N17-2: How The Rebels Viewed Moses As A Don Corleone

“But the very next day, the whole community of the people of Israel complained against Moshe and Aharon: ‘You have killed Adonai’s people!‘“-Numbers 17:6

Wow!

The people are just not getting it.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who only about a year earlier had rescued the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, had just made His Position clear that He sides with Moses and Aaron by slaughtering the rebels and yet the people are still defiant saying to Moses “You have killed Adonai’s people!“.

Quite baffling, isn’t it?

Were the people just plain stupid?

Why such irreverent and insanely dangerous behavior?

What exactly was going on inside their minds?

Okay, well right here we encounter another perfect example of how the Israelites were still very much Egyptian in their thinking.

Here’s the thing.

The prevailing belief throughout the whole Middle East at the time was that priests were much more like sorcerers.

In other words, instead of serving God or gods, they were magicians who would use their power to manipulate the gods for their own selfish reasons and purposes.

This is exactly how the people viewed Moses and Aaron at the time.

Even though Moses and Aaron hadn’t direct set ablaze the 250 men at the gate to the Tabernacle and neither had they caused the earthquake that caused the ground to split open and swallow the rebels up, they believed that Moses and Aaron had manipulated God to do it for them, kind of like how a Mafia Don will send a hit man to do a job for him.

However, in this case, Moses and Aaron were the Mafia dons and God Himself was the one hired as a hit man.

A kind of heavenly hit man so to speak.

Man, this would be so laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

Of course, we all know this isn’t true.

God is His own person (metaphorically speaking here folks, because HASHEM is anything but a man) and will act on His own accord as He pleases.

Even Messiah himself said he could do nothing apart from the Father.

Unfortunately, the stubborn people were going to have to be taught another lesson.

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“Yeshua gave them this answer:
“Very truly I tell you,
the Son can do nothing by himself;
he can do only what he sees his Father doing,
because whatever the Father does
the Son also does.”
-John 5:19