Was Yeshua a Pharisee? Part 3 “See, for that YHWH has given you the sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” So what does it mean not to “go out” of one’s “place”? In context, the Israelites were leaving their camps to collect the Manna from the surrounding fields. So in context to leave one’s place would be to leave the encampment and enter the fields where the Manna could be collected. When the Israelites entered the land, they were no longer in encampments, so naturally this prohibition would apply to leaving a person’s city. At this point we have to understand that cities in ancient Israel had three zones: 1) the city itself, 2) the surrounding MIGRASH or “pasture land” (KJV: “suburbs”) outside the city walls, and 3) finally the agricultural fields. This division into three distinct zones was a fact of ancient Israelite life which is mentioned in Nu 35:1-5. The purpose of the second zone, themigrash, is explained in Joshua 14:4 as the area where the animals live outside the city. Apparently both the Pharisees and the Essenes understood the prohibition of leaving one’s place as only applying to going into the fields (zone #3) but not entering themigrash (zone #2). Therefore, walking out of the city to the end of themigrash-zone was the maximum distance a person could walk outside their city.This was the Sabbath day’s journey! How did both the Pharisees and the Essenes come to the conclusion that it was permissible to walk out into themigrash-zone? Common sense! In ancient Israel, indoor plumbing had not yet been invented and people had to walk out into themigrash-zone to relieve themselves. The Creator would not forbid people from walking to the outhouse! Nu 35:4 defines the migrash belonging to the Levites as 1000 cubits. It can hardly be a coincidence that the Essene’s Covenant of Damascus 10:21 defines the Sabbath day’s journey limit as 1000 cubits outside the city. The next verse, Nu 35:5, defines themigrash belonging to the Israelites as 2000 cubits and not surprisingly the Pharisees defined the Sabbath day’s journey limit as 2000 cubits outside one’s city. As far as we know, all Jews in this period believed in the concept of a Sabbath day’s journey, which was a maximum limit a person could walk outside his city without entering into the forbidden field-zone where agricultural work took place. So the fact that Yeshua and Acts mention this Sabbath day’s journey just prove they read Exodus 16 and Numbers 35 the same way as other Jews, not that they were adherents of the Oral Law. Here it is important to emphasize one of the major misconceptions put forward by Oral Law-believing Messianics. The argument they make is that because Ex 16 does not mention themigrashor the length of the Sabbath day’s limit, there must have been an Oral Law to define these things. This is a misunderstanding of the Pharisee idea of Oral Law, which the Pharisees claimed was revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai. On the other hand, what the ancient Israelites did when it came to Ex 16 was apply this Torah commandment to contemporary life. Ex 16 had spoken about the desert and the Manna and they asked how this would apply to towns and agricultural fields. The Torah requires us to consider how its commandments apply to new situations and circumstances.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 14:03:41 +0000
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