As part of my desire and (sometimes) practice to observe Shabbat, I’ve been reading the Torah Portions along with some trustworthy commentaries throughout the week and meditating on what I’ve learned on Shabbat. Parashah (Hebrew for “portion”) is a portion of the Torah and Haftarah is a portion of the Writings and Prophets sections of the Hebrew Bible that are read each Shabbat in synagogues all over the world.**
Simchat Torah is time in which the final portion of Deuteronomy is read and the scroll is rolled back to the beginning to start the readings over again. (I’ve written about my Simchat Torah experience here.)
This week’s Parashah is called BO (Hebrew for “go” or “come”): Exodus 10:1 – 13:16. It includes the Passover section of Scripture. When I came to the part where the Israelites were instructed to wipe the blood of the lamb on the lintel and doorposts of their house, I tried to picture that in my mind. (I *am* a writer, after all.) One of the other things I’ve been trying to do is to learn Hebrew. (Very ambitious, I know.) Anyway, it came to me that the shape made by the blood on the doorposts was in the shape of the Hebrew letter “chet.” I thought that was pretty cool.
One of the commentaries I read mentioned that very thing. After being all proud of myself for noticing it, I continued reading. In the days before Hebrew had vowel markings, the letter “chet” spelled the word life. So, the blood (which is the life of the animal) is put on the doorposts of the house to indicate to the death angel that the people inside have been obedient in trusting God’s words and following his commands and are therefore the recipients of life.
Likewise, our obedience to trust God’s words and follow His command to repent means that we have painted the doorposts of our hearts with the blood of our Passover Lamb which indicates that we are the recipients of life!
My heart overflows with gratitude to the One who made life my eternity.
Thoughts? Let’s reason together in the comments.
**You can read more about the Torah Portions at First Fruits of Zion’s website here. Please note that while I get a lot of good information from FFOZ, I’m not endorsing them or saying I agree with everything they teach. (I don’t know everything they teach, so I’m not going to give them a wholesale endorsement.)