THE RIGHTEOUS TAKEN AS A PLEDGE

   Colossians 2:9

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

After successfully receiving the stone tables where Hashem engraved His first Ten Instructions to Israel, Moses was asked to levy from them a free-will contribution (Exodus 25:1). This voluntary contribution will serve to build what will eventually become the Tabernacle, the very place the Almighty El-Shaddai will use as a sort of communication center with Moses. Remember, the Children of Israel confessed that they could not hear the Voice of God; they ask Moses to act as an intercessor for them (Exodus 20:18-19). I think it strange that today many people seem to casually say that they hear ‘God’ speak to them when in fact, the Children of Israel couldn’t and even asked for an intercessor, move which Hashem approved (Deuteronomy 18:16-17).

Sages from ancient Israel saw the future and imagined Moses asking God, “Will not the time come when Israel will be deprived of a Tabernacle or of a Temple? What will happen then?” According to the sages the Divine reply was, “I will then take one of their righteous men and retain him as a pledge on their behalf, in order that I may pardon all their sins.” (Midrash Rabbah Shemot 35:4). The agricultural ancient Israelites were familiar with the custom of dedicating a whole harvest to God by presenting one sheave, the first and purest drop of oil from their olives, or even the first-born of animal and man-kind. They understood the principles of the first and best given to Hashem for the sanctification of the whole.

The Tabernacle and Temple housed the Ark which represented God’s covenant Presence among man. At the time when Hashem knew the Temple would disappear for a long time and the Children of Israel would go for a long exile, the Almighty took one righteous man to hold as a pledge for the sanctification of the people; His name was Yeshua from Nazareth. By the end of the first century, there were over 1,000.000.000 believers in Israel.

Chassidic Jews seemed to understand the mechanism by which God operates They believed that their righteous men, their ‘tsaddik’, their ‘rebbes’ (rabbis) housed the Shekinah of God; that they acted as the Temple or the Tabernacle. They were not so far off. Yeshua Ben Yoseph Hanotsree (Jesus Son of Joseph from Nazareth) is that righteous Jewish man, that Rebbe whom God held as a pledge for the sanctification of the Jewish people and through whom the whole worlds is redeemed as, in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority (Colossians 2:9-10). He is the first sheave of the harvest (Numbers 28:26), the pure first drop of olive oil from the press (Gethesemane, the place where the Master was pressed measure means: the olive press). He is also the perfect lamb offered as voluntary contribution from the heart.