Dear friends,
Here in Israel, we are in a season called Chagim: Feasts, or Holidays. There are two Hebrew words that one hears endlessly during this season: Acherey Hachagim – “after the Holidays”. Everything is “frozen”, postponed, delayed for this time (pretty much like the Christmas/New Year season, with a slight difference, that Christmas/New Year season lasts two weeks, and our Chagim lasts almost a month – the Jewish month of Tishrei).
Here on this Blog, we will also be celebrating the Holy Days. Even though in our last post, we asked the final and the main question of our Hidden Messiah study: Why was Yeshua hidden from Israel? – we will look for an answer “Acherey Hachagim” – after the Holidays. For now, we will talk about the Feasts, and since this is the week of the Feast of Trumpets (this is the biblical name and meaning of this Feast), that will be our subject for today.
The biblical Hebrew name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה), literally “day [of] shouting/blasting”, translated as the Feast of Trumpets. You probably know this holiday as Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year. “Rosh” is the Hebrew word for “head”, “ha” is the definite article (“the”), and “shanah” means year. Thus Rosh HaShanah means Head [of] the Year, referring to the Jewish new year (by the way, one of four “new years” in Israel).
The term “Rosh Hashanah” in its current meaning does not appear in the Torah. Leviticus 23:24 refers to the festival of the first day of the seventh month as Zikhron Teru’ah ([a] memorial [of] blowing [of Trumpets]); it is also referred to in the same part of Leviticus as ‘שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן’ (shabbat shabbaton) and a “holy day to God”. Numbers 29:1 calls the festival Yom Teru’ah (“Day [of] blowing [the Trumpet]”), and specifies different sacrifices that were to be performed.
Rosh Hashanah is also the Day of Judgment: Yom HaDin. According to the Talmud tractate on Rosh Hashanah, three books are opened on this day: the Book of Life, for the righteous, the Book of Death, for the most evil, who receive the seal of death, and a third book, for an intermediate class. The intermediate class are allowed a period of ten days, until Yom Kippur, to reflect and repent – the final judgment not taking place until Yom Kippur.
The Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah is Chapters 21 and 22 of the book of Genesis. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of these chapters in God’s mystery. In the past, my attention had always been drawn to Akedat Yitzhak in Genesis 22 and to the fact that Genesis 22 is read every Jewish New Year. Why do we read the story of Isaac’s sacrifice every Rosh Hashanah? One of the traditional explanations says that the shofar, made of a ram’s horn, reminds us of the binding of Isaac and the ram God provided as a sacrifice in his place . I personally believe, the connection is much deeper. I wrote a book based on this story, and here are a few paragraphs from the Prologue:
“I ask you to visualize that mountain, the location of one of the strangest events in the history of Israel. See the aging father, who with his own hands binds his beloved son and who, with his very own hands, lays him on the altar. Knife in hand, he has already stretched out his arm to slay him, but… halted by a voice from heaven, he looks up and sees a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, which he then sacrifices as a burnt offering in the place of the son originally intended for this sacrifice. When from the lofty height of millenniums afterwards, we look back down at this mountain and at these three figures, our hearts literally quiver with the awareness of near-physical contact with this special secret, with the foretaste of some incredibly important and only partially understood, not yet revealed, mystery of God. Here we brush up against something that without a doubt still belongs to God, but the incomprehensible inner turbulence, which agitates us to the point of outward trembling, testifies that this picture is like some episode from His forethoughts and plans for the history of the world, fashioned for our viewing. This long ago slaying of the sacrificial lamb, which took place perhaps even before the beginning of time but somehow still resounds today, exceeds all bounds of history, time and the passing world. Something incredibly important is taking place here. Something is taking shape against the backdrop of all the long ages of human history: an unsolved mystery stands behind these actions. Are you aware that every year during the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, at the beginning of every Jewish year, this story entitled “Akedah”, the story of the binding and sacrifice of Isaac, is read in the synagogues? Why? What is so important for us that every time we enter a new year of our earthly walk, we again look at this story? Why did the father have to sacrifice his son? Who was this son, laid on the altar by his father? And this ram, caught in the thicket by his horns – what does he symbolize? I found an interesting passage in the Haggadah: “I heard from behind the Heavenly Veil these words: ‘Not Isaac, but the ram predestined for the burnt offering.’” …
Within this scene, this prologue not only to the history of Israel, but in fact to the entire history of mankind, is encapsulated the entirety of God’s design for the ages, His complete plan for humanity. It is not by coincidence that the location where all this takes place was later to become the main focal point of God in the visible world. It is the mountain of Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on which the Temple will be built that the Lord will one day fill with His glory. ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering,’[1] Abraham tells Isaac, and although there on the mountain at first we see only two figures – Abraham and Isaac, father and son – after a time it turns out that there is someone else in the picture: the ram caught in a thicket by its horns.[2] The lamb, which God provided for Himself for the burnt offering! Neither Abraham nor we the readers could see how and when he got there; he simply was there, and had been from the very beginning. In Jewish sources it says that the ram, this lamb, had already been slain before the creation of the world. This is why each time at the rebirth of the year we read about this story that somehow echoes from beyond the realm of time. In its light we can discern how, in God’s plan for the salvation of mankind, at first there are two: God, and Israel who is called the son and firstborn, but in the dispensation of the fullness of the times[3] it turns out that there is also ‘the Lamb’, who from the creation of the world was destined for sacrifice. Remember the portion I quoted earlier from the Haggadah: “I heard from behind the Heavenly Veil these words: ‘Not Isaac, but the ram predestined for the burnt offering.’” The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world replaces, on the altar, the one whom God Himself has called His son and firstborn.” [4]
[1] Gen. 22:8
[2] Gen. 22:13
[3] Eph. 1:10
[4] If you are Son of God, Come down from the Cross; here is the link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Julia-Blum/e/B00LUY0JN8/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_8?qid=1474990243&sr=8-8
