The Secret Codes in Matthew: Examining Israel’s Messiah, Part 9: Matthew 13-14, by Kevin M. Williams
From Pneuma Review Spring 2003
In this section of our study on Matthew 13, we take a look at the parables. This investigation will not likely be the same as many other examinations of Yeshua’s (Jesus’1) parables. From the outset, our purpose has been to demonstrate the “Jewishness” of this gospel and this section will be no different.
The use of parables is not restricted to the New Testament:
1) I will open my mouth in parables (Psalm 78:2).
2) “Son of man, set forth an allegory and tell the house of Israel a parable” (Ezekiel 17:2).
3) “Tell this rebellious house a parable” (Ezekiel 24:3).
The Hebrew equivalent of “parable” is the word mashal (see figure below), which is a “wise saying” or a sage poem. The root word, from which mashal is derived, is very similar, with the only notable difference being the vowel markers. This word appears in verses such as Genesis 3:16, regarding the “rule” of Adam and in later texts regarding the rule of Jacob’s son Joseph and King David. In the Hebrew mind, a mashal-parable is not simply a wise saying, but a wise saying that carries authority.
Within Orthodox Judaism, these mashalim or parables are commonplace throughout their literature. A novice reader can get lost trying to piece everything together. Determining exactly what the rabbis consider authoritative doctrine or instructive parable is not always clear. This lack of discernment may have been a catalyst to some of the synagogue book burnings conducted by Christian neighbors over the centuries.
Lightfoot comments, “No figure of Jewish rhetoric was more familiarly used than that of parables.”2 The Sanhedrin tract in the Talmud states that the revered Rabbi Meir taught the Torah a third of the time according to traditional interpretation, a third of the time using allegory, and a third of his time teaching with parables. In truth, one cannot help but look at the Tanakh (Old Testament) and realize that from the temple ritual, to books such as Solomon’s Song of Songs, to the very lessons of the great Exodus, the Jewish Scriptures are rich in parables.
It is this particular idea that leads Rabbi Hirsch to argue that Psalm 78 (noted above), which speaks of a parable, really tells an encapsulated history of Israel. “Rather than ‘parables’ and ‘riddles’ in the usual sense, the psalm reviews events of Jewish history. The events of Israel’s history are parables in they are object lessons for all time.”3
It would seem that Rabbi Paul would agree: “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).
The Talmud, a multi-volume set of commentaries codified in the 6th Century, sets the standard for Jewish study. Yeshiva students will sit opposite one another and debate the Torah, often with very “heated” dialogue. The principle is that only through debate and the exercise of one’s mind can one truly learn, and truly find conviction in what one believes. The form of Christian study, sitting in a classroom and being spoon-fed information—essentially being told what to believe—is a foreign concept to the Orthodox Jewish approach to learning.
Consensus is not required. In fact, the Talmud is a list of various positions on any particular issue, commonly (but certainly not limited to) the opinions of Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel. The open dialogues, often very tense and in-depth, play on these varying opinions. The supervising rabbi at the yeshiva will wander the room and if he hears quite talk at a table, he asks the students, “are you agreeing or disagreeing?” If they say they are agreeing (hence the quiet), he tells them to move on to the next topic.
The Jewish scholars of old realized that such long-term, intense learning can be exhausting, and so they littered the Talmud with parables. These had a multi-fold purpose, one of which was to break the rigors of study with a simple story. These were something of a “recess for the mind,” breaking away from the intensity and bringing the tone between the students back to a normal level.
The parables were used to keep the debate on track. It is all to common to veer off any given subject and find oneself talking about something that has nothing to do with where the conversation started. If nothing else, the Talmud understands human nature. Through the use of the mashalim, inserted seemingly at random in and around the commentaries, the lessons are kept on target.
The parables also served to tell the simple story, a p’shat, which was easy enough to understand at any level of scholarship, if only as wisdom for the common, unlearned person. But they also held some deeper, sometimes mysterious meaning, a remetz, with which the students had to wrestle. The rabbis purposefully intended for students to have some difficulty understanding. But the real purpose is for the disciple to learn what they can on their own, taking the concepts as far as they are able, within the confines of their own experience and knowledge. The concept is by reaching conclusions with your intellect helps you to “own” the lesson, to really grasp its deeper meanings and nuances.
If we were to take these components and compare them to Yeshua’s parables, we may find some striking similarities.
First, whether addressing the common folk, his disciples, or the Pharisee or Scribe, they all heard the same parable and could all walk away with a personal understanding of what Yeshua had said. Essentially, when Yeshua spoke, he said something of relevance to everyone.
Yet his disciples suspected that there might be more.
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
And He answered and said to them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13:10-13).
It is not likely that Yeshua was calling the general public “ignorant.” This does not seem consistent with his compassionate character. Rather he is saying what was spelled out in our study here—everyone has a different “take” on a parable. Similarly, he is saying what has also been pointed out, that within a parable is a mystery, a deeper meaning with which people of good conscience can grapple. He is telling his disciples that regardless of what everyone else may have heard or not heard, he has a deeper relevance he wants the disciples to understand.
Asking questions in the third person as the disciples did, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” can be a very cunning way of sidestepping one’s own ignorance. Their question was not likely as innocent as it appears. Rabbis routinely taught in parables. It was commonplace and the disciples would have been familiar with this from their own synagogue experiences. Yeshua, knowing their hearts and minds, rather than embarrass or belittle them, answers their real question without rebuke.
“For truly I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. Hear then the parable of the sower” (Matthew 13:17-18).
Not only does he explain this parable in newer detail, he tells them three more parables, which they also did not understand fully.
Then He left the multitudes, and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field” (Matthew 13:36).
Again, the purpose of this article is not to explain Yeshua’s parables. As already mentioned, they communicate to anyone on some level of understanding. Our purpose is to demonstrate the cultural context into which Yeshua was speaking, and how parables were used in the synagogue and beit hamikdash (study house) of the day.
Yet we would be negligent if we did not take note of the subject matter of all of these mashalim: the kingdom of heaven.
In our previous chapters, we have examined that from the beginning of Yeshua’s public ministry he, “began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 4:17).
We examined the path from one person—Yeshua—as the reality of the kingdom was passed to the disciples to cast out unclean spirits, heal the lame, the menstruating woman, the leper, the deaf, and even to raise the most unclean—the dead. We demonstrated that the purity of the Temple and its priests was on the move, with a new temple not of bricks and mortar, but made up of believers taking the kingdom of heaven out into the world.
With the parables, this doctrine of the kingdom of heaven is augmented. The life of these men, traveling from city to city, has been about bringing the “kingdom of heaven” to earth. The prayer Yeshua taught them, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) continue to build upon this concept of the kingdom of heaven being “at hand.” Now, as Yeshua teaches these mashalim, these authoritative parables, he does not deviate. His parables are about our interaction in this awesome and divine kingdom.
It is taught in the synagogues of both the biblical era and today that there are three spiritual categories of people.
1) There are truly evil people, given over to a depraved mind.
2) There is a category of “basically good” people undeserving of damnation.
3) There are people seeking God with all their heart, soul, and might.
The second category sounds suspiciously like the contemporary multitudes who feel they are basically good and practicing a “good” lifestyle, no worse or better than those around them. Yet as Hebrew scholar and author Dr. Michael L. Brown points out, “The Bible does not recognize this ‘middle’ class”4
Look in the Torah: There are blessings for obedience and curses of disobedience, with nothing in between. Look in Psalms: There are righteous people and wicked people, with no middle-of-the-road people. Look in Proverbs: There are fools and there are wise. That’s it! And look in Daniel 12:2: There are those who are raised to everlasting life and those who are raised to everlasting shame, in other words, heaven or hell.5
From the biblical era to this day, in the synagogue’s Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur rituals, it is believed that there are “fence-riders” when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. Yet these middle-of-the-road people fill our church pews, schools, neighborhoods, and public offices. It is resounded in the “live-and-let-live” mantra of the 1960’s to the situational ethics of today. These may be the people Yeshua refers to in Revelation 3:16, “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”
These parables of Yeshua leave no room for a self-justified citizen in the kingdom of heaven, measuring up to his own standard. Either you are a member of the kingdom of heaven, subject to its rules of conduct as a loving servant of the Most High, or you are not. Either you are a seed in fertile soil, or you are dead. Either you are a grain of wheat, or you are a tare worthy of the fire.
Of the tares, Dr. David H Stern writes that they are “a poisonous rye-grass which looks like wheat until the heads appear. Judaism understands zonin (tares) to be not a different plant from wheat but a degenerate form of it.”6 Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for these tares, zonin, is derived from the root word, zonah—prostitute.
We can more clearly see why Yeshua’s parable contained the admonition, “Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matthew 13:30). God has always had an unfathomable place of compassion in his heart for the prostitute, always holding out to the last possible moment for redemption.
Similarly, we find the strong injunction in Deuteronomy 22:9 coming to life in this parable, “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest all the produce of the seed which you have sown, and the increase of the vineyard become defiled.” Mixed seed does not have a place in the kingdom of heaven.
He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds; but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches” (Matthew 13:31-32).
This parable continues on in the same vein. In the idiomatic symbols of the day, “the birds of the air” could refer to workers of iniquity. But they also were representative of the gentiles, the nations, “On the high mountain of Israel I shall plant it, that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and become a stately cedar. And birds of every kind will nest under it; they will nest in the shade of its branches” (Ezekiel 17:23).
Here again, understanding the euphemistic speech of the Hebrews is helpful. The high mountain of Israel is none other than the Temple Mount, the pinnacle of reverent worship and service to the Most High God. The cedars often represent the Temple itself (its interior was lined with elaborately carved and aromatic cedar).
Once again, Yeshua may be hinting indirectly at who He is—the Messiah. Earlier in our study of Matthew it was noted that Yeshua told the Pharisees, “But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here” (Matthew 12:6). Like the mustard seed, from such humble beginning comes something so vast and wonderful that—if you can believe it—even the Gentiles can find shelter!
Within the parables, we can find layer upon layer of meaning and instruction, of authority and warning. These layers of “mystery” were all meant to unfold the kingdom of heaven to the disciples.
It was this legacy, this kingdom that was being entrusted to the 12. The priesthood was evolving. No longer would it be confined to a single tribe, on a mount in Jerusalem. Those images certainly served as their own parable of spiritual truths, but the followers of the Messiah, this priesthood, had a new intensity and portability that even the mobile tabernacle lacked.
The parables wrap up with an unusual statement, “And He said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Matthew 13:52).
Consistently in the New Testament, this word “scribe” refers to scholars educated in the nuances of Scripture, to students of the Torah. Scribes are mentioned in the Bible and other writings of the day as members of the Sanhedrin (the judicial court), the elders, and priests. They were well studied in the intricacies of the Torah, and were called upon time and again to elucidate in legal proceedings.
Is it possible then that in this evolving priesthood of the kingdom of heaven Torah study would still have a place? Is it conceivable that this treasury of things “new and old” would maintain the good of the Torah along with the good of the Messiah, like two sides of the same coin?
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In Chapter 14, we have a break in the narrative. News of Yeshua and his miracles had reached the tetrarch Herod. Matthew tells us that some told Herod that Yeshua was John the Baptist resurrected. In Mark’s gospel, we read that others told Herod that He was Elijah, while others equated Him as “like one of the prophets of old” (Mark 6:15). Regardless, Herod’s execution of John weighed heavily on his mind. Either he did not know or had forgotten what His father knew about a king being born in Bethlehem!
The Matthew account reads in such a way as to potentially cause confusion. While Herod had beheaded John as a fact of history, in Matthew 14:13 it reads as if this was brand new news to Yeshua, who took a “boat, to a lonely place by Himself.”
Turning to Mark’s account of the events, we gain a clearer picture. We know that Yeshua had been preaching and performing miracles. The Mark account reads, “And the apostles gathered together with Jesus, and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. And He said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves” (Mark 6:30-32).
It is possible that verse 13 of our Matthew account refers not to the potential threat of Herod, but to 13:53-57. Our Bibles make a clean chapter break—something the original Greek text does not do. When Yeshua heard the people’s disparaging remarks in the previous chapter, and there were few miracles because of the people’s lack of faith, this may have been what caused him to withdraw. The Herod narrative is likely a mere interruption to the story.
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In the feeding of the 5,000 men (not to mention the women and children) recounted in Matthew 14:15-21 we find a strong Jewish element. Before dining, Yeshua said HaMotzi, the traditional blessing recited in Jewish households for untold generations when breaking bread. Like so many Hebrew blessings it begins, “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe.” This very prayer evokes a sense of God’s sovereignty and our relationship to Him.
The second part of the prayer is “who brings forth bread from the earth.” Man may have planted it; someone may have harvested it; people may have used their sweat on the threshing floor; another milled it and yet another baked it, but ultimately, bread exists because of Yahweh’s care and provision for His people.
This too, is a characteristic of someone whose loyalties reside in the kingdom of Heaven. We may participate in what God is doing, or with what he has provided, but the final glory belongs to God and God alone.
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Peter is the great conundrum, and likely the best remembered of the disciples. Regretfully, he is remembered so well because we find ourselves in this all-too-human fisherman.
Yeshua has retreated to pray while the talmadim (disciples) remained in the boat. A storm has turned the sea into a nightmare. Part of that nightmare is to see what they at first believe is a ghost walking toward them on the water. When they realize it is Yeshua, good old Peter is the first to say “Command me!” (Matthew 14:28).
How often have we said something similar? “Ask me, Lord, and I shall [fill in the blank].” How many times have we asked God to be put to the test. And how many times, like Kefa (Peter) have we ended up all wet?
This seemed to be the pattern of Kefa’s life. But just as with all the Scriptures, we have been given these examples to be testimonies to our own lives, our own human nature, and our own weak failings.
With admirable courage and steely faith, likely better than any of us reading this today, Peter climbed out of the boat and for a time did very well. Yet even now, even in the midst of success, Kefa could not obey the Master’s command.
How very much like all of us! Even the simplest commands seem to be beyond our ability to consistently conquer. The Messiah has not commanded us to walk on the storm-tossed seas. He has asked us to love one another. He has asked us to keep his Word. He has asked to us care for the downtrodden.
It is at times like these we need the Messiah to take us by the hand, as He did with Kefa. It is at times like these that we need to be reminded how desperately we need a Savior. It is at times like these that we need to know that despite our failings, we have a Redeemer.
Yet once again, Yeshua’s purpose is achieved.
And when they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son!” (Matthew 14:32-33).
As demonstrated throughout this examination of Matthew, Yeshua never had to personally make the claim that He was the Messiah. The people around Him came to that revelation time and again.
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And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent into all that surrounding district and brought to Him all who were sick; and they began to entreat Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were cured (Matthew 14:34-36).
This is not the first time we have encountered “the fringe” in Matthew’s gospel. Our first encounter was back in chapter nine: “And behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak” (Matthew 9:20).
This “fringe” relates directly back to the Torah:
“Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue” (Numbers 15:38).
To refer to them as “fringes” in the New Testament, but “tassels” in the Hebrew Scriptures (as the NASB and NIV do) lacks continuity. This tends to separate Yeshua’s “fringes” from their biblical origin, yet they are one in the same. These fringes are basically the same today as they were 2,000 years ago, readily visible on all Orthodox Jewish men. In the Hebrew world, they are called tzit-tzit.
Many verses in the Bible are only words and letters until we come to Israel. I was very moved when I saw a fringe found in Qumran that was 2,000 years old with exactly the same shape as those which are put on today. It has not changed in at least two thousand years. So we know that when the woman who was sick (Matt 9:20) approached Jesus from behind in order to catch the fringe of His garment, the tassel looked precisely the same way. Then I see again the connection between the Old and New Testament. Our Lord Jesus Christ was wearing this and in doing so he was obedient to all the commandments of the Torah.7
For the last two millennia, the tzit-tzit worn among the Orthodoxy have been made of all white threads, with the “blue” thread absent. This is because that thread is not what we might consider a common blue, but a unique aquamarine blue called techelet. This techelet color was derived from a particular snail which until recently was believed to be extinct. No other blue could be a proper substitute.
Some would ask why a religious item like the techelet could be made from a biblically unkosher, or unclean animal. According to the director of Begid-Ivri, the institute responsible for rediscovering the techelet color as well as many other articles for the re-instituted Levitical priesthood, “God commanded that we cannot eat unclean animals, but He does not prohibit us from using them.”8
This is born out in many other aspects of Torah life. For instance, the people of Israel can freely use an unclean donkey, though they would not consider it food. The covering of the Tabernacle, the tachish skin, was made from an unkosher creature. The scarlet thread or shani was produced from the tolat shani (“crimson worm,” or Armenian Conchial). Clearly the prohibition is from eating unkosher animals but they are acceptable to use as a resource.
There is some conjecture about the blue and white, and what these colors might symbolize. Author C.W. Slemming, in his book These Are the Garments, likens the blue thread to grace and the white threads to the Torah. As you can see from the illustration above, the blue is interwoven throughout the white. Even though there are times the blue (grace) completely embraces the white (the Torah) we know the white threads still exist.
The corners referenced in Numbers 15:38 are somewhat difficult to imagine in our modern fashions. Biblical garb was different. In this case it might be better thought of as a poncho—a large rectangle with a hole in the middle for the head allowing one half of the rectangle to hang in front as the other half hangs over the posterior.
In today’s Orthodox Jewish world, this biblical age “shirt” is known as a tallit-katan, and covers only a man’s torso (pictured here). In Yeshua’s day, a similar garment would have been worn, long enough for the tzit-tzit to almost—but not quite—touch the ground as one stood.
The commandment is somewhat vague. What does it mean to tie these threads into tassels? That is a very wide-open commandment, and one of the reasons Jewish scholarship can successfully argue in favor of an oral torah, an unwritten law. In response, the oral tradition emerged setting the standard. There would be a total of 613 knots amidst all four tzit-tzit. It is no coincidence that there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Similarly, the number 613 in the Hebrew language is also the numeric equivalent of the Holy Name—הוהי—Yahweh. So in the same “tassel,” they recognized symbols both of the Lord and His instructions.
Because the ancient sages believed that all men stand as equals before God, with no one being greater in position or prominence, the standard required all “legal” tzit-tzit to be exactly the same length. In a prayer group, therefore, with all heads covered, it would be difficult to tell one person from another.
So for some, the tzit-tzit symbolize the Torah and grace. It can also commemorate the commandments and the Holy Name of the Most High God of Israel. For others is symbolizes the equality of all people before God, neither rich nor poor, neither official nor common.
There is yet another symbol relevant to the tzit-tzit. The Hebrew word for “corners” is kanaf (ףנכ), which also means “wings.”
These corners, with the deep symbolism of the tzit-tzit, can accurately and appropriately be translated as “wings,” and the rabbis attached special significance to these “wings” as well from the Word of God.
“May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge” (Ruth 2:12).
The kanaf of the Lord is a place to seek refuge.
Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me in the shadow of Thy wings” (Psalm 17:8).
Anyone’s instinctive response is to swat away anything that would attack the pupil, or “apple” of their eye. This is how important and treasured King David felt in his relationship with God. This protected place was the shadow of God’s kanaf. The Psalms are filled with this type of “wings” imagery.
One can begin to see why the tzit-tzit is so important even today in Hebraic life. Yet one more reason remains that is important to our study in Matthew, another clear revelation of the Messiah to Israel:
But for you who fear My name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings (Malachi 4:2).
The Messiah, to whom this verse was widely attributed, would have healing in His kanaf. One Messianic expectation was that by touching the promised One’s corners, the hem or tzit-tzit, one would be healed. The multitudes in attendance in our Matthew passage did not reach out for His garment by accident. They did not grasp it because it was all they reach of Him.
They already believed that if they took hold of His tzit-tzit—and they were healed—it would be a public sign of the coming of the long awaited Messiah of Israel! The kingdom of Heaven would be in their midst.
What about today? Can a person still take hold of the “fringes” of the Messiah? Biblically, it is prophesied that this will happen, not only among the children of Abraham, but among the gentiles as well!
Thus says the Lord of hosts, “In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” (Zechariah 8:23).
If Zechariah is any indication, we see a time when faith in the God of Israel would not be limited to Israelis. It would appear that the Almighty has made a provision for non-Jews to come under the shadow of His wings, finding healing, salvation, and a path for living in the community of the redeemed. It would seem that even unclean Gentiles can become the apple of God’s eye, grafted-in to the rich root (Rom 11:17), a part of the commonwealth of Israel (Eph 2:12), and no longer kept separated by the wall of partition (Eph 2:14). All that is required is to reach out in faith like those in Mark 6:56, “And wherever [Yeshua] entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places, and entreating Him that they might just touch the [tzit-tzit] of His cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured” (brackets mine).
What about you? Have you reached out to grasp Yeshua’s tzit-tzit?
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In our next part in the series The Secret Codes in Matthew: Examining Israel’s Messiah we take a deeper look at Yeshua’s relationship to the oral law within the culture context of the day.
Endnotes
1 “Jesus” is the anglicized form of the Hebrew name, Yeshua, which means “salvation.”
2 Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, Vol. 2, John Lightfoot, ©1979, Baker Book House Co., Grand Rapids, MI, p. 212.
3 The Tanach, The ArtScroll Series/Stone Edition, ©1996, Mesorah Publications, Ltd., Brooklyn, NY, p. 1502.
4 Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Vol. 1, Dr. Michael L. Brown, ©2000, Baker Book House Co., Grand Rapids, MI, p.55.
5 Ibid.
6 The Jewish New Testament Commentary, David H. Stern, ©1992, Jewish New Testament Publications, Clarksville, MD, p. 48.
7 The Jews! Your Majesty by Goran Larsson, ©1989, Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies and Research, Jerusalem, Israel, p. 22.
8 From a private correspondence.
All Scripture references are from the NASB unless otherwise noted.
