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What the Bible says about Ceremonially Defiled
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Numbers 9:6-8

Numbers 9 contains an incident in which the command to be still plays a noteworthy part. On this occasion, Moses uses these words to some of the men of Israel who had a serious question about taking the Passover. God had told the children of Israel that they needed to keep the Passover at its appointed time, on the fourteenth day of Abib/Nisan. The Passover lamb was to be eaten at twilight, and the participants were to observe the ritual according to the instructions that God had given in Exodus 12.

However, while trekking through the wilderness at the beginning of the second year of their journey, certain men had become defiled by contact with a human corpse so that they could not keep the Passover on Abib/Nisan 14. They presented themselves before Moses and Aaron that day and complained: "We became defiled by a human corpse. Why are we kept from presenting the offering of the LORD at its appointed time among the children of Israel?" (Numbers 9:6-7).

This account reads rather plainly, but because of what Moses says in response, we understand that these men were not just excited—they were probably close to terror! We can imagine that they came rushing up to him, greatly agitated, saying, "Moses, why can't we take the Passover, even though we touched the body of a dead man?" In all likelihood, they thought that, by missing the Passover, they were facing the death penalty! As Moses verifies a few verses later, if an otherwise undefiled person "ceases to keep the Passover, that same person shall be cut off from among his people, because he did not bring the offering of the LORD at its appointed time; that man shall bear his sin" (Numbers 9:13). Misunderstanding this statute, the men cry, "We are as good as dead!"

Notice Moses' reply to them: "Stand still, that I may hear what the LORD will command concerning you" (Numbers 9:8). Then God spoke to Moses, giving him the instructions that we now know as those for taking the second Passover. If one is defiled, on a journey, or sick, he may take the Passover one month later, on the fourteenth day of the second month, and satisfy his obligation to God.

For us, the lesson in Numbers 9 is that Moses needed and asked for stillness—both in movement and in speech—so that he and afterward they could hear God's instruction. We cannot hear God speak when we are distracted by other things. Moses knew that to hear God, one has to give Him full attention, which is best done when one is still. The best place, the best time, the best environment to hear what God is trying to tell us is one of peace and quiet.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Beating the Rat Race (Part Four)

Deuteronomy 7:6

That Israel was a holy nation is far more important than is generally realized, and it affects our understanding of wavesheaf requirements. As a prelude to better understanding and properly appreciating many aspects of waving the sheaf, it is helpful to know that God specifically designated Israel a sanctified people. He set the entire nation apart as distinctive from the rest of the world's nations. As such, He gave them responsibilities to perform before the rest of the world as a testimony of their obedient service to God.

God's declaration of certain things as "clean" and others as "unclean" helped to define this holiness to them. Some things declared unclean could not even be touched without making a person ceremonially defiled until he performed the prescribed rituals. Among the things declared polluted or unclean were the Gentiles, whose uncleanness was not inherent but lay in their idolatry: They did not worship the God of Creation who set the Israelites apart. As such, even a marriage between an Israelite and a Gentile was forbidden except within very narrow parameters.

The ceremonial aspects of the Israelites' responsibilities are quite detailed, and God expected them to be followed exactly as instructed because each detail fits precisely within His purposes for His relationship with His sanctified people. Are we wiser than He is? God is not the author of meaningless regulations. Waving the sheaf of grain is one of these ceremonial duties, containing explicit instructions with spiritual ramifications.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Pentecost Revisited (Part Two): Joshua 5

Joshua 5:10-11

The following quotation is from the Pentecost Study Material, assembled by Dr. Charles V. Dorothy during and following the 1974 study by the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), which provided the paper to its ministry:

Some brethren are concerned over the alleged "arbitrary" decision, especially since Joshua 5:10-11 seems to show the Israelites counted that Pentecost from Sunday, the High Day within Unleavened Bread. More study is needed and more is being done. (p. 73; emphasis his)

It appears that Dr. Dorothy was sensitive to some people's skepticism, otherwise why did he emphasize "seems"? Did he draw attention to the word because he felt that the doctrinal committee was banking on something vague, assuming some points, and reaching a conclusion it could not fully justify?

Joshua 5 is where the majority of the disagreement begins. Joshua 4:19 records that the children of Israel crossed the Jordan River on the tenth day of the first month. Joshua 5:1-9 leads a reader to conclude that the Israelite males were probably circumcised beginning on the eleventh day. But even this may be an assumption because Joshua 5:10-11 does not say that Israel kept Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. In other words, it could have been lawfully kept in the second month (Numbers 9), although this scenario is less likely.

At no time or place in Scripture does God designate what month or day of the week this date fell upon that year. In fact, researchers are unable to give an absolute answer even to what year Israel entered the land. We always end up with calculated guesses. Should we build an important spiritual doctrine on a guess?

It is not this article's purpose to prove whether the Wavesheaf offering took place in the first or second month, only that Joshua 5 does not prove that the Israelites offered one at all. If they did not make one, it absolutely destroys the assumptions of a first day of Unleavened Bread Wavesheaf ceremony, since Joshua 5:10-11 is the source used to "support" this deviation.

So where is the authority from God's Word that Israel's observance of Passover that year was on a weekly Sabbath and that Wavesheaf Day was the next day, a Sunday, the first day of Unleavened Bread, a high-holy-day Sabbath? What positively, absolutely, biblically affirmed events are these conclusions based upon?

Notice that, thus far, the chapter makes:

1. No mention of an altar.

2. No mention of a priest.

3. No mention of the offerings God commanded to accompany the waving of the sheaf (Leviticus 23:12-13).

4. No mention whatever of a harvest.

5. No mention of the waving of the sheaf.

Interestingly, God mentions the circumcisions (which had not been performed during the wilderness journey), yet He makes no mention of what would have been the first altar, first sacrificial offerings, and first formal service in the Promised Land. It would also have been the first waving of the sheaf in the land.

However, Joshua 5:11 does say, "They ate the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day." There is nothing wrong with this statement unless one claims that the Israelites had to wave Canaanite-grown grain before God for acceptance before they could eat it. Do the ceremonial instructions give them permission to do this? Do the wavesheaf instructions require that they do this?

The answer to both questions is "No." In fact, such a wavesheaf is strictly forbidden. Exodus 23:16 says this in direct reference to Pentecost: "The Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field" (emphasis ours throughout). The offering had to be made of something the Israelites had sown by their own labors! Pentecost ends the harvest begun on Wavesheaf Day. Therefore, the same "you have sown" qualification applies to Wavesheaf Day as to Pentecost.

The Israelites had surely labored in harvesting grain in Canaan, but they had not sown what they harvested upon entering the land. It was an incomplete production and therefore not qualified. God could not accept such an offering because it did not meet the qualifications He had laid down for a holy people.

For God to accept such an offering would break the spiritual principle Paul mentions in I Corinthians 3:9: "We are laborers together with God." The Israelites were not part of the cycle of cooperation of purpose between them and God in the production of this particular harvest. It was therefore unacceptable for use as the wavesheaf.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Pentecost Revisited (Part Two): Joshua 5

Mark 7:15

He is not talking about food, but about dirt that might be on unwashed hands or in unwashed pots.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Love and Works


 




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