Crystal Writes A Blog

Blessings and Shalom

Shalom Cups by Flickr User W Keown, CC License = Attribution
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I decided sometime ago to include “Blessings and Shalom” in my e-mail signature for personal messages. Sometimes I also include it for professional messages, but not always. Sometimes I add “Love with blessings and shalom” to the signature because I want to communicate my love, but I also want to speak God’s blessings and peace. In all cases, what I am wanting for the recipient is a taste of God’s presence and God’s peace that passes all understanding. I truly believe in Yeshua’s admonition to His disciples to go into every home with a pronouncement of “Shalom” that peace would find rest with those who live there that seek it.

In today’s reading from Numbers 25:10 through Numbers 26:4, we begin a new week and a new portion. Parashah 41 is called Pinchas and is the Hebrew for Phinehas (Phineas), the son of Eleazar the high priest who is the son of Aaron the former high priest. At the end of the last portion, we read how Phineas stopped the plague against Israel by running his sword through the bellies of an Israelite and a Midianite prostitute who were openly defying God’s law.

God talks to Moses and says that Phineas has deflected His anger against Israel by being as zealous as He (God) is, and that deflection kept God from destroying Israel in His zeal. Because of that, God gives Phineas His covenant of shalom and His covenant of a perpetual priesthood in his bloodline. God says that because Phineas was zealous on behalf of Him, and because he made atonement for Israel, the office of priest will now be in his family forever.

The reading then gives us some history about the two people killed to make the atonement. The Israelite was a son of a leader from the tribe of Simeon, and the Midianite woman was a daughter of a leader of a clan of Midian. In other words, both of them should have known better, and actually they probably did know better and were acting out in defiance, which is why they paraded themselves in front of the tabernacle before going into the tent to commit adultery.

God tells Moses to treat the Midianites as enemies and attack them. As I studied a bit deeper into this, it appears that Balaam may have gone back to Balak and told him that he couldn’t curse the people because God controlled his tongue, but he could tell Balak how to make the people curse themselves. This is shown in Revelation 2:14 where it says Balaam taught Balak to trick the people of Israel by causing them to eat food that was sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual sins.

It’s one thing to blatantly advertise sins to the world, but to parade them to Christians to try and sway them away from God and toward the flesh because you want them to be cursed is not something God takes lightly. He calls the whole thing the “incident at Peor” and future Scriptures will deal harshly with the Midianites, and Balaam, on account of it. Of course, this lines up with the prophesies of Balaam who spoke that he was able to see these things with open eyes, but when God’s Spirit was no longer speaking through him, apparently he went back to being a blind leader of the blind.

The reading ends with the beginning of a new census of the people and tribes of Israel. God wants Eleazar to count the entire assembly who are twenty years of age and older and subject to military service, and number them by their ancestral clans. So Moses and Eleazar call to all those twenty and older who came out of Egypt, and they gather them in the field by the Jordan river across from Jericho.

As of yesterday, I was thinking that Balaam had started as an unbeliever and become convinced of God by walking in His presence. I mean, he spoke God’s words, he saw God’s angel, and he even witnessed as God made his donkey talk. But after all that, it turns out that Balaam was worse than a donkey–he was an ignorant beast. He didn’t learn anything from all his experiences. He was a man whose own mouth spoke words that would bring blessings and peace, and yet he chose instead to play around with curses and chaos.

If we want God’s shalom in our lives, it takes more than just talking about it. We can pronounce every blessing in the Holy Scriptures from our mouths, but if our hearts are far from God, they will also be far from His peace. I bid you, my readers, blessings and shalom, from my heart to yours, and I pray that you are a true seeker who longs for the presence of Yahveh Almighty from the depths of your soul. I’ve heard it said that the Bible is meant to be bread for daily use, not just cake for special occasions. The same can be said for God’s peace and His blessings. May those of us who have even an inkling of thought toward God let it become a head over heels love toward Him that will have us walking in His blessings and shalom every moment of our lives and right into eternity with Him.

June 28, 2014 - Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Bible Commentary, Bible study, Complete Jewish Bible, covenant, Moses, Numbers, peace, Scripture, seeker, Torah Portions