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Parashat Vayechi 5763/2002
EJD
The Bagel: Last will, testament, and a missing ossuary. The readings exhibit some of the clearest associations. There are three last wills and testaments:
- Jacob to Joseph, Joseph's children, and Joseph's brothers
- Joseph to the people of Israel
- David to Solomon
They also include these features:
- Death is near
- Blessing on successors
- Last minute instructions
- Death
- Burial
- Non-use of an ossuary 1
- "Gathering unto their fathers" 2
The insistence of both Jacob and Joseph to be interred in the Land held significance in future events. They didn't want, as representatives of Israel, to be identified with Egyptian belief and practice. The catch phrase in Egypt in those days was "Pharaoh is Egypt!" What happened to the Pharaoh happened to Egypt. The destiny of Egypt was bound up in the burial of the Pharaoh. The pyramids were the tombs of the Pharaohs and the elaborate funerary practice was the salvation of Egypt and its ordinary citizens. Israel had a different testimony.
Israel's future lay in the coming of the Messiah, who will resurrect the righteous dead and restore their inheritances in the Land. Those bones and tombs in the Land served as reminders that Adonay (the L-rd) is the true and living God not the gods of Egypt or any other land.
But bones and tombs were also reminders that the general resurrection of the righteous dead has not yet occurred. If the use of ossuaries reflected burial problems for Jerusalem in the First Century,1 then ossuaries stand as reminders of future resurrection. That is except for the absence of one ossuary. In the reading of the Brit Chadashah the last will and testament of Jesus is explored. The accompanying features are different than those of Jacob, Joseph, and David.
- Death was conquered - Yeshua rose from the dead
- Blessing on successors - the promise of the Holy Spirit
- Last minute instructions - wait for the promise in Jerusalem
- Ascension - Yeshua went up into heaven
- Empty tomb
- No ossuary was needed
- Yeshua went up to His Father - His body, soul and spirit ascended
For the believer in Yeshua, the empty tomb, the missing ossuary, and the living bones 3 are reminders that while the general resurrection is off in the future there is present certainty: "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).
Cream Cheese: Dead bones in a box or living bones in His resurrected body!
1 Ossuaries were used in the Jerusalem area from around 30 to 70 CE, most likely because there was shortage of burial plots. Jewish practice didn't normally allow the use of ossuaries, but the situation in Jerusalem was desperate. It would be anachronistic to say that ossuaries were in use by Israelites in earlier Biblical history.
2 This expression could be a description of the formal burial process in the places and traditions of their ancestors, or it could be an allusion to the gathering of the deceased soul to be with his godly ancestors.
3 "Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Luke 24:39 NIV).
The weekly reading for the week of 16 Tevet, 5763 - Dec 21, 2002 Torah: Vayechi Genesis 47:28 to 50:26; Haftarah: 1 Kings 2:1-12; Brit Chadashah: Luke 24:36-53 NLT
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