Friday, December 20, 2019

Rod Bennett on the Eighth Day (Sunday) and the New Covenant




Though the Eighth Day is, in one sense, just the first day of an entirely new week, the Pentateuch nevertheless ascribes a mysterious significance to it. The Eighth Day was the day when Israelite boys became “children of the promise” via circumcision (Gen. 17:12). It was also the climax of the eight-day east of Tabernacles (literally, of tents)—celebrating God’s presence in the Ark of the Covenant as it traveled through the wilderness along with His people, sheltered, as they were, by a tent. The Talmud, in fact, refers to this presence as God’s Shekinah—his willingness to “dwell” or “be sheltered,” a word that shares the same Hebrew root as the word “tabernacle.” “[The Tent of Meeting] that dwells among them,” writes Rabbi Charina in the Talmud, remains with the people “even in the midst of their impurities. Even in a time that they are impure, the divine presence is among them” (Tractate Yoma 56b). The festival of the Eighth Day, then—the greatest of all Jewish festivals, according to Josephus—was the festival of “Immanuel—God with us” (see Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23).

Yet the Ark was taken from the people, leaving them bereft of this presence. This means that the Eighth Day became the feast of “the God who used to be with us.” And as time went on, this festival seemed to call out every year for the return of God’s Shekinah, a cry that was finally answered—in spades!—at the Incarnation, “the Great Tabernacling.” By becoming man, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity could succeed, where the people had failed, in keeping all the rigors of the Law and then offer Himself to the Father as a spotless Lamb, an acceptable sacrifice at last. (Rod Bennett, Scripture Wars: How Justin Martyr Rescued the Old Testament for Christians [Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2019], 183)