ellauri151.html on line 702: 2. Defined the “kingdom of heaven” as Israel’s prophetic earthly kingdom2. Defined the “kingdom of heaven” as the heavenly position of the body of Christ
ellauri155.html on line 521: Today’s passage certainly qualifies as one of the more difficult passages of Scripture. It is easy enough to understand what is going on; however, it is difficult to know how to evaluate it. We see in 1 Samuel 27:1–4 that David decided the best way to escape Saul was to flee to Philistine territory and take up residence in the city of Gath. David had been there before, and he deceived the city’s king, Achish, by pretending to be insane, thereby keeping the Philistines from killing him (21:10–15). This time, David did not have to feign insanity. Achish would have heard of Saul’s war with David, so he probably felt secure in allowing him into the city. This enemy of his enemy—Israel’s King Saul—could be counted on as a friend. Achish gave the country town of Ziklag to David, and it became a royal possession after David ascended the throne (27:5–7).
ellauri162.html on line 181: To understand more fully the connection between Hosea’s domestic affairs and Israel’s relationship with Jehovah, consider these words: “Jehovah went on to say to me: ‘Go once again, love a woman loved by a companion and committing adultery.’” (Hosea 3:1) Hosea complied with this command by repurchasing Gomer from the man with whom she had been living. Afterward, Hosea firmly admonished his wife: “For many days you will dwell as mine. You must not commit no furher fornication, and you must not come to belong to another man.” (Hosea 3:2, 3) Gomer responded to the discipline, and Hosea resumed marital relations with her. How did this apply to God’s dealings with the people of Israel and Judah?
ellauri164.html on line 493: The rest of the book of Exodus and the entire book of Leviticus take place while the Israelites are encamped at the foot of Sinai. God gives Moses detailed instructions for the building of the tabernacle—a traveling tent of worship that could be assembled and disassembled for easy portability—and for making the utensils for worship, the priestly garb, and the ark of the covenant, symbolic of God’s presence among His people as well as the place where the high priest would perform the annual atonement. God also gives Moses explicit instructions on how God is to be worshiped and guidelines for maintaining purity and holiness among the people. The book of Numbers sees the Israelites move from Sinai to the edge of the Promised Land, but they refuse to go in when ten out of twelve spies bring back a bad report about Israel’s ability to take over the land. God condemns this generation of Jews to die in the wilderness for their disobedience and subjects them to forty years of wandering in the wilderness. By the end of the book of Numbers, the next generation of Israelites is back on the borders of the Promised Land and poised to trust God and take it by faith.
ellauri164.html on line 873: We would expect the pattern to repeat here. The people have rebelled, so the next part would be God’s wrath and threats of destruction. Instead, however, God merely grants their request for water. No mention of sin or possible annihilation, just grace in providing for Israel’s needs. The fact that this cycle we’ve come to expect changes is designed to highlight an important event; the oddity of the text “awakens us from our narrative slumber,” as one commentator puts it, and forces us to pay attention closely to what’s occurring. Why would God not threaten destruction? To answer that, we have to remember a key aspect of God’s character: He does not change. Hebrews 13:8 says He is the same yesterday and today and forever, “without variation or shifting shadow,” (James 1:17). The purpose of the threats of destruction, and Moses/Aaron’s intercession, was not to actually change God’s mind. God knew exactly what was going to happen in all these instances. God’s threats on Israel are spoken to Moses so that Moses will intercede. They are tests of Moses’ (and Aaron’s) character, just as God’s conversation with Abraham over the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) was about testing Abraham’s character rather than the doomed cities. Yet here, in Numbers 20, God does not follow the pattern. Why?
ellauri164.html on line 877: The reading that makes more sense is to focus on the breaking of the pattern established to this point. Moses’ harsh words toward the Israelites reveal his emotions in this moment; he classifies Israel as “rebels” rather than the chosen people, and his rhetorical question seems to imply that he does not view Israel as worthy of God’s grace any longer. This is the real failure of Moses in this moment: he’s lost his faith in God to fulfill His promises to these people. Israel is a nation of rebels outside of grace, outside of God’s ability to make a great nation, outside of the promises that God has given. It seems nearly forty years of dealing with this people has finally broken Moses, and he is so overwhelmed in this moment that he has lost faith. From God’s perspective, Moses has lost faith in the Lord to overcome Israel’s faithlessness. Moses has not believed in God, and has not treated Yahweh as the Holy God who is able to overcome the weakness of His people. Indeed, this is exactly what Numbers 20:12 says was Moses’ sin! He (and Aaron!) did not believe God and did not treat Yahweh as holy in that moment. God did offer Moses the opportunity to intercede for the people (and thus broke the pattern) because He knew that Moses did not have faith in Him.
ellauri164.html on line 879: This interpretation is solidified by Moses’ words about this event in the Book of Deuteronomy. Three times in the first four chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses says that he is not able to enter the Promised Land because of Israel. At first glance, again, this might seem an unfair charge. Moses had caused his own exclusion, hadn’t he? Why is he accusing the generation after the event in Numbers 20 of being the cause of his failure? If we look at these three mentions, we see a few important facts. In the first instance, Deuteronomy 1:37, Moses is recounting the failure of Israel when they listened to the 10 spies’ negative report and how God forbade that generation from entering the Promised Land, and he then says “The Lord was angry with me also on your account, saying, ‘Not even you shall enter there.’” Moses associates his inability to enter the Promised Land with Israel’s rebellion and unfaithfulness, but he also seems to be lumping the people’s refusal to enter the land (Numbers 13-14) with his own sin in Numbers 20. This is not Moses forgetting the chronology of these two events, but rather indicating that they are closely associate with one another.
ellauri171.html on line 973: Jezebel’s marriage to Ahab was a political alliance. The union provided both peoples with military protection from powerful enemies as well as valuable trade routes: Israel gained access to the Phoenician ports; Phoenicia gained passage through Israel’s central hill country to Transjordan and especially to the King’s Highway, the heavily traveled inland route connecting the Gulf of Aqaba in the south with Damascus in the north. But although the marriage is sound foreign policy, it is intolerable to the Deuteronomist because of Jezebel’s competing gods.
ellauri171.html on line 987: But the appearance of Jezebel in the bible includes no mention of her sexuality. In the Hebrew Bible, Jezebel appears in the books of first and second Kings as the wife of King Ahab— the marriage being a political alliance between Israel and Sidon (a coastal city to the north) where Jezebel was the princess. Jezebel brings her religion to Israel with her, and the worship of Baal is blasphemy in the eyes of the biblical writers. According to the text, Jezebel begins killing Israel’s prophets. Because of this, Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a showdown with Israel’s deity. The Baal worshipers fail to summon their deity, so Elijah calls upon Yahweh and fire descends from heaven and consumes the altar. Having won, Elijah then slaughters all of the prophets of Baal. Jezebel threatens to kill Elijah by the same time the next day, and, ironically, Elijah retreats.
ellauri171.html on line 997: Jezebel is portrayed by the Rabbis as a wicked woman who represents the negative influence of Gentile women who turned Israel’s heart to idolatry. She is a corrupting influence on her husband Ahab, who is drawn to idolatry and away from God because of her.
ellauri171.html on line 1021: Israel’s most accursed queen carefully fixes a pink rose in her red locks in John Byam Liston Shaw’s “Jezebel” from 1896. Jezebel’s reputation as the most dangerous seductress in the Bible stems from her final appearance: her husband King Ahab is dead; her son has been murdered by Jehu. As Jehu’s chariot races toward the palace to kill Jezebel, she “painted her eyes with kohl and dressed her hair, and she looked out of the window” (2 Kings 9:30).
ellauri263.html on line 369: Israel’s biggest TV hit series returns to our screens this week, opening with Israel’s biggest nightmare. The second series of Fauda, the political thriller about an Israeli army undercover unit, begins with a bomb explosion at a bus stop. But it gets worse, as it turns out the attack wasn’t ordered by Hamas, but by a new menace – a returnee from Syria who has been training with Islamic State.
ellauri263.html on line 371: That’s how we’re plunged back into Fauda, Arabic for “chaos”, Israel’s international Netflix hit, which the streaming service picked up in 2016. Released on 24 May, the series returns with its tight, testy unit of Arabic-speaking Israeli special force infiltrators who work undercover in the Palestinian West Bank to track and kill wanted terrorists.
ellauri263.html on line 375: Fauda is frequently credited with evenhandedness over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attempts to humanise Palestinian terror operatives. But that’s in the eye of the beholder, and certainly less true of this second series. For an Israeli Jewish audience, Fauda does break new ground. “It’s the first TV series that showed the Palestinian narrative in a way that you can actually feel something for someone who acts like a terrorist,” says Itay Stern at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “You can understand the motives and the emotion and that’s unique, because until that point you couldn’t really see it on TV.”
ellauri263.html on line 395: Small wonder, then, that all eyes are on finding the new Homeland Security, itself based on an Israeli TV series, Hatufim. And it’s not surprising that the quest is focused on Israel, which has spawned a string of international hits, starting with In Treatment, a 2008 HBO adaptation of the Hebrew-language Be Tipul. In 2016 Neflix started airing Mossad 101, about Israel’s intelligence service, while earlier this year Hulu nabbed False Flag, a conspiracy thriller loosely premised on the 2010 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, widely thought to be the work of the Mossad, by a hit squad carrying foreign passports.
ellauri269.html on line 594: Oh PS. Jewish =/= Israel. One is a religion and a people spread accross the world and the other is a country with many strengths and weakenesses. Please do not compare Israel’s actions or critism as somehow representative of all jewish people. That is grotesquely anti-semetic; the jewish people are not some sort of hive mind monolith represented by Israel. Stop this silliness.
ellauri323.html on line 180: Member of the Hadash Party and the Israeli Knesset Ofer Cassif says while the killing of civilians on both sides was condemnable, it was Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and the actions of the Netanyahu-led government, that was responsible for the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. Cassif also criticised the US government, saying that if it had pressed Israel to move towards a peaceful political solution and to end the occupation, events such as today’s would not have happened. Eurowesterners are making very similar statements and language that you have heard from US President Joe Biden. They are firmly blaming Hamas for this attack. Biden pledges ‘all appropriate means of support’ to Israel. The US provides $3.8bn in unconditional military aid to Zion annually. Hadash is a left-wing party that supports a socialistic economy and workers' rights. It emphasizes Jewish-Arab cooperation, and its leaders were among the first to support a two-state solution. Its voters are principally middle class and secular Arabs, many from the north and Christian communities.
ellauri346.html on line 175: This is what happened. He said “Sweden and the EU are united behind Israel’s right to genoc… self-defense”, as if he caught himself at the last moment. LOL
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 295: We also need to remember that Bible prophecy only illuminates world history where Israel is concerned. Great Empires have come and gone during Israel’s absence without so much as a hint of their existence in the Bible. Even the United States, by any measure the most successful of them all, is missing from the prophetic record. You can’t tell me God didn’t know these empires were coming, so their absence has to mean that He sees them as irrelevant to Israel’s destiny. Don’t get me wrong, He has used them all to advance His plan for His people, and they were all blessed through their time of participation. But He didn’t find any of them worthy of mention because He didn’t actually need any of them to fulfil His plan.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 348: Based on existing conditions in the world today we would interpret this prophecy as pertaining to Jordan. But this could all change with the Battle of Psalm 83 when Edom, Moab, and Ammon could come under Israel’s control again. Is that what will prevent the anti-Christ from conquering them, or is there more to it?
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