Torah Chuqat – Statutes, customs, ordinances
B’midbar – Numbers 19:1 – 22:1
Haftorah – Shoftim (Judges) 11:1-33
B’rit Hadashah – Yochanan (John) 3:9-21
Same old stuff! You know those healthy foods you’d been eating for a long time are good for you, but they don’t seem substantial enough nor satisfying anymore.
"This Worthless Bread"
Despite being sustained and kept sick-free and healthy for so many years, the children of Israel got tired of eating the same old manna. As miraculous and nutrient-perfect as it was, they couldn’t appreciate the bread from heaven anymore.
And they pulled up stakes from Mount Hor by the way to the Sea of Reeds to go around the land of Edom. And the soul of the people became impatient because of the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, and there is no water, and our soul hates this light bread.” Numbers 21:4-5, LITV
The Hebrew word for light, qeloqel, is translated as ‘insubstantial.’ In other words, they thought the bread was too light and insubstantial to satisfy their souls. So, it was contemptible or worthless to them. The root word for qeloqel is qalal, translated ‘curse,’ meaning ‘easy or trifling.’ They loathed the stuff!
The Hebrew word for ‘hate’ is quts, literally meaning to cut something off in hate or disgust, to make an end to it. So, the children of Israel wanted to cut themselves off from eating the manna they thought to be ‘worthless. ‘
This was not true nor pleasing to YHWH Elohim because, in the following verses, He sends snakes among the people to bite and poison them. What can we learn from their big mistake?
Insubstantial and Trifling?
What bread do those who call themselves the people of God find ‘insubstantial and trifling’ today? What have many of us been eating for many years that we honestly don’t value a whole lot anymore?
The multitudes were seeking Yeshua for more loaves of bread to satisfy their hunger. Yeshua took the opportunity to teach them what we all really need:
Then they said to Him, “Then what miraculous sign do You do that we may see and may believe You? What do You work? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written ‘He gave them bread out of Heaven to eat.’” (Psalm 78:24)
Then Yeshua said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses has not given you the bread out of Heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread out of Heaven. For His bread, that of Elohim is He who has come down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Then they said to Him, “Master, always give us this bread.”
Yeshua said to them, “I AM the Bread of life; the one coming to Me will not at all hunger, and the one believing into Me will not thirst, never!” John 6:30-31
Is Yeshua really all we need? Is His Word truly the manna from Heaven we are all satisfied with and nourished by in our souls? Or are we looking for something else, especially when it comes to studying the Word of God?
My Testimony of Trifling
Years ago, when I first started learning the ‘wonderful and marvelous things of the Torah,’ I was amazed by all the new things I was learning that I hadn’t heard before in Christianity. Leslie and I went to conferences, and every special guest speaker we heard made us go ‘Wow!’ I loved those ‘aha’ moments!
But something happened in my soul that was much like smoking marijuana in my previous, unsaved life. The next ‘wow’ needed to be greater than the previous one but was increasingly disappointing.
I had left my first love. The Gospel message was trifling and insubstantial to me.
Learning all the amazing pictographs and operations of paleo Hebrew, the Father showed me a letter pronounced ‘Wow!’ The greatest ‘Wow!’ of all wows is pictured by the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter ‘vav.’ In ancient times, scholars believe the letters were softer in pronunciation, thus the ‘Wow.’
I discovered that this ‘Wow’ is the Man nailed, the Messiah Who connects and fastens us to the Father. Without Him being my ‘Wow,’ I had no access to the deeper things of God. The Man nailed is a simple picture of the Gospel of the Messiah. That’s the ‘Wow!’ that truly satisfies my hunger now for more of Him in my soul. Now I find the Messiah and His salvation to be even more amazing than ever!
Reacting to the Gospel of Chuqat
Now that I’m seeking the Messiah and the Gospel in the Torah and the prophets, I am delighted with the substantial Bread from Heaven. I don’t need to hear some new and amazing thing anymore.
What dawned on me about this Torah portion is that even though it carries the most profound and mysterious ceremonies anywhere in the Torah, when we first see how the Messiah fulfills every detail, we still don’t think much of it. Why this blah reaction?
I believe it’s because so many of us tired of hearing the Gospel in this Western culture. Americans are especially gospel hardened. The Gospel became ‘this worthless bread’ to many of God’s people. We better be careful not to neglect so great a salvation.
For this reason, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard so we do not drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard. Heb 2:1-3, NASB
So, what should we pay much closer attention to regarding ‘so great a salvation in Chuqat?
The Gospel of Chuqat
The simple, the only explanation I can find for the mysteries of Chuqat is that Yeshua is in the Gospel message of Chuqat, the ordinances.
About the brazen serpent, Yeshua Himself said:
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” John 3:14-15
Therefore, the Messiah hanging on the cross is the brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness. Then in the very next verse, John 3:16, we see the scarlet thread extending to the outside world from our Torah portion:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16
Yeshua is also our red heifer sacrifice. Did you ever wonder why Yeshua had to be crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem and not in the temple courtyard where most animals were sacrificed? The blood of the second Adam was shed outside the camp for rebels, for willful sinners, for the ungodly and the wicked who were cut off and exiled outside the camp. The red heifer sacrifice outside the big white fence of the camp of Israel had to be fulfilled in His first coming, its evasive deeper meaning finally revealed.
The great love of Elohim compelled the Messiah to go out there. Yeshua loved His enemies, even the rebels, so much that He went outside the camp to pay the death penalty for them and all of us who broke His commandments. That, to me, is a big ‘Wow!’ How He loves even the ungodly and the sinner to do that for them!
The children of Israel had previously murmured, complained, and rebelled against His anointed. What a sorry lot they were. Is our attitude any better today? How about when the Great Tribulation strikes the earth? We now need our Messiah to save and deliver us today, especially in the near future!
If only the snake-bitten would realize the venom of sin is killing them! If only they would turn to their Messiah, Who was lifted up, having taken their curse upon Himself for them. Anyone who repents and turns to the cross, our Messiah, heals and sets them free as a dove.
Then His Spirit, like the waters of purification, would cleanse His royal priesthood to serve in His house.
Again, what pictures of the great love of Yeshua, Yah Who saves – rescues, delivers, forgives, cleanses, heals, and makes alive and strong in the Spirit! That’s all in the so great a salvation we should pay much attention to!
Regathering in the Gospel
The ordinance of the red heifer ceremony gives us word pictures to show us how the Messiah re-gathers and re-joins scattered exiles among the goyim (nations) together.
The Hebrew word for red heifer is parah adumah, which comes from the root words for fruit (par) and blood (dahm). How does His blood draw together scattered Ephraimites (meaning double-fruitful) like us?
At the time, you were without the Messiah, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without Elohim in the world.
But now in the Messiah Yeshua, you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of the Messiah.
For He is our shalom, Who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making shalom; and that He might reconcile both unto Elohim in one body by the [torture] stake, having slain the enmity thereby: Eph. 2:12-16
The word ashes, in Hebrew – aphar, also comes from the root word for fruit (par). Double fruit in Hebrew is Ephraim, who today is scattered and exiled among the goyim, so much so that he’s lost his identity.
The name Adam is also rooted in adumah (red). The letter hey at the end represents revelation. The root word for Adam is ‘dahm,’ the Hebrew word for blood.
So, by extension, the phrase ‘ashes of the red heifer’ can mean that Adam’s blood reveals Ephraim’s double fruitfulness. Yeshua is revealed to us as the final Adam:
So also, it has been written, “The” first “man,” Adam, “became a living soul;” the last Adam a life-giving Spirit. But not the spiritual first, but the natural; afterward, the spiritual. The first man was out of earth, earthy. The second Man was Adonai out of Heaven. 1 Cor. 15:45-47
The good news is that in His suffering and death, the second and final Adam, Yeshua, took upon Himself the uncleanness of sin and death that separates the sinner from YHWH that resulted from the first Adam through his sin. He is the great High Priest Who sprinkled His own precious blood before the tabernacle of the soul seven times, representing the completion, the finished work in the plan of salvation. In that plan is the re-gathering of the scattered exiles of Israel.
The Weird Heifer Ceremony
The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet material and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer. Numbers 19:6
Our Messiah is the clean One, the perfect sacrifice, who took the cross beam of cedarwood and was crucified. Cedar in Hebrew is erez which in paleo means the Mighty (alef) Man lifted up (Resh) was cut off, crucified (zayin). His blood was spilled upon the adumah, the earth, picturing the second Adam applying His blood, as does the hyssop does to our souls. Our Great High Priest weaves the scarlet thread of a renewed covenant in His blood into the tapestry of our lives. Thrown in the midst of the burning heifer pictures the fire of passion in the soul of the Messiah – For God so loved the world that He gave…
Only an all-wise, supremely genius Elohim could design such chuqat! The bride is becoming one with Him again under a renewed covenant written on her heart after a long separation in an unclean, niddah state, having been exiled outside the camp.
So how does that relate to the ashes of the red heifer being kept outside the camp in a clean place for the water (singular) of separation, l’may niddah, for the cleansing from sin? (Numbers 19:9) Seek Him and you’ll find the answers are with the Wow-Man of the Gospel message.
Once the revelation of the Gospel of our Messiah begins to unfold from such profound mysteries, the questions and answers flow like a river in the Ruach HaKodesh, cleansing and reviving the soul. Oh, the blood of Yeshua!
A custom, a choq, brings a people separated together to the mark, the sign of the covenant – that’s the meaning in the paleo-Hebrew for our Torah portion – chuqot. YHWH has set statutes and made ordinances for His covenant-keeping people to come together at appointed times like Shabbat and the festivals. Every week we are separated by our homes and places of work, but thanks be to YHWH, His chuqat to keep Shabbat brings those obedient to His Word to come together again in a way that is cleansing, peaceful and restful.
BaShem Yeshua HaKohen Hagadol (the Great, High Priest),
David Klug