Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Year 7, Day 144: Numbers 29

Theological Commentary: Click Here


Today, I am going to start with the fifteenth and the eight day of the festival.  Hopefully as you read, you picked up on the differences within the paragraphs that reference these.  These days are holy days.  These days are days without normal work to be done.  Naturally, being seven days apart, these days would line up with the idea of Sabbath.

If we step back from this concept, for a second, we can rationalize it really quickly.  We are very comfortable with the idea that Sabbath means no normal work.  It fits really well with what we understand of traditional Judaism.

On the other hand, let’s look at the non-Sabbath days.  These are also days of worship, yet there is no prohibition for normal work on these days.  What does this tell us?  I believe the message is subtle, yet clear.  Worship does not have to be separate from life.  We can worship God while going about our life.  We can worship God while being in the world.

So often we like to compartmentalize.  We think that there is worldly life and then there is godly worship.  What we see here in this chapter, though, is different.  There is worship while we go about our worldly business and there is worship while we separate ourselves from our worldly work.  In other words, we can take God with us wherever we are.  We may not think of worshipping God while we are out and about in the world, but that is our problem and not God’s problem!

In addition to this thought, I have some very interesting thoughts in my commentary from several years back.  You can read them if you want a completely different perspective on this chapter.  In that post, I focus on an entirely different element in these verses, not necessarily contrary thoughts.

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