1 | P a g e

Torah 101-Shoftim Portion

I. ANSWERS TO LAST WEEKS STUDY QUESTIONS (from Reeh)


1) Question for Deuteronomy 11:26-12:32:

How is one command given here linked to the last part of Revelation and how
is this same command being ignored in both Judaism and Christianity?
LO TAASUN KEN LYAHWEH ELOHEYCHEM (12:4) = You shall not
worship YHWH your Elohim in this way. A very important clarification that
chastens Israel for her past yet also carries a heavy rebuke for our present. Some
who worshipped the Golden Calf said, This be our El, O Israel and Aaron
proclaimed that day a feast to YHWH. But neither of these things was approved
of by Abba YHWH. He says to NOT worship him through idols or to syncretize
pagan worship and adapt it for His honor. See also Deuteronomy 12:31 for the
confirmation of this interpretation.

And yet both Christianity and Judaism to some degrees do just that. This is why
Yshua said to haSatan, Worship Elohim and Him only shall you serve. Abba
YHWH has no form, and He explicitly commands that statues and images
whether Nativity scenes or marble statuesnot be used in veneration even if He
is the object of the veneration. And by the way, the same thing holds with regards
to angels

(Rev 19:1) And after these things, I heard a loud voice of a great
multitude in heaven, saying: "Hallelu-YAH:
67
Deliverance,
68
and strength,
and glory, and honor to our Elohim: (Rev 19:2) for, true and righteous are
his judgments; for he has judged that great harlot who corrupted the earth
with her harlotry; and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand."
69
(Rev 19:3) And again they said: "Hallelu-YAH: and her smoke ascends
up forever and ever."

(Rev 19:4) And the twenty-four Elders fell down, and the four Creatures,
and worshipped Elohim who sits on the throne, saying: "Amen: Hallelu-
YAH!" (Rev 19:5) And a voice came forth from the throne, saying:
"Praise our Elohim, all you his servants; and such as fear Him, small and
great."

(Rev 19:6) And I heard, as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as
the voice of many waters, and as the voice of heavy thunders, saying:
"Hallelu-YAH; for our Master YHWH Elohim, Omnipotent, reigns. (Rev
19:7) Let us rejoice and exult, and give glory to him: for the marriage
supper of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. (Rev
19:8) And it was granted her to be clothed in fine linen, bright and clean:
2 | P a g e

for fine linen is the righteousness of the Set Apart believers."

(Rev 19:9) And he said to me, "Write: 'Blessed are they who are called to
the supper of the marriage feast of the Lamb.'" And he said to me, "These
my (sayings) are the true Words of Elohim."
70

(Rev 19:10) And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said to me, "See
that you do not do this; I am your fellow-servant and of those your
Brothers who have the testimony of Y'shua. Worship you Elohim: for the
testimony of Y'shua is the Spirit of Prophecy."

(Rev 22:8) And moreover I am Yochanan, the hearer and the seer of these
things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the
Messenger who showed me these things. (Rev 22:9) And he said to me:
"See, that you do not do this: I am your fellow-servant and of your
Brothers the prophets, and of them that observe the words of this book.
Worship Elohim."

2) Question for Deuteronomy 13-14:

Did Yshuas accusers perhaps believe they were being righteous per
Deuteronomy 13 and if so why might they think that?

The answer is from the Torah Thought for the Week on this parsha
Torah Thought for the Week:
Did Yshuas Executioners Think They were Fulfilling Deuteronomy 13?

Sometimes, in our zeal to proclaim our Messiah Yshua, we forget that the bad guys in
the Gospel story may have also had honorablethough misplacedintentions.
Take, for example, the Sanhedrin that condemned Yshua to death. Nazarene studies
have often focused on how various court procedures were bent and others outright
broken. Others will no doubt point outrightly of coursethat technically speaking
only Romans could put Jewish countrymen to death. All these paths are correct in their
own sense, but each one is missing another piece: There was Scripture (perhaps) behind
the decision to put Yshua to death, and it is found in this weeks Torah portion:

'If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, offering you some sign or
wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about; and if he then says to you, "Let us
follow other Elohims (hitherto unknown to you) and serve them," you must not
listen to that prophet's words or to that dreamer's dreams. Yahweh your Elohim is
testing you to know if you love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart and all
your soul.

Yahweh your Elohim is the one whom you must follow, him you must fear, his
commandments you must keep, his voice you must obey, him you must serve, to
him you must hold fast. That prophet or that dreamer of dreams must be put to
3 | P a g e

death, since he has preached apostasy from Yahweh your Elohim who brought
you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the place of slave-labor; and he would
have diverted you from the way in which Yahweh your Elohim has commanded
you to walk. You must banish this evil from among you.

'If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter,
or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries secretly to
seduce you, saying, "Let us go and serve other Elohims," unknown to you or your
ancestors before you, Elohims of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you
or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not
listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his
guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to
death and the hands of the rest of the people following.

You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your
Elohim who brought you out of Egypt, from the place of slave-labor. All Israel,
hearing of this, will be afraid, and none of you will do such a wicked thing again.
'If you hear that in one of the towns which Yahweh your Elohim has given you
for a home, there are men, scoundrels from your own stock, who have led their
fellow-citizens astray, saying, "Let us go and serve other Elohims," hitherto
unknown to you, it is your duty to look into the matter, examine it, and enquire
most carefully. If it is proved and confirmed that such a hateful thing has taken
place among you, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword; you
must lay it under the curse of destruction -- the town and everything in it. You
must pile up all its loot in the public square and burn the town and all its loot,
offering it all to Yahweh your Elohim. It is to be a ruin for all time, and never
rebuilt.

From what is thus put under the curse of destruction you must keep nothing back,
so that Yahweh may turn from the ferocity of his anger and show you mercy, and
have pity on you and increase your numbers, as he swore he would to your
ancestors, on condition that you listen to the voice of Yahweh your Elohim by
keeping all his commandments which I am enjoining on you today, and by doing
what is right in the eyes of Yahweh your Elohim.' (Deuteronomy 13:2-19 NJB)

So here we have three situations that all have the same pattern: Someone says for you to
go after other gods, kill them. The most startling line in that is even if the sign or word
they said comes true, and this brings us right to the heart of the debate about Yshua
because in other cases miracles are signs of YHWHs favora fact that is well attested to
even in the Talmud!

In effect, Yshua says, Believe me because of the miracles that I am from my Father,
and here is proof from the Scripture. Are the Pharisees then dumb to that Scripture?
No. They know it very wellbut they may have been applying Deuteronomy 13 here
and thought (this is never recorded outright in the NT) that the miracles are YHWH
testing them to see if they will condemn a false prophet to death!
4 | P a g e

Obviously, as the Gospels show us, there was no overwhelming consensus. Sanhedrin
members like Joseph of Arimathea took a different opinion. They knew that Yshua did
NOT go after other gods nor persuade others to do so. Instead, he sought to reform the
Judaism of his time away from the man-made Oral Law and back to the written Torah of
Moshe. As a result, they might have thought Deuteronomy 13 was on point, but if their
main assumption was wrongand it definitely wasthen the entire process after that
was also wrong.

3) Question for Deuteronomy 15:1-16:17:
How does the Shemittah cycle for setting a servant free every 7 years relate to the
Jubilee cycle?

The short answer is: it doesnt! The 7 year clock for the servants is tied to when they
are first indentured to their master and not to nearest land sabbath or Jubilee.

4) Haftorah Question of the Week: Isaiah 54:11-55:5

How is this Haftorah portion connected with both Revelation and one of Yshuas
greatest blessings?

Haftorah Thought of the Week:
Living Bread and Water

In the last words Yshua has for humanity, he reiterates some of his most important
concepts about using food and drink as a metaphor for eternal life:

(Rev 22:13) "I am Alap and the Taw,
80
the First and the Last, the Beginning and
the Completion. (Rev 22:14) Blessed are they who do His (Master YHWH's)
Mitzvot,
81
that they may have a right to the tree of life and may enter through the
gates into the city.
(Rev 22:15) Without (will be) dogs and sorcerers, and sexual sinners and
manslayers and idolaters, and everyone that loves and does falsehood. (Rev
22:16) I Y'shua have sent my Messenger to testify to you these things before the
assemblies. I am the root and offspring of Dawid: like the splendid star of the
morning.

But what many may not realize is that Yshua is, in an indirect way, quoting from the
prophet Yeshayahu which we just read

Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money,
come! Buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money, free!
2
Why
spend money on what cannot nourish and your wages on what fails to
satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food
to enjoy.
3
Pay attention, come to me; listen, and you will live. I shall make an
everlasting covenant with you in fulfilment of the favors promised to David.
4

5 | P a g e

Look, I have made him a witness to peoples, a leader and lawgiver to peoples.
5

Look, you will summon a nation unknown to you, a nation unknown to you will
hurry to you for the sake of Yahweh your God, because the Holy One of Israel
has glorified you.
6
Seek out Yahweh while he is still to be found, call to him
while he is still near. (Isaiah 55:1-6 NJB)

This food of course is from obeying YHWH and His Torah. In his Aramaic dialect,
Yshua often used this metaphor as well. In Yochanans Gospel, he favored the relatively
rare term for food MAKULTHA because it sounded close to the word for kingdom
MALKUTHA, and he often made the point that My FOOD is to do the will of my
Father and that definition also held to the kingdom word it sounded like, i.e. that to
get into the kingdom we also had to do the will of his Father! I also think this line from
Ezekiel that I quoted from recently also bears repeating here:

He then said, 'Son of man, eat what you see; eat this scroll, then go and speak to the
House of Israel.'
2
I opened my mouth; he gave me the scroll to eat
3
and then said,
'Son of man, feed on this scroll which I am giving you and eat your fill.' So I ate it,
and it tasted sweet as honey. (Ezekiel 3:1-3 NJB)

As we saw last time when I quoted the above, this is the meaning behind this is my
body, this is my blood for the matzah and wine Yshua blessed at his Passover Seder on
the last night of his life. The meaning: Take my teaching in like good food and drink
and make it a part of you.

Similarly though, evil also has a feast of food and drink. Paul talks about eating from the
table of the Messiah OR from the table of demons. Proverbs 4:17 also talks about an evil
feast where people, eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence, again,
they have taken the EVIL ways into their inner hearts, as if they consumed them. Such is
the case on the dark side, but the Torah, as we just saw, tasted like honey in the mouth of
the prophet. The metaphor though even extends to some unexpected places:

(Mar 2:18) Now the disciples of Yochanan and the Pharisees would fast, and they
came and said to him, "Why do the disciples of Yochanan and the Pharisees fast,
and your disciples do not fast?"
(Mar 2:19) Y'shua said to them, "As long as the bridegroom is among them, the
sons of the wedding feast are able not to fast. (Mar 2:20) But the days will come
when the bridegroom will be taken from them. In that day they will then fast.
(Mar 2:21) No man places a new patch onto an old garment and sews it, or else
the new patch be taken away from the old and the tear becomes larger. (Mar 2:22)
And no man puts new wine into old wineskins or else the wine bursts the
wineskins, and the wineskins are destroyed and the wine is poured out. Rather,
they put new wine into new wineskins." (AENT)

First, I should point out that the Pharisees are probably WRONGLY assuming that
Yochanans disciples are friendlier to the Oral Laws rules on fasting more than Yshua
and his followers are. It may simply be that Yochanans disciples decided to fast
6 | P a g e

voluntarily on the same occasion or day of the week that the Pharisees did. For example,
in one of Yshuas parables, the Pharisee and the tax collector, the Pharisee brags about
fasting twice a week, and that is not in the Written Torah at all, but doing it for a special
reason or voluntarily is allowed.

Having said that and understanding that this really is a debate about Oral Law, Yshuas
food-drink metaphor is very powerful. The Torah is the old wine, the SWEET wine
fermented over time and as Yshua also says, and no one after drinking the old wine
wants the new, for the old is better. So the Torah is BETTER, as the old wine, but what
is the new wine?

To answer this properly, first we know that the ancients fermented wine in wineskins
rather than glass bottles as we do now. Like our own rare and precious wine, it is
important to keep those wineskins SEALED until it is ready to be enjoyed. NO ONE
and to any wine lover like myself or my father this is a huge sinshould ever
prematurely open the wineskin, ADD new wine, re-seal it and act as if the wine had
always been that way.

This is a perfect metaphor for Oral Law. The Pharisees tried to fill up the wineskins that
were already perfect, already brimming with the sweet old wine, with their new wine
and the result is the skins burst and ruined everything! If that isnt a shot against the
bough of Oral Law, I dont know what is.

I should also point out that both Yeshayahu and Yshua are saying that the
wine/water/bread of YHWH comes from obeying His Torah. Yeshayahu in fact confirms
this again:

7
Let the wicked abandon his way and the evil one his thoughts. Let him turn back to
Yahweh who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness;
8
for my
thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares Yahweh.
9

For the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, my
thoughts above your thoughts.
10
For, as the rain and the snow come down from the
sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilizing it and making it
germinate to provide seed for the sower and food to eat,
11
so it is with the word that
goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out
my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do. (Isaiah 55:7-11 NJB)

And so, in the end, you really are what you eat!


7 | P a g e


II. QUESTIONS FOR THIS TORAH PORTION (Shoftim)

Please NOTE:

For clarity and time constraints, if I elect to not read the whole parsha (which
is the case this week) I may still ask questions relating to the portions I did not
read!

5) Question for Deuteronomy 16:18-17:20:

Where in this section is the number one justification the rabbis give for the existence
of their Oral Law?

6) Question for Deuteronomy 18:1-19:21:

How are these instructions about true and false prophets both similar and different
from the commands given in Deuteronomy 13?

7) Question for Deuteronomy 20:1-21:9:

How does one command in this section help shed a lot of light on Joseph and
Maryams situation in the NT?

8) Haftorah Question of the Week: Isaiah 9:1-6, 49:1-6, 51:12-52:12

We mentioned here one textual anomaly which is the final meem in the middle of
the word for increase in Isaiah 9:6. That alteration by the Jewish scribes is the
SECOND most important one in the Tanakh. What is the most important place where
they alter letters and why?


9) Renewed Covenant Commentary: Acts 7:35-60

Acts 7:38

Torah is the Living Words of YHWH received by Moshe. The Spirit of Y'shua
Mashiyach is the Living Word; therefore, the Word/Spirit that is in Mashiyach is the
same Word of YHWH that gave Torah to Moshe and who has come to write Torah
upon our hearts!

Acts 7:41

Rejoicing in the work of their hands. This is the identical rebuke YHWH gave to the
Israelites when they were in the Wilderness. One would expect Stephen to say this to
a bunch of Pharisees, but what often gets overlooked is that Stephen is also the first
8 | P a g e

Nazarene martyr, and later on he is called a Christian. Therefore, it is extremely
important for Christians today to understand that Stephen would be appalled at the
works of their hands that pervades Catholic and many Orthodox and Protestant
churches today. He would most certainly detest marble pagan style statues of Yshua,
Mary and the other disciples.

Acts 7:53

This same rebuke is levied in Mat_15:2-3 and Joh_7:19. Both Yshua and Tzephania
(Stephen) admonish the Pharisees for elevating their Oral Traditions over the Written
Torah of Moshe. Believing their own Oral Traditions to be equal to or of higher
value than the Word of YHWH, anyone who suggests otherwise undermines their
authority and enrages them to commit murder. The message in all cases is clear:
Mess with the Oral Traditions and we may kill you. The irony is that while the
religious authorities accuse Yshua of making himself equal with Elohim (Joh_5:18),
they make themselves out to be equal to Elohim by nullifying the Word of YHWH by
their own man made customs and traditions. (Mat_15:6)