SAMSON AND MESSIAH

John 3:14                                                                                             

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

When Jacob blessed his twelve sons, he told them each what would happen in the future. When it came to Dan, the old patriarch said,

Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse's heels so that his rider falls backward. For your salvation I wait for your salvation, Adonai. (Genesis 49:16–18)

The text of the prophecy seems to be disjointed. The sages of Judaism commented on this and said, "Our forefather Jacob foresaw Samson and thought that he was the Messiah. But when he saw his death he exclaimed, ' For your salvation I wait for your salvation, Adonai.'"

Samson was a descendant from the tribe of Dan and a Nazirite by birth. He is the fruit of a miraculous birth announced to his parents by an angel (Judges 13:3); his ways left his people wondering about him; he even lived outside of Israel with the Gentile Philistines for a while. He was a Nazirite but seemed to carelessly come in contact with what should be considered unclean to him. In the end, Samson vanquished the Philistines, the powerful enemy of Israel, by giving his life. 

Jacob was not out of his mind when he thought he saw Messiah in Samson. As iconoclastic as he was, Samson foreshadowed David's victory over Goliath. David did not die in battle giving his life, but he did spend some time living with the Philistines when he was in disfavor with Saul.

Further down the messianic genealogies, Samson does foreshadow Messiah, Messiah whose miraculous birth was announced to his parents by an angel, who spent some time ministering outside of Israel, who took a nazirite vow before he died, and who gave his life defeating the enemy of our souls forever.

What about the snake in the prophecy?

Jacob may have seen how through Jeroboam, the tribe of Dan led the Northern Kingdom to idolatry and heresy. They even used the brazen snake Moses was asked to make in the desert (Numbers 21:9).

Come to think of it, Yeshua also compared himself to that snake. As we look up to him raised on the wooden pole, we live (John 3:14).

P. Gabriel Lumbroso

www.thelumbrosos.com

For P. Gabriel Lumbroso's devotional UNDER THE FIG TREE in Kindle edition click here.

THE TORAH PENTECOST CONNECTION

Act 2:3

And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

The English narrative that concludes God’s uttering of His Ten Statements at Mt. Horeb tells us, Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking … (Exodus 20:18). The Hebrew on the other hand literally reads, “And all the people 'saw' the voices and the torches”. One may see a ‘torch’, but how does one see a “voice”? The question may have pushed English translators to stray from a literal rendition of the verse, but not the Hebrew sages. Also, the congregation at Horeb was composed of people from many nations, so for everyone to ‘understand’ them (a Hebrew synonym for ‘seeing’), the Ten Statements would have had to be uttered in several languages.

How do you see a voice, and how does a single voice speak in many languages?  When Moses recounts these events to the second generation of the Children of Israel in the desert he says, Then Adonai spoke to you out of the midst of the fire (Deuteronomy 4:12). One of the sages saw this verse through the lenses of the following passage, Is not my word like fire, declares Adonai, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces (Jeremiah 23:29)? The sages of Israel have always described these events as the Voice of God splitting into seventy voices speaking seventy different tongues and that these voices were actually like hot sparks flying forth from a hammer’s blow on a stone and becoming tongues of fire. This may sound farfetched, but is it really?

Fourteen hundred years after these events Yeshua, the Prophet 'like unto Moses', (Deuteronomy 18:15) came to give His elucidation of the Heavenly Voices. When He was on earth, like Moses He climbed a mountain and His disciples came to Him (Exodus 24:9; Matthew 5:1-2). Later, on the same Jewish calendar date as the Horeb events (Pentecost, or fifty days after the resurrection) as the disciples were celebrating the festival of Pentecost they saw these voices in the form of tongues of fire that gave them ability to speak in the languages of all the foreign pilgrims then present for the festival in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-5).  These ‘voices’ were later to be sent to the whole world to reach out to the lost sheep of the House of Israel and to the nations with their message.

Today we, followers of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua HaMashiach, are these ‘Voices’ of fire from Sinai. Today, from where ever we are in the world we are Hashem's emissaries and apostles of the great message spoken at Sinai. I usually teach my students that the Words of the Ten Statements uttered at Horeb elucidated by God’s Agent Yeshua, constitute the solution to all of the world’s social problems.

But the people must not only hear the message, they must also see it. They must see it in the exemplary walk of our lives. A tall order maybe, but a lot is at stake and His Spirit is ever present to help us. Truly, Yeshua ever lives to make intercession off us (John 14:26; Hebrews 7:25). May we not fail in our mission!

A DESERT JOURNEY

Proverbs 13:16
Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge:
But a fool layeth open his folly.

As walking through a maze inlaid with dangerous inlets and outlets, so is our walk through life in this world, but the Word warns us of pitfalls. If we are to arrive at destination, we are to walk prudently, meaning, in the knowledge of the Word.

Baal Shem Tov, a seventeenth century sage one day said, “The forty-two ‘stations’ from Egypt to the Promised Land are replayed in the life of every individual Jew, as his soul journeys from its descent to earth at birth to its return to its source.” The Torah also mentions that God orchestrated the desert wondering of the Children of Israel to test them; to know what was in their heart, whether they would obey or not.

The desert journey revealed many temptations. There were temptations to murmur; temptations to complain; temptations to disobey; temptations with idolatry; temptations with impatience; temptations with rebellion; you name there it was. Our lives in this world seem to be full of the same temptations. As it was with the Children of Israel, our destiny is decided by the how we respond to these tests.

The prudent, acts in harmony with his knowledge of the Word, thus displaying wisdom.

The foolish acts ignorantly of it, thus spreading to all the depraved fruits of his ignorance.

Up to the second half of the twentieth century, not everyone could learn to read. Only the financially privileged or those who worked very hard could afford an education; illiteracy kept people from reading and studying the Word for themselves. Today, even though most people read and can therefore avail themselves of the knowledge in the Word, the devil found another way to keep them away from It: distraction. We are so distracted by life, by its social demands and its constant broadcast of vanity, that even though knowledge and wisdom are readily available to us, and often free for the getting, we are today more ignorant of the good advice in the Word than when people couldn’t read.

As a result, few are prudent, many are foolish.

May we not be guilty of this.

Let us lay our priorities straight; spend our time wisely and in the study of the Word that can save our soul and bring our heart to its Promised Land destination.