Posted by Navah on Jun 8, 2025 in Bible Study
In the Book of Numbers, there is a phrase that seemingly is easy to understand, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the narration. But the Hebrew text tries to tell us something beyond what is immediately obvious. In such a case, we need to resort to the writings of the Rabbis to make better sense of the whole episode. It is, therefore, the object of this work to explain the Hebrew text of Numbers 7 and to interpret its literal translation. This matter can...
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Posted by Navah on May 25, 2025 in The Exodus
In this introduction to our survey of the Book of Numbers, we would like to clarify an obscure passage in the census of Israel with which this book begins. In the following, we would like to posit to the studious reader another way to look at this, specifically in reference to the censuses of Israel in Numbers 1 and Numbers 26. The matter will become clear to the reader once we understand why the second census shows fewer numbers than that of the first one and what...
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Posted by Navah on Apr 20, 2025 in Bible Study
If one puts a bookmark at the page called “The New Testament” and then compares the volume of “The New Testament” vs. “The Old Testament”, he/she will find the mere disproportionate “new” of “The New Testament”. “The New Testament” writings present about a quarter of the entire Bible, and if we consider the parallel accounts in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) this percentage drops down significantly. Therefore, it seems like the average Christian reads a...
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Posted by Navah on Apr 15, 2025 in Bible Study
Did God allow us in Gen 9:3 to eat any animal flesh, as we desire? Man has absolute freedom of choice, which is not interfered with, and for this reason he can choose what he desires and can direct his activities to a given purpose. A man is free to choose, but he is not free of the consequences. In the issue of clean vs unclean food, there is a common mistake made when it is asserted that the Creator had changed His mind when in one place, He allows something and in...
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Posted by Navah on Mar 5, 2025 in Bible Study
Idolatry undoubtedly is the most serious violation against the Creator of the universe. To Him and to Him alone, and to the exclusion of everyone else, honor is due. The most pronounced example of the prohibition of idolatry is what is spoken in the Covenant. The Eternal prohibited the making of images of any idol, of what is in heaven, what is in the earth, and what is in the water. Five chapters later, however, He told Mosheh to make two images of pure gold of what is in...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 22, 2025 in Bible Study
The whole subject of observing the laws of the Torah can become difficult to understand in detail, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the Scriptural text. For instance, Torah says to cease labor on Shabbat and rest on the seventh day of the Creator but does not explicitly define what labor and rest are. Likewise with other commands. Mosheh in his last address to the nation asks us to love the Eternal with all we have and do His commands and statues, but...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 20, 2025 in The Exodus
The Bible is a book of questions, not of answers. Israel uniquely became a nation before it became a state. It had laws before it had a land. Thus, Israel can be counted as the only nation in the world that is an ethno-religious nation. Yet, we do not know her greatest leader’s Hebrew name. Exodus 2 tells us that a Levite married a woman from his tribe, and she conceived and bore a son. Later, Torah will tell us also that the man’s name was Amram, and the...
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Posted by Navah on Feb 9, 2025 in Bible Study
The historical events surrounding the festival of Chanukkah are described in two historical works called Maccabees I and Maccabees II. Both books tell the story of the liberation from the Greek rule of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes over the land of Judea and of the purification of the second Temple from the abominations the Greeks committed in the Temple. Vastly outnumbered, the Jews placed their trust in the Elohim of their fathers, and He gave them a miraculous...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 19, 2025 in The Exodus
The scroll of Genesis concludes with the death of the last patriarch, Ya’akov, and then by relates that Yoseph saw Ephrayim’s children to the third generation (Gen 50:23). But it does not tell anything about his brothers except that they were few in number when they descended to Egypt: only seventy souls including their father Ya’akov. Their fate however is revealed to the reader in the scroll of Exodus, which begins with listing their names again as in Chapter...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 11, 2025 in The Patriarchs' Saga
After Yoseph was sold in slavery and spent many years first as a slave and then in a prison accused unjustly, he rose to power in Egypt to become only second to Pharoah; he became the viceroy of Egypt. And Yoseph changed. Away from home and family, he was no longer the favored son of his father, who was reporting his brothers. In his encounter with his brothers, who came down to Egypt to buy grain on account of the famine in the land of Kana’an, he learned that his...
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Posted by Navah on Jan 4, 2025 in The Patriarchs' Saga
Yoseph was sold in Egypt as a slave. But the Elohim of his father was with him and did not abandon him as his brothers did. Now raised to the highest rank in Egypt, only second to Pharaoh himself, Yoseph could set his thought on his family in the land of Kana’an. On account of the famine that was throughout the whole land, his brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain, for grain could be found only in Egypt. Yoseph was expecting them to come for the famine was very great....
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Posted by Navah on Dec 25, 2024 in The Messiah
Psalm 2 is written as a psalm without a heading in honor of a particular king. Its content and visionary language indicate that it is not describing a specific king but rather depicts a prophetic vision of the future redeemer, Melech haMashiach, King Messiah, as it is written: “This day I have brought you forth”. The psalmist penned his Psalm as a mirrored picture of what he saw and as an echo of what he heard. In the prophecy given through Natan the prophet...
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