So he [Moses] stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.” (Exodus 32:26-29).
And so begins the Levites as the priestly line in Israel… though I do not think God ever intended there to be a priestly line, for the nation was to be a priesthood for the nations, and now begins the first step of reductionism, with a priestly tribe for Israel. Seems to lead all the way to ‘we have no king but Caesar’!
Passion for God is what the Levites exhibited.
Paul showed passion for God, righteousness and zealousness:
as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless (Phil. 3:6).
That is a pre-Jesus lens, and through that lens only one conclusion, to rid the nation (Israel) of the compromising and blasphemous claims that a crucified man was the Messiah. To claim Jesus as the Messiah was as outrageous a claim as the ones who proclaimed that the golden calf was an image of the ‘god’ who had rescued them from Egypt. Paul truly was standing in a good tradition.
The post-Jesus lens though gave quite a different perspective.
Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief (1 Tim. 1:13, emphasis added).
A blasphemer: this was the accusation against Jesus, for claiming that he and God were on the same level, that he represented God. Paul now understood that his zealousness for the law was simply a cover for a misrepresentation of God. And ironically the one who was taught the Law was ignorant! Same as those who crucified Jesus, for they needed forgiveness for they did not know what they were doing! Eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and end up ignorant, full of zeal, able to represent God, but be guilty of blasphemy!
We cannot justify, nor do I believe that God justifies the killing of those 3000. Maybe there was no alternative, for how does one keep a nation clean when we are all ignorant? I don’t know how to square it all up. God worked with them… but I don’t think there was any satisfaction in God that 3000 lost their lives that day. In the light of Jesus, the express image of God, we cannot say, ‘and this pleased God’.
Jesus poured out what we see and what we hear… and,
Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day (Acts 2:41).
This Jesus we crucified because we had to be zealous for God. Yes we have to critique biblical texts, for we have to critique our own hearts of the self-protectionism that is within them.
Love this. The cohort that we started out with valued passion highly. All the church meetings, countless hours of sermons, most faithful to the orthodoxies. A stern diet of Kieth Green, Leonard Ravenhill, books like Mike Bickle’s Passion for Jesus. But misdirected passion is painful for everyone involved. Most of the past 25 years can be described as unlearning.
You know, we live on a unique and interesting planet. So far, no other planet has been found to host life like ours. Amazing. Terrifying. This planet produces life. Astounding life. Sometimes deeply weird life. And all of that life not only produces death but is produced by death. All things die. The soil is replenished for yet another round.
But I find humans funny. In light of so many ways to die on this planet. . . famine, disease, accidents, pandemics, war. . . why do we celebrate it so much? I think if I had been one of those Levites told to slaughter my own family in order to serve God I would have said no. Not having it. Count me out. In that kind of situation, I suspect it would have seen me killed. How can anyone be considered righteous having murdered family and friends? Nope. Not possible.
So I don’t get the passage. Don’t understand the reasoning. Don’t understand how murdering others makes someone worthy of serving a god. And who wants a priestly caste that is founded on murder anyway? I think at that point I would head into the woods and worship a tree. They are kind, care for their offspring, care for their elders. They will even supply a stump with food to keep it alive. They live in social communities and alert one another to dangers. A god who requires I commit murder is not my god. Sorry.
On a planet where death is always so close, where we are always in our personal end time from birth onward, I choose to nurture life in whatever way I can.