A Little Sleight of Hand Can Make a Fool Believe Something Stupid

Excerpt From Newsletter

Now that I have explained the significance of Moses addressing (through Aaron) a group of the sons of Israel with either the second person plural or the second person singular form of the personal pronoun or verb, let me show you where that little bit of information provides a whole lot of insight into the meaning and significance of the biblical text. Take a look at this: (Exodus 19:1–25). Every second person form in that passage, when it refers to the people as individuals, is plural. They are also referred to as “they” or “them.” That is because God viewed them as a disparate group of people who must prepare themselves for the ratification of the covenant that the corporate body was about to make with the Living God. He spelled out the terms of that covenant when He spoke to them from Mount Sinai and gave them the terms of the covenant. But He does so using only the singular form: (Exodus 20:1–17).

Those are the terms of the covenant that the sons of Israel accepted when God spoke to them from the Mountain, and the biblical text plainly states they accepted those terms. What the text doesn’t tell you in any straightforward way is all the details of the oral Torah that God called me to explain. One of those details is, the covenant ratified at Mount Sinai said the sons of Israel could only inherit what was promised as a corporate body. What that means is this: If even one individual sinned, the corporate body became guilty and was no longer qualified to inherit what was promised. So the people should have known they could never keep the terms of that covenant, and that is what the Prophet Ezekiel had in mind when he said this:

“[And [I] also] [gave] [them] [Statutes] {that were} [not] [good] [and Judgments] [by which] [they could [not] live].”
(Ezekiel 20:25) —my interim translation

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