Beha’alotcha (in your making go up), Numbers 8:1-12:16
Weekly Torah Studies for 2025/26 ( 5786).
On the road to Emmaus, Yeshua met with two of His disciples and, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:27). For our Torah studies this year, therefore, week by week we will seek to discover how all of Torah prepared the way for the coming Messiah.
30thMay 2026 (14 Sivan)
Beha’alotcha (in your making go up), Numbers 8:1-12:16
Seven lamps were hung onto the lampstand by Aaron, facing outwards, shedding their glorious golden light into the Holy Place of the Tabernacle:
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to Aaron, and say to him, ‘When you arrange the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the lampstand.’ ” And Aaron did so; he arranged the lamps to face toward the front of the lampstand, as the Lord commanded Moses. (Numbers 8:1-3)
The light of the lamps shone directly across to the golden table which held the showbread – the twelve loaves, renewed each Sabbath Day, one for each of the 12 Tribes of Israel. There were two rows each of six loaves. Frankincense was put onto the loaves as a memorial to God (Leviticus 24:5-9).
The structure and ordinances of the Tabernacle are full of imagery. Here we have a picture, easily interpretable as the light of God constantly shining on His people, the provision of God for His people, and the prayerful response of His people to God. Though the number seven has many applications in Scripture – for example, seven days of Creation, seven Feasts of the Lord – seven lamps suggests most meaningfully, the seven-fold Spirit of God. Whilst the Tabernacle brought a splendid representation of this, the Book of Revelation brings an even greater sense of the awesomeness of the reality of God’s light:
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. (Revelation 4:1-5)
This picture of the Heavenly throne room with twenty-four elders, gives great emphasis to the appointment of the Levites (Numbers 8) and the anointing of the Holy Spirit on the seventy Elders:
So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle. Then the Lord came down in the cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him, and placed the same upon the seventy elders; and it happened, when the Spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied….. (Numbers 11:24-25)
When we read of these things and contemplate the depth of their meaning, we wonder why there was unrest among the Children of Israel. They doubted the Lord’s provision of Manna and so quail was given in such abundance that they would become sick of it. Not only that, but the authority of Moses - of whom it was said time after time, “and the Lord spoke to Moses” – was challenged even by his brother and sister.
Of course, what Aaron witnessed in the Holy Place, was not visible to the general congregation of Israel, and though Moses heard directly from God time after time, others only heard the voice of Moses. It was possible to miss the depth of what God was doing day by day for His people and resort to human ways of thinking.
Going forward in time to the coming of Yeshua HaMashiach to the earth, the same thing happened. Isaiah foresaw how the glory of the sevenfold Spirit of God would now rest upon Him as it had once been symbolised by the lights of the Menorah:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. (Isaiah 11:1-4)
Yet, as Yeshua’s disciple John perceived, many of those living in Yeshua’s day did not perceive the Light of God shining through Yeshua:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:1-13)
Though many of His own people did not perceive the Light of God shining in a new way, just as the anointing of the Holy Spirit came to the seventy Elders in the wilderness, so the Holy Spirit comes to anoint all who are disciples of Yeshua: those who perceive who He really is. This outpouring of God’s Spirit began at a yearly celebration of Shavuot and is described in Acts 2.
The Light of God, symbolically shining in the Tabernacle, but hidden from view to the wider world, is now made manifest through the Light that He shone fully thorough the life and ministry of Yeshua. Just as a share of Moses’ anointing was given to the seventy Elders, so Yeshua appoints each of His disciples for ministry according to His choosing.
Speaking of this light for ministry, He said:
You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16)
Just as we might be surprised at the disorder that could come to the Children of Israel in the Wilderness, we might be even more surprised that the worldwide body of the Lord’s disciples can be in disorder too.
Despite the giving of the Holy Spirit, listen to the Apostle Paul conscious, as elsewhere in his writings, of the ongoing wrestling between the natural man and the new man born of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4, after writing about the ministry gifts given by God through His Holy Spirit, he says:
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)
Though we are reborn as a “new man”, the “old man”, the person we once were, can still struggle within us until we leave this earthly body.
A great gift of God through Yeshua was the taking away of the curse that Israel lived under for breaking the laws of God (Galatians 3:13), giving us the freedom to live a life founded on study of the teaching of God and gradually grow to maturity. However, Paul also warned about being careless with this freedom:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? (Romans 6:1-2)
If we need convincing that things can go wrong in the congregations of Yeshua’s disciples, in some ways comparable to the mistakes made by the Children of Israel in the wilderness, we should read the first few chapters of the Book of Revelation. On the one hand, there is the glorious vision of the risen Yeshua and also of those redeemed from the Tribes of Israel and from all tribes and tongues of the entire world, gathered around the Throne of Heaven. On the other hand, is the very down-to-earth description of seven congregations, from Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Each has their candlestick to shed its light, and each can have their candlestick removed if the light is not shining as it ought.
The light of God, symbolised by the Menorah, fulfilled in Yeshua and shared with His disciples through the gift of the Holy Spirit, must shine ever brighter in an ever darkening world. The Children of Israel lacked much understanding as they journeyed on their pilgrimage to the Promised Land, and so can much be lacking in our discernment today, of what God is doing in the Heavenly Place. We can take the opportunity from our reading of the Torah Portion this week to consider how brightly God’s light is shining in the world through us, and also how well our prayers, like frankincense on the Showbread, rise up in thankfulness to Him. Just as the showbread was renewed every Sabbath Day, so let our lives be renewed to God on this Sabbath Day.
Dr Clifford Denton
Founder and Director
Tishrei Bible School
