Join Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship for a two-part look at the second reading from the Book of Bemidbar, or Numbers, parsha “Naso” (Numbers 4:21 through all of chapter 7.)

The Erev Shabbat reading begins with the ‘head count’ of the families which make up the tribe of Levi, through the process for the ‘sota’, or woman who is SUSPECTED of adultery, through the Nazerite vow, and then the longest, and most redundant, and thus ‘perplexing’ chapter in the Torah:

Since Mark has talked about the ‘cup’ placed in the hand of the woman suspected of adultery often, and the connections, from Moses and the Golden Calf to Gethsemane and finally the Whore of Babylon in Revelation, this time the focus of the Sabbath Day midrash is a bit different.

In John chapter 8, while Yahushua is teaching at the temple, a woman is brought before Him — to ‘test him’ the text says — who was allegedly caught in adultery, “the very act.” Whereupon, Mark demonstrates, that most teachings in ‘sun-day skool’ proceed to miss the entire point of the story! And it certainly was NOT that He “did away with the law,” or even “raised the bar,” on His own Word.

There is a larger pattern in evidence here as well.

The combined two-part reading and Sabbath midrash: