“Adonai said to Moshe, “The time is coming for you to die. Summon Y’hoshua, and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, so that I can commission him.” Moshe and Y’hoshua went and presented themselves in the tent of meeting. Adonai appeared in the tent in a column of cloud; the column of cloud stood above the entrance to the tent.”-Deuteronomy 31:14-15
We have now reached that fateful moment in the Torah where Adonai informs Moses he is going to die soon.
But before that happens, Moses is to take Joshua and bring him to the tent of meeting where the Lord’s presence will meet them in the form of a cloud in front of the tent of meeting above the entrance.
One important point to note here is that instead of Moses going inside the tent to commune with the Lord, in this case both of them are standing OUTSIDE of the tent.
Why do you think that is?
The answer is simple.
Moses was a Levite and had also been appointed as God’s mediator.
Therefore, he possessed the credentials that allowed him to go inside the sanctuary.
Since Joshua was of the tribe of Ephraim, he did not possess those credentials.
Thus, they both stood OUTSIDE of the tent when meeting with the Lord.
Onward.
Notice in verse 16, God tells Moses…
… “You are about to sleep with your ancestors”.
Again, the Lord here is using the typical vocabulary of that era reflecting ancestor worship ideas.
However, do NOT think God is validating ancestor worship here!
He was just communicating to the people in the language of their times and culture.
We actually do this all the time.
There are ton of sayings we use that when we say them we know what we mean but the phrases don’t actually mean what they say.
How about phrases such as “letting the cat out of the bag” or “curiosity killed the cat”?
For example, how in the heck did the phrase “letting the cat out of the bag” come to mean letting a secret come out?
We say these things without thinking much about it and it’s the same thing with the many sayings in the Bible.
We have to understand what a given phrase in Scripture actually meant to folks during those times and NOT what the words technically and literally meant.
Got it?
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