. Tol’dot, Generations:
B’reshiyt (Gen) 25:19 – 28:9
Malachi 1:1 – 2:7
Romans 9:6-13
Both pig and sheep can show you cloven hooves. Looks good! But considering how and what they eat, that’s a different story.
A pig can show you cloven hooves, looking good so far. But what they eat, how they mow it down and digest it – disgusting! The four-legged garbage disposal passes it all through one stomach and throughout its pork flesh. Makes for meat that’s an abomination and repulsive, according to the Creator.
A lamb can also show you cloven hooves, and looking good as well. What they eat, how they slowly chew and re-chew the cud and digest it, is so much cleaner coming through and out its flesh. Slow digestion of grass and forbs through four stomachs produces clean and healthy meat. YHWH calls this clean.
Although I can show up front how clean my walk is in life, I have a cloven nature stemming from the same individual. There’s a part of me that is clean, righteous, and good (1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 3:9) fed by the Spirit and the true Word. But there’s another part that is unclean and disgusting, where no good thing dwells (Isaiah 64:6; Romans 7:18). It’s fed by the negative, seeds of discord, evil imaginations, etc. This Torah portion reveals this cloven nature of man, and how to come out as the head and not the tail.
Small Tails
Interesting to me how pigs and sheep both have small tails. There’s not much they do with them besides show how happy they are. Can’t frisk away many flies with a small tail, nor slap anybody with them! Lol!
If I’m wagging my small tail, I’m not getting much done. If I’m trying to stir up the pot from my rear end, it’s just not working. Quarreling and accusing are wagging the tongue from the wrong side.
Better become the head and not the tail (Deuteronomy 28:13,44) by growing up into the Head, Yeshua (Ephesians 4:15).
Cloven Right From the Womb
Before they were even born, Rebecca could feel the struggle between two natures, two competitors. The twins came from one womb, a righteous mother no less.
During birth, Jacob came out holding the heel of Esau to keep him from kicking in his head. How do I know this?
The name ‘Ya’aqov’ literally means `heel grabber’ or `restrainer.’ He had to restrain his brother from crushing his head by grabbing his heel, just as was prophesied to the first mother, Eve (Genesis 3:15). The struggle between the two natures was already on before their birth!
The Cloven Soul
We don’t need to look any further than the mirror to find the cloven nature. The truth is – no matter how righteous our parents may have been, or how good of a home a child was raised in, there’s an old man Esau nature contending with the renewed Ya’aqov (Jacob) spirit within each one of us. Like it or not, each one of us was born with a cloven nature.
Which one is going to win the ongoing battle that we face every day? Will it be the carnal, old man sin nature, or the new creation of the born-again spirit cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb at one with the Holy Spirit?
For good answers and instruction, let’s hear from Sha’ul (Paul):
But I say, ‘Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts (sets its desire) against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another; lest whatever you may will, these things you do…’ Galatians 5:16-17
Whether we like it or not, we all experience this internal contradiction. In the great wisdom of our Elohim, YHWH gave Ya’aqov (Jacob) a competition with his opposing brother to make Ya’aqov stronger and to develop him into a champion in the Spirit. Ya’aqov wrestled with his old man nature before becoming named ‘Yisra’el’ (Israel), meaning ‘one who prevails as a prince with Elohim/God’ (Gen 32:29).
It is a fact of life – each one of us has an evil inclination in our fallen flesh that we must master – an old Adam, an Esau nature. We must take dominion over the old man by taking it to the cross, to mortify the deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:13).
How was it that each one of us was made into the ‘older,’ the old man nature? The psalmist declared we were all conceived in the womb with the nature of Cain:
Behold, I was born in iniquity and in sin when my mother conceived me. Psalms 51:7
YHWH commanded Cain to master the sin that was laying in wait to take him down:
“If you do well, it (your countenance, face) will lift. But if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the doorway. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Genesis 4:7
“Master it,” or I’m dead meat, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
To master the flesh, for the spirit man to have dominion over the old man, we must first be born from above by the Spirit of the Living God (John 3:6-7). When we’ve believed the Good News of salvation from sin by the death and resurrection of Yeshua, we become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This new self we are instructed to put on every day is told to dominate the old man (Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 1:23).
Only then do we have the same promise that YHWH gave Rebecca and to her seed:
“But the older will serve the younger.” Genesis 25:23
Paul midrashed on the two natures when he quoted this promise (Romans 9:12) “The older – old man, un-regenerated, born of the flesh – will serve the younger” – the new creation, the spirit man, the younger, spiritual part of the born-again believer.
How the Father Raises His Children
Abba chastens those He loves, so let’s be thankful we don’t have it so easy in life. No coincidence, the Messiah’s brother by the same name – Ya’aqov (James) – the apostle, exhorted us to:
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. James 1:2-3)
Trials and troubles in life have a way of testing our faith and growing us up into His sons and daughters. As we grow up as new creatures in Messiah, as we grow up spiritually, the spirit of man increasingly dominates. The man of the flesh must serve the younger man of the Spirit. Thanks be to Abba for the salvation of our souls and for His loving instructions and correction!
Dueling at the Wells
How can a man of the Spirit dominate the carnal man in a corrupt world?
We have a good example of that in our Torah portion with how Isaac (a type of a man of the Spirit) dealt with the Philistines (men of the carnal nature) in Genesis 26:18-22:
Then Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham – the Philistines had stopped them up after Abraham’s death. He gave them the same names that his father had given them. Then Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found a well of living water there.
That’s what the man of the Spirit does. He goes back to the places in life where the Spirit used to flow but was stopped up by the enemy and he cleans them out to get them to flow again. What exactly does he dig out for the Spirit of Life to flow again?
But the shepherds of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s shepherds saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well ‘Quarrel,’ because they quarreled with him.
Ah! So it’s not easy to dig out what plugs up the Spirit to flow from the innermost being! The self can assert its rights and not allow the Spirit to come up from the innermost being. Quarrels arise over who has the right to the soul: the man of the flesh, or the man of the Spirit. We wrestle with competing voices over who has mastery of the soul.
To find shalom in life, a man may have to move on to another well.
Then he dug another well and they quarreled over it too, so he named it ‘Accusation.’
Once a man of the Spirit moves on past arguing over doctrine, contending over words to no profit, he faces something else that blocks the flow of the Spirit – accusation. Are arch enemy, the Accuser of the brethren uses accusations to keep the Spirit from flowing out of a man. Stuffing a heart with accusations of the failures of a man’s past can stifle the spirit of a man. Sure has with me.
For example, my past failures as a father have been used to stifle my heart in the past. I have to continue to plead the blood of my Messiah, line up with Yeshua, my Advocate with the Father, and walk in His mercy and grace.
Can you think of how accusations against you have stifled your growth in the Spirit?
In pursuit of shalom, a man moves on to another well…
A Well in Wide Open Spaces
Then he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he named it ‘Wide Spaces’ and said, “Because now YHWH has created wide spaces for us and we will be fruitful in the land.” Genesis 26:22
Ah! The third time means resurrection from the dead, water flowing from the well of the Spirit! The older I get and the more I grow in the Spirit, the more I just want peace, how I need shalom in my life. Move me to a place of no quarreling and true shalom!
Honestly, I’m tired of arguing over doctrines, how to keep festivals, or not, what calendar we should keep, what prophecy teachings to go by, or not, and on and on. And, I’m learning how to say “No” to the Accuser of the brethren when voices accuse me of something I’ve done that keeps me in the flesh, not walking in the Spirit. I won’t line up with that stuff!
When we find a place in life where there is true shalom among the brethren, where we can all just get along, then we find “Wide Spaces” (Rehoboth). One thing I loved about this last Sukkot was how it felt like “Wide Spaces” spiritually. For the most part, my wife and I could go freely among any of the camps, among any of the circle of friends, and enjoy shalom celebrating the feasts. We heard little arguing or accusing, mostly shalom.
However, like anywhere in life, if there’s a camp of quarreling, bickering, arguing, contention, accusing others, and gossiping, who wants to be around that?
Answer: People who like to contribute to that noise. How about people who like to wag their small tails?
Throughout my life, I have found that the more quarreling and accusing is going on, the more confined the camp to where a person can walk and enjoy fellowship with others.
On the other hand, the more shalom, love, and joy there is in our circles of friends and fellowships, the more ‘wide spaces’ we have to enjoy in life. ‘Rehoboth’ is a place where the elder, old man nature, serves the younger, nature of the Spirit. That’s where believers are growing up into the Headship of Yeshua where through the work of the cross, the sinful nature is crucified and the spirit man arises in the newness of life like an artesian well.
The truth is we all have a cloven nature. Either we walk in the Spirit or we are walking in the flesh. Let’s choose to be growing up into the Head, the fountain of the Living Waters of the Spirit, and not be wagging a small tail by a plugged-up well.
In Yeshua’s Name – shalom,
David Klug