Opening the Door with Nehemia Gordon (Open Door Series – Part 5)

Opening the Door with Nehemia Gordon (Open Door Series - Part 5)

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Nehemia: I'm gonna talk to you today about the Priestly Blessing, or the Priestly Benediction. It's a section that appears in Numbers 6. It's the blessing that God teaches to Aaron and his descendants to place upon the children of Israel.

And here, we have actually a photograph of the oldest biblical passage that's been preserved ever discovered. It's written on a silver scroll that was discovered in a cave in Jerusalem. It's actually on display at the Israel Museum and it contains the Priestly Blessing from Numbers 6. So, this is the oldest surviving fragment of a biblical text.

And of course, you know, Moses wrote the Torah around 1,500 BC, give or take a couple of hundred years, and that was copied, and copies of that were made, and copies of that were made. But we don't have the one that Moses wrote in his own hand. We have the copies, of the copies, of the copies. And this is a fragment of the oldest copy written on a silver scroll. And this is, I think, a really profound and important passage, Numbers chapter 6. Here, it says in verses 22-27, in the Hebrew, it says, “And Yehovah spoke to Moses saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons saying, Thus shall you bless the children of Israel, say to them,’” and we have a three-line blessing, one line in each verse, verse 23 on.

It says, “May Yehovah bless you and keep you. May Yehovah shine His face towards you and be gracious towards you. May Yehovah lift His face towards you and give you peace.” It's a three-line blessing, and in each line to the blessing it has the four-letter name of the Creator of the universe, of our Heavenly Father, Yehovah. Some people say “Yahweh,” I pronounce it “Yehovah,” we've explained that. But three times it has this name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, once in each line in the blessing. And then he concludes in verse 27, He says, “And they shall place My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” That's what it literally says in Hebrew. Placing the name upon Israel, speaking the name over Israel, invoking the name over Israel. That is what the Priests were commanded to do in order to bless the people.

I think this is a powerful thing. I grew up hearing this. Every feast day we would have the Kohanim, the direct descendants of Aaron through their father's line, would come to the front of the synagogue, and they would spread out their hands and cover themselves in talit, and they will proclaim this blessing. But they didn't proclaim it in the name. They proclaimed it with a replacement of the name, with the title, “Adonay,” which is “Lord,” and that's a Jewish tradition I talked about yesterday. It goes back about 1,800 years, maybe a little longer.

But here in scripture it was intended to be spoken with the name. And what's really exciting about this is the Rabbis who forbid speaking the name today, who say, “Whenever you see that name, read it as ‘Lord,’ as ‘Adonay,’” they actually say in their writings that when it comes to this blessing, originally, it was to be spoken with the name. There, they say there's no dispute, that in the Temple it was spoken with the name. And they say, “When the Temple will be rebuilt, it must only be spoken with the name.”

And here's a quote from the Babylonian Talmud. They're quoting the verse that says, “Thus shall you bless the children of Israel...” and they say it means with the explicit name. When Jews say, "The explicit name,” they mean the name “Yehovah,” Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Say, “Yud.”

Crowd: Yud.