I Hate Your Festivals - The Meaning of Amos 5:21

In this post we will tackle the meaning of God's words spoken to the prophet Amos.

"I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me." -Amos 5:21

The easy way to read this passage in Amos is to connect the despised religious festivals with the Biblical holidays. Pastors and Bible commentaries will tell you verses like these are proof that even God doesn't like the Bible holidays like Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles, so of course he doesn't expect his people to celebrate them today. You can see the logic, why should we do something if God despises that thing?

While there's logic to a view like this, pulling this one verse out of context with the book that it's in (not to mention the rest of the Bible) leads us to an extremely incorrect understanding of this Bible verse. Amos 5:21 is not about YHWH despising his own holidays that he invented and then commanded his people to keep. If that were true, that would be rather confusing to have God go back and forth about what he thinks of the holidays. But if we take a look at the book of Amos, and the context in which it was written, we will see that this is not the case.

The first thing we need to know about the context of Amos was that it was written to the northern kingdom of Israel after the unified kingdom of Israel had been split into two under the reign of King Solomon's son, Rehoboam. This matters because after the split, YHWH consistently has a specific grievance against the northern kingdom. Over and over, Scripture tells us that Israel's kings continued to follow in the sins of Jeroboam, who first ruled Israel after it was divided. The sins of Jeroboam were especially offensive to YHWH.

What were the sins of Jeroboam? For as much as they get brought up, they are not what you would expect. He didn't turn his back on YHWH and go on genocidal rampages. He didn't tell the people to worship Baal or other idols. He simply changed how the people worshipped YHWH. 

God traced the blame for Israel's sins to this man for generations.

One of the adjustments Jeroboam made was changing when the Biblical holidays happened.

Amos was written many generations after Jeroboam, but the northern house of Israel was now ruled by another king who "did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam" (2 Kings 14:23). Fittingly, he was called Jeroboam II (the two weren't related, but had a spiritual connection). Given this context, knowing that an on-going sin in Israel had to do with not abiding by the directions God gave for the Biblical holidays, we should be able to see Amos 5:21 in a different light.

It was bad enough for Jeroboam to change the holidays in the first place, but more than 137 years later, you can imagine the game of 'telephone' that had been played regarding the commandments for the holidays (and surely most other areas of life). A century of sin later, the Israelites would have been even further removed from the correct ways to worship and how YHWH wanted his feasts to be kept and celebrated.

The festivals that God hates in Amos 5:21 are not his. They had been badly twisted and perverted by thirteen dysfunctional kings. Scripture doesn't tell us exactly what they were doing on these holidays, but it wasn't what God had told them to do. Under the reign of the original King Jeroboam, the northern kingdom of Israel had stopped following Biblical instructions for their religious celebrations. This was despised by the YHWH.

If we look at the context when these words were spoken and written we will see that the northern house of Israel was not diligently keeping the Biblical holidays in the times and ways that God had directed them. In fact, they had departed so much from the instructions that he had given that he did not recognize them as his own. That's why he called them your festivals. The holidays that YHWH hates in Amos are not the ones he made or told his people to celebrate.

Related posts:
What Were the Sins of Jeroboam?
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Why the Biblical Holidays are for All Believers

The Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the Bible (and why they matter)

Seeing the distinction between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel in the Bible is essential to understand many of the events in the Old Testament and many things that happen in the New Testament, including statements made by the Messiah! If we don't have correct understanding of these separate entities, much of Scripture isn't going to make sense, and we will misunderstand our own identity.

Let's start off by looking at the Biblical term for YHWH's people: Israel. This term that means "overcoming with YHWH" or "YHWH overcomes" is first given to Jacob in Genesis 32:28. The term is then passed on to his family, including anyone not biologically related who chooses to serve YHWH and to overcome with him. The twelve tribes of Israel come from Jacob's sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naftali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Joseph (which is subsequently given to his own sons - Ephraim and Manasseh), and Benjamin. While in Egypt their families grew into a great nation. The people of Israel were united through the Exodus, the years in the wilderness, the time of Joshua and Judges, and through the reigns of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon.

Shortly after the death of King Solomon, there was a dispute between the people their new king, Rehoboam. The people wanted him to lift the heavy burden of forced labor and taxation from the rule of Solomon but he he refused and the majority of Israel's tribes decided to stop honoring Rehoboam as their leader. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and at least part of Levi stuck with Rehoboam in the Southern Kingdom, while the majority of the tribes united as the Northern Kingdom. As the name of Israel was legally passed to Ephraim in Genesis 48:12-20, Ephraim and the other tribes in the North were collectively still known as Israel. Meanwhile the Southern Kingdom was known as Judah.

Why does this distinction matter? 

-The restoration of Israel is one of the main themes of Scripture. Scholars say that you're going to misunderstand 7/8 of the Bible if you don't make this distinction. If you don't differentiate the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, good luck trying to understand Kings as anything beyond legendary stories. You'll miss much of the Messiah's work, and many prophecies won't make sense at all. The terms are different because they mean different things. Lumping Israel and Judah together after 1 Kings 12 is going to cause confusion.

-Many have erroneously taught that only Jewish people (those descending from the tribe of Judah) are the chosen people of YHWH. Scripture does not teach this. What Scripture does teach is that Yahusha came for the lost tribes of Israel (Matthew 15:24). The Messiah came for all the tribes. Whether the tribe of Judah or Issachar or Ephraim or Gad, all are important to YHWH. When we realize that his people include all the tribes, we see the family growing by millions and millions. Most people with ancestry in ancient Israel are not Jews and do not come from Jews. Of course Scripture teaches that anyone covered by the blood of the Messiah is part of the people of Israel, regardless of if they have any blood connection to any of the twelve tribes.

-Believe that you are a gentile, and you will likely end up living like a gentile. There are many who sincerely desire to be part of YHWH's people, but live in ways that are totally against what he instructs...largely because they don't realize they are part of Israel! Again, this has nothing to do with your bloodline. It is your choice to join YHWH's people or not. Understanding that you are part of this is a wake up call that YHWH wants you to live differently than the rest of the world.

Have you ever considered that your ancestors could have seen the Dead Sea parted or lived in the Promised Land? That is such an amazing thought! It's very possible that your family could come from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Lots of books and research suggest the migration of the Northern Kingdom tribes all over the world, so no matter what your nationality or ethnicity is, you could physically be from the house of Israel. While knowing for sure you are from a tribe of Israel may be lost to us, it is certainly not lost from YHWH. If we don't make the distinction between the North and South Kingdoms it's easy to miss Scripture's promise that YHWH will restore the lost tribes.

Related posts:
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Understanding the Other 88% of the Bible
Not All Bible Characters were Jewish

What Were the Sins of Jeroboam in the Bible? (After Israel Was Divided)

Reading through Kings so many of their lives contain what appears to be a footnote and it goes like this, "But nevertheless he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin." This summation is at the end of almost every King of Israel's story. "He did some good stuff, but he walked like Jeroboam." No matter how many things they did for YHWH, military victories, and accomplishments of their reign, if they lived like Jeroboam that's the defining theme of their lives in Scripture.

If you aren't familiar with him, Jeroboam was the first king of the Northern House of Israel, which first gets mentioned in 1 Kings 11 after the ten tribes of Israel split away from the tribe of Judah. While Israel refers collectively to all twelve tribes from Genesis up through the reigns of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, after the split under Solomon's son Rehoboam, the term 'Israel' refers to the ten northern tribes.

What did Jeroboam do that made his name one of the biggest insults in Scripture? Generation after generation YHWH traced the blame for Israel's sins to this man. You might be surprised by how innocuous his offensives seem in our culture.

Jeroboam:
-made two golden calves
-set up temples in high places
-decided himself who could be a priest
-moved the feast dates

I certainly don't want to downplay how he transgressed against YHWH, but those things seem fairly low-key don't they? He is not described as a murderer or war hungry. He did not make it illegal to worship YHWH in his kingdom. In fact, 1 Kings 12:28 tells us that he was trying to make worship of YHWH more convenient for his people as, "it is too much for you to go to Jerusalem."

(You can read about Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11:26 - 12)

So Jeroboam: did the same thing as Aaron by creating golden calves; set up a house of worship according to what he felt like doing; used his own standards for who would work in this ministry; moved the date of a Biblical festival. Do these things sound eerily familiar? A leader has decided that the things YHWH has asked are too difficult for the people, so he announces his alternative ideas, as if they were commandments. That can be seen in every pastor that teaches YHWH's instructions are too hard and every rabbi that says a chicken is an appropriate Yom Kippur sacrificial substitute. They are going to do what they see is best, while ignoring the word of YHWH.

It's interesting that 1 Kings 12:32 describes Jeroboam's feast "like the feast that is in Judah." He did not create a new feast to worship a false god or himself. He simply decided to move the feasts of the seventh month (Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) to the eighth month of the year. This seemingly unimportant adjustment is hugely offensive to YHWH. Rescheduling something that YHWH instructed caused Israel to sin for generations. In light of that, it is extremely important for Christians to evaluate the holidays that they keep. In many ways how Easter is celebrated in churches is very similar to Passover. It's like the feast that happens in Scripture, but traditions are valued more than the word of YHWH. Christmas is somewhat like the festival of Sukkot, except it's not YHWH's idea. Do we want to have something in common with a man who caused all of Israel to walk in sin?

In the first golden calf story in Exodus 32 Israel did not mean to turn away from YHWH. They simply decided for themselves rather than following YHWH's instructions how they would worship. In verse five it says that all the golden calf business was meant to be "a festival to YHWH." Like Jeroboam, their plan wasn't to jump ship entirely and worship a false god. They just wanted to decide how they would serve the Living God. But YHWH has not left that up to us.

Jeroboam did not stop at offending YHWH with his disobedience. He made the culture of Israel one where it was easy to sin. He created a lifestyle of defying what YHWH said, while having it be close enough that people could think they were on the right track. Probably all of us were born into circumstances like that, where the decisions of those before us caused us to sin. A culture of celebrating Easter instead of Passover. Of worship on Sunday instead of Shabbat. Church potlucks serving ham. We were made to sin by those who came before us. We were born into traditions we never realized we should question. Like Israel's kings who had their walk after Jeroboam, YHWH wants us to turn away from that.

The story of Jehu is striking. Israel's 11th king lead a military coup against a corrupt ruler, put to death the infamously wicked Jezebel, killed all the relatives of perhaps Israel's most evil king Ahab, staged a coercive operation to destroy the temple of Baal and it's worshippers, and tore down graven images of Baal. YHWH was pleased with his actions and even said that Jehu "did well in executing that which is righteous in my eyes." But then, just one sentence later, in 2 Kings 10:31, it says, "But Jehu took no heed to have his walk in the Torah of YHWH Elohim of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin."

That sentence speaks a strong truth of YHWH that we often forget: he's not that interested in our resumes. Tales of grandeur are not what he's after. You can fight amazing battles, and accomplish the bravest of feats, and still hear, "Nevertheless, he didn't turn away from simple sins. He walked like a man who wasn't even willing to attend a party when I wanted." That sentence of not departing from Jeroboam's ways is used something like 17 times in Kings because YHWH wants us to see that no matter what he wants us to live according to his instructions. This is the point Samuel made to King Saul when he said, "Obedience is better than sacrifice." To depart from the sin of Jeroboam's walk we need to follow YHWH's paths.

Related posts:
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Understanding the Other 88% of the Bible
Understanding the Golden Calf

Increase Our Numbers Like Sheep

Who's heard this verse before? Ezekiel 36:37 - "This says the Master YHWH: I will once again allow the house of Israel to call upon Me, to do this for them: increase their numbers like sheep." 

The house of Israel is the name for the ten northern tribes. Tribes that are now lost in the nations: they left the land of Israel, intermarried with other cultures and basically disappeared without a trace. However they are not lost to YHWH. He knows where his people are and promises that one day he will restore all twelve tribes together.

Since these people are not lost to YHWH, how are they considered lost? It's because the world and the people themselves have no idea that YHWH longs for them to turn to him and come back into his kingdom. Most people in our culture are lost. They've lost their bearings. They've lost the compass of YHWH's instructions as directions to live by. They have no idea that it's likely they have physical ancestry in the people who spent forty years wandering the desert. They have not been taught how to follow YHWH. He longs for individuals worldwide to turn back and become part of his people. He wants them back.

Do you see the implications that this verse gives? Since all who turn to YHWH and serve him get grafted into Israel (whether or not they have family lineage there), that means that you get to pray this. That Israel would grow and grow like crazy.

YHWH has given us the gift of this prayer. Something he will bring about, we can be part of by praying for him to bring the lost sheep of Israel back. More and more people will become part of the community that serves YHWH, keeps his feasts, sets apart the Sabbath day, follows his instructions, and glorifies the life and death of Yahusha. He will bring them back.

Increase our numbers like sheep.

Related posts:
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Understanding the Other 88% of the Bible

Harvesting the Fields

"The harvest truly is great, but the workers are few." -Matthew 9:37

Reading a book on local eating I came across an incorrect version of this benediction. It read, "The harvest is plentiful and the labors few." Ha!

Our first frost came this week. If you garden you know the mad dash the night before a frost is supposed to hit. You gather up everything because whatever's left will be ruined. Only the heartier leafy greens and roots can take a bit of frosting. So you take everything else. The green tomatoes, the baby squash, bitty lettuce leafs. And if you are a gardener you know that a plentiful harvest is a lot of work. A bountiful harvest with little labor? Not gonna happen.

"The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few." That's more like it.

What was the point of Yeshua announcing this? He didn't say much that falls under the 'common sense' category, and I struggle to believe that food was so abundant in the fields and vineyards of Israel that it was left to rot for want of harvesters. Plus, an actual commandment is to NOT harvest your fields too well, but to leave some of the grain and grapes behind for the poor. So if we take this strictly as an agriculture statement it doesn't make much sense. The fields are abundant but workers are few? What does that mean?

If we take it as a parable we can understand more. To begin with, Yeshua is hinting that there is something to be gathered that most of us are unaware of. Secondly, there aren't workers for the fields because most people don't realize there is a need.

But a freeze is coming to your garden? You realize the need and you gather the harvest. Food growers tend to do whatever it takes. I moved more weight in squash than I can at the gym. You recruit your family to help out. Shine car headlights on the garden to work after dark. A farmer friend told me he once stayed in the tractor for 36 hours straight to beat a bad storm. Typically, the grains and vegetables of the earth have plenty of harvesters.

But what is Yeshua saying? There's something that needs gathered in that most of us are missing.

This verse appears in Luke as well as Matthew. Taking a closer look at the context gives us a better idea of what he means. Matthew 9:35 tells us Yeshua traveled from village to village proclaiming the Besorah of the malchut and healing the sickness and disease in the people. Verse 36 tells us he saw the multitudes of people and had compassion on them because they were scattered abroad. In Luke 10, immediately after saying, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few," Yeshua sends his disciples to share the Besorah (good news).

"Scattered abroad," is a phrase used hundreds of times throughout Scripture as a threat, warning, and fact. "Scattered abroad," is what happened to the Northern Kingdom of Israel when it was sent into exile, and in a more limited way when Judah was exiled from the land. (Though, by Yeshua's time much of the house of Judah had returned.) The tribe of Ephraim and the Northern Kingdom is still, in every sense, scattered abroad. When he says the fields are ready for harvest, Yeshua is talking about the lost tribes of Israel! In Luke 10 he mentions three cities in particular: Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernicum. These are three cities in the Northern part of Israel's territory. Historically they were occupied by tribes other than Judah. Though much of the Northern tribes were exiled, many still lived in the area at the time of Yeshua.

This is what Yeshua wants gathered in: the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He sent his disciples to Ephraim, to Manasseh, to Zebulon. He is after Israel's lost tribes, who have been scattered amongst the nations. He wants to bring them back.

Doesn't this understanding of the fields make more sense? The world has plenty of people to gather in food. While there are lots of missionaries, how many of them are reaching out to the house of Ephraim? Bringing back the lost tribes into covenant with YHWH doesn't occur to most of us, but it is the utmost desire of Yeshua!

Matthew 9:38
Make tefillah to the Master of the harvest, that He will send forth workers into His harvest.

Understanding the Other 88% of The Bible

In The first time I read the entire Bible I had a lot of questions.

So many. Things like, "When will I get to the part where it says to ask Jesus into my heart?" and, "Where are Christmas and Easter?" or "When does God say to forget all the instructions he gave?"

I enjoyed the beautiful and poetic writings of the prophets and enjoyed the adventures of the rulers in Kings and Chronicles, but one thing didn't make sense. Why does it keep switching from Israel to Judah?

At the time I assumed they were both names for the same thing. Still this caused me great confusion because often the statements about or directed towards Israel were very different than the words about Judah. Several years ago, I stumbled across this quote:

"Not to understand the distinction of Israel from Judah is to positively misunderstand seven-eighths of the Bible." -Edward Hine.

In No wonder the confusion! A huge amount of Scripture - roughtly 88% by Hine's view - distinguishes between Israel and Judah. If I don't grasp this then I miss a huge amount of YHWH's truth.

So what's the difference?

The first time the word Israel appears is in Genesis 32:28 when Jacob is renamed Israel. His name is used to describe his descendants. His twelves sons and their families are known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

One of those tribes is known as Judah, after Jacob's fourth son. His descendants would later be known as Judahites, and later after that a certain sect of them would be known as Jews, known for practicing Judaism.

For centuries the tribes peaceably lived united under the name of Israel. Around 930 B.C. the nation of Israel was divided when King Rehoboam, son of Solomon, raised taxes and caused the tribes that were in the northern part of the country to rebel. They seceded from the King who was from the tribe of Judah and were ruled by Jeroboam of the tribe of Ephraim. You can read about this in 1 Kings 12. We know from 2 Chronicles 11:1 that in addition to the tribe of Judah, King Rehoboam also continued to rule over the tribe of Benjamin.

So when the stories in Kings switch back and forth from the King of Israel to the King of Judah, this is why! This seems obvious now that I know it but I missed this for years. I had read Kings, Chronicles, and the prophets many times without catching this! Learning this made understanding Scripture much easier for me and I hope it will for you as well.

Related posts:
The Two Houses: Israel and Judah in Scripture
Four Distinctions We Need to Make to Understand Scripture
Comparing the Melchizedek and Levitical Priesthoods

The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History - What I'm Reading

Browsing the shelves in a library, I happened to come across this book. What are the odds of that?

Until the last few years I had never heard of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

As author Zvi Ben-Dor Benite presents, until the last few centuries the Lost Tribes were an incredibly popular subject; mentioned by the likes of John Calvin, Thomas Jefferson, the Israeli Parliament, Herman Melville, a 19th century theatrical parody, John Milton's Paradise Regained, and Theodore Roosevelt, among others.

A little background information:

The sons of Israel (better known as Jacob) comprise the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Through the reign of King Solomon the tribes were united as one nation known as Israel. When Solomon's son Rehoboam became king he became so harsh that the ten northern tribes revolted and the House of Israel was split in two. See 1 Kings 12:16.

The northern tribes--Ephraim, Manasseh, Reuben, Gad, Dan, Naphtali, Issachar, Asher, Simeon, and Zebulon--were known as Israel, and the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin became known as Judah. (Levi doesn't have a land inheritance but they mostly stayed with Judah.)

This is why when you read in Kings and Chronicles it will say, "During the reign of ______ King of Israel," or "King _____ of Judah." I'd always thought Israel could be used interchangeably with Judah—like America or United States—but they are separate kingdoms!

So why are the tribes lost?

Around 740 BC Israel (the northern ten tribes) were taken captive by the Assyrians. This is seen in 2 Kings chapters 17 and 18, and 1 Chronicles 5.

Around 605 BC, Judah was also taken captive, but this time it was by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Judah was captive for 70 years and then returned to their land. The books of Nehemiah and Ezra discuss the return of the exiles to the land.

The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History is filled with fascinating stories of adventurers who searched the earth for the Lost Tribes. They believed they would find them in a specific, hard-to-reach place (the Island of Atlantis, perhaps?), and that they would be obviously Israelite.

Unlike the southern tribes the House of Israel never came back from the exile. They assimilated into the nations and forgot their Israelite identity. Certainly, there are hundreds of millions of people today who have descended from the Lost Tribes, but have no idea. YHWH promised Abraham that his descendants would fill the earth, and there must descendants from the Lost Tribes in every nation.

There are shreds of Hebrew evidence around the globe. The Ten Lost tribes recounts the story of a Marrano Jew named Antonio Montezinos travellin in South America in the 1600s. A local man named Francisco learned of Montezinos' background and offered to take him on a journey to "see your brothers." For one week, they crossed rivers and swamps in what is now Colombia. After resting on the Sabbath they reached a river on a Tuesday morning. Three men and a woman appeared by canoe, excited to meet Montezinos, and began reciting the Shema.

What an amazing story! The Ten Lost Tribes contains many such fascinating fragments. Many considered Native Americans to be the Lost Tribes. Yemeni Jews often said the tribes could be found, "beyond China." A man called Ben-Israel wrote in the 1600s that "a great number of Jews" in China could be descendants of the Lost Tribes. Expeditions were sent to India and others theorized the tribes had gone to the North Pole before venturing elsewhere. Mexico was a popular location, and some believe the tribes had crossed the Atlantic Ocean by way of the legendary Island of Atlantis.

This book was a fascinating read, and much praise goes to Zvi Ben-Dor Benite for what surely must have been a mountain of research. This book is rich in insight for anyone learning of Israel's Lost Tribes.