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We read in Torah reading שמיני Shemini (“eighth,” Leviticus 9–11) about the tragic end of Nadab and Abihu ben Aharon, we wonder why God judged them so swiftly and harshly, since we have no facts in evidence that they were acting with evil intent, yet God instantly burned them up, but this is not the only time that God sent down a swift immediate judgement on someone.
Later in Numbers 16, which we will read about later in Parashat Korach, God also burned up the 250 Levite rebels who offered the “strange” incense offerings following the conspiracy of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. They were co-conspirators in a rebellion against Aharon and Moses so it makes sense they suffered swift and brutal punishment.
In 2Kings 1–2, King Ahaziah sends messengers to Elijah to arrest him after he prophesied the death of the king. The King had sent messengers to the priests of Ba’al in a foreign land to find out whether he would survive his illness or die from it. Elijah told him that he didn’t have to go to a false god to find the answer, when there were representatives of HaShem in Israel who could answer his questions.
Elijah told the king that his current illness would kill him and as a consequence of speaking truth to power, King Ahaziah called for him to be arrested and there were several waves of authorities, about 100 altogether, who were sent to arrest Elijah, commanding him to come down and submit to their authority as they did not acknowledge God’s authority so God roasted them. The last group of marshalls who King Ahaziah sent approached Elijah with humility and they were not killed.
The deaths of those men was proof that God was not just one god among equals but He is the only God, the Creator, who is the God of Israel.
In 1Kings 18, Elijah calls down fire from heaven to burn his sacrifice on Mt. Carmel in the presence of 450 priests and prophets of Ba’al, and the offering was consumed even though the animal, the wood and the altar were all doused in water. This confrontation showed the people whose God was really in charge.
In 2Samuel 6, David calls for the Ark of the Covenant to be transported to Jerusalem, but rather than transporting it on foot, as the Torah commands, they try to transport it on a cart pulled by oxen, a man named Uzzah reached out to save it from topping over, and he was burned up as a consequence.
This story really bothers people because Uzzah’s actions were a spontaneous response to a particular moment. There was absolutely no forethought or malice in his actions or anyone else who was involved for that matter.
In Luke 9, Yeshua’s disciples James and John, who were nicknamed the “Sons of Thunder” because of this exchange, wanted Yeshua to call down fire on the Samaritans, but Messiah refused. The Samaritans hated the Jews and the Jews hated the Samaritans. Once the Samaritans realized that Yeshua and his entourage were on their way to Jerusalem, they didn’t want to extend any hospitality to them.
The reason that Messiah did not call down fire on them, despite the impassioned requests from James and John ben Zebedee, is because He did not come there judge the Samaritans. The only people who God ever burned up with fire for daring to approach Him uninvited were Israelites. He did not judge gentiles in this manner.
Leaders and authorities are held to a higher standard
Through God’s interactions with Nadab, Abihu, King Ahaziah’s sherriff’s, the false prophets of Ba’al, Uzzah and even the Samaritans, we can learn more about how God perceives us. There is a pattern in all of these scenarios, which is that the closer you are to God or want to be to God, the more responsibly God places on you. You have to be more righteous, and more careful in your conduct to come close to Him.
This is why the offerings presented by the leaders were larger and more expensive than those presented by regular people. The higher one’s position of authority, the higher the standard of one’s conduct must be, contrary to our modern politics, where it seems that the lower one’s conduct is, the higher one’s level of authority. That is not how Torah operates.
Here are the six lessons to take from the events in which God uses fire in judgement:
- Closeness to God has a price. The closer you are to God, the higher the price you pay when you fail morally. He can not abide with unrighteousness.
- Don’t come to God’s presence uninvited. God chooses who can approach Him, not the other way around. God does not tolerate self-appointed priests.
- Understand who God actually is.
- Acknowledge that God has no peers or equals. He does not tolerate rivals.
- Do not violate God’s simple instructions. We show our love of God in our actions, not despite them.
- God does not judge the ignorant (Gentiles) as strictly as he judges those who should know better (Israelites).
Nadab and Abihu disregarded God’s instructions about who was to approach Him with incense, whether they were drunk or not. The same is true for Korah and the other Levites who joined his rebellion. All of them were fully aware that God named Aaron as the High Priest, not them. The bottom line of all these stories is that God has made Himself known and when He gives us an instruction, we are to follow His instructions exactly, obeying them without deviation.
Understanding the depths of God’s mercy
The reason that Messiah did not call down fire on the Samaritans is that they were not close to God and could not be expected to know or follow God’s instructions in the same way Jews were expected to know and follow God’s instruction. Yeshua said “we are not destroying anyone today.” He brushed off the Samaritan’s hostility to Him and their lack of hospitality. He didn’t judge them harshly for the fact they wanted nothing to do with Him.
This isn’t to say that God doesn’t love us. He does love us and He wants us to love others. He wants us to be honorable people and to love Him and to love others. Yet, there are still rules of conduct He expects His children to follow. He is merciful but when these people violated His space and profaned what is holy, even by accident, or carelessness, the natural consequence was a swift death and the fact that the fire he sent down on Nadab, Abihu and the others we mention here was swift, was an act of mercy. He didn’t seek to torment them.
If we want mercy from God, we have to extend it to others. If we want forgiveness from God, we have to extend it to others. God will then show us mercy and forgiveness.
God desires obedience more than sacrifice
I want to point you to another example of God’s quick judgement against those who presume to pretend a closeness to God as well as one who was close to God who disobeyed a simple yet direct instruction from God. This story is recorded in 1Kings 13.
At this point, Solomon has passed away and his son Rehoboam has ascended to the throne and shortly after that, the 10 northern tribes break away and form an independent nation, called Israel, while the southern tribes are renamed Judah. Jeroboam is anointed as the first king of this new nation of Israel. Jeroboam, once he has authority as king of Israel, decides to change the religious character of Israel away from the temple in Jerusalem by building his own altars, establishing his own priesthood and even changing the religious feasts to his own liking. He didn’t want the people spending their pilgrimage money in Jerusalem so he created these altars in his jurisdiction to keep that money in his country.
Jeroboam instituted a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which is in Judah, and he went up to the altar; thus he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made. And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.
Now behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. Now when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, “Seize him.” But his hand which he stretched out against him dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.
1Kings 12:32; 13:1, 4 NASB
In this part of the story, we see Jeroboam was acting in direct rebellion against God.
But in the second part of the story, we learn more about this unnamed “man of God” who God sent from Judah to confront Jeroboam. God instructed this prophet not to eat or drink any nourishment in the land of Israel, but he was approached by a false prophet, who lied to him and convinced him to have a meal against his better judgement. Yet, we see that God did not judge the liar, but the prophet. God struck the prophet dead, not the liar.
This might not seem fair that God punished the prophet and not the liar, but again, we go back to the original point is that the closer one is to God, the greater the responsibility. The “man of God” received a direct instruction straight from God not to eat or drink anything while in the land of Israel, yet he took the words of a mere man and followed them rather than God’s instructions.
The same thing was true for Aharon, Nadad, Abihu, Elieazer and Itamar, all of them had received detailed instructions of their duties about what they should and should not do. Yet Nadad and Abihu decided to wing it and by getting too close, they got burned. When God gives you an instruction, you follow it.
The same with Korah and the 250 Levites with their incense. What was their instruction? Their instruction was that Aharon was the priest and that their duties were to take care of the construction of the tabernacle, not perform the rituals inside it.
We know who God is because of His words, the instructions He has given us to follow. He expects them to be followed. He has given us counsel and instructions on how we are to conduct ourselves in the world, in our families, in our communities. He also tells us how we are to interact with Him.
There is a long standing Jewish phrase, which is “The word of God is manifest in him.” So it means a person manifests the Word of God. His words become flesh. The Apostle John says this in the first verse of his gospel about Yeshua as “the Word became flesh.” That’s a common Jewish phrase, it’s been around since before Jesus was born. It just means that in a period of time, at any event in your life, you manifest the actions and instructions of God in this event or the story. So a righteous individual does the right thing, even if it’s not in their best interest. That is when the Word of God becomes flesh in that person.
This means when when God gives an instruction in His word, you are to obey it, follow it, even though your heart wants to do something else or you feel inspired to go about it another way. There’s nothing wrong with inspiration but if the inspiration contradicts a clear instruction from God, then the instructions of God must take precedence over the instruction, because that is how we know who God is, through His words.
God chose to bring the Gentiles near Him through Messiah
Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually. About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, “Cornelius!” And fixing his gaze on him and being much alarmed, he said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God. “Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; he is staying with a tanner named Simon, whose house is by the sea.” When the angel who was speaking to him had left, he summoned two of his servants and a devout soldier of those who were his personal attendants, and after he had explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.
Acts 10:1–8 NASB
Cornelius, who was a Roman centurion, wanted to know God more. God saw fit to reveal Himself to Cornelius in a different way, because of Cornelius’ love of the Jewish people, his righteousness, and his almsgiving. Cornelius knew bits and pieces of the Torah, but he did not grow up in the Jewish culture with the oracles of God as a part of his history and culture as an Italian, but he longed to understand more, so God called Peter to meet with Cornelius and teach him about the Messiah. Peter’s entire interaction with Cornelius helps him comes to the realization that anyone who wants to follow God will receive Him. God knows that all of us only know and grasp little bits about Him, because there’s no way we can fully see the whole picture of who God is because He is too big for us.
Cornelius doesn’t know much about God but he wants to. He has a desire, a drive within to know God. Peter comes to the realization that God is choosing to reveal Himself not only to Jews, but to Gentiles, too. God is pleased to invite the Gentiles to come to Him but they are still Gentiles.
The Torah instructed the Jews not to keep company with Gentiles, specifically not to engage in pagan worship with them.
Peter followed God’s instruction and willingly taught Cornelius about the Messiah. Cornelius responded to it and accepted it. If Cornelius, after having received the Holy Spirit, had later rebuked the revelation, and returned to his old ways, God would have judged him more harshly than he would judged Cornelius if he had never learned about the Messiah and simply remained as a pagan outsider. The more knowledge we have, the more accountable we are to walk in it.
Summary: Tammy