Second Touch (24 page)

grave. If they go . . . try to go home again . . . they’re stoned. Rejected. Despised.” The rabbi dismissed her morbid reverie. “True. True. No one likes us. Everyone fears us. Blames us for our affliction. True. We’re all sure to leave our bones here. But the sun is setting. What’s his name, woman?” The kind rabbi was growing impatient. It had been a long day. The baby needed to be circumcised; the rabbi needed sleep. “How can I name my baby Exile? Or call him My Sorrow? That’s what he is. But how can I name him that? Let Lily chose a name. I ¬can’t. Jekuthiel ¬didn’t come . . . and I have no hope.” The old rabbi narrowed his eyes and addressed Lily. “All these things? What his mother says? True. Everything his mother says. Terrible days, these days. Dark and hopeless days for us who are in Mak’ob. We are like Job. None of us ¬understanding our suffering. But even with all this, the child is a son of Avraham, Yitz’chak, and Ya’acov. And he must have a name. Let’s get on with it. Maybe you should call him Job. I always liked the name Job. Especially after I was stricken.” Lily shook her head and closed her eyes. ¬I’m asking you, Namer of Stars. What shall we call this baby? Rejected. Despised. Exiled. But also, you know, Lord, you know, he’s just a baby. Not his fault, all this. Just the same he’s beloved by you. What should I name your baby, Lord? He’s yours. You created him. Love him. What should we call him? The answer was not a voice, but a thought—a certainty that this baby was important to the Lord, wherever He might be hiding. Lily replied quietly, grieving at Deborah’s hopelessness. “It’s true. I feel it. Yes. In spite of ¬everything, he’s beloved.” “Yes. Yes. True. True. Beloved,” Rabbi Ahava agreed. “Who would not love such a baby? So I’ll circumcise him. He’ll suffer. That’s true. He’s beloved by Adonai. Also true. So what will you call him?” It seemed to Lily that there could be ¬only one name for a child born in such a cruel world. Exiled? Despised? Rejected? Only one name for one so small. One whose people face endless trials. One who, in spite of the obvious fact that the Outside world hates him, ¬comes from a race often surprised by divine deliverance! “Well? ¬I’m waiting.” Rabbi Ahava wiped his brow and waved the knife. “His name must be Isra’el!” Lily kissed the crown of the baby’s head. “Yes. He is Isra’el!” The rabbi pronounced the blessing. The foreskin was sliced away. Blood spurted. Isra’el’s unhappy wail announced to the world that here was one more son of the covenant to deal with! As if to protest this indignity, the baby urinated on the rabbi’s sleeve. “Yes. Well, I’ve had worse done to me in this place.” The old man laughed. Lily felt faint. How strange it seemed that in a society where horrendous

torment was commonplace, she agonized over the injury done to the baby’s unmarred skin. His thin bleats tore her heart. Poor Isra’el. Poor baby! “As if being born ¬isn’t hard enough, eh, little one? From the eighth day on, we Jews suffer!” The rabbi wiped blood from the knife. He blessed the cup of wine and touched a drop to the trembling lips of the infant. “L’Chaim! To life, little one!” Rabbi Ahava spoke so quietly Lily had to strain to hear his benediction. “You’re part of the chosen people now. So we Jews often ask God why he ¬couldn’t choose somebody else to suffer for a while? Get used to it, little one. Isra’el. Well named.” 16 Peniel lay down in the shelter of a large boulder to sleep. How many stars shone in the high desert sky above his head? Innumerable. Displaying all the wealth and extravagance of the El Olam, the Eternal One. A meal for the soul. Peniel feasted on it, reveled in it. To have eyes! Such a wonder. Such a gift. He considered that being allowed to glimpse creation should have been enough to feed him for a lifetime. How could anyone look up and doubt that a God of mighty power had set ¬everything in the universe in place? He considered the children of Israel looking up at this wilderness sky ¬every night for forty years! Their clothes did not wear out. Their shoes remained like new. And the Lord had provided bread for them ¬every day. What else could they have wanted? How could they have grumbled against the Lord? How? And then Peniel’s stomach rumbled. Three days had passed since their last fragment of bread had been eaten. Only three days. The pain of hunger gnawed at his belly. He felt sick. Not even the vision of spiraling galaxies and distant pink clouds of creation embedded with new stars could assuage the ache of starvation. Crickets chirped. The dwarf moaned softly in his sleep. Peniel closed his eyes, hoping to sleep. Against his wishes, ungrateful thoughts tumbled through his brain: ¬I’m hungry, Lord. Hungry. Have you let us come out here in the wilderness to die of starvation? Maybe Gideon is right. Maybe I should let them turn back. Go home before they starve. What am I to do? What? Silence. Silence. Would the Lord not answer? Peniel faced the worst crisis of his life. Three other lives were dependent on him for sustenance. Would the Lord offer no solution? Could the One who splashed His wealth of stars like jewels in the night sky and poured out blessings like rain upon His people not find a morsel of bread to spare this pathetic little band? At last exhaustion overtook the pain in his empty stomach. Peniel slept.

The rush of rain, gentle rain, comforted him. No thunder tonight. No flash of lightning. Just a single, gentle word followed by other words. Words like rain pouring out. Peniel strained to hear them all but could not ¬understand their meaning. Too many words. Too many. All pouring out like raindrops from heaven.

And then someone spoke his name. Peniel! Peniel! It was Mosheh. “Ulu Ush-pi-zin. Welcome, exalted wanderer. I have no bread to offer you. No shelter either. But you are welcome to share my misery.” Ah, the bread of misery. Enough of that to go around, eh? Better if it is shared. Easier to digest if it’s divided. Mind if I sit with you awhile? “As long as you like. You’re good company. Take my mind off my stomach.” Hungry, Peniel? “Starving. Three days without bread. I ¬don’t care so much for myself. But the others. They’re not as strong as I am. Gideon the lame man. Amos the dwarf. They’re growing weaker by the day. Thinking about turning back. But Jekuthiel the leper? He’ll die soon if I ¬don’t get bread for him. ¬I’m scared.” I know what you mean. The same sort of thing happened to me when I led a million or so people out into the desert of Sinai. Yes. We ran out of provisions after a few weeks, and that’s when the trouble started. “What did you do?” Me? What could I do? I was as hungry as they were. We had ¬only just left a camp where there were twelve springs and seventy trees. “I know this story.29 The camp was Elim. The seventy trees symbolize the seventy elders of Israel. The twelve springs of water symbolize the twelve tribes.” Well spoken, Peniel. But man cannot live by symbols alone. We needed food. Real food. And there just ¬wasn’t any. “Like us.” Like ¬everyone who lives in this world. Staying alive has some basic requirements. I was worried that perhaps Adonai had forgotten that we were flesh and blood and needed to eat. I told Him as much. Asked Him about it. Explained to Him that these people He had sent me to were looking back toward the green valleys of Egypt and considering stoning me and turning around. “Sure. I remember this story.30 Every morning, six days a week, Adonai sent down bread from heaven. Manna. Like rain. Looked like coriander seeds. Tasted like wafers made from honey. You told the people to collect the day’s portion in a jar called an omer. On the sixth day ¬every week there was enough to last through the Shabbat. So no one had to gather food or work on Shabbat.” You know about manna. “A good story for a beggar to know backwards and forwards. It cheers a person up to think that bread could rain down from heaven like that. Every day for forty years. Enough food to feed ¬everyone.” Should I go now? Since you already know the story so well? “No! Please, no! Forgive me. Don’t go. Stay awhile and talk to me. You always have a way of pointing out new little details in what I thought I knew. Explaining what the story ¬really means.” It is written that man does not live on bread alone but on ¬every word that ¬comes from the mouth of El Olam, the Eternal One.31

“Every word?” Every. Yes. Every word written in Torah and Tanakh. Those words which seem small in Torah and those words which seem large. Every word points to the One: the Alef and the Tav, the First and the Last. The Beginning and the End. The descending of Messiah from heaven to redeem the world. “You must admit, tonight I have reason to dream about manna, the bread which came down from heaven. I’d like a bit of it, if there’s any left.” Manna. Yes. Now there’s a story. A wonder. A miracle it was. Unending. Shall I begin there, even though you think you know it all? “Please. Since there’s no fresh-baked bread tonight, feed me with words spoken from heaven. I promise I’ll listen quietly.” From far away came the harmony of two voices, a man and a woman singing together.32 “I will sing to Yahweh, for He is highly exalted! The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. Yahweh is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. In Your unfailing love You will lead The people You have redeemed. In Your strength You will guide them To Your holy dwelling.” Mosheh said, And so it was that after all the children of Israel had passed through the midst of the sea on dry ground that I and my sister Miriam stood on the far shore of freedom and sang this song of victory to Adonai. This very song is repeated ¬every Shabbat in the Temple when the drink offering of the festive sacrifice is poured out. By its words Israel is reminded that until the end of time the people of Yahweh will be surrounded by the hostile powers who rule this world. Until the end there will rage a battle between the Kingdom of Yahweh and the powers of darkness, and yet, Yahweh will Himself intervene to destroy His enemies and save His people! We departed the sea as the bodies of our enemies washed into the shore behind us. We were a nation, created by Yahweh for Himself! It remained ¬only for us to be consecrated to Him on the Mountain of Sinai, where He first revealed His name to me. We left the seashore singing! Rejoicing! Believing! It should have been enough proof for us of Yahweh’s love. But it was not. The wilderness ahead was called Shur, or “the Wall,” because of the bare limestone hills that rose before us like a wall. In the shadow of these rocky peaks and through the dry ravines we traveled the desolate road toward Sinai. From the watering places of Marah to Elim we rested, then traveled on until at last we reached the Wilderness of Sin. Hot. Dreary. A seemingly endless tract of sand and chalk hills. It was here that the provisions we had brought from Egypt began to fail. Near us were the high purple mountains of the Sinai range. To the west was the sea we had traversed. On the other side of the water, through the veiling mist, we could just see the green and fertile land of Egypt, which

we had left behind forever. It was the fifteenth day of the second month since deliverance that the people looked back to Egypt and forward to the sandy wasteland.33 Then the first murmurings of discontent broke out against me and my brother Aaron. “If ¬only we had died of old age in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted! But you have brought us out into this desert to starve all of us to death!” Peniel interrupted. “They sound like me . . . or maybe me like them. Like I wanted to go back to the home of my parents. Unpleasant as it was there, it was familiar.” Mosheh nodded and continued. In my tent I called out to Yahweh, “Hear them? See them?” And Yahweh spoke to me. “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.” So Aaron and I went out to the people and told them, “In the evening you will know that it was indeed Yahweh who brought you out of Egypt! And in the morning you will see the glory of Adonai, because He has heard you grumble against Him. You will know it was Yahweh when He gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning!” And it came to pass that evening as we were gathered in the camp that the sky was darkened by a flight of quails. They dropped down into our midst, and the people ate and were satisfied. And in the morning, when we rose, there, like frost on the ground, was our heavenly bread. When the people came out of their tents, they called out, “Manna?” Written in Hebrew letters Mem-Noon. Pronounced: “Mawn!” Amazing stuff it was. The food of angels. “What is it?” the people asked. So this is the meaning of manna in Hebrew. Peniel asked, “What?” Yes. What? The name of the bread. What? The word can also mean “Who?” As in “Who did this?” But that’s the part of the story ¬everyone knows. Or at least they think they know. Manna means “What?” and also “Who?” But there’s so much more to it. “Tell me then. Tell me what I ¬don’t know.” Yes. Well. You remember the people were instructed to gather the manna in jars. One omer for each person in the tent. Now an omer was a measurement, about the size of half a pitcher of milk. Not much, but sufficient to feed one person for an entire day. While there are other meanings of the word, there is no other place in all of Torah and Tanakh where this ancient measurement of the omer is used. For centuries ¬ever after the size of an omer measurement had to be explained to Torah schoolboys. The very obscurity of this word is a hint that it must be important. That it must have some significance not ¬only to the story but also to Messiah and prophecy. Can you think what it might be?

Peniel sighed and considered. “It was the measure of bread from heaven. That seems important, ¬doesn’t it?” True. True. Later Adonai commanded that we make a golden vessel and gather up two days’ ration of manna and place this before Adonai in the Tab¬ernacle. Two omers of heavenly bread given by Adonai as a memorial of His provision for His people. But there’s more. “Speak. ¬I’m listening. I’d rather dream this dream than sleep.” All right, then. Listen closely. This Omer is spelled Ayeen-Mem-Resh. Adonai said He would send bread like rain from heaven. And so He did. From heaven He sent down What? and Who? to nourish us day after day for forty years. Now here is the secret of the Omer and the bread sent down from heaven: Omer has a second meaning. Spelled with a slight difference, Alef-Mem-Resh is also pronounced Omer. It means “Promise! Speech! Answer! Word!” Listen! See the meaning in your heart, Peniel! Every day Adonai was saying to the people of Israel as they gathered an Omer of manna, “This is My promise to you! I AM speaking here! My Word is the true bread from heaven! My Word will feed your souls as you cross the wilderness of life! Until the end of time there is a battle raging against you, but I, Yahweh, will win the battle for your souls! I, Myself will lead you and provide for you, if you will ¬only trust Me! My Word sent from heaven is your salvation!” Maybe they learned; maybe they ¬didn’t. But this is the lesson: This small truth speaks to us in a big way of Messiah. He is the WHO, the Messiah! He is also the WHAT, the Bread of Life sent from heaven! He is also the WORD, the OMER, the full measure of truth that feeds men’s souls. There is always enough to meet our needs and to satisfy the hunger of our hearts. It is written in Deuteronomy: “Let My teaching fall like rain and My words”—Omer—“descend like dew.”34 It is written in the Psalms: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech”—Omer. There is no speech, no language, no Omer, where their voice is not heard.35 Forty-four times in Torah and Tanakh, the word Omer is used to convey Yahweh’s speech, His promises to His people. Omer! His teachings. His revelation! His answers! His blessings poured out, rained down on mankind from heaven! Bread sent from heaven to give life to all who needed it. Manna. The people asked, WHAT IS THIS? WHO IS THIS? These questions were asked ¬every day by those who gathered Yahweh’s blessings and ate the bread rained down from heaven upon them. The answer to our questions is found within the Omer, like gathering a container of miraculous bread. More than just a measurement of man’s physical need, the Omer—the Word, the Answer—is the daily ration of Yahweh’s voice, revealing eternal answers to our souls. The Omer of Yahweh’s revelation never runs dry. There is always truth to nourish us! Who is our Messiah? That is the question. Yahweh’s speech, Yahweh’s words—