This Shall Be a Token unto Thee

I have suggested above that the Hebrew 'ot, meaning "sign" or "token" appears in number of contexts connected with priesthood, in other words, that the priests themselves were or bore the tokens.  We saw this in the creation account, in the covenant of the rainbow, in the story of Cain, and a propos of the Virgin and her sons.

The same idea appears in the story of the burning bush.  God tells Moses that the token of his calling will be priestly service on what Exodus calls (in the Hebrew) the "mountain of the Gods."

The Herald of the Gods

This is a fragment from a Ugaritic epic called Kirta (as translated in Stories from Ancient Canaan):

El has heard your speech--it is like El's:
You are wise, like the Bull, the Kind One.
Call to Ilisha, the herald god,
Ilisha, the herald of Baal's house,
and his wives, the herald goddesses...

At Ugarit, Ilisha was the "herald of Baal's house."  In the worship of the visionary men, Elijah preceded the Lord as Dawn and called those who waited for him in darkness to make straight his paths.  Elijah (Elias) was Yahweh's herald.

Post-Script on Cain: the Angel of the Lord

The Targums are old Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible.  Like the LXX, they were written for ancient communities of Israelites who no longer spoke Hebrew as their native language, and like the LXX, they can differ significantly from the MT.  Sometimes the differences come because of error, but often the differences come because the translators understood the Hebrew passage differently than we do and inserted commentary, or because they were looking at a more ancient and different Hebrew text than we have today.

You can read English translations of the Targums online here.  You can also buy physical books on Amazon.

I have observed that Genesis and Moses both seem to identify Cain as a priest.  It turns out that the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds another element that suggests we should think of Cain this way.  At this link you can find the first six chapters of Genesis; scroll down to chapter IV and read the Targum's translation of Genesis 4:1:

And Adam knew Hava his wife, who had desired the Angel; and she conceived, and bare Kain; and she said, I have acquired a man, the Angel of the Lord.

The Angel Eve desired in the Targum was Sammael, the angel of death, who appeared in Genesis 3 beside the tree of knowledge as Eve ate.  But the man Eve acquired, the Angel of the Lord, is Cain.  Remember: stars = angels = priests.

The Importance of Being Sarai

There are many hints in the Genesis account of Abraham's life that Sarai (later Sarah) is much more important than is explicitly stated.  Let me set out a few:

1. Sarai/Sarah's name means "princess" or "my princess."  This is interesting in itself, but doubly interesting because Abraham's brother married Milcah, whose name means "queen."  What are we really being shown here, that these two brothers marry royal women?
2. At the same time that Abram's name is changed to Abraham, Sarai's name is changed to Sarah.  A change in name reflects a change in status, for instance, a change in priesthood status.  Abraham isn't the only special one in this little family.
3. There's an oddity about Abraham's tent.  In both Genesis 12 and Genesis 13, the King James tells us that Abraham pitched "his tent."  Oddly, the original Hebrew in both cases clearly says "her tent," and the rabbis felt so strongly that this was mistaken that they inserted vowels to change the reading.  Was the tent originally Sarai's?  Interestingly enough, there is also a camouflaged "her tent" in Genesis 9 -- it's the place where Noah gets drunk.  The fact that "tents" so commonly stand in for temples makes these passages extra provocative.
4. Sarai is associated with the idea of goodness.  She has to lie to Pharaoh so that "it may be well" with Abram, yetav.  She lies, and Pharaoh "entreated Abram well," hetiv.  Tov is "good," and appears in the early chapters of Genesis in curious connections.  The first thing created is light, and it is tov.  Havilah, somehow connected with the Garden of Eden, is the land of "good" gold. And the tree in the Garden is also "good."  These chapters, so close together, suggest an association among Sarai, the Garden of Eden, the light of creation, and Havilah, the land of good gold.  How important is this idea of "goodness" to Nephi?  Seems important.
5. There's an oddity in the marriage, again involving royalty, and also involving ambivalence between brother and husband and a swap of persons, perhaps with a pointer connecting us with Egypt.  I don't know what's going on here, but the upshot seems to be that because of Sarah, Abraham becomes a shepherd and also gets followers -- the men are called 'avadim, which can mean "workers" but may also indicate ordinance-performing priests, and the women are called shefachot, a word the dictionary tells us is synonymous with "handmaid," a word used to describe the mothers of both Samuel and Jesus, for instance.

Who is Sarai?  I don't know, but the OT tells us that she's royal, she's priestly, she's associated with temples, and she confers elevated status.  So it looks like Abram married well.

This Is the Token

I suggested earlier that various texts use the word 'sign' or 'mark' (Hebrew 'ot or Greek semeion) to refer to priests (specifically, Genesis 1, Genesis 4, and Isaiah 8).  Now Genesis 9 give us an interesting test, where it identifies the 'token' (again, 'ot and semeion -- the English translation is different, but the Hebrew and Greek are the same term as the other texts) of the eternal covenant (brit 'olam), as a bow set in the clouds.  A rainbow.

Cloud imagery is common of texts set inside the temple: for starters, the Mount of Transfiguration, Daniel 7, and Lehi's dream.  This reflects the incense altar that was set in the hekal, the middle room of Solomon's Temple.  But are there any texts that corroborate the idea that a rainbow might refer to a priestly figure?

Turns out there's at least one.  Chapter 50 of Sirach, a book preserved in the LXX but not the MT, shows the coming forth of a priest named Simon son of Onias in a temple setting (scholars think on the Day of Atonement).  Verses 5-7 read like this: "...how he was glorified as he spun around the shrine, as he exited from the house of the veil.  Like a morning star in the midst of a cloud, like the full moon in the days of a feast, like the sun shining on the shrine of the most high, like the rainbow gleaming in clouds of glory..."

We have: the specified location in the temple; clouds; comparison of the priest with astral bodies, like 1 Nephi 1 (stars = angels = priests); and the identification of the priest with the rainbow.

So I think the message of Genesis 9 is not that as long as you see rainbows, God won't flood the earth, but when rainbows cease, we might be in trouble (this was the folklore I knew as a kid, and believe me, I looked for rainbows with great anxiety).  I think the message of Genesis 9 is that the sign, 'ot, of the eternal covenant, is that the Lord appears to his people in the temple.  In ordinances, he does this in the person of his authorized messenger, the Melchizedek priest.

Before the Flood

I'm doing my OT reading this year out of the Hebrew and Greek versions of the OT, side by side.  This is a large undertaking for me, which involves getting up early and committing real time, but so far I'm on track.  The immediate fruit has been to see that the vocabulary in the first seven chapters of the OT is heavy in terms that have priestly and temple significance, even if that doesn't always come through in translation.  There's way too much to capture in this blog, but let me throw just out a few points:

1. The ritual actions in Genesis 3 are unmistakable, but maybe we haven't thought all the way through them.  For one thing, the garment of 'skin' in Genesis 3:21 is a garment of 'or in Hebrew, spelled 'ayin-vav-resh (the names of the three Hebrew letters in the word).  Well, 'or, spelled aleph-vav-resh, means 'light.'  These two words are pronounced identically in modern Hebrew, and have always been pronounced very similarly.  God clothes Eve and Adam in garments of light.  In verse 22, "Yahweh of the Gods" pronounces that "Man has become like one of us."
2. In the same segment, Adam is cursed that he will eat his bread by the sweat of his brow.  Eating bread and being dressed by God are both temple ritual actions, and connected in the Sermon on the Mount (more about this in the next class, for those of you who don't already know what I'm talking about).  This suggests that the curse is the sweat, not the bread part.  Similarly, it suggests that childbirth is not a curse -- the curse is the sorrow.  If anything, the implication is that childbirth, at least in some circumstances, is a sacred act.
3. Adam is commanded to 'work' ('avad in Hebrew) and 'keep' (shamar) the Garden.  These are temple-priestly verbs -- 'avad means to perform ordinances, and shamar means to keep covenants.  It is very striking, then, that the same words reappear in the story of Cain.  Cain, first of all, is given to Eve by the Lord (like Samuel and Jesus), punning on the sound of the name 'Cain' in Hebrew (Hebrew prophets, including Nephi, thrive on puns and wordplay).  In Hebrew, Cain is an 'oved of the earth -- not a 'tiller,' but a 'worker,' using the same word that means 'perform ordinances.'  Interestingly, his brother Abel is a shepherd, a common image for priests and kings.  In terms of vocabulary, the story we're told here is about a rivalry between two priests.  After Cain kills Abel, he justifies himself by asking 'am I my brother's keeper?', where 'keeper' is shomer.  Cain is an 'oved, a temple priest, but he does not shamar, keep his covenants. 
4. After this incident, God marks Cain with a 'sign' ('ot in Hebrew).  Elsewhere, the heavenly bodies are said to be or provide an 'ot.  So are the Virgin and her sons.  Here's another piece of vocabulary for understanding the Visionary Men: stars = angels = priests.  Nephi knows this vocabulary.  Cain is a priest who falls from his station, but who still should not be killed, because of his priestly status.

Keep up the study!

Christ as a Son

Christ is also a temple figure, inside a house.  He is categorically different from Moses: Moses serves and witnesses, but Christ rules as the son.  The difference between Christ and other priest figures is a central theme of Hebrews.

As Also Moses

Moses is a temple priest, one who serves and bears witness in a house.

Thou Art My Son

Hebrews now launches into a series of Old Testament quotations, all of which have a temple ritual context.  It starts with the begetting of the Melchizedek priest, the king, with quotations from Psalms (in the Greek Old Testament the early Christians used, Psalm 110:3 also refers to begetting -- the "dew" of the Hebrew version may be anointing oil) and from Samuel.

The Gods Had Not Appointed Unto Adam

The fact that Adam is to have a reckoning of time is corroboration that Kolob, with its reckoning, is not a planet as we understand it but a star-angel-priest.

One Shall Be More Intelligent

God explicitly compares the stars to eternal spirits.  Some are more intelligent than others.

Alma teaches Zeezrom that priests are eternal spirits.  Some are more faithful than others.

I think this is the same doctrine.

From the Beginning of Time

Abraham says the Melchizedek priesthood is from the beginning.  In this, he agrees with Alma.

The Blessings of the Fathers

This verse is astonishingly clear.  The man writing under the name Abraham is a shalem, because he has had happiness (joy), peace, and rest.  He has followed Righteousness behind the veil.  He wants knowledge, instructions, and to keep the commandments.  He wants to be a prince of peace, a title whose only other possessors in ancient scripture are Melchizedek and the Lord.  He wants ordination in the higher order of temple priesthood.

He Is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts

Still in Malachi.  Take a look at this terrific bit about the covenant of Levi.  A couple of comments:

First, look at what first seven says: the "priest" is "the messenger of the Lord."  "Messenger of course, is mal'ak, "angel."  Malachi ("my angel") tells us here directly what Alma shows us by repeated implication: that priests are angels, warriors in the heavenly host.

Second, the word "peace" appears twice.  Levi's covenant was one of "life and peace," and he walked with the Lord "in peace and equity."  "Peace" is the Worship of the Shalems, the peaceable followers, and "life" and "equity" are both references to the Day of Atonement / Judgment Day, on which the Lord brings judgment and resurrection.  So we have here two synonymous pairs, or really one pair, which is also synonymous with "my rock and my salvation," and a subtle reference to the two core rites of the visionary men.