Exodus 19:2, “For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come [to] the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.”
There is a very subtle grammatical issue in this verse that I find no Christian commentator addressing. Perhaps there is a Christian commentator who has addressed this issue but I have personally not found such a commentary. Our many different English translations totally ignore this little grammatical issue.
It seems that with all our Study Bibles, commentaries and resources in Christianity we are merely content to eat the frosting on the cake of the Word of God but not the cake itself. In 3,500 years of Judaism the sages and rabbis were not content with just the frosting, they not only wanted their cake they wanted to eat it too.
I have faced criticism for reading the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash and other works of Judaism to draw many of my insights into Scripture. After all we Christians have our scholars, our commentaries, our preachers, our Scofield Reference Bibles, why do we need to go to the Jews who have rejected Jesus as their Messiah for our understanding of the Word of God. They, after all, do not have the truth like we enlightened Christians do. Never mind the fact that the main characters of the Bible are Jewish, The Bible is a history of Judaism, the Jews are the guardians of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language (Romans 3:2), they believe in the same God as we do and the orthodox Jews believe the Old Testament is the inspired Word of God which they gave to us on a silver platter for crying out loud and we just grabbed the silvery platter and put the Book on our shelves. They are, after all, the chosen people, not just chosen to bring us the Messiah Jesus, but to teach and show by example the true nature and passion of God Jehovah.
So I look at a passage like Exodus 19:2 where Christian commentators spend all their time talking of the location and the reason for two apparently different locations which has absolutely no spiritual value to me and totally overlook this grammatical anomaly which may embody a very profound spiritual truth. I believe the Bible is filled with what our Jewish brothers call remezes, little hints where God is telling us to dig a little deeper, “If you seek me and search for me with all your hearts, I will be found by you.”
So what is this little remez or grammatical anomaly? It is found in the words pitched and camped. Both words vayachanu and vayichan come from the same root word chanan which means to encamp or pitch one’s tent. So the passage literally reads “…had encamped in the wilderness and there Israel encamped before the mount.” Commentators speculate on whether they encamped in two different places or not. Frankly, I don’t care if the encamped on the mountain itself, that says nothing of my relationship to God to me. What does hint at my relationship to God is the fact that the first time the word chanan is used it is in a plural form and the second time it is in a singular form. Literally this reads, “… and they encamped in the wilderness and there Israel he encamped before the mount.” Of course a good Hebrew professor will tell you that plural and singular do not mean the same thing as it does in English. I’ll bite, but that still does not answer my question, why is one plural and the other is singular?
I remember hearing someone who attended a rather liberal seminary which did not believe that miracles happen today as they did in the Bible. In a New Testament class they happened upon a verse which speaks of the signs and wonders following them who follow Jesus and this student asked, “Professor, how do you explain this verse in light of our view that miracles do not happen today as they did in Biblical times?” This professor did what every good teacher, preacher and commentator does when faced with a question they can’t answer, he glossed over it and said, “That is a dangerous passage, let’s move on.”
I am not letting go of this, why is the first encampment plural and second singular? After doing my duty and searching out Christian commentators I turn to the ones who always seem to address these issues we Christians seem to overlook and sure enough I found a Jewish rabbi and scholar who addressed this problem because he saw the remez, the hint that it was telling him there was some deeper truth that would force him to really examine this passage and events. He noticed that the people of Israel had just come from Rephadim. What happened in Rephadim? Rephadim was the place where there was no water so God gave them water from a rock. It was also the place of the first battle fought by the Israelites against the Amalekites. This battle was led by Joshua. Moses stood on top of the mountain and so long as he has his hands raised in the air in praise and worship to God the Israelites prevailed, but once he let his hands down, they started to lose such that Aaron and Hur had to brace Moses so he could continue to worship God with uplifted hands. If ever Israel received a clear message that they were under the protection of the God of the Universe, the God who transcended any other god they worshipped in Egypt it was at Rephadim.
It was right after this great victory and miracle of water from a rock that they encamped (plural) in the wilderness but they also encamped before Mt. Sinai. The rabbi explained that the remez, the hint of a deeper message, was that in the wilderness the people of Israel bickered, fought and complained with each other and were not of one mind, but before Mt. Sinai, the mountain where God showed his glory, the mountain where He gave his commandments they were of one mind, they were unified.
I believe in this passage God is showing that when a church or even a family is in the wilderness they are going to have differences, complaints, dissatisfactions and they will not be unified, but if and when they turn to face the glory of God together, that is the one unifying factor. We may argue and disagree over how to interpret a passage of Scripture, we may even hold bitterness with each other over our differences and not be unified, but when a member of our body our family suffers we are suddenly united in prayer.
Recently the former employer of my study partner, a CEO of a software company located in the financial district of Chicago was shot in the head by one of his executives in their downtown office. The executive then shot and killed himself, but my study partner’s former employer did survive. I saw that little community where the CEO lived come together, Catholic, Jews, Protestants and I suspect even Muslims came together, put red ribbons on the trees outside of their homes to show their solidarity and promise to pray for their neighbor’s recovery.
Your church or your family may be at each other’s throats over minor issues of disagreements, but once an attack by the Amalekites comes and once you run out of water and God sends your church or family a miracle of water from a rock, and you lift your hands in worship to God, just watch how quickly your attention is turned toward God and how united you suddenly become. You move from the plural vayachanu (they encamped) of the wilderness to the singular vayichan (he encamped) of Mt. Sinai.
Recent Comments