak of the
Messiah as “the cornerstone.” On the one hand, Isaiah 28:16 seems to say that the
“cornerstone” will be widely believed and accepted, but on the other hand, Psalm 118:22
says that the cornerstone will be rejected. Peter resolves this contradiction by
inserting another passage from Isaiah 8:13-15 that mentions the disobedient “stumbling”
but the righteous serving God faithfully.

Here is the passage: [1 Peter 2:4-8] “Coming to Him, to a living Stone, rejected by men but
chosen and precious by God, you also, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house,
a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it
is written: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a chosen and precious cornerstone, and whoever believes in
Him will never be put to shame.’ [Isaiah 28:16] To you therefore who believe, He is precious; but
to those who do not believe, The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone [Psalm 118:22] and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense [Isaiah 8:14].
These are the ones who stumble at the word, being deceived by the wicked. disobedient, to
which they were also appointed”

7. iraPD icbyi

Davar has-nilmad me-inyano

(Explanation obtained from context)

This is actually one of the most fundamental rules of biblical interpretation.

A text must be examined within its context to be properly understood. Much of

of Paul's teaching would become incomprehensible and subject to misinterpretation if the context
is not considered.
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The book of Galatians is a great example of the importance of context in

understanding the writings of the Apostles.

Another example is Romans 14:14, which says, “I know and am persuaded

by the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who considers
anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” If the general context of Paul’s
letter is ignored, one might conclude that he nullified all the dietary laws of the
Torah. However, when the context of Paul’s own life and the problem of
unity between Jewish and non-Jewish believers in the congregations with which
he is dealing is taken into account, then it becomes clear that the
meaning of this verse is not so simple. Looking at the rest of the context of
Romans, we see that Paul teaches that nothing is intrinsically “unclean,” but that
things are “unclean” only because God calls them “unclean” in the Torah.
Each believer must decide, according to his own conscience, by the
guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, what is pure for himself.

The second contextual issue raised by Paul is that there is “freedom of

criticism” in matters of diet, holy days, and lifestyle, since the essence of the
“Kingdom of God” is not really about these minor issues. These are
also the minor issues in the Torah itself, and they are certainly
secondary to the salvation of Gentiles and Jews alike. What we eat should not
become a hindrance to the salvation of those around us. The context clearly
defines the issue and supports what Paul says in Romans 3:30-31: “For there
is one God, who will justify the one by faith.”

“Do we then nullify the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we
establish the law.” In my opinion, the seventh of all these principles of Hillel is
the most important because it is the one most ignored and most often
misused. The original context is the primary tool for understanding the issues
and principles the author intended us to understand. If we ignore the context,
we leave the Word of God without any warrant, since it could be used to
say and justify anything, and it could be twisted into whatever we want. In
fact, it could become the most horrible tool of evil, as it has unfortunately
become in the hands of those who have misused it over the centuries.
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There are seven rules, and there may even be some passages that should not be
interpreted by any of them. If understood and used well, however, these principles or
midot can become a great tool in the Body of Messiah for interpreting and expounding the
Scriptures according to their original Jewish context. Hermeneutics, or the way we understand
God’s Word, is one of the keys to both the spiritual health and the unity of God’s people. If we are
able to use the same tools, we should get the same results and come to a common understanding
of what God has planned for us to learn about Him and His people.

Chapter 3

Heckesh

Although not included in either Rabbi Ishmael or Rabbi Hillel’s list of exegetical principles, an
important rabbinic method of interpretation is called hekkesh. Hekkesh is an “analogy that proves the
law concerning one thing that also applies to another, either because both have characteristics in
common or because there is a Biblical intimation to that effect.” 4 Hekkesh literally means “to take
two stones and strike them together,” which is a metaphor for comparing two verses that have
similar language in order to learn something that was not previously known. Although this
technique is slightly complicated, it has given rise to some beautiful midrashim and is used
extensively in Scripture.

Hekkesh is different from gzerah shavah (analogy - we learn something from one verse and apply
it to another). In hekkesh, however, two verses are examined that have the same wording, giving rise
to a completely new doctrine that is not indicated by either verse alone.

An example of the use of hekkesh in the New Testament occurs in Matthew 5:27-28, where Yeshua
says, “You have heard that it was said,
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'You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust for
her has already committed adultery in his heart.

with her." How could Yeshua say that if a man looks at a woman with the intent of sexual
immorality, he has already committed adultery? In fact, there are many rabbinic passages
that prohibit lust on exactly the same principles. What is unique, then, about Yeshua's
equation of lust and adultery is that He based this halachic ruling on the use of hekkesh. He
combined two of the Ten Commandments, "you shall not commit adultery" and "you shall not
covet," from Exodus 20, and put them together to conclude that the Torah's prohibition of
adultery also includes sins that go beyond sexual relations with another man's wife.

Yeshua was able to combine these two commandments because the Septuagint word
for “covet” in the Ten Commandments is the same Greek verb (epithymeo) that Yeshua
n
uses in Matthew 5 for “lust.” "In other words,
Yeshua reads the humanly unenforceable tenth commandment as being just as important
as the other, more humanly enforceable commandments. In Matthew's ethics, if one does not
break the commandments but wishes to do so, then he has already broken the commandments.
56
became guilty.”

Yeshua actually takes two verses, hits them against each other, compares them, and makes a
hekkesh. Thus He teaches something completely new: that adultery is not just the physical
act, but also the intention. He concludes that the commandment, “You shall not
commit adultery,” means not just the act itself, but also the intention that arises in the
heart and is committed with the eyes.

The entire Sermon on the Mount, in which Yeshua says, “You have heard that it was said…
but I say to you…” is based on this principle of hekkesh. Some believers mistakenly
think that Yeshua’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount was intended to nullify the Torah. In
fact, the phrase, “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you…” appears in
rabbinic literature as well. This expression means, “One might think that this applies only
literally, in the simple (pshat), but I tell you that the commandments are not to be taken literally
because they have many facets.” These other facets include things that are learned through
the interpretation of the remez, drash , and sod elements of a text. One can only reach
these types of conclusions by comparing texts.
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Here is another example of how Yeshua used hekkesh. Matthew 5:38-42 says,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell
you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him
the other also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your
cloak as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one
who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
To discover the basis for this statement of Yeshua, we need to examine the texts
from which He made hekkesh.

The Torah says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth...” but leaves it up
to us to decide what the implication of this law is. Normally speaking, if
someone deliberately gouged out another person’s eye, the victim would be
inclined to kill the offender. This is a normal human reaction. However, contrary to
our natural tendencies, the Torah teaches that even the victim of such a terrible
crime should not seek revenge or retaliate in any way.

Violent. The victim has the right to go to court and receive compensation
commensurate with the loss. The Torah does not teach that it is permissible to kill
a person. If he took out an eye, he will pay for an eye (not with his life). If he took
out a tooth, he will pay for a tooth. If he burns someone, he will pay for
the burning. This commandment in the Torah means that the one who caused a
victim to lose an eye or a tooth will pay the price of an eye, the price of a tooth,
etc. If someone causes harm to an individual accidentally, the law is applied and
the court determines the value of the eye. Different eyes have different prices,
depending on the age, profession, etc. of the person.

The reason we know that the Torah does not literally teach how to gouge out the
eye of the attacker comes from another verse that explains how this principle
should be interpreted. Exodus 21:22-25 applies the principle of “an eye for an
eye” to a particular situation and interprets it to mean that the attacker must
pay fair financial compensation. “If men fight and strike a pregnant woman so that she
miscarries, but does no further harm, the one who struck her shall be liable to
make restitution according to what the woman’s husband demands; he shall pay
as the judges determine. But if there is serious harm, then he shall give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for
wound, stripe for stripe.”
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However, there is another text in the Torah that seems to take this principle very
literally. Leviticus 24:19 says, “If anyone causes a blemish in his neighbor, as he has done,
so shall it be done to him!” It is clearly stated in this verse that if someone knocks out his
neighbor’s tooth, he should have his tooth knocked out as well. This is a completely
different legal outcome.

Yeshua saw that there was a legal contradiction in the Torah. In one place, it says that one
must pay according to the judgment determined by the courts. In another place, it says that
the guilty man’s eye must be plucked out as compensation for the victim’s lost eye. To
“complicate” matters even further, let us now examine a third text in Lamentations 3:30,
which says something completely different. “Give your cheek to him who smites
you; be filled with shame.”

Here we have a situation where three divinely inspired texts give completely different
instructions. One says that if someone causes his neighbor to lose an eye, he should go to
court to determine compensation, which will be a monetary fine to the offender. The other
says that we should take revenge in kind. If someone does something to another person,
exactly the same thing should be done to the offender. And yet another verse says that if
someone strikes, he should turn the other cheek! How can all these texts be inspired by
the same God? The only way to understand these verses is to use hekkesh, or “strike one
against another,” and get a completely new idea.

To understand why Yeshua said to turn the other cheek, we need to remember the cultural
context in which He was speaking. During the time the Gospel was written, the Land
of Israel and the Jewish people were suffering under Roman occupation. Yeshua lived his
entire life under Roman occupation and the corrupt rule of Herod and his family. The
Romans basically did whatever they wanted with the people of Israel. They had laws
that said any Roman soldier could take any Israelite’s coat, shirt, donkey, and equipment at any
time, and even take him away.

as a servant for 24 hours! However, after 24 hours he had to be released. The law in
Israel is still more or less the same. If the Israeli military needs a car, he has the right to take it.
If they need a house,
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they have the right to take it, just as was the situation in Roman times.

Now that we have examined all three texts in their context, let us see how Yeshua did a
hekkesh with them in the Sermon on the Mount. Yeshua is not talking about an accidental
mutilation. The person who strikes someone in the face clearly intends to humiliate. Yeshua
says that when someone intentionally hurts or embarrasses us, we should not return
evil for evil. Allowing that person to “strike us on the other cheek” demonstrates strength, not
weakness. If someone intends to shame us by publicly striking us on the cheek, we should
not give in to their malice and respond in kind, since this would show the person that they
have affected us. Instead, we should prove that they cannot affect us. We should show that
we are proud and strong enough to withstand another strike on the cheek. Yeshua
teaches this by taking the two verses from the Torah and striking them together with the
verse from Lamentations.

Therefore, “Turning the other cheek” and “Going the second mile” is not a “new” law that cancels out the Torah. Rather,
Yeshua expounded the Torah using midrashic and hekkesh principles. He took several verses that dealt
with the same subject, analyzed them, made an analogy, “struck them against each other,” and made a new
conclusion to prevent one verse from contradicting another.

Now let us see how we can use the principle of hekkesh in our day to understand the Bible.
The first time we encounter Bezalel Ben Uri is in Exodus 31:2-3. The text says: “See, I have
called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled
him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in skill in all manner
of craftsmanship..!”
This verse mentions four attributes or gifts given to Bezalel: wisdom, understanding,
knowledge, and skill in all craftsmanship. Exodus 35:31 uses the exact same words used to
describe Bezalel. “He filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in
knowledge and skill in all craftsmanship…”

Exodus 36:1 uses another term to describe Bezalel, which in Hebrew literally means “a
wise heart.” In traditional rabbinic thought, wisdom comes from the head, but emotions originate
in the heart.
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According to Nachmanides, (the Ramban), these things are opposites,

but Rashi resolves the apparent contradiction by making a classic hekkesh. He said
1
that the “knowledge” was actually the Holy Spirit or Ruach ha-Kodesh}

According to the New Testament, the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to “guide us into
all truth,” as John 16:13 says, “ When He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide
you into all truth.” The word for truth in Hebrew is “emêt” (noR), where the first letter
( K ) is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the second letter ( ü ) is the
letter that divides the alphabet, and the third letter ( n ) is the last letter of the
Hebrew alphabet. In other words, the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to synthesize!
7

In this classic hekkesh, we are able to get at two separate things and
understand a third. Westerners who hear Easterners speak often think we are
exaggerating. But truth also includes the emotions that accompany it. This concept
sheds light on what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:6 about how God has given us the
ability to be ministers of the New Covenant “not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the
letter kills, but the Spirit gives life!”* This example, like the two passages we have
discussed from the Sermon on the Mount, is also a hekkesh.

Of course, hekkesh needs to be used carefully and by the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, for any new conclusions we reach by “beating one verse against another”
must not contradict the letter or the Spirit of God’s Word.
Our understanding and use of this important concept is a great tool for interpreting
and explaining the Bible within its original Jewish context.

Contemporary Challenges for Messianic Judaism

Chapter 4
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Jewish-Messianic Hermeneutics
While it is easily possible to speak of the hermeneutics of the early Church or of Second
Temple Judaism, there has never been a fully developed and articulated system of
biblical interpretation that is both messianic and Jewish. This chapter will discuss
the need for hermeneutics, review some important Jewish contributions, and then propose
some initial guidelines for biblical interpretation within the messianic Jewish community.

Hermeneutics has been called both a science and an art. There are laws and rules for
understanding a text that must take into account knowledge of time, place, speaker, audience,
and religious and cultural context. Texts do not float in the vast expanse of nothingness. They
always exist within the context of some setting, time, and historical events that led to their
creation. The tendency in the early twentieth century was to give an existential turn to the
interpretation of the Bible. This took the Word of God out of its historical and cultural context
and gave it a philosophical meaning. It is my intention to restore an understanding of the ways in
which the Bible has been historically interpreted in order to provide committed students with a
deeper understanding of the biblical complexity and its relevance to our daily lives.

For the sake of clarity, let us define hermeneutics. According to the Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church, hermeneutics comes from a Greek word meaning “to interpret.” It is described
as “the science of the methods of exegesis. Whereas exegesis is normally the act of explaining a
text, often in the case of sacred literature and according to formally prescribed rules,
hermeneutics is the science (or art) by which exegetical procedures are devised.” 8
Hermeneutics is the way we establish rules for interpreting texts so that readers can
understand the author’s worldview and intended message.

It is impossible to “read” the Bible without simultaneously interpreting it, even if this is not
realized. The Protestant idea of “sola Scriptura” without any accompanying interpretive
traditions or guidelines may seem
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This may sound appealing, but it is actually impossible. We all approach a

text with our own preconceived ideas about what it means, based on what we
have been taught by others. In many cases, these prior understandings can
be helpful in guiding our interpretation, but we should never rely solely on what
we think the text “should” say. Instead, we need to use the interpretive principles
of hermeneutics to discover what the text meant in its original cultural
context and only then seek to apply it to our own circumstances.

The Jewish attitude toward the biblical text is that each statement has seventy
possible understandings and interpretations. In practice, this principle allows for a
wide range of

possibilities for understanding the same text without breaking the consensus.
This does not mean that everything is allowed, but rather that there is room to evaluate and examine different
possibilities and options for interpreting the same text.

Although at first glance it may seem that the rabbis interpreted the Bible without
rhyme or reason, there are, in fact, very specific rules for forming midrash and for
exegesis within the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Hillel, who lived in the first
century AD, had seven rules for interpreting sacred texts. It must be remembered
that these hermeneutical methods never exclude the p'shat, the plain, literary
sense. The p'shat alone, however, cannot show us all the "Seventy Faces of the
Torah." Thus, the other methods are also important tools for
seeing the depth and richness of God's Word.
In the second century AD, there was a very famous rabbi in the Land of Israel named Ishmael. He enumerated thirteen exegetical

principles for the Bible, which are guidelines still accepted in Judaism today, many of which are found throughout the New

Testament.

In Romans 3:1-2, the apostle Paul asks: “What advantage then has the Jew? Or
what is the advantage of circumcision? Great in every way.
Especially since the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God!' The
contribution of the Jewish tradition to the understanding of the Scriptures can
be divided into two major areas, which are the biblical text itself and its simple
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exegesis. The rabbis call this davar Torah, which is the regulation of the Torah.
Understanding comes from the process of deductive thought about the text. In
Hebrew this is called severa. In other words, it refers to interpretation.

deduced from the Scriptures by logical conclusions, or as we would say in the

West, by hermeneutical principles.

God gave the biblical text to the Jewish people, but the rabbis preserved it
and made it understandable and intelligible for all generations. Yeshua said this
very clearly in Matthew 23:2, when He gave the Pharisees the right to
interpret the Scriptures because they “sat in Moses’ seat.” Let us
remember with gratitude the work of the countless Jewish scholars
who, since the pre-Maccabean period, devoted themselves to the
Masorah, which is the codification of the biblical text, including critical notes.
Words, letters, dots and marginal readings were all duly weighed and scrupulously
determined by the rabbis and Torah scribes.

The full story of what it involves to codify the scriptural tradition can be
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read in the Talmudic tractate Soferim, which means “scribes.” This tractate deals with details such
as the spacing between letters, the width and height of the scrolls, the capitalization and
finalization of letters, etc. Without the work of these scribes, we would not have God’s Word
available to us today because we would not be able to understand the most basic
language of the Bible. This tractate also discusses the qualifications for the making of the
books, their respectful handling, and their sanctity. We should understand and be
grateful for the fact that Yeshua and the Apostles would not have even had the books of Moses if
it were not for the Rabbis who preserved them and protected them from corruption.

Rabbinic tradition provided the vowel signs for the Tanach, which made it possible to read
the Bible thousands of years after it was written. A text in Portuguese, composed only of
consonants, would be incomprehensible. If we saw

the letters DS in a book, how could we know what they meant? They could mean DiaS, DeUS,
DuaS, or even aDeuS. The only way to distinguish their true meaning would be by understanding
the context, which is not always easy. It was the Jewish rabbinical tradition that
determined the text of the Bible in Hebrew and made it readable and understandable for the entire
world. The rabbis also developed the PaRDêS method of interpreting the biblical text at different
levels, which we discuss in more detail in chapter 1.

Another rabbinic method of interpretation is gematria, a method of coding that allows us to

interpret the meaning of numbers in words (each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a
numerical value). Although we must be very cautious in using this method, it was a
phenomenon well known to the New Testament writers. Here is an example of the
rabbinic use of gematria: Genesis 14:14 mentions Abraham’s 318 “trained men.” However,
318 is the numerical value of the name Eliezer, Abraham’s servant mentioned in Genesis
15:2. It seems hard to believe that this is pure coincidence. Therefore, the rabbis
connected the account in Genesis 14:14 with Eliezer and concluded that Eliezer was the one
who trained Abraham’s servants and made them like himself.
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Rabbinic exegesis is often the key to understanding Paul.

Only Paul's reliance on rabbinic tradition can explain his view that the Torah was
given by angels and not directly by God (Gal. 3:19), or his view that the
Messiah was the rock who followed the Israelites and gave them water in the
desert (1 Cor. 10:4).

The rabbinic tradition of biblical exegesis has undoubtedly contributed to the understanding
of the Bible in the past. It is my firm conviction that when Christianity is restored to its roots
in the future, rabbinic principles and attitudes toward the text will help it return to true
biblical faith. The Jewish tradition of the rabbis and their love for and preservation of God’s Word
is a heroic and constant song of devotion and faithfulness in which Jews and Christians can
fellowship and experience the fullness of God’s revelation. Only in God’s Word can
believers find the fellowship and communion that can one day bring salvation to all humanity.

I will now attempt to propose a hermeneutic for Messianic Jews and for all
people who would like to discover biblical truth.

Here are some basic guidelines:

1. The Bible is the Word of God and should be treated as such.

2. The Bible is a very old document and should be treated as such.

3. The Bible was not written in Portuguese. It is important to remember that

whenever we study a translation, we already begin with an interpretation.

4. The Bible is a Jewish document and should be treated as such.

5. The Bible contains different types of literature. Each genre must be

differentiated and treated with appropriate linguistic tools.

6. The Bible reflects a historical reality that must be understood within

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of that context.

7. The Bible, as the Word of God, communicates the will of God. There is a
spiritual dimension to the Bible, which involves more than the careful use of
hermeneutical principles. The Bible is more than a series of words,
sentences, and chapters. It is more than mere literature.

8. A person needs the guidance of the Holy Spirit, along with the proper use of
hermeneutics, to fully understand the words and discern the spirit of the Word.

In my opinion, these guidelines are axiomatic. They should be the rules not
only for Messianic Jews, but for all who would like to understand the Bible.
In the modern West, some people have treated the Bible as an existential book
of God, completely disregarding its historical, cultural, or linguistic limitations.
Unfortunately, there are also those who use the rabbinic method to justify
extravagant interpretations of Scripture.
We have to be balanced in our approach. Let me state my opinion clearly: not
everything Jewish or ancient is automatically right and good. Rabbis and
interpretation

Jewish scholars have sometimes erred, and any use of rabbinic methods must be done critically and
in accordance with the demands of the biblical texts, always based on the time and culture
of the people who wrote them. However, to study the New Testament, which is a first-century
Jewish document, while ignoring the traditions of interpretation and exegesis that were used at the
time, is to miss a very important tool for understanding the Word of God.

These guidelines are important for the specific development of a Jewish-

Messianic hermeneutic for the following reasons:

1. These principles place the New Testament back in the context in which it
was written. There must be an awareness that we are dealing with a Jewish book
and a Jewish Savior. This will cause the student to seek the solution of
textual problems within the world of Yeshua. We must not
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seek impractical solutions. Furthermore, we must not live under the illusion that “faith” is simply
a confession or an emotion rather than an action-oriented commitment. “For as
the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).

2. Biblical scholarship often takes a historical and philological approach, but may lack an
understanding of the inspiration of the text. When we look at the New Testament in its
historical context, we see that its principles of interpretation reflect the traditional Jewish approach.
This is called midrash.

A Messianic Jewish approach should incorporate a solid historical and biological approach to
understanding Scripture, as well as a firm faith in the integrity and inerrancy of the biblical
text.

3. A Messianic Jewish approach to hermeneutics must approach the biblical text according to
the genre in which it was written. Each text has its own poetic, narrative, literary, discursive,
rhetorical, and thematic structure, each requiring its own form of analysis. Poetry is not
approached in the same way as prose, and the reader who attempts to do so may miss
the fundamental message the writers were trying to communicate. Not every text is meant to
be taken literally. This is especially true of apocalyptic literature.

There are very special rules for dealing with this type of text. My conviction is that
without a comprehensive knowledge of intertestamental and first-century Judaism,
it is impossible to properly understand the full intent and nuances of the texts.

4. Bible study should not be merely an intellectual or spiritual process. It must also
be practical and lead the student to “every good work.” For this reason, Paul wrote to
Timothy that: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be
perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16:17).

Our attempt to understand the Bible should lead us to “do the will of our Heavenly Father.”
Hermeneutics should be a tool not only for
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understanding, but also to do God's work among men.

Messianic Jewish hermeneutics faces a two-pronged challenge. On the one hand, we must
strive to approach the biblical text objectively and authentically in order to truly understand
it within its cultural and historical milieu. On the other hand, we must work to free the
text from the embedded tradition of two thousand years. Inflexible doctrinal positions are
evident in both Jewish and Christian scholarship. These must be examined and, if found to be
erroneous, rejected. There are some traditions that have come from the Greco-Roman
world that have infiltrated both Jewish and Christian hermeneutical scholarship.
Messianic Jews will have to learn to recognize and deal with imported, erroneous
interpretations, while sifting out interpretive traditions that may actually be helpful. We must
work hard to develop an original, historical approach to understanding the Bible.

One of our current challenges is to raise the level of biblical and Jewish education among
Messianic Jews. This education should be as important to us as it is to the non-Messianic Jewish
community. If we are to emulate the Jewish community at some level, we must learn
from the good things that exist in it.

Ultimately, all believers will have to deal with the same hermeneutical principles and approach
the Bible according to its historical-cultural and identity integrity, which

is a first-century Jewish book. When this happens, I believe unity and understanding will
be the result. As believers in Yeshua, we should seek a practical outcome to our study of the
sacred texts. As we seek to put God’s Word into action, we need to remember a number of
things.

First, we must have a clear understanding that we are saved by faith, through the grace of
God, for the purpose of obedience to God's commandments. "Was not Abraham
our father justified by works , when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Do you
see how faith
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“Was it by works that faith was made perfect?” (James 2:21-22) To many of
us it may sound simplistic to say that we must obey God’s commandments.
In fact, this area of hermeneutics will probably be the most
controversial in the development of a Messianic Jewish hermeneutic. The
question will arise, “Which commandments and when?”
Since this is such an important subject that it deserves full treatment, we will
address this issue in more detail in another chapter of this book.

Second, we must imitate the good examples of holy people in biblical

history. If we are to honor God’s will, we must take seriously the examples of
the first-century church. The behavior of the early believers should have
a direct bearing on what we do and how we do it in our practice today. If
they held communion each week on the “first day of the week,” we should
seek to understand the reasons and significance of this action and
encourage them to do as much as possible what they did.

Finally, we must be aware that the world has changed with the advent of
modern Western life. We no longer live in an agrarian society. For this
reason, we must learn from our hermeneutics, as well as from our
common sense, in order to apply biblical situations and principles to our
own lives. This will, of course, require making necessary inferences
through logical and rigorous analysis of biblical principles, examples,
and teachings. One of the main examples of the current challenges that
need to be met in this area is the role of women in the life and
administration of the congregation. While we cannot ignore Paul’s direct
commands in 1 Timothy 2:10 or 1 Corinthians 14, we must find spaces
and means by which modern women can find themselves active and
fulfilled in the kingdom of God. All this must be done without breaking or
nullifying any explicit command in God’s Word.

In my opinion, the hermeneutics of the 21st century will be more

pluralistic, allowing for a greater cultural expression of biblical faith. In
practical terms, this means that Messianic Jews must put Romans
14:10-13 into practice in a much more deliberate way in their congregations.
“ But why do you judge your brother? and why do you despise your brother? For all
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we will stand before the judgment seat of God. As it is written: “As I live, says
the Lord, every knee will bow to Me, and every tongue will confess to God.” So
then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Let us not judge one another any longer, but resolve not to put a stumbling block
or a stumbling block in the way of your brother."

Furthermore, Christian denominations must do the same toward Messianic

Jews. There will be congregations whose

interpretations will differ greatly from the Church, and perhaps even from other
Messianic Jewish congregations. These differences should celebrate the universal
nature of the Body of Messiah and the cultural diversity among His children. At the
same time, effective hermeneutical application will serve to break down the walls
of folklore that Satan has built to divide and diminish the effectiveness
of the universality of the message of salvation in Yeshua the Messiah.

The challenge for a Jewish-Messianic hermeneutic is to rediscover the spirit and

practices of the New Testament Church in the 21st century. The future
effectiveness of the Body of Messiah in the world will depend on our ability to
overcome the constraints of tradition and return to a much more biblical faith.
It will also depend on our ability to seek greater unity among those who profess
faith in Yeshua the Messiah, regardless of their cultural orientation.
This unity and spirit will be considerably reinforced by the
development of a more Jewish hermeneutic, both in Jewish and Christian
circles.

The Jewish mind operates in practical terms, and it is crucial that the Body of
Messiah understand this and continue to develop theology and hermeneutics. In
sharing the Good News with the Jewish people, it is very important that Messianic
Jews apply the principles of hermeneutics in the preparation of their messages.
Jewish people tend to be intellectually astute, and they feel no obligation to
listen when someone explains principles they have heard all their lives. Jewish
discourse must have something interesting as well as spiritual. It must
have a moral imperative and a practical application of the teaching that can be
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Hidden Treasures

applied in the community and in people’s private lives. This type

of message can only be taught if the text is taken in its context, with the
proper principles applied. Messianic Jews must work very carefully on
the messages they bring to their listeners. It is important for us to
develop a teaching style and approach that is consistent with Jewish
practice and firm biblical truths.

Chapter 5

Hillel was the president of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem from the last year of the first century AD until
AD 16. His partner in this position was Shammai. These two great men argued much about
everything, but together they left a profound mark on the world of Yeshua. In fact, what is called
“The Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12) was actually first formulated by Hillel, who said, “What is hateful
to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah and the commandments”
(bShabbat 31a). Hillel passed this office on to his son Gamaliel who was the teacher of the Apostle
Paul (Acts 5:34-39; 22:3).

The Babylonian Talmud: Glossary. Ed. 1. Epstein. Index Volume. London: Socino Press, 1952, p.734.

Santala, Risto. Paul, thc Man and thc Teacher in thc Light of Irwish Soun.cs. ferusalem: Kercn Mcshichit, 1995.

The Babylonian Talmud: Glossary. Ed. 1. Epstein. Index Volume. London: Socino Press, 1952, p. 736.

5
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Allison, Dale C. The Sermon on the Mount. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999, p.72.

Keener, Craig S. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdman s, 1999, p. 187.

Ben Isaiah, Abraham and Benjamin Sharfman. The Pentateuch with Rashi s Commentary: A Linear
Translation into English. Vol. 2. Exoduas. Brooklyn:

S.S. & R. Publishing Company. 1949, p. 394.

“Hermeneutics.” Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Ed. F. L. Cross. Oxford University
Press. 1983, p. 641.

See the appendix for a list of Rabbi Ishmael's thirteen midot .

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The question of mitzvot (commandments)

In a previous chapter, the question of the commandments and how to interpret

and practice the many mitzvot that we find in the biblical text was briefly touched upon. Now,
let us address these questions in greater detail. It is of great importance for Messianic Jews
today to make an orderly synthesis of what we think about God’s commandments and the
practice of them. The commandments are the clearest thing to follow when we interpret them
literally, although we must remember that there are all different types of mitzvot . There
are commandments specific to genre and time, and other types as well.

An interesting issue we have to deal with is that of head coverings. Although I wear a kippah
to weddings, funerals, and Shabbat services, I actually don’t like wearing one. If I were
to literally obey every word of the New Testament, I would not wear a kippah at any time,
especially when praying, because 1 Corinthians 11:4 says that men should not pray with
their heads covered. Verse 5 of the same chapter says that women should cover their heads.
Paul said these things based on

in a halachaic midrash, through which he made a ruling for all congregations that women
should cover their heads as a sign of submission to authority. Most modern messianic
movements are doing this the other way around. Men wear kippahs and women do not cover
their heads. In most of the evangelical world, neither men nor women cover their heads,
but they are more strict with regard to men. In most churches, a man who enters with a hat will be
asked to remove it. Was this commandment given only for the specific time and situation of the
Corinthian congregation, or was it a commandment for all times and places?

To find out which interpretation is correct, we need to ask ourselves what kind of commandment
this is. Is this really a mitzvah (commandment) that is tied to a certain time, place and cultural
context, or is it a mandate to
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all times, in all places and under all circumstances? Not all commandments are for all times and
for all people. Some mitzvot are designated for specific times and places or specific groups
of people.

The Torah has many examples of mitzvot that are designed for specific groups of people. For
example, men are commanded to be circumcised and to study Torah. Some commandments,
such as purification after childbirth, naturally apply only to women. There are
commandments only for priests and Levites that do not apply to a regular Israelite. The
commandments apply specifically to the people for whom they were given.

Likewise, there are some mitzvot directed to Gentiles and others directed to Israelites. For
example, men who were not circumcised were not

could eat the Passover, even though they were part of Israel. They came out of Egypt and could
even be Israelites, but they were not allowed to celebrate the Passover.
During the 40 years that Israel was in the wilderness, they did not keep the Passover because
all those who were born in the wilderness were uncircumcised. When they crossed the Jordan
River, the first thing they did was to have a mass circumcision. All the males of Israel were
circumcised in order to celebrate the Passover.
1 Easter. This is an example of the fact that not all commandments are for all people.

The New Testament contains commandments that were made for only one group of people.
When Ephesians 5 says, “ Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord,” we are clearly
reading a command that is intended only for women. There are also commandments for the elderly,
wives of elders, deacons, children, etc.

We need to keep aspects like genre and target audience in mind, since this is a part of hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is a way of determining what God requires of us. In other words, what does the text
actually say and how can we apply this knowledge to our lives?

Midrash is part of this hermeneutical process. It is a search for solutions

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coming from the text of the Bible to questions that the text does not directly address.
The Midrash is born out of problems

that exist within the text, as well as the contemporary needs of the believing community
that the text does not directly address. We all live in a world quite different from the one
that existed when the Bible was written.
A simple example is that we no longer live in a primarily agrarian culture, and many of
the commandments in the Bible are geared toward an agricultural society and context.
The more technology our world invents, the more questions we have to answer
about how God wants us to use these items. Especially as Jews, we have great
trouble synthesizing the literal keeping of the commandment with the principle of the
commandment in some cases.

For example, the Bible instructs us to “keep the Sabbath day holy” and says that we
should not do any manual labor or light a fire on the Sabbath. Today we live in a
different world, and so we must ask ourselves what it means to not do any labor or light a
fire in our modern context.
When a person turns the ignition key in his car, is he starting a fire? If a person turns on the
electricity or opens his refrigerator, is he starting a fire? Different groups of Jews have
developed different answers to these questions, but they are questions that must be
addressed as we try to keep the Sabbath in an age of technology that the
Bible never mentions.
When we talk about midrash and halachah, we are addressing issues that have to do with
life. This is not just theoretical theology because we actually create these types of
midrashim all the time.

An example we discussed in the previous chapter was the problem of how congregations
receive tithes from their members. Texts are taken from the Tanach and the New Testament.

Testament, and are connected to draw conclusions that are not explicit in either of
the original texts. This midrash is then applied to situations
common.

We should not allow ourselves to become afraid or retreat when we hear the words
“midrash,” “Torah,” “halachah,” or “rabbis.” There is no reason to be afraid.
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afraid to study the Jewish context of the New Testament. It is a sin for us to try to make anyone
Jewish. We should not tell anyone to keep the Sabbath or to be circumcised or to keep any
of these things unless he or she feels led by the Spirit of God to do so.

However, it is necessary to describe these issues because this is the world of the New Testament
and these are the kinds of issues the Apostles had to address. Furthermore, these were
the methods used to bring life to the first-century Church.

“Halacha” is simply a technical term that means the practical result of our daily living according to
the Torah. How do we walk according to God’s will? When one examines Paul’s various
letters closely, it becomes apparent that they are divided into two parts. Typically, the first
part is theological and the second part is practical. The word that is the dividing line
between the theological and practical parts of the epistles is “walk.” The first three chapters of
Ephesians are very theological and theoretical, but then, before Paul begins to give many
practical commands, Ephesians 4:1 says, “…I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
with which you were called.” The first part of Colossians is also very theological, but then in
chapter two, verse six, we have the practical section with the words, “Therefore, as you
received the gift of God, so you walk in the same way as you did in the first chapter .”

Messiah Yeshua as Lord; so walk in Him." Halacha is the way we live our faith in practice.

Paul was a rabbi with a rabbinical education, so he wrote as a rabbi. He studied with the
greatest rabbi of his generation. So it should come as no surprise that he uses rabbinic terms
like “walking” as a way of life.

Another issue that needs to be addressed when believers study the commandments
of the Bible is what Paul meant in Galatians when he spoke negatively about being “under
the Torah (law).” Since Paul says in Romans 7:12, “Therefore the Torah is holy, and the
commandment holy and righteous and good,” it is clear that he does not mean that the
Torah is a bad thing. Rather, the problem arises with the expression being “under the
Torah.” The key
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The key to understanding what it means to be “under the Torah” and why Paul saw it as negative
is found in Exodus 23:5. This verse says, “If you see the donkey of one who hates you bowed
down under its load, you shall not abandon it, but help it up.” Here, the Torah commands
us to have mercy on this donkey that is so weighed down by the load it is trying to walk
under that it can barely move. If we come across it along the way, we are to take its load off
and set it free so that it can walk.

Paul’s understanding of the negative effects of being under the Torah comes from this
passage. Therefore, to be under the Torah is to be so burdened by the Torah that one cannot
live. It is possible to have such a legalistic spirit in order to keep the Torah (which is not
necessarily linked to the number of commandments a person keeps, but rather
to his or her attitude),

that it becomes impossible to walk freely. When a person is living under the yoke of the Torah,
he lives under constant pressure and fear. One cannot function in love and freedom when he is
terribly under the yoke of anything.

Does faith exempt us from keeping the commandments of the Torah? There is a principle
involved here, and it has to do with God’s ultimate interests. Paul writes numerous times
in his letters that Abraham was saved by faith, so this idea must have been an important
pillar underlying his worldview. In Romans 4-5, Galatians 3, and many other places,
Abraham’s faith is mentioned, citing Genesis 15:6, which says, “Abraham believed God,
and it was credited to him as righteousness.” When Abraham believed, did he stop keeping
God’s commandments? Of course not. Abraham was saved by faith, but that faith
brought him into obedience to God’s laws, just as Genesis 26:5 says, “Because Abraham
obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

So what is Paul’s point? He is teaching that we are freed from the burden of the Torah by the
cross. The cross frees us and frees us from the burden of the Torah, not from the Torah itself. It
frees us from the curse of the Torah. Galatians 3:13 says that through the cross we are
freed from the curse of the Torah. The Torah has entire chapters filled with terrible curses,
especially at the end of Deuteronomy.
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What is the function of these curses? Their function is simply to instill fear!
These curses were designed to scare people into being obedient.

Europe has a lot of ancient medieval cathedrals with creepy paintings

of the Last Judgment on the walls. These paintings

They show people being cut into pieces and decapitated, and the devil swallowing them. The
purpose of these paintings is to provoke fear. The Torah has curses (punishments) for
2
precisely the same reason. There is love, as 1 John However, where there is fear there cannot be
4:18 says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with
punishment, and he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” Whenever there is no love,
the motivation for worshiping God is wrong.

God is not interested in sacrifices any more than He is in the love and motives of
our hearts. We see this in Amos 6:6, Jeremiah 7:23, Isaiah 1, and many other
passages. God is not an idol who needs people to feed Him or build a house for
Him. He does not need anything from man. He gives to all life and breath and
everything they have. What God requires of Israel and the whole world is that
they have a true and honest relationship with Him, based on the inner motives
of man’s heart. Love given freely is the opposite of fear. The reason we needed
the New Covenant promised by Jeremiah was to free us from fear and the curse
of the Torah, so that we can have a relationship with God and obey His
mitzvot out of love and the honest motives of our hearts. God never wanted to
scare people into doing what He said.

obey. He always wanted a relationship based on true faith and love.

What changed when Yeshua died on the cross and rose from the dead?
Galatians 3:13 says that when Yeshua died on the cross, He became a curse for
us. Paul makes this midrash based on the same text in Deuteronomy 21 that
we studied in the chapter on kal va homer. Paul uses the phrase from the Torah
“Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” to explain why Yeshua was
crucified. He became a curse for us. He did not die
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to take away the Torah, but to take away the curse of the Torah. He died to free us from
fear because fear was an instrument of the devil to enslave us.
Yeshua freed us from the burden of Torah because the burden of Torah is not a
positive thing.

The burden of the Torah was what Yeshua was referring to when He condemned the
Pharisees and scribes in Luke 11:46: “Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load
people with burdens that are too much for them to bear, yet you yourselves will
not lift a finger to lift them.” Yeshua’s statements here refer to the issue of helping the
donkey in Exodus (which we just focused on), and are also a play on the words of King
Rehoboam’s counselors in 1 Kings 12:10-11. In this passage, they foolishly advise
the king to tell the Israelites who were complaining about the heavy taxes and forced
labor that King Solomon had placed upon them: “My little finger is thicker than my
father’s loins. So if my father laid a heavy yoke on you, I will add to it.” This is the
problem with having a religion instead of a relationship with God. Yeshua came to
free us from this problem, and He gave us His Spirit to guide us in

The whole truth. This is not so that we can do whatever we want, but rather so that we
will be enabled to do God’s will. The lessening of this yoke is what Yeshua meant
when He declared in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke
is easy and My burden is light.”

The reason we must “die with Yeshua” and be baptized is so that our own ego and
passions will no longer have dominion over us. They dictate to us, and without God’s
help we are powerless before them, as Paul teaches us in Romans 6. Since we
have been “crucified with the Messiah,” we have received a new life, an
immortal life, in which we are led by God’s Spirit and His Word, and not by our own
lusts.

To summarize these two things, let's look at Galatians 5:18, which says, "But if you
are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." Although the text says
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Just because we are not under the law does not mean that we are free to do whatever we
want. Not being under the curse of the Torah means that we will no longer
partake in the works of the flesh. However, whenever there is an area of our lives that we have
not yet submitted to the Spirit of God, we will be subject to the application of the curse of the
Torah.

Let's get this straight. If we are law-abiding citizens and follow the laws of our country, we
will live in freedom and will not be afraid of the law. If we see a police officer, we can say
hello to him, ask about his well-being, or ask for help. On the other hand, if we are
breaking the law and see a police officer coming toward us, we can do so.

We immediately become afraid. We think, “Maybe he’s coming

to get me because he knows what I’ve done wrong, and my face
might give me away.” 7* So we try to run away and not
meet him face to face. On the other hand, if we are not guilty and
have done nothing wrong, we are free! The law has no effect in
this case.

Most of us have areas in our lives that we have not yet submitted
to the control of God's Spirit.
We need the Torah to help us control the areas within us that
have not been controlled. Paul’s statement is conditional:
“If you walk in the Spirit, then you are no longer under the
Torah.” If we have not submitted a particular area to the Spirit,
then the conclusion is that we still need the Torah, and the
Torah will be our judge. The Torah will, in a sense, be a hedge to
protect us from our own inclinations and weaknesses in these
areas.
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Moishe Rosen, the founder of “Lews for Jesus,” once , said one
said that the problem with most believers is not that we don’t have
enough life; it’s that we haven’t died enough in the Messiah. In
our baptism, we didn’t really intend to give up our past.
We didn’t really intend to give up all our sins and lay them at the
foot of the cross. We wrapped some of our old lives in a plastic bag,
so to speak, and when we entered baptism, that part remained
dry. If we had died with the Messiah and were truly resurrected to a
new life filled with the Spirit, the curse of the Torah
would have no effect on us, because we would be doing God’s
will naturally. The Torah would be written in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, and we would automatically and through our inner motivations
be doing God’s will.

This is what Paul teaches. He was not teaching against the Torah. Anyone who teaches
against the Torah is a false prophet. Paul could not be teaching against the Torah when he
says in Romans 7 that the Torah is from God and is a good and spiritual thing.
In Romans 3:31 he asks, “Do we then nullify the law through faith? No, certainly not! On the
contrary, we uphold the law.” In other words, we defend and uphold the Torah.
What was crucified was not the Torah, but the burden of the Torah.
Paul could not say that the Torah is good, spiritual, and from God in one passage,
and then in another passage say that the Torah is bad and dead.

Abraham was saved by faith, but he still had to obey the Lord's statutes,
commandments, and ordinances. Anyone who teaches that salvation by faith does not
require obedience is teaching against the will of God. Yeshua said in
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John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” This

combination of love and keeping the commandments appears many times in
the Tanach as well (Exod. 20:6; Deut. 7:9; Dan. 9:4). If we truly believe that
He is the Son of God, then we cannot deny that God’s mitzvot and Yeshua’s
commandments are one and the same. We were saved by faith so that we
could be free and obedient to God in love and in purity of heart and mind,
being servants of righteousness rather than servants of sin.

Chapter ()

The apostle Paul declares to the Gentile disciples of Yeshua in Eph 2:19 that in the Messiah they are
no longer strangers, but “fellow citizens with the saints” and “members of God’s household.”
Although they do not become Jews, the work of the Messiah makes the Gentile who believes in Him
a child of Abraham through faith (Gal 2:26,29). The rule of Exod 12:43 is still in force, and
to this day foreigners cannot celebrate the Passover. However, through the work of the Messiah,
there are no “foreigners” in the Kingdom of God. This is why the apostle Paul commands Gentile
believers to celebrate the Passover in I Cor 5:8, without thereby breaking the Torah’s command.

This is similar to a speeding ticket. The traffic department should not create tickets or speed cameras
to ensure that drivers obey. However, many people do not break this and many other traffic laws
because they are afraid of being punished. In this case, the driver is 'under' the law. Ideally, the
driver would have as a principle in life never to exceed the speed limit, regardless of tickets or speed
cameras. In this case, the law would be written in his heart and he would naturally observe it, without
fear and without being 'under' it.
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The Jewish-Messianic Halacha

The word halacha comes from the Hebrew word nDbb “to walk.” This is a technical term
used for the rules that govern life within the Jewish community.
The term halachah appears many times in the New Testament, especially in Paul’s letters.
He uses the word “walk” in almost all of his letters when he gives practical instructions on how
a believer should conduct his life. Luke also uses this term when describing the life of a
righteous person. Here are some examples of this point:

“And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances
1
of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:6)

“...that you may live (walk) in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His kingdom
2
and glory.” (1 Thessalonians 2:12)

“Let us walk properly, as in the daytime, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness
3
and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy.” (Romans 13:13)

“Let each one walk as the Lord has distributed to him, as God has called each one. This is
4
what I order in all the churches.” (1 Corinthians 7:17)

There are many more examples of the use of the term “walk” in the context of halachah, but
these are sufficient to prove my point. It seems evident from these passages that the first-
century church was actively seeking to form a specialized messianic halachah , and that it
was referred to by the word “walk.” There are also rulings and decrees legislated for
believers by the Apostles that do not specifically use the word “walk.” Some identifying
terms here would be “regulate,” “permit,” or “prohibit.” Each of these words has a
corresponding Hebrew term that is very common in rabbinic literature. “Permit,” for
example, reflects the Hebrew halachic term ttid which means “to release” or “to give
permission.”
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The apostles understood from Yeshua’s words in Matthew 16:19 that they had the
right to “bind” (permit) and “loose” (forbid) on earth. “I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and
whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Yeshua’s words are clear only
if they are understood within the Jewish context of forming halachah. Yeshua
gave the apostles authority to make decisions that would be acceptable, or, “bound”
in heaven as well as on earth.

This is exactly the same authority that the Rabbis took upon themselves.
Midrash Tehillim 4 says: “An earthly king makes a decree, and even if his
advisors ask him to, they cannot cancel it. Whether they want to or not, they have
to obey the decree, but if the king himself asks for it, the decree is
canceled. But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like that, because whatever the
Sanhedrin decrees, He obeys.” Although the rabbis seem to have taken their
authority a bit too far in this case, the principle is the same.
Yeshua gave the apostles the right to form halacha by His authority.
However, these decisions must still be based on Scripture and without the dictatorial
ex-cathedra attitude that has plagued the Church for so many years.

Before we discuss the issues and guidelines for forming halachah in modern
Messianic Judaism, let us first take a close look at the context of Matthew 23:1-4 and
what it implies for Messianic halachah today. The meaning of this passage for us
today cannot be very different from the way the apostles understood it in the first
century.

Yeshua and His disciples were part of the world of the Pharisees in the Land of Israel
during the first century, and Yeshua had a very Pharisaic worldview.
Therefore, all the arguments He had with the Pharisees were arguments
between fellow believers. In the first century B.C., the Pharisees
brought a religious revolution to Judaism, saying that the will of God could be known
and discerned by any student of the Holy Scriptures. Before this great revolution and
according to the Torah of Moses, the way to discern the “will of God” was to ask the
priest.

or to the prophet. When these two institutions were marked by corruption and Hellenism,
the Pharisees developed a school of thought that acquired the
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knowledge of the “will of God” by studying the text of the Torah.

Yeshua thought this way too, which is why the Gospels record so many
arguments between Him and the Pharisees. Only because they considered
Yeshua “one of their own” could the Pharisees have come to Him with
accusations and questions about washing hands and picking corn on the Sabbath.
If He had been a Sadducee, they would not have bothered to accuse Him.
We all argue with the people closest to us and accuse those we know best.

Matthew 23:1-4 says, “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The
scribes and the Pharisees have sat on Moses’ seat. Therefore, do and observe all
that they tell you, but do not follow their works, for they say and do not do.
They tie up heavy burdens [and hard to carry] and put them on men’s
shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with one of their
fingers.’” Why does the text mention that Jesus spoke to both the crowds
and His disciples? The point of mentioning the crowds is to show that
these words apply to both the common people and the disciples of Jesus.

If we are to understand these instructions correctly, we must first discuss the

meaning of the term “sitting on Moses’s chair.” Moses’s chair has been found
in several synagogues dating back to the Mishnaic period (the period in which
the Mishnah was written). The rabbi would sit on Moses’s chair, (which functioned
as a pulpit), and give his drashah, “homily,” after the Torah reading. Because
of the idea

In the revolutionary Pharisaic belief that the study and interpretation of Scripture
was the standard by which man could know God’s will, the rabbis who explained
the Torah from “Moses’ seat” had great authority and responsibility.
These rabbis, who were in Moses’ line of authority, had the right to exegete the
text and draw practical or moral conclusions from it. This was the first method
of forming halachah in the Jewish community.

Yeshua declared that Torah teachers and Pharisees have the authority to
interpret and create halacha when they are explaining the text of the Torah of Moses.
However, Yeshua's words here do not give them carte blanche to
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to do halachah for His disciples. The statement limits them to the time when
they “sit in the seat of Moses,” which means, only when they are exegeting
the text of the Torah in the synagogue.

Now, we need to clarify the words, “you must obey them and do whatever they
tell you,” because many things have changed in Judaism in the last two
thousand years. In the time of Yeshua, the rabbis had not yet given any official,
authoritative teaching against Yeshua or belief in Him.
Unfortunately, after two thousand years of “Christian” history, both the situation
of the Jewish people and Christianity has changed significantly. During these
years, Jewish tradition has made many controversial decisions against Christianity
and Yeshua Himself. In my opinion, however, if we place Yeshua’s words back
in their historical setting, we can obey them and still continue to respect the
Jewish tradition of exegesis and interpretation of the Torah.

Yeshua’s instruction to “do what the Pharisees say, but not what they do,”
is curiously similar to King Alexander Yannai’s instruction to his wife, Queen
Alexandra (Shlomzion), as recorded in bSotah 22b. He said, “Do not fear
the Pharisees or the non-Pharisees, but guard against the hypocrites, for their
deeds are like the deeds of Zimri, yet they expect a reward from Phinehas.”
Clearly, Yeshua’s problem with these Pharisees is that they made many
Torah rules but did not keep them themselves. He was opposed to making
demands and placing burdens on people without regard to whether it was
practical or even possible to keep them. The Torah was given so that we
could live by it. It is not meant to be simply a theoretical exercise for people
living in a Beit Midrashy who never have to deal with the daily, practical
problems.

The place to start in creating halachah today has to be with Yeshua’s

instructions to the disciples in this passage, so we are obligated to carefully
consider His words. This passage means that we must make a very serious
effort to know, study, and understand what “the Pharisees who sit in Moses’
seat” say and teach about a variety of issues that we all face as Jews living
in a postmodern world. We must discover an operating system that allows us
to respect and accept the traditional interpretation of Orthodox Judaism. At the
same time,
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we must add elements of life, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and a good dose of God's love
and grace, in the spirit of Yeshua's teachings. This may be the greatest challenge facing the
Messianic Jewish movement today.

A follower of Yeshua must always take into account the principles of God’s grace.
Messianic Jewish halachah must stay as close as possible to the Word of God and
remind us that we will be judged on the basis of God’s grace through Yeshua’s sacrifice.
This grace of God, however, cannot be taken as an a-priori consideration in forming halachah.
It can only be considered as a post-priori abatement of circumstances.

To explain this better, let us remember that laws are made based on certain
standards and not based on exceptions and special cases.
These exceptions should not be the norm. Likewise, God’s grace should not justify making
a ruling that is more lenient than the Torah’s requirements in normal cases. If the
normal standard cannot be met because of exceptional and unavoidable
circumstances, then God’s grace will cover that situation.

Let us now examine some potential problems with the formation of halachah in
today’s Messianic Jewish movement. We need to be honest and admit that we are sorely
lacking in the unity, preparation, training, and tradition to form our own halachah body at
this time. If we are to succeed, we must work to increase our integrity in the eyes of both
the Jewish and Christian communities. Since we lack important knowledge about
Torah and Judaism, our integrity as an authentic Jewish movement is in
question in the eyes of both Jews and Christians. Furthermore, as long as our
movement depends on donations from Gentile churches to survive, we will be subject
to accusations of potential bias in our decisions.

Unfortunately, we do not have many leaders who are widely respected enough in the Messianic
and Christian communities for their halachic decisions to be accepted by the majority of the
Messianic community. When we create a halachic body , we have to make sure that we do
so in as isolated a manner as possible from internal politics and power plays. We also have to
try to
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not to be divisive by making “rules of conduct” that only a small minority will keep, while
the rest continue to do as they please. Unfortunately, most members of the
Messianic movement hardly care about the halachah that is clearly written
in Scripture, much less Judaism. If they don’t even care about God’s explicit laws, they certainly
wouldn’t care about what some leaders decide as rules that would affect their lifestyle.

Most importantly, we should not invent our own rules if they take us out of fellowship with the
rest of the people of Israel. There is nothing that will make us a cult faster than making our
own halachah in opposition to biblical Jewish tradition or in opposition to the
commandments of the New Testament. We cannot begin to impose binding
rules on our members that further alienate us from the Jewish community. It may, in fact, be
better to simply accept the traditional halachah on all matters, rejecting only those that
directly impinge on the person and character of Yeshua or that go against the written Word of
God. On the other hand, some congregations may find it preferable, for
demographic reasons, to simply settle for the Protestant model and follow the path of Western
Christian culture.

These words may cut and wound deeply, but without an honest assessment of who we are
today, we will not be able to form an effective and trustworthy body of halachah . Without this kind
of painful honesty, any halachah we make will be short-lived and divisive to the Body of
Messiah and to Israel as a people. In short, if we want to create our own body of halachah, we
need to do so with great caution and with much prayer and consideration.

Rather than simply focusing on the potential pitfalls and problems inherent in constructing
messianic halachah , let us also review some important steps we need to take as we
begin to navigate these challenging seas. The first guideline for messianic halachah is
that it must include the acceptance of all halachic rulings , apostolic examples, and inferences
that we find in the New Testament. One of the basic rules for forming halachah is that it must
build on the foundation of what previous generations have spoken as authoritative. We cannot
create a new
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halacha by ignoring or underestimating the apostolic writers of the

inspired Word of God. Ignoring the decisions of the apostles will make
the Messianic movement live up to the accusations of our Jewish brothers
that we are a sect, with the Christian world joining them in the same refrain.
Forming halachah cannot become a tool for solving political problems in
the Messianic movement. Rather, it must be a sincere pursuit of doing
God’s will in the Spirit and truth of His living Word. We must recommit
ourselves to the fact that God’s Word is the sole authority for our teaching
and our actions.

The second step we need to take as individuals and as a movement is to think

through our position on the relationship between the biblical commands,
God’s grace, and our unity with the rest of the Body of Messiah. We cannot
alienate our non-Jewish Christian brothers who are still stranded on
the unbalanced margins of Martin Luther’s understanding of God’s grace.
We want to present a theology that is grounded in a loving and friendly
manner, without compromising God’s Word or the Jewishness of the New
Testament. Please see the chapter in this book on the commands and grace for
a possible synthesis of these important concepts.

Third, we must commit ourselves to unity and fellowship, despite all the
arguments and disagreements that may arise during the process of
making halachah. There are all sorts of disagreements, personality
conflicts, vested interests, and temperamental issues that may arise during
such discussions and deliberations. We must demonstrate great tolerance and
civilized behavior toward one another, no matter how much we disagree. We
must remember that the purpose of forming halachah is to work toward
unity in both action and doctrine. If our own halachah alienates us from one
another or from the Jewish community, it would be best for us to discard
the idea until we mature.

It will take a long time until we form a Messianic Jewish halacha .

It will take years to develop the kind of respect and prestige that is necessary
for our community to respect the decisions of a committee. If we are going
to have Messianic Jewish halachah in the future, we will have to work
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It takes a lot to earn the respect and authority of God and the movement. It will also
require erudition and education, and erudition takes a long time to build and develop within
a community.

It is my firm belief that with the goodwill of our Messianic community members and a
broad base of thoughtful and knowledgeable leaders, we can build a biblical
and Jewish halachah for future generations of Messianic Jews. We must begin by preparing
sufficient moral and financial support for those who would fulfill the task, and by choosing
people according to their spiritual and intellectual qualifications as honest students of God’s
Word and Jewish tradition. Our halachah must be rooted in Scripture and in the grace of
Yeshua. A vital part of developing Messianic Jewish halachah is to turn to authentic
Jewish hermeneutics, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In this way, we will be
able to grow and evolve into a healthy, strong, and unified Body of Messiah.

Chapter 7

In this verse, “walking” is directly related to keeping God’s commandments.

This verse uses “walks” to refer to the righteous way of life that the believer should follow.

Paul's instruction to the Romans regarding civil authorities is directly related to

keeping the halachah which the Rabbis later formulated as “dina demalchuta dina,” (the law
of the kingdom – Rome or any other pagan government – is law).

4
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Paul here is clearly making a halachic ruling for all his congregations. He commands
people in all congregations to walk according to their “calling.” If they are Jews
(circumcised), they are not to be walking like Gentiles (uncircumcised). This is a halachic
ruling that he binds all congregations to as an ordinance.
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The Principles of Jewish Education

There are seven pillars in every Jewish community that have allowed us to survive for
thousands of years despite extremely difficult circumstances. We certainly would not have
survived without these pillars. The first pillar is the synagogue and worship. The community
must come together and worship the Creator. The second is the charitable duty of caring for
widows and orphans. The third pillar is called Talmud Torah, which means school for children.
Without teaching the Word of God to children, there can be no continuity or transfer of values
and culture.
Therefore, this pillar is crucial. The fourth pillar is Beit MidrasK which means adult
education. Adult Jews are commanded to continue to study Torah throughout their lives. The
Torah is eternal and renewed by the Lord every day.
Therefore, we see that education (study) is very important for the Jewish community.

The other pillars include mikveh (ritual immersion), caring for the poor, and caring for the dead,
which means washing their bodies before burial, maintaining the cemetery, etc. In this study,
however, we will focus on education and its importance in the Jewish community.

One of the greatest commandments in Judaism is to learn the Word of God. God saves the
mentally handicapped, the ignorant, and the mentally ill out of His pure mercy.

However, salvation is not the only thing God wants from us. He wants us to be instruments
and tools in His hands. God can turn a donkey into a prophet, and He even did this once in the
case of Balaam.
However, none of us should strive to be a mere donkey.
God can and does use people even if they are ignorant, but learning and studying God's
Word is essential.

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one
approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word
of truth .”
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Showing ourselves approved means justifying the credit God has given us. We have
received credit from God by grace, but with the idea that we will grow in faith and be
useful in the Kingdom of God. If a person wants to be useful in any position or
profession, such as being a housewife or mother, a carpenter, an electrician, or a doctor,
then continual growth is a requirement. Professional growth and growth in
“professional faith” are vital, because if we are given the opportunity to witness to
someone about Yeshua, we must have the answers.

We are living in a world that is not as simple as it used to be a few hundred years
ago, because people have access to modern communication and a wealth of
information. Children as young as seven or eight already know how to navigate the
internet and look things up, and knowledge is power. Knowledge of God’s Word
is power twice over, because it affects not only our lives here on earth, but also in
heaven. Ignorance has never been a gift, and study is one of the most important things
in life. This is both the biblical and Jewish understanding of life. We are commanded
to study and to show ourselves approved in order to justify trust and confidence.

that God has given us. We are commanded to have answers from the Word of
God and the Holy Spirit if anyone asks us to give the reason for the hope that is in us.
However, this is only one aspect of understanding and studying God’s Word.

Jewish people study the Bible universally by reading the same Torah portion in
synagogues around the world, each week in particular. It does not matter if they are
Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, or Messianic.
All Jews throughout the world read the same text from the Bible each
week. Once a year we publicly read and study all five Books of Moses and part of the
Prophets in the parasha (weekly portion).

There is a portion in Exodus that contains some very important things about education
and study. Reading in Exodus 12:25-27 we see: when you come into the land that the

The Lord will give you, as He promised, observe this rite. When your children ask
you: What rite is this? You shall answer: It is the sacrifice of the Passover to the
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The Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he struck
the Egyptians and delivered our houses. Then the people bowed down and worshiped.”

When our children see us doing something, no matter what it is, they will ask, “What is that
thing you are doing?” As they grow up, children ask questions such as, “Mommy and Daddy,
why are we going to church? Why do we believe in God? Who is this Yeshua?”

Why do you give money? Can’t we stay home? Can I stay home just this once and watch an
interesting program on television instead of going to church?” They will want to know what
our lives are centered around, and the answers we give our children will stay with them.

for the rest of their lives. They will not remain faithful or walk in the light if we give them the
wrong answers. They will know before anyone else if we are false. Children know these
things.

This section of the Torah is from the time when the people were still in Egypt, and it
predicted that after they arrived in the Land, the children would ask their parents: “What is
this work that you are doing? What is the center of your life?” We must give them an
appropriate answer.

We don’t go to school just to make more money. It’s about the quality of our lives and how
we’re going to do our jobs and what equipment we’re going to be able to use. A person can
still tighten screws with an old kitchen knife if there’s no screwdriver available, and most
of us have done that once or twice. If you look at the tip of the kitchen knife after it’s been used
in place of a screwdriver, however, it’s clear that it’s not ideal. We damage the knife,
we damage the screw, and most likely, we damage our hands because if it slips, it cuts us.

It was not made for that purpose. You can't be a good musician without going to school, and
you can't do a good job of cooking at home without learning how to do it. If we want to do
something worthwhile, we have to know how to do it properly.

Apparently the devil has deceived the Church by saying, “You don’t need to learn. Just
sit or sleep on the Bible, and somehow, by osmosis, something will come to you.”
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will be filtered into you.” However, that is not how it works. Study is essential.

In Exodus 13:14-16 it says: “When your son asks you tomorrow, ‘What are these?’
You shall answer him: The LORD with a strong hand brought us out of the house of bondage.
For it came to pass, when Pharaoh was hardened against letting us go, that the LORD slew all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice
unto the LORD every male that openeth the womb; but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.
And this shall be as a sign upon thy hand, and as frontlets between thine eyes, that with a
mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.

One very important thing about the concept of Jewish education is that education involves
signs. For example, in every doctor’s office there is a diploma hanging on the wall that
says which school he graduated from, and this makes a big difference. No one wants a
neurosurgeon who received his degree by correspondence. The diploma acts as a
sign to prove that he received a genuine high-level education.

God’s education involves signs too. God says that when our children ask, “What are you
doing here?” we are to tell them, “God brought us out of Egypt with signs and wonders and
with a mighty hand, and here is the sign that every Jew should have. He should have the
Word of the Lord between his eyes and in his hand as a symbol of his relationship with
God.”

We all have symbols. Most people have wedding rings, and some churches have
a cross. We may also have personal symbols that mean nothing to anyone but
ourselves. My wife keeps the pants my son wore to his Bar Mitzvah in a

Hidden Treasures
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trunk in the basement, even though she's so little now that we couldn't even make a sleeve out of
it for him. For her, the pants have a special meaning.

Our schools and teachers are also symbols of our education, and they have value. I was fortunate to
have had some of the best teachers in both Judaism and Christianity. I was fortunate to be
born at a time when some of the “giants” were still alive. I was privileged to have been taught by
people like Martin Buber, one of the most famous Jewish philosophers. I listened to them and drank
from their wells of knowledge. I remember, and still quote, sermons my teachers gave over 30 years
ago, not because I am so smart, but because I wanted to know what God had for me. I needed to
have the tools to face my Jewish brothers and sisters and convince them, with the help of the
Holy Spirit, why Yeshua is the Messiah.

Maybe in the United States, a person might say, “Follow me just because I’m pretty and happy,” but
that’s not how it works with Jews and Arabs or much of the world. We have to be able to give an
answer about the hope that God has planted within us, and that answer has to come from the
Word of God. We can’t give what we don’t have. That’s the number one principle in education and in
life. The question now is, where are we looking for what we want to give? We want to be God’s
servants so that He can use us. He made us, He gave us a nose, a mouth, a brain, and eyes, and
God can use us if we are willing to be used by Him.

To be a priest in the Tanach, there were certain requirements. One had to be born of the family of
Aaron, but that was still not enough. Men had to be prepared from the beginning.

three months until they were twenty years old. During that entire time, no service in the Temple
was allowed. All this training was done in preparation for eventually serving. At twenty, they began to
serve the priests as apprentices, until they were thirty years old, which was another ten
years of preparation. They could only serve in the Temple from the age of thirty to fifty. They spent
thirty years preparing because they could not make mistakes with God's holy things. Making a
mistake with the
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Temple implements could be deadly, as is clear from certain narratives in

the Tanach.

Why did the sons of Eli and the sons of Aaron, Moses' nephews, die?
“Bringing strange fire” means that there was a proper place to get fire for the altar, but they were
lazy. They became lazy because they drank alcohol and their perceptions and reflexes
were reduced. After they had drunk, they probably said, “Why should we go there to get fire?
There is fire here closer to us.” So they brought the fire that God had not prescribed and were
instantly killed by the Lord. Therefore, the priests had to be very careful, because they were
handling God’s holy things.

Being a pastor or a teacher of God’s Word today is just as scary as it was in the past. James
3:1 says, “Do not let many of you become teachers,” because it is a very dangerous job.
Congregation leaders are dealing with people’s lives, souls, emotions, and family situations,
and this is a huge obligation. I lose a lot of sleep over what I counsel people in our congregation
in Jerusalem because I see children imitating me and saying, “When

When I grow up I want to be like Joseph or Marcia, or other teachers of God's Word.” When I
counsel people whose lives or marriages are struggling, I have to be careful and put everything
I say to the approval of the Holy Spirit, because my words can either build their lives or tear
them down.
There is no job more important and with more responsibility than being a shepherd of God's
flock.

There is no work that is more rewarding either, and I am not talking about financial rewards. I
have 'great-grandchildren' in the Lord scattered all over the world, and there is nothing
more rewarding than knowing that I helped some of these people find Yeshua,
be saved, and have their sins forgiven. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing them
crucified and raised with the Messiah to a new life. There are Jews, Arabs, Germans,
Finns, Japanese, and Brazilians who were formerly pagans and have come to the Lord
through my help. There is great reward for that.
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This is a great joy, but also a great responsibility. God expects me to share the truth, not just
a bunch of nice words. If we are called to be servants, ministers, pastors, teachers, or
elders, it is very important to make sure we have the right equipment for the job. It is
impossible to teach what we do not yet have or know. To have, we have to
receive. To receive, we have to sit down, work, and be trained.

One of the principles I mentioned is a sign of the education we received from

God, which could be a degree or a life of service and the respect of the community that
says, “This man knows what he is talking about when he speaks of
Word of

God.” God’s way of educating is interesting, because He uses tests to see whether people
are faithful or not, even if this is difficult for us to accept.

One of the most famous tests in the Bible was the one God gave to Abraham. Abraham
waited years to have a son with his wife Sarah, and finally Isaac was born.
So when his son reached the age of twelve, God came to him in Genesis 22 and said, “Take
your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there
as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you.” We know that God did this to
test him, because the previous verse says, “God tested Abraham.”

But what is the point of these tests? Did God really need to test Abraham? God could see into
Abraham’s heart and know whether he was following Him, and whether he believed or not. The
answer is that it was Abraham who needed the tests!
He needed the tests for the same reason that every elementary, middle, and high school student
needs tests. Most high school, middle school, and even college teachers are not so cruel and sadistic that they enjoy
giving students impossible-to-solve tests. The tests are so that the student knows where he stands, and so he can

know what he has learned and what he has not learned. The test was given to Abraham because God knew his
heart, but Abraham needed to know how far he was willing to go in order to obey God. There is no learning in
Judaism without tests.
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In some places in the United States they are trying to do away with testing, and this is a big
mistake. God tests us, and without these tests we ourselves do not know where our
faith will take us. Abraham's test has become a symbol of the great

Abraham’s faith, dedication, and willingness to sacrifice everything valuable for the sake
of God and His Word. As a result of his approval, Abraham became such a symbol of faith that
he became known as “the father of the faithful.”

After Abraham's test, Genesis 22:16-17 states the reward: "By Myself I have sworn, declares
the LORD, 'because you have done this and have not withheld your only son from Me, I will
surely bless you and multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens and as the sand
on the seashore; your descendants will possess the cities of their enemies.'" When he passed
the test, there was a reward in that the Lord blessed him and multiplied him. Education,
especially biblical education, is essentially passing the test and receiving the
reward. Likewise, when one trains dogs and horses, he gives them a biscuit or a lump of
bread when they do what is right.

This is also how God deals with education. When God saw that Abraham passed the test,
He rewarded him with His blessing. In every instance recorded in the Bible where God tested
people, they became a great blessing after they passed. Testing and rewarding are very
important concepts in Jewish education. It is not enough to just sit on the bench and say,
“Now I have learned how to do this.” If we do not practice what we have learned, then we
have not learned anything.

After I graduated from a Christian university in the United States, my wife Marcia and I
invited one of my professors to dinner. At the time, he told me, “Joe, God won’t be able to use
you until you forget everything you learned at this university.” What I learned in the
classroom was a lot of useless knowledge compared to what I learned from my professors
outside the classroom, observing how they lived, treated their families, prayed, and
studied God’s Word on their own. What I saw in their lives was a life-changing experience
for me. Knowledge is important, but if it is not applied to life, it is not meaningful.
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can serve God effectively.

The rabbis have a book called Pirkei Avôf, “The Ethics of the Fathers,” which
says that if a person wants to learn for the sake of teaching, God will give him
the opportunity to learn. If he wants to learn in order to teach others, God
will give him the opportunity to learn for himself and to teach others. While these
things are good, if a person wants to learn in order to practice what he
has learned, then God will give him the opportunity to learn, to teach others, to
practice what he has learned, and as a bonus, eternal life.

We do not study just for the sake of learning. The Greeks, pagan
philosophers, studied just for the sake of learning and their own ego, but the
Jews are more practical. We learn with the intention of putting into practice and
doing something with what we are learning. When we put into practice what we
learn, we are learning about life. When we practice what we learn, we
are given the opportunity to learn and teach others and to practice this
knowledge and eternal life as well.

Another statement by Pirkei Avôt is that anyone whose practice is less than his
learning will end up losing his learning. In other words, if we do not use
what we have learned, we will lose everything. On the other hand,
anyone whose practice is greater than his learning will maintain his learning
and receive the reward in heaven.

We say in Hebrew: Lo há-midrash há-ikar, elah há~ma 'asei

“learning is not the main thing, but doing” We have to know how to do
something before we can do it.

I have been using computers since 1982, and I basically use the computer as a
typewriter because I don't know how to develop software and I've never
programmed anything. I probably only use fifteen or twenty percent
of the capacity of my word processor, "Word", and I know it can do much
more. They say Einstein only used five percent of his capacity, and
most of us probably don't even use that much! God can use any of us to do
powerful and wonderful things, but the secret is that we have to exercise our
faculties and put them to good use.
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function so that we can become useful to God and His kingdom. None of us have reached
even fifty percent of the abilities God has given us. God’s Word is a tool with which we are to
exercise our minds.

People say, “Look how successful the Jews are.” There are more Jewish Nobel Prize winners
than any other ethnic group in the world. It is a fact that about fifty percent of Nobel Prize
winners are Jews. Jews are not born with higher IQs, nor are they naturally smarter than the
rest of the world, but they have the stubbornness to sit down and do the work required. We
must have a disciplined life, a desire to please God and to do His work. Without putting in the
blood, sweat, and tears it takes to learn, we cannot do the work. There is no magic to
it; the magic is just sitting down in obedience to God and applying yourself to do the work.
By the way, statistically speaking, people who continue to learn

even in their old age they are less likely to get Alzheimer's disease and lose their memory.
The brain is like any other muscle; it needs to be exercised.

A biblical narrative that has great educational implications is about

Elisha, the man of God, and comes from 2 Kings 4:8-37:

“Now Elisha was passing through Shunem, where there was a rich woman, who forced him to
eat bread. So whenever he passed by, he would go in to eat. She said to her husband, “I see
that this man who passes by us is a holy man of God. Let us make a small room upstairs
for him, the work of a stonemason, and put a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp in it. When he
comes to our house, he will retire there.

One day he came there and went to his room and lay down. Then he said to his servant
Gehazi, “Call this Shunammite.” So he called her, and she stood before the prophet. The
prophet said to his servant, “Tell her, ‘See, you have treated us very generously. What can
we do for you? Is there anything we can say to the king or to the commander of the army about
you?’”

She replied: 'I live among my people!

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Then the prophet said, 'What is to be done for her?'

Gehazi replied, 'Why, she has no son, and her husband is old!

Elisha said, 'Call her!' And he called her, and she stood at the door. And the prophet said
to her, 'By this time, within a year, you will embrace a son.

She said, 'No, my lord, man of God, do not lie to your servant!

The woman conceived and gave birth to a son at the appointed time, when she was one year old,
as Elisha had told her.

When the boy grew up, he went out one day to his father, who was with the reapers. And he said
to his father, “Oh, my head!”

Then the father said to his servant, “Take him to his mother.”

He took him and brought him to his mother, and he sat on her knees until noon, and then he died.
Then she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and then she shut the door and
went out.

She called her husband and said to him, “Send me one of the young men and one of
the donkeys, so that I can run to the man of God and come back.”

He asked, “Why are you going to him today? It is not the New Moon Day or the Sabbath.”

She said: It's okay.

Then she saddled the donkey and said to the lad, “Lead on and go; do not stop until I tell you.” So
she went and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

When the man of God saw her from afar, he said to Gehazi his servant, “There is the Shunammite!”
Run to meet him and say to him: Everything is fine with you, with your husband, with the
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boy?

She replied: Okay.

And when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. And Gehazi came
near to pull her away: but the man of God said unto him, Let her alone: for her soul is in
bitterness; and the LORD hath hid it from me, and hath not told me.

She said, Did I desire a son of my lord? Did I not say, Do not deceive me?

The prophet said to Gehazi, “Gird up your loins, take my staff with you, and go. If you meet anyone,
do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer him; lay my staff on the boy’s face.”

But the child's mother said, "As the LORD lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you."
So he got up and followed her.

Gehazi passed by and laid his staff on the boy's face, but there was no voice or sign of life in him.
So he went back to Elisha and told him, "The boy has not woken up."

When the prophet arrived at the house, behold, the boy was dead on the bed.
Then he went in and shut the door on them both and prayed to the LORD. He went up on the
bed and lay on the boy. He put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on
his hands. He stretched himself on him, and the boy's flesh became warm. Then he got up and
walked back and forth in the room once, and then came up again and stretched himself on the
boy. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Then he called Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” So he called her, and she
came to the prophet, and he said to her, “Take your son.” She went in and fell at his feet and
bowed to the ground, and took her son and went out.”

Elisha was a prophet who traveled from place to place in the Jezreel Valley and
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Mount Carmel and had a ministry as a prophet. He prophesied and taught, and
people came to him to know the will of God. Then a woman who knew
how intimate Elisha was with God invited him to dinner a few times.
One day she turned to her husband and asked, “Why don’t we make a
small apartment for this man of God?”

There were no hotels in those days. People welcomed men of God into
their homes, and they considered it a great honor. An important lesson in
education

The Jewish tradition is that a teacher should be valued. Teachers lived close
to their students and under their protection. Students provided for their
teachers, just as the Shunammite woman wanted to provide a bed, a
chair, a room, and a lamp—a place for Elisha to live. It is very important for a
Jew to value his teacher.

The New Testament commands in 1 Timothy 5:17

that the man of God who serves the congregation
should be worthy of “double honor” or “double
honor.” The words “double honor” mean
“salary” or “money.” He should be rewarded for his
teaching if he is a man of God, but he should not
have to ask for it.

This woman knew the importance of providing for a teacher’s needs, and so
she wanted to build an apartment for the man of God. The man of God enjoyed
living in this woman’s house, and he appreciated her attitude. So he asked
her, “What can I do for you? Do you want me to speak to the king or the
general on your behalf?”

She said, “No, I am living with my people. I am well connected in the

community, I don’t need your help.”
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Then the prophet’s servant said, “This is what this woman needs. She has no son, even
though she has been married for many years. Her husband is old. Let us pray that God will bless
her.” This is lesson number two in Jewish education: education is not one-sided. In the
West, the teacher stands on the platform and the students sit below him on the other side. The
teacher gives and the students receive.

In Judaism and the Bible, education is a two-way affair. The teacher gives and receives,
and the students give and receive, just like the input and output wires on a stereo. To have the

In true education, there must be input and output. It is important to discuss, ask, and question,
otherwise there is no learning. The input and output may be of different substances,
but if nothing is put in, nothing will be learned. If a person does not put something into his or her
learning, whether it be pay or homework, or service in the congregation or community, or
caring for the poor widows and orphans or teaching the little children, there will be no learning.
In the Greek model, we have one teacher giving and all receiving. That is the Western model
of college, but it does not work. That is why many teachers and PhDs have very little
practical knowledge. They are great in the classroom, but in reality, they “don’t have the
sense to come out of the rain.” The teachers I have learned the most from are those whose
relationship with me has been one of input and output (give and take). When the
students give something back, both sides are satisfied. This is an important principle.

This woman had been good to Elisha, so he wanted to repay her in some way. So he told
her, “At this time next year you will have a son.” God honored Elisha’s words, and when the
next year came, she had a son.

When the son grew up, one day he went to work with his father in the fields and
probably got sunstroke. His head began to ache and he died. The woman, very dramatically,
ran to the man of God who lived about two hours away. Shunem is near Afulah, and the
man of God lived in the mountains of Carmel. It took two hours to go and get the man
of God and another two hours to bring him back, while the child lay dead in bed. So the man
of God sent his servant
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and said, “Place my staff on the child’s face,” but nothing happened.
When the man of God arrived, he placed his eyes on the child's eyes,
his head on his head, etc., basically something very similar to what his
master Elijah had done when the widow's son died in Tyre.
Elijah took the boy to his room, laid him on top of him, and prayed, “God,
help this woman’s son.” God honored his words, and the child was
raised from the dead. This account of Elisha is very similar. He did what his
own teacher had done. This is another important educational principle.
We are all like our teachers, and we all imitate them to some extent. Some
of my characteristics, both good and bad, come from my teachers.

Although I always add a little of my own “flavor” to my teaching, much

of what I know and teach, as well as the way I serve and operate,
comes from learning from other people. God can use other human beings to
fill us with His knowledge of the Word and their experience.
This is why we should not all be teachers. We must also be careful about
who we allow to lay hands on us and who we are willing to absorb
information from. If I teach a bunch of garbage, then the minds and hearts
of those who hear me will be full of garbage! If I teach what God’s Word
says, then those who hear me will have God’s Word in their hearts. This
is absolutely true and unavoidable. Teachers who are unprepared
and do not tell the truth will get their students into trouble. A good pastor
does not allow people he does not know very well to teach his flock,
because

If that guest professor feeds the flock with a bunch of garbage, they will
get a “stomach ache”.

Elisha did what he learned from his teacher and rabbi Elijah. Since Elisha
was Elijah’s successor, he did what he learned from his teacher. We all do
this, and it should be this way. By the way, one way to recognize if someone
belongs to a cult is that they learn to imitate their teachers to an exaggerated
extent. We have to be careful who our teachers are.
We are all like our teachers, and as long as we do not become a cult
and continue to remember who our ultimate Guide and
Teacher is, we will be safe. After all, we are all servants of God.
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Elisha was frustrated because God’s answer did not come immediately. He sent
his servant to place the staff on the child’s face, but it did not work. When he
came himself, it did not work the first time either.
We know this because the text says that he walked back and forth in the
room, asking and crying out to God: “This woman has blessed us, so we want to
bless her.”

This goes back to one of the educational principles mentioned earlier: one cannot
learn without giving and receiving. If the pastor or elder or teacher only gives and
does not receive, no education is taking place. Giving and receiving can
be money, service, or many other things, but there has to be input and output on
both sides. Otherwise, people absorb and absorb, without ever learning anything.
In the school of life there must be both giving and receiving.
God honored Elisha, the child came back to life and everyone went home happy.

An interesting question to consider is why this child died in the first place. Did
God give this child

as an answer to prayer. The woman’s husband was old, and she had no son.
Elisha spoke to her a word of prophecy: “At this time next year you will have a son.”
So why did this child die?

Along the same lines of thought, why did Lazarus, Yeshua's friend, die?
Yeshua was away for four days before He answered Martha and Mary’s call.
They had sent a message to Him in Transjordan, and He could have arrived
there in one day. However, He took His time and did not rush. He arrived there on the
fourth day and had dinner. Everyone was crying because Lazarus had died, and it
was not until the next day, when they went to the tomb early in the morning, that
Yeshua told them to open the tomb, saying to Lazarus, “Get up and come
out!” Lazarus came out of the tomb, wrapped in his shroud. Then Yeshua said
something very strange: “He died for the glory of God.”

This story with Elisha is strange in the same way because the woman was
blessed, but her son died. So Elisha raised him from the dead.
Why did all this happen? It was for their learning and for ours. We learn nothing
except through experience. The faith of these
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people after having had an experience with God was unshakable.

I met an Orthodox Jewish woman from the United States. After becoming a disciple of Yeshua,
she immigrated to Israel. Since she was Orthodox, she began studying at an Orthodox
Jewish seminary for women. When the rabbis discovered that she was a believer in Yeshua, they
decided to “deprogram” her. Three rabbis sat with her and fired questions
at her all night and would not let her leave the room.

for no reason at all. They tried to brainwash her, and she sat and listened to them. Finally, the
next morning, they all got fed up and asked her what she thought then. At that point,
they had presented her with every objection and attack they could think of about Yeshua, the
New Testament, and Christianity. However, she responded with one sentence and
completely devastated them: “I’m sorry, but you can’t argue with an experience I had with Him;
I not only believe, I know Yeshua!”

This is the essence of biblical teaching. We must go from faith to knowledge.

We are saved by faith, but God does not want us to stop with faith. He wants us to know Him.
God has promised many times, “Will all who are small and great know me ? ” He does not
say, “They will believe in me,” because belief is only the first step. Paul says in 1 Corinthians
13, the great chapter on love, “We shall know even as we are known.” He does not say, “We shall
believe,” but “We shall know.” There is no knowledge without learning. It is wonderful to
believe in God and have innocent, childlike faith, but we must grow from
faith to the knowledge of God. Without this test, as in the story of Elisha and Lazarus, we will not
come to knowledge, since the difference between faith and knowledge is experience with God.

I believe that man landed on the moon, but I wasn't there. I don't understand how he did it or
how it works, but if I spent enough time studying physics and ballistics and all the different
trajectories, maybe I would know instead of just believing. As children of God, we want to know
and not just believe. Faith is a wonderful thing, but it is very fragile. When we know God and
have experience with Him,
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He, we will be as strong as my friend. We will be able to say, “You can’t argue with
experience. I have experience with God because I know His Word and practice it. I
know It has power.” Now that’s learning!

These are the principles of learning in Judaism: (1) There must be input and output.
(2) We must value our teachers and choose whom we want to learn from. (3)
We must be willing to suffer and sacrifice. (4) We must have experience and pass tests.
(5) We must practice what we learn.
These are the essences of biblical teaching, and there is no learning without these
things. I have learned something from every person I have ever met, and this should be
our attitude as well. Let us conclude with this expression: “I have gained wisdom
from each of my teachers.”

Appendix
1
Rabbi Ishmael's 13 Principles

1. Kal va-hômer (light and heavy or a fortiori).

2. G'zerah shavah (equivocal expressions).

3. Binyan with mikatuv echad

(compose a “family” of a text).

Binyan av mish 'nei ketuvim

(compose a “family” of two or more texts).

4. Kelal uf*rat (from the general to the particular).

5. Prat u 'k*lal (from the particular to the general).

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6. Kelal uferat ukelal, i atah dan elah kéin ha-perat

(general statement followed by a specification, followed in turn by another general statement

- one can only infer what is similar to the specification).

7. M 'kelal sh 'hu tzarik lifrat umiprat sh 'hu tzarik likelal

(when a general statement requires a specification or a specification requires a general

statement to clarify its meaning).

8. Kol davar sh 'haya bikelal v 'yatza min hakelal lelamed, lo l 'lamed al atzmo yatza, elah l
'lamed AL hakelal kulo yatza

(anything that was included in a general statement, but was then pointed out from the
general statement in order to teach something. It is not pointed out to teach only about itself,
but to apply its teachings to the whole generality).

9. Everything is 'haya bikelal and yatza lit 'on, to 'an echad sh huk 'inyano, yatza l'hakel v 'lo
lehachmir

(anything that was included in a general statement, but was then singled out to
discuss a clause similar to that in the general category, being chosen to be mild rather
than more severe).

10. Kol davar sh 'haya bikelal v'yatza lit 'on to 'on sh 'lo k 'inyano yatza l'hakel ulehachmir

(anything that was included in a general statement, but was then singled out to
discuss a clause not similar to the general category, tends to be singled out either to be more
lenient or to be more severe).

11. The one who has been riding a camel in the yatza lidon by the way he has been riding, and
the one who has been riding a camel by the way he has been riding
Machine Translated by Google

(anything that was included in a general statement, but was then singled out to
be treated as a new case, and cannot be returned to its general statement unless
Scripture explicitly returns it to its general statement).

12. Davar halamed me íttyano v davar halamed misofo

(explanation obtained from the context or the following passage).

13. Sh 'nei ketuvim hamak-chishim zeh et zeh ad sh 'yavo hakatuv hashlishi v 'yakria
Beineihem

(two passages that contradict each other until a third passage tries to reconcile them).

For a complete list of these principles in Hebrew and English, along with notes and
examples for each, please consult any siddur from the publisher 'Artscroll'. These principles
are recited during the Shacharit (the morning prayer service) between the recitation of
Torah passages about the daily sacrificial offerings and the Pssukei d'Zimrah (songs of praise).
Machine Translated by Google

Selected bibliography

Allison, Dale C. The Sermon on the Mount.

New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999.

The Babylonian Talmud: Glossary. Ed. 1. Epstein. Index Volume. London:

Socino Press, 1952

Ben Isaiah, Abraham and Benjamin Sharfman.

The Pentateuch with Rashi's Commentary: A Linear Translation into English.

Vol. 2. Êxodo. Brooklyn: S.S. & R. Publishing Company, 1949.

Fishbane, Michael. “Midrash and the Meaning of Scripture. The Interpretation of

the Bible: The International Symposium in Slovenia. Ed. Joze Krasovec.
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.

“Hermeneutics.” Oxford Dictionary ofthe Christian Church. Ed. F.L. Cross.

Oxford University Press, 1983.

Keener, Craig S. A Commentary on the Gospel ofMatthew. Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1999.

Lategan, Bernard C. “Hermeneutics.” Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 3.

London: Doubleday, 1992.

TheMinor Tractates ofthe Talmud. Ed. Rev. Dr. A. Cohen. Socino Press, 1971.

Neusner, Jacob. Invitation to Midrash.

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London: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989.

Porton, Gary G. “Midrash”ABD. Vol. 4.

Royerson, J. W. and Werner G. Jeanrod. “Interpretation, History of.” ABD. Vol. 3.

Santala, Risto. The Midrash of the Messiah.

Finland: Tummavuoren Kirjapaino Oy, 2002.

Ibid. Paul, the Man and the Teacher in the Light of Jewish Sources. Jerusalém:
Keren Meshichit, 1995.

AMES

Zion Teaching Ministry Association - Brazil

Affiliated with Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry - Jerusalem - Israel

Post Office Box 2177 Zip Code 31270-310 - Belo Horizonte - MG Tel: (31) 3498-1761
- Fax: (31) 3498-5195 [email protected] www.ensinandodesiao.org.br

'Hidden Treasures'
There is a traditional Jewish saying that goes, “The Torah has 70 faces.” But
how can an ordinary Bible student see all of these faces?
Machine Translated by Google

In this innovative and easy-to-read book, Joseph Shulam explains how Judaism has
interpreted sacred texts since ancient times. Some of the concepts covered in this work
include kal va-homer, midrash, hekkesh , and the four levels of rabbinic interpretation. In
addition to explaining how these methods work, the author also gives examples of how the
New Testament writers used these resources to create the sacred texts of their day.

The second part of this book contains a series of articles on topics relevant to the
development of modern Messianic Judaism, such as instruction, the formulation of
halachah , and the need for a balance between grace and Torah observance. This work will be
of great value to anyone who wishes to deepen their knowledge of the Jewish context of the
Scriptures and the current issues facing contemporary Messianic Judaism.

faces.” But how can the average Bible student see all these
faces? In this groundbreaking and easy-to-read book, Joseph
Shulam explains how Judaism has interpreted the sacred texts
since ancient times. Some of the concepts covered in this
work include kal va-homer, midrash, hekkesh , and the four
levels of rabbinic interpretation. In addition to explaining how
these methods work, the author also gives examples of how the
New Testament writers used these resources to create
the sacred texts of their day.
Machine Translated by Google

--

The second part of this book contains a series of articles on topics relevant to the
development of modern Messianic Judaism, such as instruction, the formulation

of halachah , and the need for a balance between grace and Torah observance.

This work will be of great value to anyone who wishes to deepen their knowledge of the

Jewish context of the Scriptures and the current issues facing contemporary Messianic

Judaism.

ISBN 978-85-87952-18-9

www.netivyah.org

www.ensinandodesiao.org-

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