BEMA 107: Donkeys and Rabbis

Transcription Status

11 Aug 23 — Initial public release

8 May 23 — Transcript approved for release

Donkeys and Rabbis

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today, we continue our verse-by-verse examination of the Gospel of Matthew by dealing with Sabbath and biblical arguments surrounding Torah.

Marty Solomon: These last two episodes I was reminded why I never have done verse by verse because there are some stories that I’m just not as prepared for. It’s always nice to just skip those and go onto the ones where I was really solid. We’ve made a commitment to our listeners, dang it.

Brent: I think we’ve got plenty to talk about in this episode.

Marty: [laughs]

Brent: This episode’s title is “Donkeys and Rabbis.” Boy, there’s a lot tied up in those two words.

Marty: I am pretty sure we’re going to have fun. [laughs] I think maybe when I don’t have things to say, I talk even more.

Brent: That is probably true.

Marty: [laughs] I’m noticing that about my son. My son was at the doctor’s office and we were called by the nurse. They said, “Kids are short one shot. They need to get a shot.” Okay, I forgot about that apparently. I went in to do that, my son is nervous as all get out, and he is just Chatty Cathy in the doctor’s office. Nervous talker. He must get it from me apparently. [laughs] Alright Brent, we’re in Matthew 12. We’re going to do the first half of Matthew 12. I think that’s 21 verses we’re going to do. How about you read us the first 8 or so?

Brent: At that time Jesus went through the green fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

Marty: All right, I’m not even going to let you get eight verses in. We’re going to cut that short right there.

Brent: I was like, “That seems pretty ambitious.”

Marty: [laughs] A lot of context flying around about this. They’re walking through the field on Shabbat, which is totally fine as long as they’re not outside—as long as they’re within that mile- to two-mile radius it was determined in their rabbinical world to be within the city limits. Maybe walking around as much as they want. Nothing wrong with that.

Brent: Really, you could do laps around the town on Sabbath as long as you’re within a given range?

Marty: Absolutely. You can walk as long or as much as you want.

Brent: I thought the regulation was total distance.

Marty: I don’t believe so. It was all connected to a journey. You weren’t allowed to journey, to travel on the Sabbath but you were allowed to walk. You weren’t allowed to carry, you weren’t—that’s actually what we’re going to talk about here—they’re walking through a field on Sabbath, Shabbat, and they’re hungry. They decide they’re going to—totally lawful according to Torah. Totally lawful according to custom in the Middle East even today. Even in Muslim countries often, not that I would necessarily want to assume this wherever I went. I’d be a horrible tourist.

Typically, in these Middle Eastern countries, if you’re in their field you can take whatever you need or want to eat. You can’t take more than that. You can’t harvest and take it home. You can walk through a field. Walking through a vineyard, you can grab some grapes. Walking through a field, grab some grains, nothing wrong with that; but it is Shabbat. Shabbat was very tricky in Jesus’s day. Torah, directly, Torah really only has—like it speaks of Shabbat quite a bit. We’ve looked at Session 1 how important the Sabbath is. Torah speaks of Shabbat but as far as the laws about what you can and can’t do on Shabbat there aren’t as many as you might think.

Basically, they’re found in two categories. There’s one obscure reference, I believe in the book of Numbers, “You shall not light a fire.” You’re not allowed to light a fire on Sabbath. All the rest of them are essentially, “do not work.” You’re not allowed to work. You’re not allowed to do this. You’re not allowed to gather manna you could say that. You’re not allowed to—there’s a guy who gathers firewood in the Book of Numbers, gets himself stoned to death. There’s like—

Brent: So Sabbath is pretty serious?

Marty: Sabbath is a pretty serious deal. That’s where this conversation is rising out of. As far as direct commandments, it’s not that complicated in Torah. It’s pretty simple. Then you could extend it to like indirect commandments. Now you’re talking about indirect commandments or maybe should I say, the application of the commandments that are in Torah. That would be a more appropriate way to say. The application of those few commandments. As soon as you do that, we’re now getting into the work of interpretation. How do we interpret these commands? That’s where things got incredibly complicated.

In the Jewish world, they had oral tradition and in their world what they would call halakhah. Halakhah refers to your walk. Halakh is to walk. The Halakhah is the walk. It’s the walking out of Torah. Remember how we talked about abolishing and fulfilling. Halakhah is the Rabbinical rulings about this is what it means to fulfill Torah.

They had this oral tradition. At this point in history, it’s not written down. It will not be written down until about a century after Jesus. I think just under a century after Jesus, they’re going to put the Mishnah in place. It’s going to be the first set of oral tradition. Canonized, written down oral tradition. After that, you’re going to have—so Mishnah was about 3,000 commandments. How many commandments were in Torah, Brent?

Brent: 613.

Marty: 613. I know in the 613, you have a handful or two that deal directly with Sabbath. Now a little bit later, and we will talk about this sometimes. Remember in class we have a whiteboard, I’ll draw Torah and I’ll put 613 on the board and then I’ll draw a fence around the 613. After Babylon, and they learned their lesson after they went to captivity, the Jews came back and they said, “We don’t want to break God’s law ever again.”

In an effort to make sure that they don’t transgress the 613 that God gave, they put their own fence around the 613. The first fence that they installed formally was the Mishnah. Now the Mishnah is not going to be for another 100 years after Jesus. The Mishnah is about 3,000 commandments. We’ve gone from 613 and then they put a fence of 3,000 around the 613.

Then around just under a century later or maybe just over a century later, another 100 years later, they decided to add to that fence and put another fence around the fence. You had the Torah; you had the 613. You had a fence and then you had an outer fence. That fence, the Talmud, is going to have roughly about 6,000 commands. 6,000 laws and rulings and commandments that they have to follow.

Brent: 6,000 in addition to Mishnah?

Marty: That is a good question. I always—in my head I just assumed another 3,000, but I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate. I’m trying to think, the Talmud does include the Mishnah, but in the commandment count I don’t know if it’s an additional 3,000 or additional 6,000 on top of the 3—that’s a really great question. I never thought about that before.

Nevertheless, you have these fences and I think the typical Christian reader will think, “You see that’s what’s wrong with Judaism. They’re just so legalistic.” Legalism is not what’s driving them. What’s driving them to install these fences around Torah is the true desire to walk obediently and make sure their walk is what brings honor and is devoted to God. That’s where this is coming from. You were with me Brent in Israel when we were in Jerusalem. You met Moshe, shop owner at Shorashim Shop there in Jerusalem, right? Do you remember the story he told about oranges and his wife?

Brent: Oh yes.

Marty: His wife is pregnant. She gets a pregnancy craving in the middle of the night, “I want an orange.” He gets up, talks about trudging uphill in the snow—which is funny in Jerusalem—but both ways. Goes to the store, gets—what does he do Brent? Does he get an orange?

Brent: I think he gets 40.

Marty: I think it’s 20.

Brent: 20.

Marty: He gets a bag of 20 oranges, right? He brings this bag of 20 oranges. What does she do, of course? She just does what?

Brent: She wants the one.

Marty: She takes one orange. She picks her favorite orange. What does she do with the other 19?

Brent: Throws them out.

Marty: Throws them out. Moshe was saying, “Christians come in all the time and they say, ‘Why do you engage this legalism? You just had to get your wife one orange.’ ” He says, “Of course, I had to get my wife one orange, but it doesn’t matter if she threw away the other 19. It’s my gift.” Is what he says. He says, “My obedience as a Jew following all these oral commands and traditions is not because I’m a legalist, it’s because it’s my gift to Adonai.” Adonai says, “I want X, and I give him X, Y, and Z. It’s my gift. I get to choose that.”

That’s where this heart is coming from. Before we are all quick to critique it and be critical of it and throw it out, we have to understand where the heart is coming from. When God said, “Don’t work on the Sabbath.” They had to decide what that meant. I think everybody would have agreed. I believe Jesus would have said, “You can’t harvest on the Sabbath. That would be working.” I don’t think Jesus would have disagreed with that at all. “You can’t harvest on the Sabbath. If you’re in the middle of harvest season, don’t work on the Sabbath. Do not go out and harvest your fields on the Sabbath.”

Does harvesting mean—see now we’re in the work of interpretation. When Jesus and his disciples are wandering through the field, grabbing heads of grain with their hands. Rubbing them in their hands, taking the grains and putting them in their mouth, is that harvesting? Well, much of rabbinical halakhah said yes. You can’t engage in that. That’s harvest. I think Jesus says, “You’re missing the heart of the law. You’re missing the point of what Sabbath is all about. You’re worried about a technicality.”

I don’t think Jesus is upset because they’re worried about technicalities. He’s saying you’re worrying about the wrong technicalities. If you want to worry about technicality, that’s fine. Just make sure that the technicalities that God cares about. I don’t think Jesus is ever upset that the Pharisees are nitpicky and care about the details. In fact, at one point in teaching, He’s going to say, and we’ll run into this, “You tithe the 10th of your mint and dill and cumin,” and he doesn’t critique them for that. He just says, “You neglect the weightier matters of the law, which is mercy and justice and righteousness and compassion.”

“You should do both,” is what Jesus says. You shouldn’t reject the one and only do the other. The details are fine. Just make sure you’re caring about God’s details. What’s happening here is this Pharisaic worldview is getting very upset because Jesus and his disciples are picking grain and eating on Shabbat and they’re looking at it on a technicality and going, “That’s harvesting. How dare you work on Sabbath?” I think Jesus has something else to say. Go ahead and keep reading where you left off there, Brent.

Brent: There is a follow-up on Talmud’s mission, it basically seems to be impossible to know.

Marty: Okay? It’s pretty complicated. The Talmud—if you ever get your hands on it—is A) in Hebrew, and B) the size of an Encyclopedia Britannica. It is a massive, massive work. You can get them online, by the way, a wonderful site out there called sefaria.org.

Brent: We can put a link to that.

Marty: sefaria.org. They’re cataloging and trying to translate as much as they can into English. All of your Jewish works are there—Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash. It’s unbelievable. Actually, it’s a huge, huge deal. Kudos to them. [crosstalk]

Brent: Some sources say the Talmud doesn’t have any laws, Torah is the law.

Marty: Sure, absolutely. Yep.

Brent: Some people say the Torah doesn’t have any laws—those are mitzvoth.

Marty: Right.

Brent: And the Talmud is the laws explaining how to handle a mitzvah.

Marty: Sure. Yep. Yes. Lots of different ways to look at it. The semantics of rulings, laws, mitzvah, good deeds, all those things that are very particular depending what tradition you are coming from, who your teacher is. It’s going to make a difference. Yes, absolutely complicated.

Brent: Apparently, the current Talmud, though, was sealed in AD 505.

Marty: AD 505?

Brent: That’s the final sealing.

Marty: I believe they put it—they began to canonize in about the mid-third century, I believe. If I have my dates in my head correct. Mid-second century was Mishnah. Mid-third century was Talmud.

Brent: Moral of the story: Go learn Hebrew, I guess.

Marty: Apparently. And learn how complex these issues are. It’s not just about legalism and the Pharisees. It’s much more complicated than that but, all right, go and pick up where you left off.

Brent: All right, back to Matthew 12. He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, he entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Haven’t you read in the law, that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple, desecrate the Sabbath, and yet aren’t innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Marty: Now, this is important, Brent, because I hear people say this all the time, people that I really respect as great teachers and preachers and bloggers and folks, I follow on Twitter, and there are people that I really respect that I’ve heard them say this multiple times. I’ve read it in their books. It’s so frustrating to me. They’ll talk about how Jesus knew how to forsake the law. Jesus knew when to put the law aside. The assumption here is that Jesus broke Torah, like—there were times when Jesus broke Torah.

It is so important, from a Jewish perspective, that we stay away from that nonsense. It is my absolute conviction that Jesus never broke Torah. We say that Jesus lived a sinless life. That has to mean in his Jewish world that he fulfilled Torah and its completeness. Jesus never broke it. This is so important for me. Jesus never broke a direct commandment of Torah. Jesus never broke the 613, period.

Now, we’ll talk more about what that means throughout Session 3, because it’s like okay, but what about this? What about this? Well, what’s that? But what Jesus is always doing is he’s interpreting Torah correctly. What He’s talking about here is not any command. There’s no command in Torah, about Sabbath that Jesus is breaking here. What He is breaking is tradition. He is commenting and thinking critically about and critiquing culturally, the rabbinic tradition that dusts around Torah.

Did Jesus break halakhah? I believe He did. I believe He did it very intentionally, as a teaching tool, to say “You’re not interpreting Torah correctly, because you’re all wound up about obedience to the Sabbath, and you’re forgetting what the Sabbath was for,” because of Sabbath—take me back to Genesis 1 here, Session 1, Brent, where it all began for us. The Sabbath is supposed to remind me what? What items? What things?

Brent: That we have enough.

Marty: We have enough. That we—what else?

Brent: That we can rest. No, no, we’re good.

Marty: Yep. That we can trust the story that we—what are the things that might come up? My children say…

Brent: The Sabbath is: We rest. We play. No work. God loves us.

Marty: Absolutely. Like, that’s what the Sabbath is about. He’s like, “If you’re worrying about—if you’re getting all wound up because my disciples are rolling grain in the palms of their hands to eat because they’re hungry. You are missing the point of “we rest, we play, no work, God loves us.” You are missing the point, and so Jesus is going to use two examples out of the Text. It’s so important to me—I don’t know why I’m so amped up about this, but I’ll hear Christians say all the time that Jesus broke Torah, like Jesus broke the Books of Moses. No, he didn’t. No, he didn’t. He did critique the interpretation of the Books of Moses.

Brent: I was actually noticing in verse two when the Pharisees are pointing this out to him. They don’t say that he abolished Torah.

Marty: Exactly.

Brent: They said, “Your disciples are doing what is unlawful.”

Marty: Correct. They’re breaking tradition.

Brent: They’ve had the conversation about abolishing and fulfilling Torah previously, so it’s not like they’re using this language in one place because that’s just always how Matthew talks about it or whatever. No, that’s not the case. We’ve had the conversation about Torah before. Now we’re just talking about something else.

Marty: Absolutely, and so Jesus, like a good rabbi, has this conversation by going back to the what, Brent?

Brent: To the Text.

Marty: To the Text; it’s always going to be in the text and so it uses two examples, one from David, and then one about the priests and I believe you have a passage from 1st Samuel? Can give us the address and read us that part because he talks about a story here that’s in our Bible. Let’s hear the story. It’s a weird story, by the way, it’s going to throw us because it’s not real clean and pretty. It’s very human and gray and messy but we’ll go ahead and read the story of Jesus references here.

Brent: 1st Samuel 21. David went to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?” David answered Ahimelech the priest, “The king sent me on a mission and said to me, no one is to know anything about the mission I am sending you on.”

Marty: If we’ve lost the context of this, David is being chased by who, Brent?

Brent: Saul.

Marty: Saul. Saul wants to kill him and Saul is the current…?

Brent: The king.

Marty: David has been anointed king, but he refuses to take the throne unless God chooses to give it to him, and so he’s on the run. He’s fleeing for his life. Just to remind ourselves in the context here, because what David just did is he lied to the priest. He said, “I’m on a secret mission from the King, and I’m not supposed to talk about it.” Again, we want this to be really nice and neat and tidy. It’s messy.

Brent: If he thinks of himself as the king in that moment.

Marty: I wanted to put a capital K on the king like, “I’m on a special mission from the King.” Like the LORD, King, but yes, David here is stretching the truth at best to talk about what’s going on here but go on and keep reading.

Brent: “As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever you can find.” But the priest answered, David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand. However, there is some consecrated bread here, provided the men have kept themselves from women.”

Marty: Okay, now the priest says, “Okay, you’re looking for bread, I get that you have a need like you’re on a mission from the king…” The priest doesn’t need to know the context. Apparently, it’s on a need-to-know basis, but he says, “You’re on a special mission. You and your men are hungry. I don’t have random bread, but I do have the Bread of the Presence.” What bread is that, Brent?

Brent: At the tabernacle?

Marty: Yes, in the temple in the tabernacle, they have bread, 12 loaves of bread, that sit on the Table of Shewbread, the table of the presence, and every day, they put fresh loaves on that table and it’s supposed to represent this fellowship, this relationship that God’s people have with God, but that table sits in the holy place. It sits inside the temple, where only a priest can go and it’s holy bread because it’s God’s. This is like a big deal. The priest is like, “I don’t have bread for you.”

Brent: Not the most holy place.

Marty: Not the most holy place, not the Holy of Holies.

Brent: But the Holy Place.

Marty: The Holy Place.

Brent: Only priests are in there.

Marty: Only priests, and that bread, according to Leviticus and Numbers, can only be eaten by the priests and he’s—essentially, what the priest is going to say here is: feeding the hungry is what the temple is all about. The priest is doing his priestly duty. He’s doing it correctly. Ah, this was the episode that we should link, Brent. If we get to link an episode, we should go back and talk about Leviticus, then the kingdom of priests, a kingdom of what or whatever the title of that episode was, our Leviticus episode.

It will remind us of the four roles of priesthood. We talked about how a priest puts God on display, how a priest helps people navigate their atonement, a priest intercedes on behalf of others. We talked about how a priest distributes resources to the oppressed. All four of those things the priest is embodying right now.

In this gesture because this is a big deal, he’s talking about the Law says, Torah says, that David can’t eat this bread. Only a priest can eat this bread and the priest can only eat it at the end of the day after new bread is cycled onto the table. This is a big deal, and so—“A Kingdom of What,” episode 25, is the episode that we’re looking at there. This priest is putting God on display. This priest is helping David navigate his atonement. This priest is inner seating on David’s behalf. This priest is distributing resources.

The priest is essentially saying, “If I understand the God that lives in, that dwells in this temple, this God cares more—” Torah is not about keeping the bread holy, but the whole reason we have holy bread is to teach us about who this is and this God wants us to feed the hungry. Therefore, the hungry person is more important than the holiness and the consecration of the bread, and he gives him the bread.

That priest is making an interpretation of what the law truly desires. Jesus calls back to it. I don’t think applauding David for his lying and fibs here, but the priest in this priestly role for interpreting the law correctly and doing the right thing, because feeding the hungry would be more important than—how does the passage finish out there? Brent, you got a few more verses?

Brent: David replied, “Indeed. Women have been kept from us as usual whenever I set out. The men’s bodies are holy, even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today?”

Marty: That reference is the priest wants to make sure you’re not unclean, you’re on this mission from the king. Have you been pillaging and in battle and taking women and have you been doing all these things that would make you unfit to eat this bread or are you consecrated? David essentially says, “Yes, we haven’t been with women. We haven’t been in the middle of battle. We are clean. We are able to receive this bread, if this is the bread you want to give us.’”

Brent: This definitely feels like some Genesis 1 stuff though. The men’s bodies are holy, even on missions that are not holy.

Marty: Yes. That’d be a fun little side podcast on that one, because there’s some connections there that we could talk about. I think David’s initial point being even the king sends us out to do things that are less than desirable, like battle, yet our bodies are holy anyway. How much more so if we’re not in battle? You’re absolutely right. There’s some good stuff in.

Brent: It finishes out. The priest gave him the consecrated bread since there was no bread there except the Bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

Marty: This is the story that Jesus calls back to. He says, “You’re upset about eating on Sabbath. Don’t you remember?” Which I love that it’s kind of a backhanded compliment as if the Pharisees that he’s talking to don’t know their Text. “Have you forgotten the story about David? He had consecrated bread. How much bigger of a deal is that than us picking grain on the—” You have to remember what the law’s all about, what the weightier parts of the law are. We’ll get to that in just a moment. He uses another example and that is the example of the priest. Go ahead and read that verse again, Brent, in Matthew 12.

Brent: Haven’t you read in the law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent.

Marty: Okay. Now you have a passage from Numbers. I believe Numbers 28:9-10.

Brent: On the Sabbath day make an offering of two lambs a year old without defect together with its drink offering and a grain offering of two 10ths of an ephah of the finest flour mixed with olive oil. This is the burnt offering for every Sabbath in addition to the regular burnt offering and its drink offering.

Marty: They offer that offering on what day?

Brent: On the Sabbath.

Marty: On the Sabbath, every Sabbath. Jesus’s point is if we’re offering offerings on the Sabbath, somebody has to work on the Sabbath so who is it that has to work on the Sabbath?

Brent: The priests.

Marty: The priest. He says, “This is the whole job. The job of the priest is to help people understand, see God, make atonement for others. You are misinterpreting Torah. It’s not about following the rules of rules, the rules. It’s not about all your extra fences. Your fences are fantastic if they help you love people, but if they don’t help you love people and if they actually hurt people, if they make people hungry, if they don’t allow people to find healing then your rules are actually incredibly problematic.” Then that last statement there, read that last statement in that paragraph one more time, Brent.

Brent: If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Marty: Which by the way, he just quoted the Pharisees a few chapters earlier when they were all upset a few podcasts ago about him eating with the sinners and the tax collectors. He’s just quoted that verse for a second time to them.

Brent: We’ve got some Hosea context going on there.

Marty: Yes.

Brent: You would not have condemned the innocent for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. A little Daniel reference there.

Marty: It could be, but I think this is a good example of more like an Ezekiel usage. It’s not necessarily a reference to Ezekiel, but it’s using the term in—I don’t think there’s any reference here or connection to Daniel, like Abel has a Lord over the Sabbath or Jesus is Lord over the Sabbath. I think what he’s saying—in fact in another Gospel, he’ll talk about how Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

I think his point here is the son of man. Just a typical human being. The human being is lord over Sabbath. You don’t serve Sabbath. Like he said, in another Gospel, God gave Sabbath to you. God didn’t make you for the Sabbath. God made the Sabbath for you. Sabbath is your gift. You are not the gift to the Sabbath. Sabbath is your gift to you. You as a human being are Lord over the Sabbath. Now that’s going to not be typical, even today of Jewish interpretation.

Some of it will be typical of Jewish interpretation, but there’s going to be a devotion and a commitment again, not out of legalism, out of devotion and obedience, but I think we need to hear the scandal of our Lord Jesus, as he teaches here to say, if you’re interpreting your law correctly, it’s about out other people. Go ahead and read the next verse.

Brent: I just want to point out even in this case, the NIV translators, they capitalize Son of Man.

Marty: Yes. That’s somewhat interpretive.

Brent: It is.

Marty: Somewhat interpretive because that’s going to imply that Jesus is the one who’s the Lord over Sabbath. I think Jesus’s point is you’re lord—you’re lord over Sabbath.

Brent: Not that Jesus isn’t Lord for the Sabbath.

Marty: Exactly. Because he truly is.

Brent: So are we?

Marty: Yes, exactly. Yes.

Brent: Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand. Was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus? They asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

Marty: They’re pretty wound up about the Sabbath thing. They’ve done it on purpose. They have intentionally set Jesus up. In synagogue on Sabbath, they bring this guy before Jesus, he’s got a shriveled hand. They’re like, we hear you saying that Sabbath is about people. We’re curious, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Because in their mind, healing’s going to be engaging in this creative work, creative work that’s prohibited on Sabbath.

Now what we’re wandering in here is something we need to introduce in this podcast. We’re only 25 minutes in, not a big deal. We’re going to introduce a major concept here and we still have 10 verses to go. In the world of Jesus, there is always a massive rabbinical debate taking place. There’s not just one rabbinical opinion. There never is. The joke is if you have five rabbis in a room, you have eight opinions.

There’s always a tension, a paradox, two rabbinical schools throughout all of Jewish history. There will be two rabbinical voices that are arguing back and forth because that argument encapsulates the rabbinical culture and the tension that exists within that rabbinical culture always true of Judaism. You always have a conservative view and a progressive view. You always have somebody leaning, and you always have somebody leaning left. These rabbinical voices are always held in tension. In Jesus’s day, the two rabbinical voices that had defined the conversation were in the generation, just preceding Jesus.

There was a rabbi by the name of Hillel and a rabbi by the name of Shammai. Hillel and Shammai. Now Shammai, one of the things that—well, Jesus said not too long ago, Brent—Jesus said, “My yoke is easy.” We didn’t stop at that moment to talk about yokes, but every rabbi had a yoke. His yoke is the lens through which he interprets Torah. Every rabbi has a set of lenses.

I can’t do this on the podcast because nobody can see a visual, but I have a pair of glasses. I have glasses. There are two lenses, a right, and a left lens. I look through these lenses and they help me see the world. A rabbi looks at text and he has a yoke. A rabbi has a filter that he uses that helps him interpret Torah. That filter is driven by one rabbinical question, which is what are the greatest commandments.

Now, every rabbi throughout all of ancient Jewish history agreed on the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is never up for debate. No matter who you talk to, it’s always the same: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. That’s your greatest commandment, always. What every—not every—but what rabbis disagreed on was the second greatest commandment. The second greatest commandment defines your lens. It defines your filter.

To make this conversation as short and sweet as we can, Shammai had a particular yoke. Shammai had a filter. If you would’ve gone up to Shammai and said, “Shammai, what are the two greatest commandments?” He would’ve said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.” His second command was, “Obey the Sabbath.” Literally, that was his second greatest commandment.

What that meant was that Shammai’s lens, Shammai’s filter, Shammai’s yoke was a yoke of obedience. When I look at Torah, what I believe God wants is God wants obedience. Brent, all the way back in Session 1, we would talk about midrash and we would talk about different threads of midrash. There’s a midrash that says this, there’s a midrash that says that. There’s a midrash that says Isaac tied his own—when Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac on the mountain, he tied his own bindings and laid himself on the altar. That’s the obedience, Shammai perspective that talks about faithful obedience.

Then there was a midrash that talked about Isaac, being so traumatized on the mountain that he has to leave. That thread of midrash follows a more Hillel line of thought. It’s about relationships and love. If you were to ask Hillel, “Hillel, what are the two greatest commandments?” He would say, “Well, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. The second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.” Sound familiar, Brent?

Brent: A little bit.

Marty: A little bit. Jesus wades into these rabbinical conversations and takes Hillel’s yoke; every single time, he will agree with Hillel, except for one. That’s the topic of divorce. We’ll get to that later. We’ll talk about why, because it’s stunning, but Jesus almost always sides with Hillel. Jesus has a Hillel yoke. Jesus didn’t come up with it. He didn’t create it. That yoke had been around from the generation preceding Jesus. Jesus waded into this cultural debate and he took a side, which matters to us because we’re followers of Jesus. We don’t get to disagree. Jesus’s yoke is our yoke. If we’re a follower of Jesus, we have to have Jesus’s yoke.

Jesus said, “When I look at the scriptures, I see the scriptures through a lens of love. That’s my filter, not obedience.” Obedience still matters. Like if you would’ve asked, Shammai does love your neighbor make the list? He would’ve said, yes. In fact, I believe it landed at number six on Shammai’s list. Love your neighbor was number six, but it defined Shammai’s yoke. If you would’ve asked Hillel as obeying the Sabbath important? What do you think he would’ve said?

Brent: Absolutely.

Marty: Absolutely. Why, obey the Sabbath is driven by love. What we’re talking about when we have these conversations is what they call the weightiness of the law, which commandment is weightier? Because you’re always going to find yourself in a situation where you can’t obey two commandments at one time. For instance, we all know the stories of the Holocaust. You’re hiding Jews in your addict and the Germans come and they knock on your door and the Nazis want to know, “Do you have Jews in your attic? Because we’re here to kill them.” What’s the problem, Brent? I have two laws I have to worry about.

Brent: Well, should you lie or should you kill people?

Marty: Right. Should you be hospitable? Should you protect the life of others? Should you murder? Whatever you want to call that. Should you lie? Which commandment is weightier? Because whatever you do, you’re going to break a commandment. Or that’s actually looking at it totally backwards. That would be how we would look at it. In our moralistic society, in our moralistic evangelicalism, we would be worried about breaking a command.

Jesus would say, “Don’t look at it as breaking the command, look at it as fulfilling the right command.” If you choose the right command, you’re not breaking any commandment because, in fact, you’re fulfilling Torah. That’s what the priest did. When the priest served the consecrated bread to David, the priest was saying, which commandment is weightier—to keep this bread holy or to let somebody go hungry? The priest chose to take care of people, not care about the holiness and that obedience factor. In that, Jesus said, he interpreted Torah correctly.

When you ask Hillel or Shammai about their yoke, you’re asking them, which is weightier? Now, one of the places that this came out in the Rabbinic world is they had eight great debates. There were eight great rabbinical debates. Eight questions that rabbis argued about to apply their yoke. One of them was the argument about the donkey in a pit on the Sabbath because there’s two commandments. If a donkey falls in the pit, Leviticus says you have to help your neighbor, get it out. The scripture also says, Leviticus also says, you are not to work on Sabbath. What do you do, Brent, if your donkey falls in the pit on what?

Brent: On the Sabbath.

Marty: On the Sabbath, you now have a conundrum. Do I save the donkey or do I not work?

Brent: What about pulling a donkey out of a pit is work?

Marty: Because you’re actually going to have to, especially according to rabbinic tradition, you’re going to have to exert, like you’re going to have to physically work. To get this donkey, you’re going to have to go get ropes. You’re going to have to lift. Remember, like in other stories, in the Gospel of John a lame man who was healed, can’t even carry his mat because carrying and lifting the mat is considered work. How much more is going to be lifting a donkey out of a pit?

Brent: That’s a nice little kal va’chomer right there...

Marty: I know. There’s definitely work taking place there. Now, what’s so ironic. What you’re going to see Jesus do here. In essence, it would help us understand the Shammai debate and Hillel debate because donkey in the pit on the Sabbath, ideally, what does Shammai say?

Brent: He says you can’t do it.

Marty: Don’t help the donkey, obey the Sabbath. If Hillel looks at that same conundrum what does he say?

Marty: You absolutely have to do it.

Marty: You save the life. You save the life of an animal. Even loving animals is going to be better than letting it die because of obedience. You see how the yoke works. Now, ironically, even Shammai figured out how to save the donkey. Because nobody’s going to let the donkey die in the pit on the Sabbath. That’s just a violation of Torah.

Brent: Donkeys are very valuable.

Marty: What’s that?

Brent: Donkey’s very valuable.

Marty: Very, very valuable. I’d be like letting your Lexus roll down a hill because you don’t want to put the parking brake on. There’s definitely—even Shammai figured out how to rescue the donkey. Everybody was in agreement. You rescue the donkey, but the debate provided the opportunity to see how the two different world views functioned. Watch what Jesus does with this, go ahead and keep reading where you left off.

Brent: He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Marty: Remember the context: they’ve brought in this guy with a shriveled hand to a synagogue on Shabbat. They’ve thrown him in front of Jesus and went, “Jesus, can you heal this guy on Sabbath? It’s Sabbath, you know.” Jesus says, “Okay, haven’t you guys figured out the whole donkey and sheep in a pit thing, and aren’t you all in agreement, no matter what side that you fall on, that you’re supposed to save the life of the animal? If you’re supposed to save the life of an animal, how much more important is this guy’s hand and human life and goodness? Like, give a break!” Jesus says.

Then I love—it’s not Matthew, but one of the other Gospels says he looks around in anger. Like he’s righteously angry because of the way that people use religion and the way that people use their hopped-up morality to hurt other people.

Brent: Even in Matthew, it’s beautiful how he turns it around because the Pharisees ask him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Jesus sets up the example and says, “Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Marty: Yes, absolutely. It’s not just healing, it’s what the Sabbath was here for. The Sabbath was here to remind us of goodness. It’s the whole reason that Sabbath exists. Of course, go ahead and keep reading. Read that last little sentence there.

Brent: Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and it was completely restored just as sound as the other, but the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Marty: Which I think is a horrible translation, by the way, just in passing. This idea of killing, that word there is incredibly complex, and kill is just one of about twelve different options you have for that word. I don’t think the Pharisees are going out to plot how to kill Jesus—think that they were going out to plot how to get rid of him, to destroy him, to undermine him, to do away with his teaching, to wreck his authority. I think to kill is a pretty arbitrary translation there.

I think the Sadducees are going to want to kill him. I’m not so sure about the Pharisees, but just do a typical word search on that. You’ll find that that word is far from—kill is not option number one on your translation list there. Anyway, it makes sense, I suppose.

Brent: All right.

Marty: All right, let’s go ahead and finish this out.

Brent: Aware of this Jesus withdrew from that place. A large crowd followed him and he healed all who were ill. He warned them not to tell others about him. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the Prophet Isaiah. “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight. I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he has brought justice through to victory. In his name, the nations will put their hope.”

Marty: All right. So as we close out this passage, I just wrestle with this direct quotation from Isaiah 42 here. I would just wrestle with this on a p’shat level, surface-level reading; just wrestle with it on p’shat level. Matthew closes the section of his story here, by saying—on the heels of Jesus, doing this Sabbath work and engaging these conversations and healing this guy with shriveled hands. Jesus is showing us the exact kind of leader that Isaiah 42 asked God’s people to be.

Jesus is fulfilling Isaiah 42. I love that because he engages in all these debates. Things are getting pretty tense and it says he leaves the place to go, exact quote here, aware of this Jesus withdrew from that place and a large crowd followed him.

Matthew quotes Isaiah, which talks about he’s not going to raise his voice in the streets. He causes this ruckus. He’s not here to go win a bunch of debates and stand up in the city square of Capernaum and start freaking out and pounding on walls and demanding everybody pay attention to him and promoting his ministry. He just slips away and keeps bringing peace. Keeps bringing wholeness, keeps bringing justice. He’s gentle, a bruised reed he shall not break, he’s quiet in spirit. He’s not here promoting some massive agenda. He tells people to be quiet about stuff. He’s just here bringing Kingdom. He’s here bringing justice. When people see it, the nations come looking to him for wisdom

Brent: Isaiah there, that word for justice is of course, mishpat.

Marty: Absolutely. yes. It’s about putting things right and making things. That was p’shat, Brent. What would you think?

Brent: Well, we should probably go to Isaiah 42 and see what else it has to say.

Marty: The remez is obvious, yes. It’s a direct quote. We can go to Isaiah 42. It’s the first actual four verses of Isaiah 42. How about you just keep reading past where it’s quoted in Matthew so we get a good sense of the context here?

Brent: This is what God the LORD says. The creator of the heavens who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that Springs from it who gives breath to its people and life to those who walk on it. I the Lord have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles. To open eyes that are blind to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not yield my glory to another, or my praise to idols. See the former things have taken place and new things I declare before they spring into being. I announce them to you.

Marty: This is the context for that quotation coming out of Isaiah 42. It would seem perfect because he is healing people. The context there goes on to talk about how he has—can you find that part about the blind and the lame and the…?

Brent: I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and the light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

Marty: Okay. There’s that quote, which fits the context nicely. As far as drash, Brent, I have a bunch of questions that I haven’t quite answered yet. Maybe our listeners can help me out at some point because there are two references here that tie me back to the story about John the Baptist. Because if you remember when John the Baptist, just a few podcasts ago, John the Baptist sent a question saying, “Jesus, are you the one?” Jesus healed a bunch of people, then Jesus quoted two passages. One of them was this one right here. That’s the—of the two passages that Jesus squishes together, he quotes this one and we pointed out that he left what quotation out.

Brent: He doesn’t talk about freeing captives.

Marty: Exactly. Where was John when he quotes this?

Brent: In prison.

Marty: In prison, in a dungeon. This is that quotation, but just prior to that, there was the re did you catch another reference that Jesus used when he talked about John the Baptist? What did Jesus call John the Baptist when he sent the disciples away and he turned to the crowds and he said, “What did you expect to see when you came out here?” Do you remember?

Brent: Is that when he’s…? Oh no. That doesn’t make sense.

Marty: He looked at the crowds and he said, “When you came out to see John, what did you expect to see? Did you expect to see a reed blown by the wind?” Here in Isaiah 42, a bruised reed, he shall not break. I’m wondering if Matthew has tied these two stories together and I have just yet to find the treasure, because I find it interesting that reed and the quotation about blind and those in the dungeon show up in both stories that are closely connected. I feel like there’s something maybe more going on there, but I don’t have any good answers.

Brent: Well, and this is an interesting—right before the reed reference, it says he will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. John was a voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Marty: Absolutely. It’s a great point. Just keeps getting better.

Brent: I’ll leave this podcast on an unresolved note because I’m still searching for the drash.

Marty: All right. I love it.

Brent: If you have any ideas, any other thoughts on this passage, please get in touch with us. You can find Marty on Twitter at @martysolomon. I am at @eibcb. You can also go to bemadiscipleship.com. We’ve got a contact page there. Check out our map of discussion groups. We’re adding more and more groups all the time. If you’d like to start a group, please get in touch. We’ll help you out with that. So thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.