The Threshing Floor That Started Solomon's Temple

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

Artist Balage Balogh has provided us a beautiful illustration of the threshing floor of Araunah on what we later know to be Mount Moriah.  Araunah was gracious in his offer to allow David to take any of his property needed — the oxen, the threshing sledge, and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. He said, “All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.”

Below;  wind used to separate the chaff from the grain of wheat.

                                                 

David’s reply is one of those memorable statements of Scripture. But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. (2 Samuel 24:24 ESV).

 As the temple in Jerusalem was built over a threshing floor, Victor Hurowitz observes, “This site was chosen because it was outside the city and was elevated.

 In ancient Israel threshing floors were located at places where the wind would blow freely to facilitate winnowing.” (Isaiah10:2).  The threshing floors of the Bible were outdoor stone floors, usually circular in fashion, used by farmers to process the grain of their crops. For the larger community, like watermills of the recent past, they could be gathering places bustling with commercial and communal activity. 

     Men threshing wheat by hand                               

It was already a cleared large area, a good place to begin the building of Solomon's Temple.  David (1010 to  910 BCE.  His son, Solomon by Bathsheba, then ruled from 961 to 920 BCE.

 As mentioned in 2 Chronicles 3:1, Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. This temple would play a pivotal role in the social and economic life of the Jewish people. (song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHtmmbAftU

Jebusites were a people in Canaan already settled in Eretz Yisrael prior to the Israelite conquest.  They lived in the hill region around Jerusalem which their people had called Jebus.  Josua defeated a Jebusite-led coalition, but Jerusalem was occupied only in the reign of David (II Sam.5:6-7).  The last Jebusite king was apparently Araunah (II Sam.24:15).  The Jebusites remained in the city under David and became tributary under Solomon.  They seem to have been assimilated into the population.

Spike morphology and threshing characteristics of (A) Bread wheat, complete spike (upper), threshed spike (middle) and rachis (highlighted red colour square) (B) Spelt complete spike (upper), threshed spike (middle) and Rachis (highlighted red colour square) and (C) Spelt hullness 1772–14308 (PI 191617) around 99% hullness (upper), Rojo (PI 191100) around 40% hullness (middle), Tomarense (PI 608792) free threshing (lower)                                       

            Today's view of Mt. Moriah of Jerusalem 

Going back further, the reason the Israelites needed this spot was for another reason, too.  "Way back in the time of Moses, God told the people of Israel that he had already chosen a place for his dwelling place in the Promised Land, long before they’d even got there:

“You are to seek only the place Adonai your God chooses from all your tribes to put His Name to dwell—there you will come.” (Deuteronomy 12:5)  Jerusalem includes Mt. Moriah, a place chosen for them. 

The location is not specified at that point, but God had decided where it would be way before the Israelites got to Canaan. With hindsight, we can see God had put his prophetic mark on his spot back in Genesis 22: it was the place where God told Abraham he was to sacrifice Isaac – Mount Moriah.  "Please take your son, your only one, whom you love--Isaac---and go to the land of Moriah;  bring him up there as an offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell you.  ...On the 3rd day, Abraham raised his eyes and perceived the place from afar...They arrived at the place of which G-d had spoken to him;  Abraham built the altar there..."

We're thankful to read that Abraham was stopped from sacrificing Isaac and told that was was the end of human sacrifice.  Abraham showed that he was at the point of giving up his most cherished, Isaac, for G-d's direction, and that was enough.  The fear of events such as earthquakes, floods, etc, was enough to cause all people of the earth into human sacrifice in those days for their own hoped for protection.  It's hard to accept that it was once an accepted act.  

Mount Moriah was a hill in Jerusalem  where Abraham prepared to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to G-d.  David had bought this land so he could build an altar here.  Later, it became the site for the Temple that Solomon was to build.  The original hill was enlarged in the course of time by embanking it.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2050/threshing-floors-of-the-bible/

https://www.oneforisrael.org/bible-based-teaching-from-israel/the-temple-was-built-on-a-threshing-floor/

Israel Now Has Red Heifers : Needed Before the Temple

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Israel has tried and tried to find a red heifer, but usually some little white patch has appeared on it's body as it aged, making it unusable. A heifer is a young female cow who has not yet had a calf.  

The Red Heifer was important in ancient days because it played an important part in making a sacrifice, a congregational sacrifice.  The ashes of a red heifer had to be mixed with water, and it was used to remove any impurity created by contact with the dead. Cohens were not allowed to touch the dead and not allowed to do so even today.  

The ashes had to be from an all red heifer, quite a rare find today and most likely then as well,  had to be unblemished and never yoked (used in the fields).  The burning of its body had to take place outside the camp at Jerusalem, on the Mt of Olives.  Even those that handled all this also required purification (Num 19).  

Update: A recent delivery of five red heifers from Texas to Israel is causing quite a stir. Talk is growing that their arrival is prophetic, and a prerequisite to the return of the Messiah.  Some rabbis believe the ashes of a red heifer are necessary for purifying priests to serve in a future Temple. The heifers were discovered and brought to Israel with the help of the Boneh Israel – “Building Israel” – organization and its team leader, Byron Stinson. 

From the time of Moses (1391BCE-1271BCE)  to the time of the 2nd Temple-the return of Jews from Babylon that were allowed to leave and rebuild their Temple  (538 BCE), only 9 red heifers had ever been used in such a sacrifice. Many people have tried to raise a perfect red heifer, but all have failed until now.     

All this information is found in the Mishna, a legal book containing the core of the Oral Law of Moses, compiled by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi on the basis of previous collections and arranged logically, divided into 6 groups (sedarim).  It deals with religious laws pertaining to  agriculture, seasons, Sabbath and festivals, women, marriage and divorce, damages of civil and criminal legislation,, holy things like ritual slaughter, sacrifices, purities. It's an encyclopedia of all the 613 laws we follow.  

The very 1st red heifer was processed by Moses.  The 2nd red heifer was done by the prophet Ezra during 1st Temple days.  The 2nd Temple lasted until till 70 CE (538 + 70=608 years.  During those 608 years, only 7 more heifers were used for the ashes it produced, enough to provide for the nation of Israel and then just Judah to purify people and things for all those years.

The high priest at that period had to prepare those 7 heifers.  They were 1. Shimon the Just and 2. Yochanan.  Each had 2 heifers to prepare.  3. El'yhoeini ben Hakof;  4. Chanameil HaMitzri;  and 5. Yishmael ben Pi'avi processed one heifer each.  

Since the beginning with Moses till 70 CE, purifying ashes have been produced by the hands of these high priests, and 9 heifers have been involved.  

Actually, the act has not been repeated since then since the Jewish people were almost completely destroyed by the Romans who took survivors of the burning of Jerusalem and the Temple as slaves, while others managed to escape and find refuge.  We have so much history of this event written by Josephus.  https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-history-and-genealogy-of-flavius.html  When reading Josephus, you have to realize he was their prisoner, and he was writing for a Roman audience, so he would be very careful to flatter them, not to insult them.                                         

We have Israel once again.  When King Solomon died in 920 BCE, his son, Jeroboam was the heir, but he continued the heavy taxation of his father for the Temple, and the people saw Solomon's death as a time for change to get rid of the taxation, and chose to have a Civil War and new king.  They ceded from the Union of the 12 tribes, leaving Solomon's son's state of Judah which had already taken in most of Simeon and Benjamin. The Ten Tribes ceded, only to become the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel which we are now finding again as some have already made their way back home.  The Ethiopians, not of the 10 but created according to the history of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and her leaving pregnant, have just had their last group return to Israel, being the newest immigrants.                               

The provisional government was created. David Ben-Gurion, leader of Mapai and head of the Jewish Agency, became Israel's first Prime Minister on May 14, 1948.

          David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel on Time by 16 August 1948.  

May 14, 1948 was the birth of the new nation of Israel.  The Temple is not yet rebuilt, but they have the ability to make all the ashes they will need now for a long time to come.  Since before 1980, the Temple Institute, of which Stanley Goldfoot was a member, had been preparing for the day the Temple would again be built. Stanley had been the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group. 

Ezekiel of the 6th century BCE had had  vision of the Temple.  He was also a priest of the family of Zadok and may have served in the Temple before its destruction in 586 BCE.  Ezekiel was among those exiled before that date to Tel Abib on the river Kebar in Babylonia where he prophecied over a period of at least 22 years.   

In ancient days, the 2nd Temple had been built over the 1st Temple that was built by Solomon from 538 to 515 BCE during the period of Simon the Just, the high priest. and  Judah the Maccabee, Simon the Hasmonean, and Herod.  The Herodian Wall (Western Wall, Wailing Wall, Kotel) that surrounded the Temple hill measured 913 x 1,515 x 1,586 x 1,050 feet.  The area enclosed had to be leveled and filled between the Tyropoeion and Kidron valleys.  One entered by the many gates and approached by 4 bridges.  

The Temple itself was divided into the hall, the shrine and the holy of holies which was empty and entered only by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur.  The holy of holies is sacred, the reason why many rabbis discourage their followers from visiting the Temple Mount.  They are afraid they will be walking over this area.  After its destruction, the Romans were still there, and built themselves a Roman Temple over the remains.  After that when Mohammad had died in 632 CE, a mosque, the Mosque of Omar, was built over the Roman Temple.    

We have plenty of people who are descendants of the Levite priests, as found by DNA bearing the Y haplogroup of J1.  Israel does not have a high priest.  The Chief Rabbis are elected for 10-year terms. The present Sephardi Chief Rabbi is Yitzhak Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is David Lau, both of whom began their terms in 2013. The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over many aspects of Jewish life in Israel. The 10 years are almost up, as 2023 is not far off.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://templeinstitute.org/red-heifer-the-tenth-red-heifer/

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2022/september/texas-red-heifers-arrival-stirs-prophetic-excitement

 

Human Sacrifice Among Canaanites

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

                                                      Moses

If I were the leading Palestinians, I'd quit saying I was a descendant of the Canaanites.  First of all, none of them exist anymore.  They were done for when Joshua and the Israelites entered Canaan and had a battle over the land which started in 1271 BCE  That was 3,285 years ago.  The Israelites won and the few Canaanites that were  left alive were soon taken into the population through marriage.  Any Canaanite genes that were passed on are in the Jews of today in very small quantity if indeed they've lasted that long.

G-d explained his plan in that it wasn't because the Israelites were so pure and perfect that they were to have the land but that the Canaanites were so evil.  G-d had also promised the Patriarchs of the Israelites that he would lead them there.  The Canaanite religion was immoral and inhumane.  They practiced every abomination imaginable.
                                                                             

They sacrificed people and that included their sons and the killing of their aged parents.  Akiba (40-137 AC) cited a particularly loathsome instance of such a murder, which he himself had witnessed.  He was Rabbi Akiba or Akiva ben Joseph.  Many of the comments in the Babylonian Talmud are written by him.  He taught Judaism in his travels and because he did that was tortured by the Romans.  They flayed his skin with iron combs.

Human sacrifice was the practice among the primeval Greeks and Romans, Celts, Slavs, and Scandinavians.  It was used among the Germans down to late Roman times.  This was also widespread among the ancient Semites, especially in times of national danger or disaster.  Excavations in Israel  at Gezer, Taanach, and Megiddo have revealed regular cemeteries around the heathen altars in which skeletons of scores of babies have been found, showing traces of slaughter and partial consumption by sacrificial fire.  "According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice in Ancient Rome was abolished by a senatorial decree in 97 BCE, although by this time the practice had already become so rare that the decree was mostly a symbolic act."

Israel's fight against this hideous aberration of the religious sense began with the story of the sacrifice of Isaac and was continued throughout the centuries.   Many cultures show traces of prehistoric human sacrifice in their mythologies and religious texts, but ceased the practice before the onset of historical records. Some see the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) as an example of anetiological myth explaining the abolition of human sacrifice.

 It is an irony of history that the one People, Jews,  who for a thousand years fought this horror of eating blood have suffered from the libellous accusation of ritual murder and the use of human blood for religious purposes, such as with the Damascus Affair in 1840 , an accusation of Jews using blood in matzos and such.

"Deut 18:10 explicitly states "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire". Jer 7:31 states that sacrificing a child by fire, even to Him, had never been commanded nor entered God's mind."

Even in the 20th Century, this horrible and Satanic lie was officially levelled against Israel in the Beilis trial at Kieff in 1913; and then it was broadcast by Nazi leaders in their campaign of ruin against the Jewish population of Germany.  In regard to the Nazi resurrection of the fable of ritual murder, it is well to recall that in 1912 no less than 215 non-Jewish leaders in German public life, learning, literature, theology, science, and the arts, issued a protest against this cruel and utterly baseless libel on Judaism.  They wrote:  "this unscrupulous fiction, spread among the people, has from the Middle Ages until recent times led to terrible consequences.  It has incited the ignorant masses to outrage and massacre, and has driven his-guided crowds to pollute themselves with the innocent blood of their Jewish fellow-men.  And yet not a shadow of proof has ever been adduced to justify this crazy belief."

Deuteronomy XII, 23-28 warns against using or eating blood.  This law is mentioned as early as Genesis IX,4 and is repeated in Lev. XVII, 11.13; XIX, 26.  The Jewish method of slaughter and the salting of meat have as one of their main purposes the draining away of the blood so as man could not ingest any of it.

Another practice in primitive man was to eat a limb torn from a living animal, and that became a law Jews couldn't  do.  Blood was looked up as the life.  The law said that "though shall not eat the life with the flesh."  Even the blood that remains in an animal after the flow of blood has ceased is prohibited.  Another commentator, Ibn Ezra, suggested that the use of blood would have a demoralizing effect upon the moral and physical nature, and pass on a hereditary taint to future generations.  Blood was to poured out upon the earth as water.  "Thou shalt not eat it.

It was very scary for the Israelites who had been walking for 40 years to come to their goal and be told they had to fight for the land in 1271 BCE.  Deuteronomy's advice in VII 17 was: "If thou  shalt say in thy heart;  "These nations are more than I;  how can I dispossess them?  thou shalt not be afraid of them;  thou shalt well remember what the Lord thy G-d  did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt;  the great trials which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, whereby the Lord thy G-d brought thee out;  so shall the Lord thy G-d do unto all the peoples of whom thou art afraid."  The victory belonged to G-d, not to Israel.

While working in Montana with children who had been abused, I found out that some of them had belonged to some sort of Devil's Cult and had experienced or seen infant sacrifice.  This is happening today.

Resource: Pentateuch and Haftorahs II, edited by Dr. J.H. Hertz, chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Volume II Numbers, Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy XII, 31
Cecil Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew, London, 1935
A Book of Jewish Thoughts, Oxford edition, p. 181.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiva_ben_Joseph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112059/jewish/The-Wisdom-of-Rabbi-Akiba.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair

Truce Broken in Syria During Eid al Adha Holiday and What This Holiday Is All About

Nadene Goldfoot
Right now Muslims are celebrating Eid al Adha.  It is also called Feast of the Sacrifice.   It is said to be Islam's most important holiday that started Thursday evening and lasts 4 days.  Assad had agreed to keep the truce for the 4 days, but he broke it by bombing a building in the Damascus suburb and killing 8 people.  He didn't keep his word.

What is this holiday of Eid al-Adha about, anyway?  It's about Abraham sacrificing his son, but in the Muslim version, the son is Ishmael, not Isaac.  Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, was born  in 570 CE and died in 632.  He had been exposed to hearing stories told by Jews in Saudi Arabia and adopted many of ours.  In his version, Abraham was about to sacrifice Ishmael, but in the Jewish  version, which is about 2,000 years older than Mohammad's, it was Isaac.

Jews have Abraham born in the beginning of  the 2nd millennium BCE.  This is a big difference as in the Jewish version, Ishmael was the first child of Hagar the Egyptian, the handmaiden of his wife, Sarah.  Abraham circumcises Ishmael  at age 13.   Ishmael was so mean and unruly to his baby brother, Isaac that Sarah had asked Abraham to send them both away, which in our version, he did. Ishmael would have been older than 13.  We understood they went off to live in Paran.  He joined Isaac in burying Abraham.  His daughter married Esau.   It's presumed that Ishmael was the father of the Arabs.

  The Muslim version has Abraham  bringing Hagar and baby Ishmael to Saudi Arabia from Canaan.  It was then, as the story goes, a dry, rocky and uninhabited place.  At the time Isaac hadn't been born yet and has him married to Hagar.  He was going back to Canaan alone and Hagar asked him if she was left to die.  He answers saying it was G-d telling him to do this, and he leaves her and the boy a lot of food and water, but they are hungry and thirsty after 2 days.  She prays and water gushes up by Ishmael's feet.  Other accounts have the angel Gabriel striking the earth causing the spring to flow.  This Zamzam Well lets them trade water with nomads for food and supplies.

Years later Abraham is told to return from Canaan to build a place for worship next to this well.  He and Ishmael build the Kaaba, which became a gathering place.  Ishmael became a prophet and "gave the nomads of the desert his message of submission to G-d.  Mecca became a thriving desert city and center for trade thanks to the Zamzam Well".

Abraham was commanded by G-d to sacrifice his only son. (This is part of both Islam and Judaism traditions.).  In the Islamic version, they have Satan tempting Abraham and his family by trying to dissuade them from carrying out G-d's commandment and Abraham "Ibrahim" driving Satan away by throwing pebbles at him.   To remember rejecting Satan, stones are thrown at symbolic pillars signifying Satan during the Hajj rites.  At age 13 when Abraham was 99 years old, G-d tested their faith in public.  Abraham had a dream to sacrifice his son.  He asked Ishmael for permission and he gave it.  He cut Ishmael's throat while blindfolded so he didn't have to see him die, and found he was unharmed.  Instead, he found a dead ram which had been slaughtered.  Abraham had passed the test by his willingness to follow G-d's command.  As a reward for this sacrifice, God granted Abraham the good news of the birth of his 2nd son, Isaac.  Muslims commemorate this ultimate act of sacrifice every year during Eid al-Adha.

We Jews have a different take on the story.  Isaac, circumcised at 8 days, was saved by divine intervention with G-d telling Abraham that he didn't have to sacrifice Isaac. He was just being tested in obeying G-d.  Evidently in those days sacrificing people had been going on.  This put an end to Abraham's followers accepting human sacrifice.  Our story continues.

Isaac grew up to marry Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel and they had twin sons, Jacob and Esau.  Jacob received Isaac's death blessing instead of Esau due to his bad eyesight and Jacob tricking him.  Esau was the older twin by a few minutes but was wild.  The twins became enemies because of this and Esau sought to kill Jacob.  Jacob had to get out of town and went to Haran.  20 years later Esau received him affectionately.  Jacob's name was changed to Israel and Esau was connected with Edom.  Esau was connected with villainy and violence, and a coarse materialist.  This is why Jacob had to pretend to be Esau to receive his father's important inherited blessing.  

In the United States Muslims will wear traditional clothing, pray, make pilgrimage to the Kabba in Saudi Arabia, have special foods, and give gifts.  The USA has a special stamp commemorating this holiday "aimed to highlight the business, educational and social contributions that Muslims made in the United States".

Jews do not have a holiday in commemorating this story, though it is an important part of our religious history and we are very familiar with it.  Abraham is for us, the Father of Judaism as he broke away from Ur and went to Canaan to keep his family believing in one G-d.  He started monotheism.  He's the one who broke the idols in his father's idol shop.

The people of Gaza slaughter animals for the holiday themselves in duplicating Abraham's sacrificing an animal instead of his son.  The story on Haaretz tells about a cow that tried to get away.

Resource:  http://news.yahoo.com/syria-bombards-major-cities-further-undermining-truce-activists-081219942.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/eid-al-adha
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/one-killed-150-injured-during-gaza-eid-al-adha-celebrations-1.472588