Bible Fiber

I never intended for Bible Fiber to become a multiyear series. Yet each time I close out a book, I feel newly enthusiastic about sharing a new part of the Bible. Throughout much of Bible Fiber's life, we studied the least-read books of the Bible, like the Minor Prophets and Ezekiel. That changed with the Torah series, and it remains different with 1 and 2 Samuel. These represent some of the most famous, loved, and bewildering stories in the whole Bible. When we studied the prophets, we pieced together their biographies. Most of them remained stingy with personal details. As God’s mouthpieces, they delivered only the oracles God gave them and provided little narrative. The books of Samuel do the opposite. These books feature larger-than-life characters and hold back no biographical details, good or bad.

Next week we officially start the study. Before I do, I want to share a little about my purpose and process. 

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

Deuteronomy 34 brings us to the heartbreaking conclusion of Moses’s life. In the final verses of the book, the biblical narrator pens an epitaph that crowns Moses above all others. No other prophet has ever arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled in all the signs and wonders God sent him to perform, and unrivaled in the mighty power and terrifying deeds he displayed before all Israel.

Within the Old Testament, no one was greater than Moses. Abraham was the father of the nation, David was the beloved king, and Elijah was the fiery prophet, but Moses stood in a category of his own. He was the architect of the nation, the deliverer from Egypt, the recipient of the law, and the intimate friend of God.
Yet what makes Moses’s greatness so compelling is that it came with humility. The book of Numbers tells us that Moses was humbler than any person on the face of the earth. When God first called him at the burning bush, Moses did not leap at the chance for power; he pleaded his inadequacy. He begged God to send someone else. Alongside his humility, Moses always remained human. The Bible never mythologizes him into a flawless superhero. We see him in his human exhaustion, breaking down in the wilderness and telling God that the burden of this people is too heavy for him to carry alone.

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

Deuteronomy 32 breaks in style and format with the rest of the covenant book. The chapter is a seventy-line poem that tradition holds Moses sang to the people on his last day. The song begins as a reminder to the Israelites of this generation to pass their story on to the next generation. They must tell their children and grandchildren about the miracles they witnessed in their deliverance from Egypt and their wanderings in the desert. 

After Moses recites the song, God instructs him to go up on the mountain so he can look out on all the land (Deut 32:48–52; Num 27:12–14). Then the Bible states, in a few words, that Moses was gathered to his people. He was 120 (Deut 31:2; Deut 34:5–7). This moment is the most desperate in the entire Torah. It makes the reader who has followed Moses from the burning bush to the rebellion of Korah scream out and beg God to reconsider. 

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

When you hear a shofar, you are hearing an instrument unlike any other. It is not made of hammered metal, crafted by human hands and refined through metallurgy, like the silver trumpets described in Numbers 10. Instead, the shofar is organic, taken directly from the natural world—almost always from the curved horn of a kosher ram. The shofar is intentionally unadorned. When air is forced through it, it does not produce a conventional melody; it produces an elemental cry. It’s a sound that is supposed to bypass human intellect and speak directly to the soul. 

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

This week we are reading a double Torah portion. The reading portions are called Nitzavim and Vayelech, and together they cover Deuteronomy 29:10–31:30. They capture Moses’s final charge to the assembled Israelites as his life nears its end. For the last time as their leader, Moses exhorts them to commit themselves to an enduring covenant with God. Moses transfers leadership to Joshua and arranges for the written law to be preserved alongside the Ark of the Covenant.

Although much of God’s covenant with his people was revolutionary, the literary framework in which Moses presented it was familiar to the Israelites. In fact, the covenant was arranged in a format that any nation in the ancient Near East would have recognized. This understanding, that the covenant is following a common format, is something relatively new to biblical historians. Only in the last century have we learned a great deal about bilateral covenant-making in the ancient Near East.

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

This week’s Torah portion covers Deuteronomy 26:1 to 29:8. It takes its name, Ki Tavo, from its opening Hebrew words, which mean “When you come” or “When you enter.” The commandments that follow are for when Israel crosses the Jordan River, takes possession of the land, and settles into its new national life. Before Moses hands the people off to their new leader, Joshua, he reminds them of the laws and teachings they received at Sinai. The new generation did not witness, or was too young to remember, God descending upon Sinai with the rumble of thunder and flash of lightning. They did not smell the thick smoke or feel the ground shaking beneath them. Of course, they heard the stories from their parents and believed the witness of the tribal leaders. However, they needed their own Sinai moment, led by their appointed leader with the full participation of the rising generation. They needed their own founding story.

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

This week’s Torah portion covers Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19. It is named Ki Tetze, which translates to “When you go out.” Of the Torah’s 613 commandments, this portion covers 74 of them. This is more commandments than any other weekly reading. 

The long list of laws jumps from wartime rules to family inheritance to animal rights to marriage laws. A significant percentage of the laws address the upstart nation’s public health policies, agricultural standards, and financial guidelines. The sheer volume of laws demonstrates how faith must permeate every aspect of life. Admittedly, plenty of them leave modern readers scratching their heads. Like, what does mixing wool and linen have to do with faithfulness to God. However, some laws clearly call the Israelite nation to a higher ethical order than any other ancient people. Many laws focus on defending people who lacked societal power. The Israelites had to care for the marginalized.

In Deuteronomy 24, God commands:

Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. (24:14−15).

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

This week’s Torah portion covers Deuteronomy 16:18 to 21:9. The portion takes its name from its opening command: “You shall appoint judges (shoftim) and officers within all your gates” (16:18). In this portion of Moses’s final address, he lays out the structural foundations of a just society. As he establishes the leadership framework that will sustain the covenant people over the centuries, the mantra is “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue” (16:20).

The portion outlines the shared and separate responsibilities of Israel’s future leaders: judges, priests, prophets, and kings. These are the four authority structures intended to govern the covenant nation.

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

Deuteronomy 12 looks to a future day when the Tabernacle no longer needs to be portable. Until now, God has moved his cloud of presence from camp to camp, following the Israelites in their forty-year journey. God promises that they are entering a place of rest from their wanderings and from surrounding enemies. When they are living in relative safety, God desires his presence to also have a place of rest.

Deuteronomy 12 looks to a future day when the Tabernacle no longer needs to be portable. Until now, God has moved his cloud of presence from camp to camp, following the Israelites in their forty-year journey. God promises that they are entering a place of rest from their wanderings and from surrounding enemies. When they are living in relative safety, God desires his presence to also have a place of rest.

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.

This week’s Torah portion is called Eikev, and it covers Deuteronomy 7:12 to 11:25. The name Eikev translates to “because” or “as a consequence of.” Much of its message is about the cause-and-effect relationship between Israel’s obedience and God’s blessings and her disobedience and God’s curses. The portion starts: “If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors” (7:12). Moses lists the blessings to include everything from abundance of crops to protection from disease. 

Moses recaps the last forty years, recalling all of Israel’s highs and lows. He is speaking to a new generation—people who have never known anything other than desert wanderings. However, he recounts the events as if they too were eyewitnesses. He rebukes their shared lack of faith. He reminds them of their darkest moments. These incidents include the crafting and worshipping of the golden calf (9:16) and the constant complaining about the lack of food and water (9:22). Yet, alongside his rebuke of what he regularly calls “stiff-necked people,” Moses reminds them that they were chosen out of all the nations on the earth. All the trials and hardships over the last forty years had a purpose. God was humbling them and testing them so he would know what was in their hearts (8:2). Moses promises them that if they remember to keep God’s commandments after they settle the land, all will be well with them. 

Support the show

Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www.TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve production quality. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible to our non-profit organization. Bible Fiber and The Red Alert Report are available via YouTube and all major podcast platforms. The Jerusalem Connection also engages in additional educational and advocacy programs. Check our "Projects" tab for all the endeavors we invite YOU to be part of.