To better understand why God struck down Uzah when he tried to steady the Ark, let’s rewind the tape to Chapter 6 of 1st Samuel.
This was when the Philistines had captured the Ark.
It was in their possession for seven months, but soon, they wanted to get rid of the darn thing.
Why?
Because of all of the death and devastation it was causing.
In their desperation, they went to their priests and soothsayers for advice.
The priests told them, “Don’t be stubborn like Pharaoh in Egypt. You need to send the Ark back, but do it the right way.”
They came up with a plan: build a new cart, hitch it to two milk cows that had never been yoked, and leave their calves behind.
So they placed the Ark on the cart along with a box of gold objects as a guilt offering to God.
They then sent the cart off on its own to see what would happen.
Amazingly, the cows walked straight toward the land of Israel without anyone guiding them!
The cart eventually stopped at a big rock, where the Levites carefully unloaded the Ark and the gold.
The people nearby sent a message to Kiryat-Ye’arim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the Ark of the LORD. Come and take it.”
The men of Kiryat-Ye’arim came and brought the Ark to the house of Avinadav.
They appointed his son Eleazar to take care of it, ensuring it was guarded and respected.
However, soon after, disaster struck.
“…for [Adonai] struck the people of Beit-Shemesh for looking at the ark of Adonai. He killed 50,070 of the people; the people mourned because Adonai had struck them with such a terrible slaughter.”-1 Samuel 6:19
Putting aside the fact that the 50,070 figure is inaccurate (the total number of people killed was most likely around 70), why in the world would God summarily execute a large group of Hebrew villagers in the first place?
He only made the Philistines sick with tumors and temporarily attacked their food supply for rough-handling his Ark…
But He executed 70 Israelites at Beit-Shemesh at the drop of a hat.
What gives?
Well, the first thing you need to know is the Hebrew inhabitants of Beit-Shemesh were not your average Hebrew citizens.
They were Levites.
This goes back to what I was talking about yesterday.
It’s pretty tragic and shocking that the Levites…
The very men who were supposed to know and teach the Law of Moses…
Didn’t have a clue how to handle the Ark properly.
This is something even the Hebrew Sages point out.
These were the men King David had assigned to move the Ark…
Yet they had no idea what the proper Torah protocol was.
Fast forward 70 years to our study today after the Ark was returned from the Philistines.
When it came time to transport it to the City of David.
What did David and his men do?
They imitated the pagan Philistines and placed the Holy Ark on an oxcart.
And to make what they were doing seem extra righteous, they decided it should be a brand-new cart.
Their behavior might’ve looked good on the surface…
But it was NOT what God had commanded.
And that’s your takeaway for today.
This type of violation is something that has been committed by pretty much every religion that claims to be following the God of Israel (called YHVH).
They make up all manner of pious rituals and traditions that have absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT’s WRITTEN IN SCRIPTURE!
Ya feel me?
We’ll dive into this a bit more the next time we speak.
After 25+ years as a Jewish man accepting Yeshua as my Messiah, I can tell you that there is as much confusion and dissension within Messianic Judaism as there is within Christianity.
Most of the “messianic” synagogues or churches I have attended or known are mostly Christians, never more than maybe 40% of the congregants being Jewish,
It all started with Jews accepting Yeshua as the Messiah, then Gentiles joining that Jewish sect, slowly being taught how to live and worship in a Jewish manner.
After the original Jewish apostles and Jews leading this new sect died out or were martyred, leaving Gentiles in charge, things began to mutate from Judaic worship to what is today Christianity, a totally new and unique religion which not only rejected their Jewish roots, but over the millennnia has tortured and killed millions of Jews trying to get them to convert.
The reason for this schism (which I have studied about and believe to be true) is because the neophyte believers had been “under the radar”, so to speak, when they were Roman citizens or slaves, worshiping as the Romans did. Once they began to change, they were afraid they would be associated with the Jews, who at that time were rebelling against Roman rule and targeted by the Romans. There were a total of three separate rebellions, the last one being the Bar Kokhba rebellion around 132-136 AD, which was the final rebellion, with Rome killing thousands of Jews and deporting many of the survivors.
With all this going on around them, the Gentile believers did not want to be considered Jews, so they changed the Shabbat to Sunday, began to reject the Torah and fill that void in worship with their own tenets and ceremonies, which eventually mutated from Jewish into Christian, a true misnomer, since the real “Christ” would never have lived or worshiped that way.
Of course, this backfired on them when, after the final rebellion was over, Rome could now turn its full attention to Christians, because the one thing Rome hated almost as much as rebellion was a new religion being created in places they ruled.
So sad that the gentile inheritors of the original messianic faith turned their backs on the very people they inherited the faith from