Tag: Jewish traditions
-
"Teach them diligently unto thy children"
In the Book of Deuteronomy, when the Israelites are about to enter into the promised land, they are admonished over and over to keep the judgments, statutes and commandments of the Lord. They are informed about the blessings that await if they do and warned about the curses that inevitably follow if they don’t. This passage…
-
Belonging to Yahweh
For a person to belong to another person is a very foreign and perhaps even abhorrent notion today. But it was a normal part of ancient cultures. For instance Often a man who had taken on debt and could not pay it off was forced to sell himself or one of his family members to…
-
The breastplate and the Urim and Thummim
I just read Exodus 28:30 And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Lord: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually. Aaron and his sons, the priests of the…
-
Blood, murder and guilt
The Book of Mormon is a Jewish book. This has become increasingly clear to me as I have studied it in much detail while learning more of ancient Israelite culture and language. I mean “Jewish” in a broad sense, since Lehi was from the tribe of Manassah, but he came from Jerusalem and the inhabitants…
-
The Jewish festivals and their fulfillment
Yes, the title may appear a bit strange. Are festivals really, like prophecies, something to be fulfilled? This seems to me to be the case. As I studied about the Feast of Tabernacles and saw some sort of fulfillment in Isaiah 54 and Revelation 19-21 that I wrote about recently, I had the thought that…
-
Lehi, Nephi and the shekinah — Part 1 (The divine presence)
Shekinah is an interesting Hebrew word that is difficult to translate directly into English. It denotes the divine presence of God. It is derived from the Hebrew root, shakan/shaken, meaning “to settle down, abide, dwell”. According to Encyclopaedia Judaica In classic Jewish thought, the shekhinah refers to a dwelling or settling in a special sense, a…
-
A marriage of heaven and earth
A Jewish rabbi states: The purpose of the Jewish people—the objective of all Jewish history—is the marriage of heaven and earth. While many spiritual seekers and virtually all religions seek to escape the confines of the flesh and climb heavenward, the Jew is charged with a far more profound calling: first create peace, then build…
-
More on the number 8
Even though we have addressed symbolism and ancient Hebrew frequently on this blog, we have not discussed the significance of numbers much. In ancient Hebrew, there is much meaning and symbolism connected to numbers beyond the numerical value. In fact, there are no separate numbers in Hebrew, but rather letters that also have a numerical…
-
"Touch not that which is unclean"
Often we read about a physical, concrete concept in the Old Testament that has an abstract or spiritual counterpart. This counterpart is typically more prevalent in other scripture. The Law of Moses is one example. It is easy to get hung up on the rituals and rules that are found in Numbers and Leviticus and…
-
On time, eternity, squares and circles
The frequent reader of this blog has probably noticed that we are concerned with the original meaning of the scriptures, not just how we understand it today. Even though it is the same God and gospel, our worldview and language is very different from the ancient prophets. The Nephites became extinct and left no other…