Zealousness for God

TORAH

Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12

HAFTORAH

Joshua 1:1-9

B’RIT HADASHAH

Mt 17:1-9; Mk 9:2-10; Lk 9:28-36 Yd 3-4, 8-10

Our comments today are on Deut. 33:8-11

The Thummim and Urim were small, flat stones or wooden plaques, perhaps of different colours or shapes, used for purposes of divination, that is, to learn the will of God in any given matter. The High Priest alone kept them on his person (under his breastplate, in his ephod) and normally, by dint of his position, he alone had the sanctioned authority to use them. In a larger sense, however, they were apt symbols for the duties and position of the whole priesthood—and by further extension—the entire tribe of Levi, of which tribe came the Aaronic priesthood.

Back in Genesis 49:5-7, Jacob blesses Simeon and Levi:

“Simeon and Levi are brothers;
    weapons of violence are their swords.
Let my soul come not into their council;
    O my glory, be not joined to their company.
For in their anger they killed men,
    and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.

Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
    and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
    and scatter them in Israel.

In their rage, the brothers Simeon and Levi slaughtered a whole town for the gang rape by a few men of their sister Dinah. Their anger was willful, extreme and unjustified. Consequently, Jacob their father said that they would become divided and scattered, and according to the books of Numbers and Joshua this is exactly what happened. Simeon became the smallest and least important tribe even though its progenitor was the second of Jacob’s 12 sons. And while the dividing of the two tribes was a curse for Simeon, it became a blessing in disguise for Levi, the third son. Because of the faithfulness of this tribe during the rebellion of the golden calf (Exodus 32:26-28), it was scattered as a blessing throughout the whole nation of Israel. They received no large tract of land or holdings, for the Lord was their inheritance (Joshua 13:33). Rather, it became their privilege and honour to attend the LORD God as ministering priests and servants. The Levites were always the most ardent defenders of God’s honour; Phineas is a very good example (Numbers 25). Simeon and later Simeonites such as Zimri were never able to overcome the “blessing” of Jacob. Or rather, they were never able to overcome or transmute their self-willed anger that Jacob’s blessing targeted.

From the examples of Simeon and Zimri, we see that that emotion we call anger—being self-willed, self-important, or self-focused, in other words stemming from pride—is also self-destructive. When that strong emotion has self as its object as well as its subject, God will ultimately turn it against us for our chastisement, perhaps even for punishment, if we are not in the Lord. In contrast, we see from the example of Phineas that anger outwardly focused—that is, anger that has God as its object/subject, may be transmuted by Him into something else: spiritual zeal, commitment or passion. God-focused anger is an aspect of righteousness because God is thoroughly righteous, therefore—to the degree that God is its object and its subject—such transmuted “anger” can never be destructive. Men like Phineas were praised for their zeal, their ardent love for the honour of God. Moreover, of course, we have the perfect example of our Lord in John 2:17, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” in which He fulfills the OT in such places as Psalms 119:139 “My zeal consumes me, because my foes forget your words” and 132:1-5, “Remember, O Lord, in David's favor, all the hardships he endured, how he swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob, ‘I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.’”

These passages illustrate a fundamental quality of the truly faithful—a symbol of which is the tribe of Levi, the ministers of God in the OT. But as elect gentiles have now, because of Christ, been grafted into the olive tree of the remnant of Israel, and as we consequently have been designated as the equivalent of the Levitical ministers of God by such verses as 1 Peter 2:9—^“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”—it seems that we have a solemn duty not to give in to self-righteous anger but to let God—through His Word and the intersession of the Holy Spirit as well as our own effort—transmute our self-willed anger into the pure and holy zeal and passion for God, His Kingdom and His glory.

AMEN.