Ha'azinu – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joe Shulam, and we are doing and have been doing the Torah portions that are read in every synagogue on the Sabbath days every week.

We are approaching now the end of the Jewish calendar year, and this next Shabbat, we will be reading from a portion that is called Ha’azinu, which means give ear, listen.

In the book of Revelation, we are told that when the saints gather around the throne of the Lamb, they will be singing, and they will be singing two songs; the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb.

The song of Moses, we have two candidates. We have Exodus chapter 15, which is the song that Moses sang with the children of Israel, right after they crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. It says that Moses sang this song to the Lord, but there is a second song of Moses at the end of the book of the Deuteronomy, and that is chapter 32.

The end of chapter 31 verse 30 says this, “Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were ended.” The words were ended, not the people. Now, this song is a very, very special genre. It’s a genre that doesn’t exist very much in the Bible.

There are very few examples of it. First of all, it is a prophetic genre that is in verse. All the prophetic text from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all the way to Malachi, are written in verse.

When we read them in English and in other languages, we don’t see the verse, we don’t get the verse. But when you look at the Hebrew text of the Psalms, all of these songs, you see that they’re written in two columns. The one column makes a statement, the other column repeats the statement in different words.

In other words, it’s like a commentary. The message that is in the first column, verse one, will be also in the second column verse one. And this genre exists in Exodus 15, and it exists in Deuteronomy 32, and it exists in the song of Deborah, in Judges chapter five, and in the book of Psalms many times, and specifically in Deuteronomy chapter 32, in the portion that is called “words.” And in the book of words, (the book of which is Deuteronomy) and in chapter 32 it says, give ear or listen, and that’s what the name of this chapter is in Jewish tradition, Ha’azinu, of this portion, Ha’azinu.

Let me read for you about 21 verses, because I will be concentrating on these 21 verses:

I want to stop here, at the end of verse 21.

I said earlier that this is a song, it’s poetry, but it’s not just regular poetry. God is taking Israel, His children, to court, and He is inviting witnesses and judges like any other normal court case. The judges are the heavens of the Earth. They’re the judges, and the witnesses are the rain, and the agriculture. And the world, the nations, the Gentiles, are the witnesses.

So God is the plaintiff. He’s the one that is complaining, taking His children Israel to trial. And what is the accusation? The accusation is I’m your Father. I begot you. You’re My children. I have been a perfect Father, a perfect God. I am the rock that made you.

That within itself is a very big theme, the rock; the rock in the wilderness from which they drank water according to Paul in first Corinthians 10. The rock on which Moses stood and saw the revelation of God in chapter 34 of Exodus. The rock that is the triangular stone that holds the building together in Psalms 118, and all that is found not only in the New Testament in the letter of Peter, but also in Koran, and also in Rabbinical literature. The rock of our salvation, the rock that begot us, Israel, is God and the Messiah; that He sent to redeem us.

God has been a perfect Father. He’s always been just, and God is truth, and there is no injustice in Him. He’s righteous and upright. They, Israel, have corrupted themselves. They are not behaving as His children. They’re blemished. They’re a perverse and crooked generation.

God doesn’t deserve, in verse six, how His children have treated Him. They act foolishly and unwise with their Father, and the rhetorical question appears in verse six; is He not your Father who brought you and begot you, who gave you birth? Has He not made you and established you?

If you don’t remember, let me remind you.

In verse seven, Moses is speaking to the people,

That’s talking about Genesis chapter 11 when God created the nations. Before that there were no nations. Everybody spoke one language. God created the nations in Genesis chapter 11, the fall of the Tower of Babel. And then He spread out the sons of Adam and made nations. He set boundaries to the people. Each nation received their territory according to the number of the children of Israel, which means what? 70 nations, that’s the biblical ethnology, 70 nations by the 70 children of Jacob that went down to Egypt.

The Lord apportioned His people. Jacob is the place of His inheritance. God’s inheritance was given to Jacob. The divine, the spiritual, the godly, the legal, the loving inheritance of God was given to Israel.

Yes, other nations had laws. We know the Hammurabi, law of Hammurabi. We know the Enuma Elish that is even older than law of Hammurabi. We know several other more ancient and more new ancient codes of law.

But the law of God, that was given to Moses in Mount Sinai and to the children of Israel, was given to Jacob, was given to Israel.

I mean, if you read the first verses of Jeremiah 31, you’ll immediately see how this theme goes all the way back to the eighth century BC prophets, and all the way back to the earliest of the Psalms, and all the way back, and forward all the way to the book of Revelation, if you wish, same theme.

“He found them in the desert, in the wasteland, in the howling wilderness, and He enriched him, instructed him,” gave him the Torah. Torah means instruction. It doesn’t mean law, it means instruct. “Instructed him.” He kept him as the apple of His eyes.

That’s another theme that repeats itself in the eighth century prophets:

Ah, dear brothers and sisters, remember. Remember the words of Jesus before the crucifixion. The words of Yeshua at the end of Matthew chapter 23, as a bird. Yeshua says how much did I want to gather you under my wings as a bird, but you would not. It’s taken from here, from this Torah portion, and it’s not the only place that similarly this example, this parable, in a few words, is taken here. “As an eagle stir up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings.”

So the Lord alone led him. And there was no foreign God with him.” He’s the only God. Read Isaiah chapter 45, you find out there’s only one God, and that God revealed Himself in His spirit and in His Son.

Yes, He made him ride in the heights of the Earth that he might eat the produce of the field, the fat of the field, and draw honey from the rock, and oil from the flint rock. God gave Israel the best of the best; curd from the cattle, milk from the flock with fat of the lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats with the choicest wheat. And you drank wine, the blood of the grapes.

But in verse 15, Jeshurun (is another name for Israel, based on the root of honest, straight, direct,) grew fat and kicked. “You grow fat, you grow thick, you are obese,” says Moses to the people of Israel.

They’re standing at the edge of the Jordan River before they crossed the river to the land of promise, to the land of Canaan.

“Then you forsook God who made him.” Israel forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the rock of his salvation. They provoked God to jealousy with foreign gods. With abominations, they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons.

So people sacrificed to idols. They weren’t sacrificing to the statue of the idol. They were sacrificing the spirit, to the demonic spirit behind the idol, and we learned this from here.

It’s a very important teaching. “New gods, new arrivals that your Father did not fear,” didn’t worship, in other words, they didn’t know. “Of the rock who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the God who fathered you.”

So sad. So sad, Moses, after 40 years leading these people in the wilderness, feeding them manna from heaven, water from the rock, after all that time, at the very last of his speech, he says,

Here comes the crucial text:

Now, these last verses in the text that I read is the basis of all of Paul’s theology, and of all of Paul’s motivation to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles; also based on the promises that God gave to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and to all the prophets, all the way to Zachariah and Malachi.

Yes, this text of Ha’azinu, of “hear this, oh people, pay attention to what I have to say to you.” This is a court case. I’m taking you to court with witnesses and judges. Remember.

To end this teaching, I want to go to the book of Romans, chapter 11, and read just two verses for ending this teaching for Brad TV on the Torah portion of Ha’azinu, of hear this, pay attention to this.

Romans 11, I’m going to read verse 25 and 26.

The deliverer came out of Zion, and He’ll turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them; that I take away their sins.

Now, how is this going to happen? It’s also in chapter 11 of the book of Romans. I’m going to read now at the end of my teaching, from chapter 11, verse 11 to 14.

Why has salvation come to the Gentiles according to Paul? So that they will provoke Israel to jealousy, based on this text from verse 20 and 21 and from Deuteronomy, chapter 32 verse 12:

Ah, Paul is basing his mission to the Gentiles. He’s called by Yeshua to be an apostle to the Gentiles in order to have the Gentiles provoke the Jews to jealousy, and return them to the place where God reveals His face to them.

Please, read as homework, Ezekiel chapter 39 from verse 21 to the end of the chapter. You’ll get a revelation.

God bless all of you, and keep studying the Word of God. Pray for Israel, and for the world to know the Messiah, in the name of Yeshua, amen.