First
It’s so funny to make a post about how I’m going to start writing again, post something three days later, and then go silent for 4 months. I’ve thought about it a lot lately, and I’m trying to figure out what holds me back. I have no excuses (just a couple of reasons that aren’t great). So here is my attempt at writing something short and imperfect to get used to the idea of not needing ✨the perfect topic✨ to actually sit down and write.
Exodus
I’m preaching through the book of Exodus right now in church, and I’m finding so much interesting history about how God revealed his character to the Israelites (the people through whom he was re-revealing himself to the world). This week, my attention was drawn to a detail that beautifully ties a bunch of Bible stuff together. And this happens all the time. I’m studying some minute detail of a Hebrew word or random reference and, seemingly out of nowhere, there appears some amazing connection to the greater biblical narrative that delights me every time.
Last Sunday we were looking at Exodus 16 where God gives his hungry people magical bread from the sky to keep them from revolting and reenslaving themselves to some foreign nation in order to not miss a meal. The dew would settle in the night, and in the morning, it would leave a mysterious, flaky, bread-like snack on the ground. They found it so confounding that they called it “manna,” which, in Hebrew, sort of sounds like the phrase “What is it?” The Israelites would survive for YEARS off of this stuff.
Numbers
In one of my study Bibles (I’ll reference a bunch of my study material at the end so no one thinks I’m coming up with this stuff myself), it pointed out a detail about how manna is described in the book of Numbers.
Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium.
Numbers 11:7 (ESV)
I typically preach from the NLT because of its readability, but I use other translations to study from. And this word that the ESV (and many other Bibles) translates as “bdellium,” originates in the Hebrew bedolach (בְּדֹ֫לַח). There is only one other place in the Bible where this Hebrew word is used.
Genesis
The Bible describes the Garden of Eden as a perfect, untainted, utopia. It was the first place where heaven and earth met with no interruption (sin would be that future interruption). The features of Eden are described in great detail in order to communicate its purity and beauty. That includes this little verse here hidden amongst descriptions of the rivers of Eden:
And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.
Genesis 2:12
There it is again. “Bdellium.” Bedolach (בְּדֹ֫לַח). What’s the connection?
The Israelites are wandering in the desert in need of provision, and Yahweh miraculously makes bread appear on the ground every morning. Despite the curse of Genesis 3, where humanity has to work hard for their crops and groceries, God provided food from heaven without his people breaking a sweat. He’s providing for them as if it were before the curse—as if it were Eden.
This otherwise insignificant word is there to make a connection to the perfect garden. To remind us that after the Fall of Man, the disconnection between God and his creation, Yahweh is hard at work mending the wound. This is what it means that the Bible has a grand narrative. There is one all-encompassing theme to describe the work Yahweh is doing. To get there, we’ll need to bridge once more to another verse.
John
What I like about this connection is that we don’t have to do any work to see it. Jesus points it out for us.
Yes, I am the bread of life! Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died. Anyone who eats the bread from heaven, however, will never die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and this bread, which I will offer so the world may live, is my flesh.”
John 6:48-51 (NLT)
Jesus calls himself the bread of life. The bread from heaven. Manna.
The Israelites had no way to help themselves and needed to completely rely on God to meet their physical needs, and God provided them with bread.
AND THEN.
Humanity had no way to help itself and needed to completely rely on God to meet its spiritual needs, and God provided us with Jesus.
This is the theme.
The entire Bible is about Jesus and what he came to do.
I say this all the time. Any time I’m preaching and there are allusions to Jesus, I’ll ask the congregation if their Jesus-senses are tingling (which is a REALLY weird thing to hear if you don’t get the reference to Spider-Man). This should happen all the time when you read the Bible, because the Bible is about one thing: Jesus and his redemptive work. It’s about God trying to restore the world and humanity to its Eden condition. That’s why Jesus says that when you eat the bread of life (trust in him for abundant life and eternal life), you’ll never die. Sure, you may experience a temporary earthly death, but you live forever with him in a new Eden. A beautiful sentiment that bridges his life recorded by John to the miracle of manna and the perfect Garden of Eden.
The entire Bible is about Jesus and what he came to do. And what he came to do was resurrect, redeem, and restore. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
THANK YOU
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Shalom, yinz!
Links:
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Bible