Toldot – Torah with Joseph

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

Shalom. My name is Joseph Shulam and we have been doing the reading of the Torah portion that every Jewish synagogue in the world does each week, together with Brad TV and in this lesson we’ll be talking about the portion that is called in Hebrew “Toldot.”

The word Toldot, like a lot of words in Hebrew has more than one meaning and that is because Hebrew is actually a very limited language compared to Korean, English, and other languages. It has only about 70,000 words in modern Hebrew, In Biblical Hebrew, it’s actually only 22,000 words.

And the word Toldot is translated as genealogy. It’s also translated as history, and it appears several times in the Book of Genesis, more than any other book in the Bible. Both Genesis and Chronicles have the word toldot appearing very, very many times, and it’s an interesting word. The reading in the synagogues this week is from Genesis 25:19 to Genesis 28:9. And the reading from the Prophets is from Malachi, 1:1 to 2:7, and the reading from the New Testament is from Romans 9:6-13. But we’re going to deal mainly with the Torah reading. The portion of Toldot.

New Testament Starts With Toldot

Now the word Toldot is a word that the New Testament starts with. All of you should probably already know how to quote Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” Hallelujah. You all know that. But very few pastors actually know how to quote a more important verse for every Christian in the world, and that is Matthew 1:1, which starts in Hebrew, “Ele Toldot Yeshua ha-Mashiach ben Avraham ben David.” This is the genealogy or the history of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.

No, I misquoted it on purpose. It doesn’t say that. It says “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.” And the phrase, “this is the book of genealogy,” only appears twice in the Bible. Matthew 1:1 and Genesis 5:1. Now that’s a very, very interesting start of the first verse of the first book of what we call the “New Testament.”

It’s an amazing start. A genius start that you should know because the phrase “This is the book of genealogy” appears only one other time in the whole Bible and that is Genesis 5:1 and it says “This is the genealogy of Adam.” Whoa! This is the- Adam didn’t have a genealogy, folks. He was created from the clay of the Earth that God molded and formed into a human being and breathed into it the life from the Spirit of God. So why did Matthew start his gospel with this phrase, taken from “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam,” Genesis 5:1?. Why did he start with that?

Isaac and Ishmael Bury Abraham

Because if anybody would criticize the virgin birth, the first words in the Gospel starts with a bang, nailing the case for the divinity and the sonship of Yeshua, of Jesus, to the Father, the creator of heaven and Earth. Hallelujah. So now, this is the genealogy of Isaac. In the last few verses in chapter 25, last week’s portion, which was called “The Life of Sarah.” “Chayei Sarah.” And Sarah dies. Abraham negotiates for her grave and he dies, and another amazing verse in last week’s portion is “Isaac and Ishmael come together.” Isaac, the Father of Israel, the Father of Jacob and the Twelve Tribes of the Nation of Israel.

Ishmael also has twelve children, twelve sons, and they are arch enemies until this very day. Yep. But they come together to bury their father in Hebron in the cave which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as an everlasting tomb for Abraham and his family.

Wow, Isaac and Ishmael come together to mourn and to bury their father. That’s a very interesting and touching verse, and I think it’s a very important political verse for us today because the war between the children of Isaac and Jacob and the children of Ishmael is still on. That’s the war that we’ve been fighting now for hundreds of years. But let’s go on with our portion of the week, Toldot.

Isaac Marries Late

Abraham’s son Isaac is 40 years old when he marries Rebecca. 40 years old. Unusual for the time of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At that time, men married when they were 18, 19, 20. It was considered a late one if they were 27 or 28 like the age at which Israeli boys marry today, even that would have been considered late.

But no, Isaac marries Rebecca when he’s 40 years old and she’s around 18 years old. That’s why when she comes in the previous portion riding a camel to get Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, and the first time she sees Isaac, the Hebrew text says she fell off the camel. She said, “This old man, I’m gonna marry this old man?” The Hebrew says “vatipol,” and she fell off the camel. In the Old King James version, it says “She alighted off the camel.”

If you ever go visit Hong Kong and you ride the subway in Hong Kong, the announcement in English is, “The train will alight” in any particular station. Tsim Sha Tsui or other station in Hong Kong. Alight. It’s a very fancy Old English word, to land. So Rebecca alighted because she saw Isaac was 40 years old when she married him. But let’s continue with our text.

Isaac Prays for a Child

Isaac prays for Rebecca to conceive and have a child. Why? Verse 21 tells us, she was barren. Now folks, is it an accident that she was barren? Sarah was barren, Rebecca was barren, Rachel was barren. Moses’ miraculous birth and survival. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?

That all the Mothers of the Nation of Israel are barren and their issue has to come from God as a miraculous intervention to be able to give them a child? I’ll tell you what the Holy Spirit is doing. Why are the Mothers of the Nation of Israel barren? Because it’s a preparation of the mind of the reader of God’s Word for the angel to come to Mary and she becomes pregnant of the Holy Spirit and if anybody says “how could that be?”

If God could open the womb of Sarah at the age of 90 and then Rebecca and then Rachel, and David’s case which is also a little bit more complicated, but David also says “in sin did my mother conceive me.” He wasn’t talking about every human being like some of the Christian denominations teach. No. He was talking about his mother, not about my mother, and maybe not about your mother. I was born naturally, and most of you have been born naturally, too.

Isaac Asks God to Intervene to Make Rebecca Pregnant

We didn’t have to have a miracle, divine intervention of God and the Holy Spirit, to bring us to life. The course of nature did it. Hallelujah. Praise God for nature. And for God’s intervention, also. So Isaac has to beg God, plead with God, please give me a child from Rebecca. The problem was probably not with Rebecca but with him because he was already an older man.

But anyway, God answers his prayer and not in a simple way. Rebecca gets pregnant with two twins. Twins! I know a case like that in Israel. One of the kids that grew up in our congregation. Also he was married a few years, no children, then bang, she gets pregnant. Bang, they have twins. Yeah. After prayer as well.

So this is the case. Rebecca has twins. In verse 23 in our portion, Genesis 25:23 says, “And the Lord said to her,” before birth, before there was such thing as ultrasound, before they could take a picture of the womb and see what’s with the baby and see that there are twins. Before all that, the Lord tells Rebecca, “Two nations are in your womb. Two peoples shall be separated from your body. One shall be strong and the other,” no, I made a mistake reading. “One people shall be stronger than the other and the older shall serve the younger.”

That’s a very interesting text. It’s a very interesting text that is quoted, actually, in The New Testament. But here is a young woman that gets pregnant and God revels himself to her. What does it make Rebecca? A prophetess. In the Jewish religion, Rebecca, like Sarah, were prophets. And why are they prophets? Because God reveals to them things.

God Shows Rebecca Esau’s Thoughts

Now the next portion of the week that we’re going to teach next week, we’re going to see that Rebecca is a prophet because she gets a revelation of what Esau, her older child, first to come out of her womb, contemplates in his heart. He hasn’t told anybody. He thought about it in his heart and it was revealed to Rebecca that he wants to kill his brother Jacob after Isaac, her old husband, dies. And that’s why she tells Jacob, “Pack up, leave. Go to my brother in Assyria.”

That’s a very interesting thing, but here we see that God reveals himself to Rebecca and says, “You have two nations.” Not just two children, two nations in your womb. “And the older shall serve the younger.” That’s also a quotation in The New Testament. How do you say in Hebrew, this phrase? “The older shall serve the younger.” “Rav yaavod tzair.” The one that is greater, the older, will serve the younger.

The Older Will Serve the Younger

Now, Yeshua makes use of it in John 13 when he wants to wash the feet of the disciples, and he washes the feet of the disciples doing a midrash, a homiletic, use of this phrase that we see in our portion. “Rav yaavod tzair.” “Your Rabbi,” the greater one among you, will serve the younger.

Tzair is also another word especially in New Testament Greek, for disciple. Student. Not the same word as disciple, but the same meaning as a disciple. “Neaniskos” is a parallel to the word “mathitis,” which is disciple. So interesting. Interesting. Right in the beginning of our portion.

But because our time is limited in these TV broadcasts on Brad TV, I want to jump to chapter 26 of our reading. I’ll come back to Chapter 25. 26:5 is very interesting. God is transferring to Isaac all the promises that he made to Abraham, his father. And here is the verse that I want to concentrate on. Chapter 26 in our portion of the reading. Verse five.

Abraham Both Believed and Obeyed God

“Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my Torah,” in the plural, “That’s why I am going to give you all the promises that I made to your father, Abraham.” They will be transferred to, inherited by you. What do we learn in this text from our portion? We learn from this text from our portion that Abraham not only believed God and God counted it for him as righteousness, like in Genesis 15 that we already talked about, but Abraham believed God and obeyed God.

He obeyed God’s commandments and he obeyed God’s charges. Precepts, if you want to translate them. And His commandments and His statutes and His Torah. Plural Torah. His teaching, His instruction. His law is the way it’s translated into Greek. Very interesting verse. Connects us back to Abraham. But I wanna back up now to the relationship between Jacob and Esau.

Jacob Was a Homeboy – Esau, a Hunter

It says that Jacob was a man who dwells in his tent. A homeboy. And Esau, an outdoorsman, a hunter, runs around the hills of Judea, around Bedlam, around Hebron, hunting. Contending with the people. A roughneck in Yiddish. Yeah. A kind of rough outdoorsman. Jacob is sitting in his tent and he’s cooking for himself some kind of red soup. And the King James translation followed the Greek and says lentil stew.

And Esau comes off the field and he’s hungry and he smells the good garlicky, onion-y, wonderful lentil soup and says to his brother, “I’m hungry. Feed me.” Jacob says, “Listen, I’ll be glad to feed you, but you have to pay.” And it says that Esau, verse 34 of our portion says that Esau... 25:34, I mean, says that Esau despised his birthright. Said, “why do I need a birthright? Don’t need a birthright. I am a man of the outdoors. I’m a tough guy. I take care of myself. I don’t need the inheritance of my old father.” Despised his birthright, and Jacob says, “You know what? I’ll feed you for your birthright.

You don’t like your birthright? You don’t want it, you despise it? I’ll take it.” And he takes it. Esau gives it gladly, for a bowl of soup, sells his birthright and that becomes a problem for the next several chapters in the Book of Genesis that we are going to continue to study, dear brothers and sisters in Korea, in the next weeks.

God bless you all. Read the Bible for yourself. Follow the Torah portions and read the whole Torah portions every week and the text from the Prophets and the New Testament. I guarantee it will enrich your faith and your life. In Yeshua’s name, God bless you all. Amen.