Muse

Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. when we get started here in just a moment, we're going to be picking up at the beginning of Numbers chapter 20. And so we left off last time at another place where sort of the genre of the text shifted again, as we've talked about now many times. Book of Numbers covers about 40 years of the history of Israel in the wilderness. And so we get all kinds of stuff, right, all brought together here. We get narrative episodes. We get commandments. We get liturgical instructions. We get a census at the beginning and another one at the end. We get all kinds of material in here. And when it shifts, it can shift kind of abruptly. Now, as we saw last time, we had an episode talking about who held the priesthood, and then we had commandments for priests right so it's not that it's just totally arbitrary and jumbled and thrown together right there is a rhyme and a reason to it as to where these things are inserted and how it's been brought together but it is the bringing together of a whole bunch of different material and we're about to start another narrative section last time we were talking about those commandments aimed at priests as we've talked about the narrative sections we're not given all like super detail on the 40 years so as we talked about between uh mount sinai in the middle of exodus and a few chapters into the book of numbers was two years between that point in the book of numbers and the end of the book of numbers is 40 years right so that gives you an idea of the difference in level of detail in terms of the of of how comprehensive our narrative is right of events so we're just sort of spot checking in we don't always get an amount of time that's passed but we spot check check in on these sort of major events that take place during that 40 years hop from one to the other and then based on the themes that are understood as being related to those events we'll have some other material related to that theme brought in before the next event right that's sort of in general the kind of structure that we're dealing with uh so now but so now we're going to be shifting right and we're going to see really the beginning of this chapter beginning tonight we are shifting sort of into the end game we aren't given an exact again amount of time passed right in terms of how close this is to them arriving at Canaan at the end of the 40 years but as we're going to see right off the bat uh and over the course of tonight we're drawing we're now much closer to the end of that than

the beginning right it only began a few chapters ago but now we're we're on the other side of that and so we're going to shift into some of the events that we're going to be reading about some of the some of the other material is now going to be shifting towards okay now that older generation that came out of egypt is dying off new next generation is coming of age and them making preparations then to go into Canaan. So that shift really, that pivot point is really where we're at tonight. We've left the buildup, now we're shifting into that mode. And we'll see that right off the bat. So unless anybody has any leftover comments or questions or anarcho-primitivist lifestyles that don't involve starving to death, And we will go ahead and pick up in Numbers chapter 20, verse 1. Now, the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the desert of sin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh, and Miriam died and was buried there. So this is what I meant by right off the bat. Okay, so we've had sort of the three people who are at the top of sort of the hierarchy in the camp are of course moses right as the leader aaron the high priest and moses sister miriam okay so now miriam has passed away so we're seeing the beginning of the end of that generation remember miriam is the one who led the song after they crossed the red sea right and so now she has passed away she has been buried uh there don't read a ton into the desert of sin because the english word sin is not related that's yeah it is related to sinai uh the sinai desert is in like the sinai peninsula

which is where they've been wandering what about kaddish because i had a vague idea that ancient

kaddish was was north of israel but no no kaddish is kaddish was depending on what point in history we're talking about right uh was at the far eastern edge of egyptian territory and power so the not very good yes right the not the not very good movie uh with christian bale playing moses exodus gods and kings i think it was called no no christian bale is christian bale is moses uh not a very good movie but based on where they place the timeline the first 20 minutes of it are an incredibly good historical recreation of the battle of kaddish where the egyptians fought the hittites right so the hittites had come down right across the levant and were at the edge of sort of egyptian at the edge of the so we're where the sinai peninsula meets the levant is the idea and so yes i recommend the first 20 minutes of that movie and then turning it off because it just gets weird so there are two things that number one miriam number two they're now moving back closer to it now they're not going to immediately go up into canaan where god said why back in exodus because if they went up the coast they'd have to go through philistine territory uh because that's where the philistine cities are philistine territory was centered around five major cities the biblical ones you when main biblical one you've heard of is got or gath where goliath was from uh but also ashkelon ashdod right they're they're all along the coast where the philistines settled after they and the rest of the sea peoples tried to invade egypt and failed so they settled along the coast and god said earlier that uh when they first left egypt that they weren't going to go through that territory because he knew that the israelites would chicken out. They ended up chickening out anyway, but he knew they'd chicken out if he tried to go through Philistine territory because they were too militarily powerful and they'd get scared. We're going to read something else about the Philistines in Deuteronomy, but that's a teaser for when we get to the beginning of Deuteronomy in a couple of months. We'll find out some more about the Philistines and who they're descended from. So they're moving back into that area. They're going to end up looping around. We'll see that here in just a few verses, the sort of path they take. But so they've drawn back into proximity. And Miriam, who's obviously a major figure in that initial generation that came out of Egypt, has passed away. Verse 2, but there was no water for the congregation. So they gathered together against Moses and Aaron.

So the people scoffed at Moses and spoke, saying, Would we have died in the destruction of our brethren before the Lord? Why have you brought up the Lord's congregation into this desert to kill us and our cattle? Who does this sound like? They're sounding a lot like their parents.

Yeah.

Right? That generation. Why did you bring us here to die, Moses? Right? And so we've talked about this before, I know, but the and our cattle. Right? This is a sort of Hebrew way of speaking, right? To kind of take something to an extreme. The idea being, don't you at least care about the cows, right? If you don't care about us, why don't you care that you're going to be mean to the cows? What did the cow do you, right? You get one of the most famous places you see this is the end of the book of Jonah, right? Where God says to Jonah, like, you're all upset that this tree died there for a couple of days, right? And, you know, in this city, there's all these thousands of people and a lot of, and all these cattle.

Right.

Don't you at least care about the cows? Why did you also bring us up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? A place where nothing is sown, neither figs, nor vines, nor pomegranates, nor is there any water to drink. So we're back to this again. Right. This shows us something important, though. Right. Remember that. previous generation died in the wilderness why are we now seeing the next generation doing the same thing it's not that the next generation we're just all no we're all you know we're not like our parents we're all obedient and wonderful and love god and keep all the commandments and no they're just as bad right and god's going to emphasize this in deuteronomy right like you didn't earn this you're not like better right you're marginally better than the actual canaanites who you're going to be displacing right who are committing real abominations but you're not righteous and wonderful and you're right that's why we're doing this so moses and aaron went from the presence of the congregation to the door of the tabernacle of testimony and fell on their faces then the glory of the lord appeared to them okay so here we go again all right so they go to god what do we do the lord then spoke to moses saying take the rod and you and your brother aaron gather the congregation together speak to the rock before them and it will give its waters thus you shall bring them water out of the rock and give drink to the congregation and their cattle so this should be giving you a little bit of deja vu i know it's been a long time probably like a year but not only did this is this grumbling sort of deja vu but there was a whole water issue back when they first came out of egypt into the wilderness we don't have any water why did you bring us out here to die right and you remember at that time god said to moses i'm going to go stand on the rock and you're to go out there and strike the rock with the rod and it will bring forth water and we talked about we talked about at the time a couple of things one of those was so what did that symbolize right well the rod is representative as we've seen all through this in the Torah the rod represents judgment right if you're a shepherd the rod is what you use for discipline when you need to whack a sheep back into right it was the poking stick right and so remember he went when they turned the nile into blood he went and struck the water with the rod right so this is like pronouncing judgment so in that first case there's this dispute between the israelites and god

and the israelites are accusing god basically they're accusing god you brought us out here to die right they're imputing god's motives they're making this accusation against him and we talked about how god saying well i'll stand on the rock and you strike the rock and it'll bring forth water was a demonstration of the humility of god which is a strange phrase right the idea that god is humble like how what right like but we talked about one of the unique things about the god of israel is that he has humility even though it seems like a contradiction he's the god of the israelites this made no sense to pharaoh the god of a bunch of slaves is trying to tell me what to do well he can't be a very good god because his people are slaves right you know like you're a bunch of losers he's like i'm pharaoh i'm the head of the greatest superpower in the world i think my gods are probably better than right because i'm way more powerful than you guys are that's how people thought but god chooses to identify with them god identifies as the god of abraham isaac and jacob three like nomads who nobody had heard of who didn't even have a country let alone ruling one who were just wandering around in tents with their families right and we've seen as we've gone through the torah that god identifies himself with orphans and widows and strangers and foreigners and the poor right like all the people who are lost those are the people who god jesus to identify himself with and we talked about how this display of humility at the rock and that in general is part of what's pointing us to jesus as the messiah messiah refers to a king right the anointed king the ruler so what should you if you understand the torah right and what we've been reading what kind of person would you expect him to be this god's messiah to be would you expect him to be like a warrior right to be herod's son To be the Roman emperor's son, right? No. You'd expect him to be maybe the son of peasants born under circumstances that got him accused of things and his mother accused of things, right? Born in a cave with a bunch of animals, right? Laid in a food trough when he was born. Dirt poor. Nothing to recommend, right?

That's exactly what you should be expecting if you understand that somehow this God, the true God who created the universe, is nonetheless humble and identifies with the humble. So we talked about that. We'll come back to that in a second. We also talked about the tradition, the Jewish tradition, which is important because St. Paul refers to it. it answered the question well we read that way back in exodus like a year ago now we're reading this in numbers they've been wandering in the wilderness for like close to 40 years now roundabout right 30 some odd uh where have they been getting the water all this time right and so there came to be a tradition that that original rock followed them around from place to place when they picked up camp and moved in fact if you read the Midrash on this which has a lot of these stories it has a song that they sang when they wanted the rock to move and catch up to that the rock would come and show up where they were and I say St. Paul refers to this remember he says in 1 Corinthians and he just drops this with no explanation he just says Israel had a rock that followed them in the wilderness and if all you read was the text of the Torah you'd be like followed them what St. Paul just refers to this tradition as being a fact he says the rock was Christ kind of bearing out what I was just saying a minute ago but that's but so this is important because, for example, St. Paul receives the scriptures within a tradition of interpretation, and he doesn't distinguish between the two. He doesn't say, now listen, Corinthians, you know, it's not in the Bible, but there's this tradition that the rock followed them. Doesn't do that. Doesn't remotely do that. He doesn't ever do that. Right? When he's talking to St. Timothy, he talks about Moses contesting with Janus and Jambres. And you're like, who? Well, if you know the Jewish tradition, those are the names of Pharaoh's court wizards who contested with Moses. Their names ain't in the Torah. Again, St. Paul doesn't say, well, now this isn't in the Bible, but traditionally the names of those wizards were Janus and Jambres, right? He just references it because he's received it as part of this whole. so there is no sort of bare biblical text or torah text or something that isn't a part of a

tradition of reading it interpreting it copying it handing it down right you can't separate those things out i mean you can verbally but in reality you cannot pry those those things apart so all that said now this time you see the instructions are a little different he says go to the rock Now, let me point out, if you're looking for evidence in the text for that tradition, notice God says, the rock. Which rock? Right? If this was just another random rock, he'd have to tell him which one, right? It's not like there's only one rock in the Sinai Desert, right? There's a couple. Or go find a rock. Right? Right? Go to the rock I direct you to. Right? Go to this rock, right? That's what he says, go to the rock. So apparently Moses immediately knew what rock it was. So this could be taken as evidence that that whole following them thing is implied here, even though not stated. But he says, go and speak to it. And when he speaks to it, God will give the Israelites water. verse 9. So Moses took the rod from before the Lord as the Lord ordered him. So he took it from before the Lord. Remember, this is Aaron's rod. Remember, it budded, and they put it in the most holy place. So they went in there to talk to God. Moses goes and takes the rod. And Moses and Aaron And get. gathered the congregation together before the rock. And he, Moses, said to them, Hear me, you disobedient ones. Must we bring water for you out of this rock? Now this already should set up the danger of Will Robinson, right? Like, we, Moses and Aaron, are going to bring them water out of the rock? Or Moses and God? But wait, it gets worse. Verse 11, Moses then lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. And water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their cattle drank. Wasn't supposed to hit the rock. Wasn't supposed to hit the rock twice. Wasn't supposed to present it as, oh, here's Moses and Aaron are going to do a magic trick and give you water. What did hitting the rock symbolize the first time? God accepting the judgment of the people giving them water and giving them life nonetheless so what is Moses doing when he strikes the rock he's judging God in front of the people and taking credit for the water they're about to get because he's angry at them

oh disobedient ones is a very nice translation right like he's angry at them possibly a little at god also for the whole situation this again right and so he does this and they're about to be serious consequences because as we've talked about you're in a leadership position right like and moses is in the highest leadership position possible for humans right you are more accountable you are more accountable so and and this is something you need to know to understand the old testament right because this looks like okay yeah he lost his temper and whacked a rock with a stick a couple of times right this seems like a fairly minor thing to us by our standards right but that's what this accountability is about people you know sometimes wonder to me or ask me they're like you know if you're like a monk on Mount Athos and like you live in a monastery and you're like doing the full cycle of monastic services every day and spending another big chunk of the day in prayer right then work your hands like what do you talk about when you go to confession right like what could you possibly do like how much trouble could you get into right like you know and that's because we're living in the world and I know what kind of trouble I get into. And I'm like, well, if I, I think if I lived there and I had all that to do, I wouldn't be doing the things I currently do to get into trouble. Right. But the closer we, we get to God, the more things that right now would be the least of my issues. Like if I was going to list all my sins, they'd be number 378, right. On the list. if you actually take care of the first 350 or the first 370, 378 now moves to the top of the list. And so what may seem like a little thing to me now, based on how simple I am, right, for someone who's come very close to God, right, and has spent a life in repentance and has achieved a certain level of holiness and is in the presence of God a lot more than I am, those things that seem to be consolidated by comparison are big things. And so Moses, who is as close, I mean, he's talking to God face-to-face day-to-day, as close to God as any human being has ever been while they're alive, right? This thing is huge, even though to me, I mean, even among things I've done when I've lost my temper, this would be super low on the list. But this is big because of who Moses is. verse 12 but the lord spoke to moses and aaron because you did not believe me to sanctify me

before the children of israel therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land i am giving them so that's a weird translate you didn't believe me didn't believe him about what that doesn't make any sense and then the second piece to sanctify me before the people of israel So here's what that actually says, right? So we've talked about the word for believe and the word for faith is the same word in Greek that this is translated from. So the idea here is because you were not faithful to me, because you didn't do what I said, you didn't do what I told you to, right? You weren't faithful to do what I told you to do, number one. And then number two. sanctify their strength, because you didn't present me as holy. They didn't represent God correctly. Part of Moses's job is to represent God to the people of Israel. How did he represent God? He went out there and got angry and yelled at them. God's like, did I call them disobedient? Did I say any of that? No. So that's the problem. Those are the two problems. Number one, I told you to do something you didn't do it you did something else and number two in doing that you misrepresented me essentially lied about who God is misrepresented who God is to the people and Moses's main job right is representing God to the people and the people to God right so this is a major issue and aaron was right there with him and so god is saying this to both moses and aaron saying because you did this there's a consequence you know you're part of that generation that came out of egypt too and was gonna make an exception for you right in theory to go to go into the proselyte but no exception now so you're going to lead them right up to it and then in Moses' case so again God's not killing them right Moses is going to live to be 120 okay instead of 120 in 6 months because he led them across the Jordan River and Aaron is still the high priest until the day he dies His son will take over his high priest after him. God is not doing horrible things to them. But what did they just show? They just acted like that generation that's dying in the wilderness. Right? Fair is fair, is kind of what God's saying. Right? If you're going to behave like them, it wouldn't be right for me to give you special treatment.

that they didn't get. Verse 13, this was the water of contention because the children of Israel scoffed before the Lord and he was sanctified among them. They're talking about that, the spring of water there was called the water of contention because of the contention between the Israelites and God. Now we're going to see, before we keep going, the book of Deuteronomy, when we get to the end of the book of Numbers, the Israelites are basically going to be ready to enter. about to enter the land so deuteronomy is not like another leg of the journey or something the book of what the book of deuteronomy is and of course we'll talk about this more when we get there but what the book of deuteronomy is is a final sermon that moses gives to the people depteros nomos means second law or second torah right um because in this sort of final sermon to the people as they're about to go into the land and he's about to pass away right uh moses sort of reminds them of a lot of things right it reminds them of what they've experienced reminds them of the command of command the commandments god has given right reminds all these things and so one of the things we're going to see there and we'll talk about this more in the book of deuteronomy and the places where we see it is that even this moses not being allowed to enter the land you notice moses doesn't hue and cry and right all this um even this kind of discipline moses is going to receive and kind of learn from right not only is he not going to be like angry and raging about it he's going to sort of fully absorb and process it and see it as you know this is something that happened and that god did from for my good right because as all the way through we've been seeing that god has been working with moses right and moses has been being changed and transformed over this process all these times where god has said look i'm sick of these people why don't i just wipe them out and start over with you and your kids moses right and moses then goes and pleads with god don't do that as we've talked about that's not because oh god was really mad and was really going to do that but moses was really smart and talked him out of it but this was a process that he engaged in with moses where moses is put in the position where these people who sometimes had just tried to murder him he's asking god to bless them and to not punish them Yeah, which didn't happen here. But we've seen that a lot in the past, right? And why would God do that? Why would God go through this? Because it's been changing Moses, right? How he sees the people, right? And how he interacts with others and how he understands who God is.

Because, you know, we're going to see Christ, for example, ask his father to forgive the people who are murdering him while they're murdering him. so all of this even stuff like this is not oh god's really mad at moses and is punishing him and oh he's taking this away from him right even this is for moses benefit and moses is going to see that it's not only just theoretically because of my view of god oh this must have benefited Moses. Moses is going to tell us that in Deuteronomy. Now Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom saying, thus says your brother Israel, you know all the hardship that befell us, how our fathers went down to Egypt and we dwelt in Egypt a long time and the Egyptians afflicted us and our fathers. But we cried out to the Lord and the Lord heard our voice and sent his angel and brought us up out of egypt now here we are in kaddish a city just outside your borders okay so if you know a little bit of the layout of the territories in the levant at this point in history so are folks generally familiar with the terms cis jordan and trans jordan or does that just make you think about weird weird cultural debates now that's where the terms came from so uh the cis jordan is the region between the mediterranean sea and the jordan river the trans jordan is the other side of the jordan river so you have the basically the west side i'll just say the west side of the jordan river and the dead sea and the sea of galilee right the west side and then the east side now we're gonna have a rap feud or something but then the east side of the jordan river and the dead sea and the sea of galilee right the east side is the trans jordan the west side is this is jordan but i'll just say east side and west side So on the west side, coming up out of the Sinai Peninsula, that's where the Philistines were. And Canaan is north of that. So if they went up on the west side of the Jordan River, they would have to go through Philistia to get to Canaan. So they're not going to do that. So the plan is Edom, the Edomites, are on the east side of the Dead Sea. and then Moab and Ammon are to the north of them on the east side of the Jordan River. So the Edomites are descended from Esau, from Edom, who's the brother of Judah, of Israel. So these are their cousins.

So what Moses is doing here is he's sending messengers to the king of Edom to say, hey, remember us, your cousins? You know, we ended up being slaves in Egypt. god brought us out of egypt we're on our way to canaan we're just passing through can we pass through your territory on the way right because they're planning to go up on the east side of the jordan river until they're past philistia and then cross the jordan river over into canaan right that's their plan but to do that they have to go through edom notice also they remind us here in case you forgot it says he sent his angel and brought us up remember the angel of the lord we talked about being christ he's been with him this whole time he didn't go away he's gonna be with him through the rest of the torah he's gonna be with him through the whole book of joshua we're gonna see him a couple times in the book of joshua he's gonna end up leaving at the beginning of the book of judges so everyone saw we kind of forget because we don't see him coming out and talking to everybody every day right but right that's the case and notice here so the actual exodus if we're going to ask the question who brought who brought israel out of egypt there are actually three different answers that are given in different parts of the old testament those three answers are number one obviously god right yahweh number two the angel of yahweh angel of the lord number three the spirit of god spirit of yahweh brought them out that's not coincidence okay that's not something that christians who believe in the trinity like are reading back into the old testament the old testament itself in three different places gives these three different answers here it says it was the angel of the lord right so this is one of those places there's a similar thing in the new testament in the new testament if you ask the question who raised jesus from the dead there are places that talk about god the father raising him from the dead there are places that just say jesus rose from the dead like he himself just right like christ says in saint john's gospel he could lay his life down and he could pick it up again, right? Meaning he's kind of raising himself. And 1 Corinthians 15, 45 and other places, the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead. Again, that's not something that after the Council of Nicaea, we went made up. It's the same three answers given to a similar question. Because what do we celebrate at Pascha at Passover now? Christ's resurrection.

The old passover was the exodus so in both cases if you ask the bible who's responsible for pasca who's responsible for passover the answer you get is the holy trinity so again all this is just reading carefully trinity isn't something that gets made up later to try to explain things because things are confusing or because they're like hey you know the pagans have like thousands of gods. The Jews have like one God. Let's compromise on three, right? Like that's not, that's not how any of this works, right? It's people reading carefully. But so anyway, this is the beginning of this very nice letter that Moses is sending to the king of Edom saying, hey, cousin, we just need a little help from you. Verse 17, let us pass through your country. We will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink water from wells. We will go along the king's highway. We will not turn aside to the right hand or the left until we pass through your borders. Right. So he says, look, we're not going to, I know what you might be thinking. We're a big group of people, right? Big camp. We're going to come. We're going to start picking your fields, clean of food, right? To feed ourselves. We're going to drain your wells of water, you know, and you've got farmers you've got right that are feeding your people we get that we're not going to do that we're going to stick out stay on the highway we're going to keep going right now they're not going to drink from any of the wells that eat it where are they going to get the water which means it will follow them right right so better say we're not going to touch anything we're just going to stay on the road we're going to pass right through you won't even know we were here we all good then edom said to him you shall not pass through me lest i come out against you in war so that's not polite right that's they say nope border is closed my friend right uh do not come if you right you pass through here army's coming now notice something here it says edom said that does that mean Esau his ghost came from beyond the grave and said that that's going to be important later for some verses that we're going to read like Jacob I have loved Esau I have hated and things right that often that name even though it's the proper name of a person and the name of a whole country it doesn't mean that person it's referring to that historical person it also doesn't be like every person in that country all said as one no right it's the king so the children of israel said to him now again this is not them all speaking in unison this is moses right we would go

along the mountainous area but if i or my cattle should drink any of your water i would pay you but the matter is nothing let us pass along the mountainous area so he's saying okay we won't take the highway right the highway runs through nice land you might not trust us you might not believe us right but there's this mountainous area on the east end of edom right we'll go through the mountains right so you don't have to worry there's no fields there for us to pick and hey if it turns out we took anybody's water we'll pay you for it whatever the going rate is if you don't trust us we promise let's let us go through that way but he replied you shall not

pass through me i should have stopped at you shall not pass you shall not pass through me now again moses and the people were not going to pass through the king like bad mexican food no me is the country the king is identified with right the country itself so edom came out against him with a heavily armed multitude and with a strong hand so they said troops out to the border, right? They're like, we don't trust you to not try something anyway, right? So they sent troops to the border. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his borders and Israel turned away from him, okay? So this essentially makes really inconveniences Israel because they have to go out further past Edom into the desert and sort of go around the territory of edom and they're going to have to once they get past edom they're going to have to either go through moab or ammon they're going to have to try and talk to them who are also kind of their cousins because they're descended from abraham's nephew lot right they're kind of related kinfolk they're going to have to find some way to go through there to get to the jordan river and to cross it and to get to canaan right this is the idea So that's going to be the new plan. They're going to have to take this much longer, more circuitous route. So the children of Israel, the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh and came to Mount Hor. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor by the borders of the land of Edom, saying, Let Aaron be added to his people, for he shall not enter the land I am giving to the children of Israel, because you provoked me at the water of controversy now look I try to be at least respectful to the people who translated the orthodox study bible but they couldn't translate this phrase the same way on the same page notice over in verse 13 it's the water of contention and now here it's the water of controversy people take Aaron and Eliezer his son and bring them up to Mount Hor before all the congregation strip Aaron of his robe and put it on Eliezer his son and let Aaron die there and be added to his people so Moses did as the Lord ordered and took him up to Mount Hor before all the congregation so let's pause there for a second so Aaron gets told in advance now's the time right you're gonna you're gonna pass away here at Mount Hor you're gonna be buried here they're kind of going along the border of edom right to go around it um and so the time has come for his eldest surviving son

to become eliezer to become the new high priest so they're going to do this but notice the phrase that's used we've pointed this out before but it bears repeating because folks like bart urman think that israelites and jewish people did believe in an afterlife but notice the phrase that's used when it talks about someone dying, be added to his people. If they don't believe in an afterlife, that would be subtracted from his people, right? His people would be the people of Israel over there at the camp, and he's about to be subtracted, not added to them. He's being added to his people when he dies. That implies he's going to where his people, meaning his family, his ancestors, his fathers, are. He's going to rest with them in the place where they are in the grave sheol it's kind of clear but it's not to some people apparently yeah are they not his people what yeah so moses takes him to mount horror as god told him that moses stripped aaron of his garments and put them on eliezer his son and aaron died there on top of the mountain and afterward moses and eliezer came down from the mountain now all the congregation saw Aaron was dead and all the house of Israel mourned for Aaron 30 days Miriam's gone now Aaron's gone right so this is what I meant in we're transitioning this is the next era so Eliezer now is the second high priest yeah and Aaron is buried there right where

they are. Listen next time as Fr. Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the Scriptures on the whole counsel of God. Fr. Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com. That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com. Thank you.