Numbers 5 - 7

Numbers — Steve Gregg

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Numbers 5 - 7

NumbersSteve Gregg

Numbers 5-7 by Steve Gregg is an insightful exploration of biblical verses that discuss the importance of restitution and repentance. Gregg highlights the story of a wife suspected of adultery and how her innocence is determined through a peculiar test involving curses and offerings. He also delves into the significance of vows and the rituals surrounding them, shedding light on the practice of shaving heads and bringing offerings to consecrate oneself to the Lord. In addition, Gregg touches on the duties of the Gershonites and the presentation of offerings by various tribes in chronological order. The talk concludes with a reflection on the desire to hear God's voice beyond the veil.

Transcript

Alright, so we will begin at Numbers chapter 5. Numbers chapter 5. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and whoever becomes defiled by a dead body. You should put out both male and female. You should put them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camps in the midst of which I dwell.

And the children of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp as the Lord spoke to Moses, so the children of Israel did. Now, it's not really said how these people lived outside the camp until they were undefiled. The lepers obviously had a long-term condition, possibly a permanent condition.

And those who had a discharge or who had been defiled by contact with a dead body would have a temporary condition, perhaps unclean for about a week. But they saw a outside the camp, they weren't in their own tents. And they were probably in some kind of a, I don't know if they were all gathered together like in a leper colony or outside the camp.

The lepers probably had to be separate, at least from the others. I don't know if every one of them had to stay separate from every one of the others. You know, had to each find a place to just sleep out in the desert.

Or if there was sort of a tent city outside of the main camp, which was for the unclean people while they were unclean. In any case, the point was that the camp had to be separated from uncleanness. It had to be ceremonially clean.

And then it talks about other forms of separation from sin, not just uncleanness. Verse 5 says, Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel. When a man or woman commits any sin that men commit in unfaithfulness against the Lord, and that person is guilty, then he shall confess his sin, which he has done, and he shall make restitution for his trespass in full value, plus one fifth of it and give it to the one who is wronged.

But if the man has no kinsman to whom the restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for the wrong must be to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of the atonement, which with which the atonement is made for him. Every offering of all the holy things of the children of Israel, which they bring into the priest, shall be his. And every man's holy things shall be his.

Whatever any man gives to the priest shall be his. Now, this is just talking about the trespass offering again, and it's saying, first of all, you need to remove from the camp ritual uncleanness. And secondly, sin.

Sin and ritual uncleanness are not the same thing, and they're not dealt with the same way. When a person sinned, they weren't put out of the camp. When a person sinned, they had to make it right.

They had to offer a ram as a trespass offering, and they had to make restitution to the injured party. This is really, verse seven really tells us how sin is to be repented of. And this is true in the New Testament as well.

It says that in verse seven, he shall confess his sin and he shall make restitution and give it to the one that he's wronged. And in the New Testament, we have, of course, 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Also, making restitution is a New Testament idea.

If you've wronged somebody and they have sustained some material harm or wrong or loss because of your sin, well, then you owe them. And it basically says you have to pay them back the amount of the damages plus 20% penalty. Zacchaeus, the tax collector, had apparently wronged certain people in his business before he knew Jesus.

But when Jesus came to his house, Zacchaeus stood up and said, I'm going to give half of my goods to the poor. And if I've wronged anyone, I'm going to repay him four times as much. And so he's going to make restitution for the wrongs he'd done.

And Jesus then said, Today, salvation has come to this house. So obviously, Jesus saw restitution as the evidence of repentance. Now, repentance is needed in order to restore fellowship and clearness of conscience and so forth between a person and God once they've sinned against God.

But since most sins actually involve other parties and injure other parties as well as God, there was the need for restitution. Now, you can't make restitution to God for certain sins. There's certain things that you just can't fix.

You did it wrong. You can't go back and play the tape again. You can't get it right.

You can't pay it back. But anything, any sin that has actually left somebody injured is something that the repentant person would certainly make it a priority to repair. I had a friend in high school.

He was a... I met him after he was out of high school. He went to the same high school I did, but I met him after he became a Christian, but he had been a drug dealer and a burglar before he was a Christian, and he got arrested and he got converted while he was in jail. And while he was in jail, he made for himself a list of all the burglaries he had committed and as near as he could recall what he had taken from every house.

And when he got out of jail, he was just probably 19 years old or something, but he went to live with his mother and he worked at a gas station and working for minimum wage and he saved up and paid back all the people he had burglarized. Of course, the law didn't require him to do that. That is, the civil law doesn't require that, although it should.

Obviously, robbers should be made to pay back what they owe, but I mean, once he's done his time in jail, the law doesn't make him pay him back. But his conscience did, because he was a Christian and he wanted to... I don't even know if anyone had even spoken to him about the principle of making restitution. It's just the fruit of repentance.

When you repent, you want to undo anything you can undo of the damage that you've caused to somebody else, and that's required here. Now there's an interesting case in the remainder of chapter five, which we could call the ordeal of jealousy. It has to do when a woman is suspected by her husband of having committed adultery, but there are no witnesses.

And of course, adultery is the kind of sin that would normally not have witnesses. If someone gets away with that, I mean, sometimes people get caught in the act of adultery, like the woman in John chapter eight. But if a person doesn't get caught and it has happened, you know, there's not going to be usually witnesses to testify against it.

And yet the penalty for adultery was death. But the law had a principle you can't put a person to death without the testimony of two or more witnesses. And therefore, how in the world could a person be put to death for adultery? In most cases, there would be no witnesses to testify against them.

So there was a special case made where God would testify against an adulteress who had not been witnessed. If her husband began to suspect that she was guilty, he could take her to the tabernacle. And there was a special ordeal that was prescribed to discover her guilt or her innocence.

And well, let me just read it. It's really interesting. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, if any man's wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him and a man lies with her carnally and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband and it is concealed that she has defiled herself and there is no witness against her, no way she caught it.

The spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife who has defiled herself or the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife, although she is not defiled herself. If he gets jealous, whether she's guilty or not, he doesn't know, but there's a way to find out. Then the man shall bring his wife to the priest.

He should bring the offering required for her. One tenth of an ephah barley meal. He should pour no oil on it and put no frankincense on it because it is a grain offering of jealousy, not an ordinary grain offering.

There's nothing sweet about jealousy. They don't put incense on that offering and offering for remembrance, for remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord.

Probably that means in front of the tabernacle and the priest shall take holy water in an urban vessel and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. Then the priest shall stand the woman before the Lord, uncover the woman's head and put the offering for her remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of jealousy. And the priest shall have in his hand, the bitter water that brings a curse of this bitter water is just ordinary water that has some dust in it that was scraped up off the floor of the tabernacle.

But it's now bitter water that brings a curse and the priest shall put her under oath and say to the woman, if no man has lain with you and if you have not gone astray to unclean this while under your husband's authority, be free from this bitter water that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband's authority and you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has lain with you, then the priest shall put the woman under oath of the curse and he shall say to the woman, the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people. When the Lord makes your thigh to rot and your belly to swell.

And may this water that causes the curse go into your stomach and make your belly to swell in your thigh to rot. Then the woman shall say, I'm in. So be it.

Then the priest shall write the curses in a book and he shall scrape them off into the bitter water. Now, whether this actually scraped the ink off of the book into the water or whether it's just symbolic of saying the curses I've written are now part of this part of this brew, part of this concoction symbolically. He scrapes it as if scraping the words into the water and he shall make the woman drink of the bitter water that brings the curse.

The water that brings the curse shall enter her and become bitter. Then the priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy from the woman's hand. Shall wave the offering before the Lord and bring it to the altar and the priest shall take a handful of the offering as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar and afterward make the woman drink the water.

It sounded like she drank the water in verse 24. That may have been simply stated in anticipation of her drinking it at the end of verse 26, or maybe she drinks it before and after the offering is presented. When he has made her drink the water, then it shall be if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, that the water that brings the curse will enter her and become bitter and her belly will swell and her thigh will rot and the woman will become a curse among her people.

But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she should be free and may conceive children. This is the law of jealousy. When a wife, while under her husband's authority goes astray and defiles herself, or when the spirit of jealousy comes upon a man and he becomes jealous of his wife, then he shall stand before the woman before the Lord and the priest shall execute all this law upon her.

Then the man should be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her guilt. I guess the man will be free from the iniquity of judging his wife wrongfully when she's innocent or the iniquity of simply tolerating an adulterous wife in Israel, which would be something that would not be permissible. I would defile the land.

Anyway, the man is responsible if he if a spirit of jealousy comes on him. Now, it's not clear whether spirit of jealousy actually refers to a real spirit or simply an attitude, because the word spirit can simply refer to an attitude like God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and a power and a sound mind. The Bible talks about the Israelites and the Israelites having a spirit of poetry as they went after other idols and so forth.

This could refer to actual demonic spirits in some of these cases, or it could just mean an attitude or disposition. And likewise, a spirit of jealousy. It's not clear whether this is meant that he has an attitude of jealousy that comes upon him.

He just feels suspicious that his wife has been cheating on him, but he doesn't know or whether it actually means that God allows an actual spirit. Maybe the Holy Spirit reveals to him, or he's not sure if it's the spirit of God revealing to him or even a demonic spirit coming to make him jealous so that, you know, I mean, although this could result in a righteous outcome, jealousy is a tormenting thing, and this would be a way to be relieved of a jealous spirit. If a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, if there's no way to find out if his wife is telling the truth or not, and he suspects she's lying, but she's holding to her story, you know, and he lives with this suspicion, I think my wife's cheating on me, I think she slept with that guy, but he has no way of knowing, then this spirit of jealousy could be nagging him all the time and unresolved.

And that's not good for him or for her, especially if she's innocent. Now, if she's guilty, I guess it's it's from her point of view, desirable that that is never found out. But if she happens to be innocent and her husband is just jealous, then it's to her advantage to have some resolution to this matter.

God will show her to be innocent to her husband's satisfaction or guilty. You see, the thing about this ordeal is it may seem like it's pretty hard on the woman, but it's actually only hard on the guilty woman for the single woman, for the innocent woman. It actually is a boon because otherwise she might live for years with a husband who thinks she's been unfaithful when she hasn't.

And this will clear her name if she's innocent. So it's just like going to trial and having the truth come out. The guilty party has something to fear from it.

The innocent party actually has something to appreciate about it, that it proves her innocence when she's been falsely suspected. And so there's this ordeal. He takes the dust from the floor of the tabernacle.

He puts it in the water. He also writes curses upon her if she's guilty, scrapes those into the water and puts an offering, a great offering in her hand. And he puts her under oath and says, you know, if you've gone astray from your husband and slept with another man, then let your belly swell and your thigh rot as the Lord makes you a curse among your people.

And she's supposed to say, amen, so be it. Now what else is she going to say? I mean, she either has to confess her guilt or go along with this thing. If she says, no, I'm not going to go along with this.

And I think she'd be treated as guilty by default. But so she's actually invoking a curse on herself verbally. If she's lying about this matter.

And then, of course, she drinks it now or deals like this have been viewed negatively by many modern Christians. For one thing, some people say it sounds awful like the Salem witch trials or the medieval ways of finding out if a woman is a witch or not, you know, like tie a rock around her feet and throw in the in the in the lake. If she floats, she's innocent.

You know, if she thinks she's a witch and she deserved to die anyway. Obviously, the those kinds of ordeals stack the deck against the woman and it would require a miracle for her to be proven innocent. But in this ordeal, it would take a miracle to prove her guilty, which this ordeal actually stacks the deck in her favor.

Because I'll tell you what, if we went out for some dirt in some water and had you women drink it, I guarantee you not one of you and intend probably not one of you at all would find your belly swell and your thyroid as a result of drinking a little bit of muddy water. In other words, the stuff doesn't cause the condition. The in the water is symbolic and the condition is supernaturally God's way of exposing her guilt.

Presumably, if God didn't show up at all, if there's nothing we're asked at all, then all women would be proven innocent by the ordeal, because no one would find their belly swelling in their thyroid and as a result of drinking dusty water. I had some arguments with someone on a Bible forum about this some time ago. He he thought this was barbaric.

He thought it was. He thought it was not God. He thought it was Moses mistakenly coming up with this.

He thought it was an anti-woman kind of thing, he said, because, you know, the fact that drinking this water would make the belly swell in the side of rot means there must have been some kind of a microorganism or something in the dust that would give this woman some disease that would have these symptoms. And therefore, it would take a miracle to keep her to prove her innocent. But that's, to my mind, the most absurd thing I could ever imagine.

Why would there be an organism in the dust of the tabernacle floor that caused those particular symptoms? I'm not aware of any disease that caused those exact symptoms. And even if one existed, how would one know that that disease organism would be in the tabernacle dust? I mean, the likelihood is not great. And if if there was in the in the region where the children of Israel were wandering, if there was, in fact, some organism in the dust that made that happen, then it wouldn't just be adulterous women who begin that condition.

Every little kid would get that condition because kids put dirt in their mouth and they eat with dirty hands and stuff like that. I mean, bellies would be swelling and thighs were running all over the place because of this infected soil. But to suggest that there was something in the soil that made this happen is absurd.

I mean, I don't think any medical doctor can identify some organism that's in the soil that would make this happen. Obviously, if there was no miraculous intervention on God's part, every woman would be proven innocent from this. Only the guilty woman will be having these symptoms because God will make them happen.

The idea here is that God was a witness when no one else was a witness to her adultery, and he will testify to it in this way. Now, why the belly swells? Why the thigh rots? I'm not really entirely sure. Some commentators have said that the thigh in the Old Testament is a euphemism for the sexual organs.

I'm not really sure I agree with that, but that was in a pretty respectable commentary, that in the Old Testament they have a variety of euphemisms for the genitals, and that the thigh is one of the common euphemisms for the genitals. So, to say her belly would swell and her genitals would rot would make it a very apt thing, although the thigh is involved when a woman is having sex, too, as far as that goes. So, in any case, the parts of her body associated with the sin, certainly the womb is associated with sex, although the swelling is not, in this case, from pregnancy, but from a curse.

Probably a defect in the womb is suggested. If it is her genitals that are rotting, then of course everything about the ordeal is related to her crime. And so, this really is a way of solving a problem, a mystery, really.

How does a man know if his wife has cheated on him? Now, if a man is just suspicious, then his wife should welcome this. She should be glad to have closure on this matter. My husband has been accused of having this affair I've never had.

Let's go to the tabernacle and get this cleared up, because if I'm guilty, God will prove it. If God doesn't show me guilty, then you have to understand I'm innocent. And that would be very good for the restoration of marriages that are damaged by those kinds of suspicions.

Now, you might say, is there a comparable test to see if a man's been committing adultery? No, there wasn't. And that is a double standard, but it's a double standard that was related to the whole issue of polygamy and concubinage. In a day where a man could have wives and concubines, adultery was much harder to find, more narrowly defined.

It was only adultery if he slept with another man's wife, in which case the man would be put to death for that, if caught. If the woman was found guilty through this ordeal, presumably the man she slept with would be implicated too by her. I mean, if she's going to be put to death, she'll probably tell who the culprit was that she was with.

And so, at least it's supposed to happen that way. Now, some people think, well, maybe this belly swelling and thigh rotting business is psychosomatic. I mean, because there are people, commentators, who have a real hard time with the supernatural, and especially with strange supernatural things.

This is kind of a strange supernatural thing. Miracles that, you know, feed multitudes or that raise the dead or that heal sickness, those are miracles that we can imagine God doing because they're God's kind of thing to do. But this kind of thing is bizarre.

And so, there's commentators that try to say, well, this obviously was to play on the psychological sense of guilt that the woman was feeling, and it would be drinking the water and all this oath that she took and so forth was simply to make her nervous if she knew she was guilty, and it would have these psychosomatic effects on her. But again, I mean, I don't really know that a swelling belly and a rotting thigh or rotting genitals, if that's what's referring to, is something that comes about just from feeling bad, from feeling guilty, from being afraid that you'll be caught. I mean, there might be some kind of ulcers somebody would get from that kind of situation, but the particular things that are suggested don't seem to really fit.

Besides, it wouldn't be very fair because a woman would be like taking a lie detector test. If I was taking a lie detector test, even if it was innocent, I'd be nervous. I don't know if I trust the test.

You know, what if this comes out positive and I'm really it's really negative. I didn't do anything. It comes out and makes me look guilty and I'm not, you know, I mean, just the very nervousness about the reliability of the test could make you give a false reading.

And I would think that if this was a matter of making the woman's own psychology work against her, then then, you know, any woman who's put through this ordeal would be nervous. And, you know, the specific results obviously require God's intervention. And therefore, it's not something that that was against the woman.

It's a thing that only if God exposed her sin would she be found guilty. And if God didn't show up at all and they did this, even a guilty woman would be found innocent. So that the the ordeal is stacked in favor of the woman, not not against her.

And the husband would have to accept the solution if his wife went drank this water and this ordeal and she didn't swell up and, you know, didn't have these effects. And he'd have to just realize, OK, she's innocent. I still think she's guilty.

No, no, she's vindicated. And that's a good thing. I don't know, but I wonder sometimes if there's a relationship between this law and that strange story about Jesus riding in the dust on the temple floor when the woman who was caught in adultery was brought to him.

Because you remember how that went. This woman is caught in the act of adultery in the opening verses of John chapter eight. The Jews, the Pharisees brought her to Jesus to see if he would condemn her as Moses would to death.

And Jesus ignored them initially. We know he eventually gave a really brilliant answer to them, but but he waited a long time to answer him. Instead, he stooped down and he wrote on the dust that says on the temple floor with his finger.

Nothing is said about what he wrote, which is strange because it's the only instance in the Bible of any recording of Jesus writing anything. We don't have any record of writing on parchment or writing on papyrus or writing with a pen, writing with his finger on dust on the temple floor and its content. The only thing ever written by Jesus that we know of, the contents are not preserved for us, even by the apostles who were there and saw it.

Why? I don't know why it's strange. There's a lot of different opinions about what people think, but I wonder if there is in his mind a connection here. Israel was like an adulterous woman.

He considered that these people here who are bringing this one were just as guilty as she was. He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her. Some translations or some commentary say that his words should be trusted.

He that is without this sin, let him cast the first stone as if they're guilty of the same thing. She is. She was an adulterous.

So is Israel. Whenever Israel was unfaithful to God, God spoke of Israel as being an adulterous, guilty of spiritual adultery. And with Jesus, maybe going through the ordeal to prove them guilty.

I mean, I don't know. He didn't. He didn't use a water didn't make him drink anything, but he may have written the curses on the floor in the dust, just like the priest who wrote the curses and scraped them into the water and the dust of the temple floor that and the dust of the tabernacle floor in this are the only two places that the Bible ever makes reference to the dust on the floor of the sanctuary.

So I wonder if there's some connection there, but I don't know if he's going through something that ritualistic that may, as it were, be intended to show them their guilt because he wrote on the floor first and they stood up and said, let he that is about cinnamon. You cast the first stone at her and they had time to read what he wrote, whatever it was. And then they then he stooped down and started writing on the dust again and they walked away and left.

That's how the story goes. I everyone wonders what he wrote and everyone wonders why he handled the situation that way. But I've always wondered when I read this, if there is any connection.

I don't know. I can't make a clear connection. Maybe you could, if there's one chapter six.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the children of Israel and say to them when either a man or woman consecrates an offering to take the vow of a Nazarite to separate himself to the Lord. He shall separate himself from wine and similar drink. He should drink neither vinegar made from wine nor vinegar made from similar drink.

Neither shall he drink any grape juice or eat fresh grapes or raisins. All the days of his separation, he shall eat nothing that produced from the grapevine, from the seed to the skin and the days of the vow of his separation. No razor shall come upon his head until the days are fulfilled for which he has separated himself to the Lord.

He should be holy. Then he shall let the locks of his hair of his head grow all the days that separates him from himself from the Lord. He shall not go near a dead body.

He should not make himself unclean. That is not go to a funeral, even for his father or his mother, for his brother or his sister when they die, because his separation to God is on his head. All the days of his separation shall be holy.

He shall be holy to the Lord. Now it does talk about a situation where he accidentally gets defiled. He or she, because it is either a man or a woman that can take this vow in verse two.

That would be more obvious when a man was taking it because women had long hair anyway and they didn't have beards. So a woman taking an advert vow would simply be avoiding all products of the grapevine, avoiding all dead bodies and not cutting her hair. But most women didn't cut their hair anyway.

It was kind of the custom for the women to leave their hair uncut. The man would look different than everyone else in society because he'd have long hair and a long beard uncut. Now the Nazarite vow, it's clear as we'll see there's a time where they finish the vow and they go through a certain ceremony, which begins to just be described in verse 13.

The vow could be for a set period of time. I think according to Jewish custom, the shortest time of a Nazarite vow could be a month, but it's not designated here what the shortest Nazarite vow could be. But I think a month was considered to be the shortest Nazarite vow under Jewish tradition.

Or it could be for a year or years or a lifetime. There are at least three people we know of that were lifetime Nazarites in the Bible. One of them was Samson, the most well-known for being a Nazarite because the length of his hair was an issue was made about it because it was regarded to be the source of his strength.

But Samson was made a Nazarite from his mother's womb. Even before he was conceived, the angel of the Lord told his parents they were going to have a son and he'd be a Nazarite forever. So Samson never ever cut his hair or beard until he did.

And he never drank wine until he did. And he never came near a dead body until he did. Actually, he was never supposed to come near any of those things.

But he was a bad Nazarite. He was a bad boy. He did a lot of bad things.

He was a bad Jewish boy. He did finally cut his hair to please a woman. Actually, he didn't do it, but he allowed her to do it.

A barber did it, really. And she called a barber in and he cut his hair. And he did go near dead bodies.

He did kill people. And he probably drank too. He partied a lot.

So he's not a good example of a Nazarite. He was a Nazarite, not by choice. Most people were Nazarites by choice.

Now, Samuel was a Nazarite, apparently. Although that's no big issue, no big issue is made of that in the Bible. It may be that a lot of the prophets were Nazarites.

Samuel was the first of the prophets. And it's very possible that prophets commonly would separate themselves, the Lord of the Nazarite vow. But it says about Samuel, before he was conceived, his mother was praying and asked God to give her a child.

And in 1 Samuel 1.11, it says, she made a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me and not forget your maidservant, but will give your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall come upon his head. There's no razor should come upon his head. That means he'll be a Nazarite.

It's just a shorthand way of saying that. Also, John the Baptist was a Nazarite, according to Luke chapter one, the angel that announced again before his birth, even before his conception to Zechariah said this about him in Luke 1.15 says, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord and he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb.

The fact that he would not drink wine or strong drink means he'd be a Nazarite. To be a teetotaler was not common in biblical times. To avoid all alcohol was not done.

I mean, people needed alcohol to keep their water from being unsanitary. They mixed it with their water in order to avoid getting amoebas. But only a Nazarite would really be sworn off of alcohol.

I think the Rechabites were mentioned in the book of Jeremiah were also Nazarites. I think for life, I mean, I think they're permanent Nazarites. So there were some in the Bible who were Nazarites from the time they were born or at least from some point in their life till forever.

And they just never cut their hair. Whenever you see movies or even classic paintings of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, it always amazes me how John the Baptist is so short-haired when in fact he would have never cut his hair in his life when he was 30 years old. Or his beard.

He would have been wild looking. And so, although he may have worn his hair tied up in a bun or something, we don't know. But he didn't have short hair or even medium length hair.

He had very long hair, as did Samson and Samuel and a few other Nazarites that we know about. But Paul took a Nazarite vow, but not for an extremely long time. Interestingly, he took one while he was in Corinth.

And Corinth is the town he wrote to where he said, it's a shame for a man to have long hair. In 1 Corinthians 11, that famous verse in verse 14, the verse says, does not nature itself teach you that for a man to have long hair is a shame unto him? Well, Paul was growing his hair out while he was there. And he was in Corinth for 18 months.

We don't know how long he was growing his hair out, but he ended his vow when he left Corinth. We know that because it says that in Acts 18, in verse 18, about the time Paul left Corinth, he shaved his head to conclude a vow. And that would be a Nazarite vow, obviously, because that's how they ended it, with shaving their head.

It says in Acts 18, 18, this is when Paul leaves Corinth. So Paul still remained a good while. Then he took his leave of the brethren and sailed for Syria.

And Priscilla and Aquila were with him. And he had his hair cut off at Centuria, which is the seaport near Corinth, for he had taken a vow. Now, you don't cut your hair off when you begin the vow.

You take, you cut your hair off when you finish a vow, as we'll see. It was part of the vow. You take a vow and you grow your hair out and your beard out.

And then when you end your vow, you shave and shave your head. And you burn the hair as an offering to the Lord. It's called the hair of your separation.

It's the length of hair that grew while you're on the vow. It represents the time you're separated to the Lord. So Paul took a vow, a Nazarite vow.

Interestingly, he did. And also when he went to Jerusalem, his final trip there, when James told him that there were a lot of believers there in Jerusalem who were zealous for the law, but they'd heard rumors about Paul being against the law in order to befriend Paul to the Jewish Christian community there. James suggested that Paul participate in the ceremony of cleansing of four Nazarites who had finished their vows.

They needed to go offer the offerings that are necessary, a couple of birds and so forth, and grain offerings. And James asked if Paul would consider going and paying the fees for the cost of these four men finishing out their vows. And he did.

So Paul did not object to Nazarite vows. He took one himself, and he even paid the fees for four Nazarites in Jerusalem to finish out their vow with the sacrifices and so forth required. Now, what is the meaning of the vow? The word Nazarite means separated.

It means someone separated to God, as it specifically says in verse two, if they want to take a vow of a Nazarite to separate himself to the Lord. So in a sense, the whole nation of Israel was separated in the Lord. But a Nazarite could be separated more like the priests are.

It wouldn't give him the privileges of a priest or the duties of a priest, but he'd be separated like the priest is. The priests were not allowed to drink wine when they went into the tabernacle. They could drink it at other times, but they're not allowed to drink wine when they went in the tabernacle.

They weren't able to go near a dead body. We saw that earlier. And as far as the hair goes, we don't have any reason to believe the priest never cut their hair, but they did cover their head.

They covered their head with a turban or a hat when they ministered. And so in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul said that a woman's hair is given to her for a covering. And maybe by the Nazarite growing his hair out long, this was like covering his head, sort of like the priest did.

It's hard to know, but he was separated to the Lord in a way similar to the way the priests were, more than the average Israelite. Now, I want to make this clear. Jesus was not a Nazarite.

Some people have said he was. Back in the days of the Jesus movement, when a lot of hippies had long hair and got saved, and so there were a lot of long haired Christians, and there were a lot of people saying it's a shame for a man to have long hair and so forth. When there was controversy about that, if you weren't around, you can't probably relate to it, but there was a big controversy about that among Jesus freaks, like myself.

And some of the Jesus freaks said, well, Jesus had long hair because he was a Nazarite. But they were mistaken. Of course, he was not a Nazarite.

Jesus drank wine. In fact, he made it very clear that though John the Baptist did not drink wine because he was a Nazarite, Jesus said he was different than John and that he did drink wine and people even referred to him as a winebibber and a glutton because of it. Remember when he contrasted himself with John the Baptist, he said John came neither eating meat nor drinking wine.

And you say he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. You say, behold, a winebibber and a glutton, a friend of sinners.

He mentioned that John's Nazarite behavior was in contrast to his own. He was not a Nazarite. The reason people sometimes say he was Nazarite because he was a Nazarene.

And this these words sound similar in English, though they're not really very similar in the Hebrew, and they certainly don't mean anything like the same thing. Nazarite means a separated one. Nazarene means someone from the city of Nazareth.

In other words, Nazarene just is a reference to the geography of where you were born. A Nazarene is from Nazareth, a Nazarite, maybe from anywhere. It doesn't say anything about where he's from.

It's a vow that he takes. And Jesus never did take this vow, though Paul did and John the Baptist had it and many other good men did. And a person who is separated by a vow was, in a sense, probably separated from other activities, too, that we don't read about.

In other words, they probably took special time out for devotion to God. Perhaps like John the Baptist, they would commonly go out in the desert. We don't know if they did.

John did. But, you know, spending time alone with God, it would appear that Saul, after his conversion, spent some time in Arabia, probably in the desert. And he may since we know he took a Nazarite vow later, he may have taken Nazarite vow during that season, too.

We don't know. In some sense or another, he saw himself especially separated during the course of his vow to the Lord. Which must have meant an interruption in his other activities as well.

Unless simply not drinking wine was a separation from ordinary activities of a great significance, because wine was served at every table. It might have been, you know, if you didn't drink wine, you didn't really socialize much. You didn't go to feasts and you didn't banquet and so forth.

It may have been that he was separated from other people voluntarily during the time of his vow by his not drinking wine. It's difficult to know what the value of his hair and his beard growing out was. It may have been just so that it'd be obvious to the glass who was and who was not.

And that's right. It might have been just his emblem, his badge of being one who is separated to God. And as far as not going near a dead body, of course, that that's defilement.

If you go near a dead body, you can't go to the tabernacle. So there those are the things he was required to avoid. And it says in verse nine, if anyone dies very suddenly beside him, which probably doesn't happen very often, but it could happen.

I mean, if he was in, I don't know, maybe somewhere where someone dies of a heart attack or something, or if he's at war, I don't know if Nazarites fight in the war, but if they were, someone might die next to him. Well, he shouldn't be in a war. If he's not, he's going to be around too many dead bodies there.

But the point is, if he's accidentally defiled by an unexpected death that takes place in his vicinity. And that says he defiles his consecrated head. His consecrated head is so described because it has the hair of his separation visible upon it.

And he is defiled. His vow is defiled. If he's even accidentally in contact with a dead body.

So he's got to shave his head and start over. So then he shall shave his head on the day of his cleansing. On the seventh day, he shall shave it.

Then on the eighth day, he shall bring two turtle doves or two young pigeons to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. And the priest shall offer one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering and make atonement for him because he sinned by reason of the dead body. And he shall sanctify his head that same day.

Now, he sinned. How is it a sin? It's actually not a sin to be defiled by contact with the dead. But apparently it is a sin if it breaks the vow, even though it's an accidental sin.

Interestingly, I mean, the guy is not going to be punished for this sin. He can offer a couple of birds and it's done or whatever. But the thing is, God provides an atonement for it, but he still calls it a sin, even though it was accidental, which suggests, of course, that we need to be aware, just like there were sacrifices for unintentional sin, the sin offering was for unintentional sin or sins of ignorance.

There are sins that we commit not because we intend to, not because we're willful sinners, but because we're weak. We fall to a temptation or we are ignorant that something is wrong and we do it and later find out these were all treated as sins anyway. And there were still sins that needed atoning.

And so to become defiled while you had vowed to remain undefiled is to break a vow, even though it's accidental. The vow was broken and it's something that has to be atoned for. So he'll shave his head and then seven days later on the eighth day, he'll bring these offerings and then he should consecrate to the Lord the days of his separation and bring a male lamb in its first year as a trespass offering.

But the former day should be lost of his values. Got to redo those because the separation was defiled. Now, then he has to, of course, start over again.

So he had to shave his head and start over. This may suggest that the vow had to be begun by shaving the head, too, though it's not stated. The vow is ended by shaving the head, but it would make sense for it to begin with shaving the head, too, so that all the hair that grows would be the hair of the separation.

If you already had some hair on your head and said, OK, from this moment on start growing out, then it wouldn't all be technically the hair of your separation. Some of it was your ordinary hair before you were separated to God. So it's possible.

And the fact that he has to shave his head to start over, it might suggest that the vow is ordinarily begun by shaving the head, though it's not stated in so many words. Verse 13. Now, this is the law of the Nazarite.

When the days of his separation are fulfilled. He should be brought to the door of the tabernacle of meeting and he shall present his offering to the Lord. One male lamb in its first year without blemish as a burnt offering.

One new lamb in its first year without a blemish as a sin offering. One ram without blemish as a peace offering. A basket of unleavened bread cakes, a fine flour mixed with oil, unleavened wafers anointed with oil and their grain offering with the drink offerings.

Drink offerings were wine generally. Then the priest should bring them before the Lord and offer his sin offering and his burnt offering. And he shall offer the ram as a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord with the basket of unleavened bread.

The priest shall also offer its grain offering and its drink offering. Then the Nazarite shall shave his consecrated head at the door of the tabernacle of meeting and shall take the hair from his consecrated head and put it on the fire, which is under the sacrifice of the peace offering. And the priest shall take the boiled shoulder of the ram.

One unleavened cake from the basket and one unleavened wafer and put them in the hands of the Nazarite after he shaved his consecrated hair and the priest shall wave them as a wave offering before the Lord. They are holy for the priest together with the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the heave offering. After that, the Nazarite may drink wine.

That is, his vow is over at that point. So the priest had a lot of occasions to get free food. You know, when people sinned, when people were Nazarites, when people were unclean and had to make a restitution for it and so forth.

So this is the law of the Nazarite who vows to the Lord the offering for his separation and besides that, whatever else his hand is able to provide according to the vow which he takes. So he must do according to the law of the separation. Now, whatever else he has to provide according to his vow means that when he made the vow, he may also have vowed in addition to the ordinary provisions of abstaining from grape vine products and dead bodies and cutting the hair that he also vowed some other things to God at the same time.

The Jews often vowed monetary or animal gifts and so forth to God. And so it says any other vows, any other stuff he vowed, he has to also pay that, of course, and then he's done with his vow. Now, the last few verses of chapter six are kind of interesting.

I mean, that they'd be thrown in here because it's not related at all to the material before it or after it. And it's just basically what we call the Aaronic benediction. Aaron, the high priest, was supposed to bless the people, although it doesn't say on what occasions, perhaps on festival days, every time the people gathered, perhaps he was supposed to get out and say this, this little thing.

It's become very famous. Many churches actually use it as a benediction. Also, it says the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his son saying, this is the way you shall bless the children of Israel.

Say to them, Yahweh bless you and keep you. Yahweh make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

So they should put my name on the children of Israel and I will bless them. So the blessing of Yahweh is put on them in specific words of this formula by Aaron upon the people. And it's basically a well-wishing, of course, like it's like a prayer, only it's pronounced as a blessing that God will keep you.

And that he will, the reference to making his face shine upon you and also lifting up his countenance upon you. These are just expressions for having a favorable attitude towards you and blessing you in general. His face shining on you means he sees you, he looks upon you favorably and he's gracious to you.

And the end result is that he gives you peace. So the ultimate blessing is Shalom. God gives peace to his people through keeping them and showing favor and being gracious to them.

And in saying this benediction, he would put God's name on the people. Now. The next chapter is extremely long.

And I would like to summarize it. Because it is repetitious, the reason it's long is it's repetitious. Once you read verses 12 through 17.

You've read. Almost all the words that you're going to find from that point on to verse 83. The only thing that changes is the name of the tribe.

And the name of the leader of the tribe. What we have here is each tribe. Is bringing certain offerings to the Lord.

And first of all. There is a these these offerings are apparently. Voluntary.

But they're bringing them as a show of appreciation to God. And to help support the work, the sanctuary. The first thing they bring are six covered carts and 12 oxen.

And that is that these are the regular leaders of the 12 tribes that we've we've seen mentioned before. Each one provides one ox. And two of them together provide one cart or covered cart.

These carts are for the purpose of transporting the tabernacle. Now. They give some of these carts to the.

Call it to the Mariah and some to the. Gershonites. But they don't give any to the call it.

Because the call it. Are carrying the furniture on their shoulders. They don't put them on carts.

That stated in verse nine. To the sons of Coat. He gave none because theirs was the service of the holy things which they carried on their shoulders.

So this is what we read. Now it came to pass when Moses had finished setting up the tabernacle. And this would be apparently out of chronological order.

Just as we shall find chapter nine, verse one is out of chronological order. Where it talks about the keeping the Passover. Remember, the book opened the first day of the second month.

But the tabernacle went up the first day of the first month. And this apparently these offerings were apparently offering after tabernacle went up. Probably during that month.

Although it's not clear exactly when it was. It said. Because it could have been a little while afterwards to.

When he had anointed and sanctified all its furnishings and the altar and all the utensils and anointed them with sanctified them. Verse two. Then the leaders of Israel, the heads of their fathers houses, who are the leaders of the tribes and over those who were numbered, made an offering.

And they brought their offering before the Lord six covered carts and twelve oxen. A cart for every two of the leaders and for each one in ox. And they presented them before the tabernacle.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, except these from them, that they may be used in doing the work of the tabernacle of meeting. And you should give them to the Levites to every man according to his service. So Moses took the carts and the oxen and gave them to the Levites, two carts.

And for oxen, he gave to the sons of Gershon according to their service. Now, they were the ones who carried the tarps and the coverings and stuff. So they only needed two carts, whereas the Meraites, they carried the hardware that and the structural come up to the boards and all the heavy stuff.

So four carts and eight oxen were given to the sons of Marary, according to their service, under the hand of the son of Aaron, the priest. Apparently, these carts were large enough to accommodate these boards that were like 15 feet long, and the carts were covered also so they could be protected from weather as they traveled. So each of the tribes provided some of this, the two oxen to pull one cart.

And two carts were used for the tapestries and the tarps and the coverings for the tabernacle and four carts for the boards and the pillars and all that stuff. But as we saw in verse nine, the sons of Coat, he didn't receive any because they carried their service on their shoulders. And we remember, of course, that that became an issue later on, because when the Ark of the Covenant was stolen from Israel by the Philistines and they thought it was too hot to handle, they kept it for a while.

But every time they put it into a city, the city broke out with hemorrhoids and rats. They probably bubonic plague wherever the Ark went in the Philistine land. There was a plague of rats and some kind of a plague that caused hemorrhoids on everybody.

And this happened wherever the Ark went. First, they had put it into the Temple of Dagon, the Philistine God. But when they did that, the statue of Dagon fell down before the Ark and they put it back up again.

And the next day they found that the head and the hands of Dagon were cut off. And the hands of Dagon were on the threshold of the temple. And they thought, this is weird.

And so they they took it to one of their cities. And that's when the plague broke out. And they took it to another thing.

The plague broke out there. Finally, they bring it to another city. They said, don't bring it here.

Send it back to Israel. And so they weren't sure how to get it back to Israel. So they consulted their sorcerers or their magicians or their priests or whatever.

And they said, put it on a cart with some oxen and let them let the oxen go and see if they take it back. If they do, then this is of God. And so they did.

And the Ark was taken back to Israel on an ox cart. And then it was stored for a long time until David was king. And then when David wanted to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, those who were in charge of transporting it foolishly put it on an ox cart.

That's not how the Ark was transported. It's supposed to be transferred on the shoulders of the priests. And because it was on an ox cart, it was unstable.

And the ox cart, which is the oxen, stumbled and the ox cart apparently jostled. The Ark started to topple, the man in charge stood up and stabilize it, and he was struck dead by God, which made David kind of angry that that wasn't very nice of God to do that. But in all likelihood, the guy who was struck dead was the guy who was probably responsible for its transport.

That's why he was so nearby attending to it. He was probably the one who decided to put on the ox cart, which was against God's instructions. He put the Ark in danger of this kind of situation by not following instructions, and he got struck dead for it.

But the Ark and the other furniture was to be carried on the shoulders, not on carts. And that's what's made clear here in verses four through nine. Verse 10.

Now the leaders offered the dedication offering for the altar when it was anointed. So the leaders offered their offering before the altar for the Lord said to Moses, they shall offer their offering one liter each day for the dedication of the altar. And it says in verses 12 through 17, it says on the first day.

The one who offered his offering on the first day was Nashon, the son of Aminadab of the tribe of Judah. Reflecting the fact that Judah was going to be the leader of the tribes on the marches in the future because they were on the east side of the tabernacle in their camp, so in the break camp, they would move out first. The tribe of Judah was going to be the first.

And his offering was one silver platter, the weight of which was 130 shekels and one silver bowl of 70 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. Both of them were full. A fine flower mixed with oil as a grain offering one gold pan of 10 shekels full of incense.

One young bull, one ran one male lamb in its first year as a burnt offering. One kid of the goats as a sin offering. And for the sacrifice of the peace offerings to oxen, five rams, five male goats, five male lambs in their first year.

This was the offering of Nashon, the son of Aminadab. So it's given in detail. And then the exact same offerings are made by the other 11 tribes by their leaders.

The second one in verse 18 is Nethaniel, the leader of the tribe of Isishar. And in verse 24, the third day, Eliab, who is the representative of the tribe of Zebulun. And in verse 30, on the fourth day, Elisur, who was the chief of the tribe of Reuben.

And in every case, the verses that follow these give exactly the same information. Each guy gave exactly the same offering and they're told in exactly the same words. You could have just rubber stamped it 12 times.

So each leader offered identical offerings that consisted of one silver platter that weighed 130 shekels full of flour, one silver bowl that weighed 70 shekels full of fine flour, one gold pan that weighed 10 shekels of gold, and it was full of incense. And then there were the animals for the sacrifices. There was a young bull, a ram and a yearling male lamb for burnt offering.

There was a goat kid for the sin offering. And then for the peace offerings, there were in each case, two oxen, five rams, five male goats and five male lambs, a lot of animals, a lot of gold and silver. Each one offered on his own day.

They didn't all bring him the same day, though it seems like they could have. But each one got the special attention, got the spotlight on his own individual day to bring his offerings and present them to the tabernacle. And so it's the same all the time.

Verse 30, on the fourth day, there's the tribe of Reuben. Verse 36, on the fifth day, Shalumiel of the tribe of Simeon gave his. Verse 42, on the sixth day, Eliasath of the tribe of Gad.

In verse 42 through 47, verse 48, the seventh day, Elishema, the son of the Mihud, leader of the children of Ephraim, gave his exact same stuff. Verse 54, on the eighth day, Gamaliel, the son of Padasur, leader of the children of Manasseh, presented his offering. Verse 60, on the ninth day, Abidon, who was of the tribe of Benjamin, brought his.

In verse 66, the tenth day, Ahasuer of the tribe of Dan presented exactly the same thing. Verse 72, on the eleventh day, Pagiel, the son of Okron, the leader of the children of Asher, brought his. And then on the twelfth day, verse 78, Ahira, the son of Enon, leader of the children of Naphtali, presented his offering.

And that goes up through verse 83. And then verses 84 through 88 simply give the total number of all the things offered, and the math is perfect. Twelve silver platters, twelve silver bowls, twelve golden pans, twelve young bulls for burnt offering, along with twelve rams, twelve male lambs for burnt offering, twelve goat kids for sin offering.

Then for the peace offerings, twenty-four bulls, sixty rams, sixty male goats, sixty male lambs for peace offerings. And that's what we're told was the total brought by the twelve tribes. At the end of verse 88, it says this was the dedication offering for the altar.

After it was anointed. OK, the last couple of verses here, or just the last verse, 89. It says, Now, when Moses went into the tabernacle of meeting to speak with him, that is to God, he heard the voice of one speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony from between the two cherubim.

Thus he spoke to him. Now, in Exodus chapter 25. And verse 22, God had said that he would speak to Moses from above the mercy seat and access 2522.

It says in there, meaning above the mercy seat, I will meet with you and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat from between the two cherubim, which are on the ark of the testimony of all the things which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel. So Moses actually heard an audible voice from God coming from there. Now, it appears from number 789 that he didn't go into the Holy of Holies.

It sounds like he just went into the tabernacle of meeting, which would not be the Holy of Holies, but the main sanctuary. And he apparently would go there about where the golden incense altar is and just listen through the veil as God spoke in a human like voice. Tim, that'd be really interesting to hear God speaking from behind a veil.

Very tempting to look. And and yet we see that Moses, therefore, didn't have to depend on vague guidance, as we sometimes do. I mean, when we're trying to figure is this God speaking to me, is the Holy Spirit leading me or is it just my imagination? We often have to wonder those kind of things because we don't hear audible voices.

But apparently God in the Holy of Holies spoke out loud so that Moses could hear probably converse with God, probably mainly listened. I imagine he did more listening than talking. Moses did.

But that brings us to the end of Chapter seven. And there we will take a break.