“When Moses slew the Egyptian, he was doing the will of God but not with the power of God.”
Numbers 12:3 says that Moses was the meekest man “on the face of the ground [adamah].”
Psalm 37:11 says the meek will inherit the Land [eretz] and delight in abundant prosperity.
Isaiah 11:4 says that
with righteousness [God] shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the Land;
and he shall strike the Land with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips she shall kill the wicked.
Firstly, what is meekness? And secondly, why is it connected to “face of the ground” (Adam), or Land?
Meekness is a Tour of Duty
Every new Covenant God makes puts a man between heaven and earth as a mediator. The requirement for success is passivity towards God (obedience to the Covenant Ethics) and then activity towards the Creation. This exactly why God tested Adam to qualify him before opening the Land and the womb. God required the Ethical fruit of righteousness before He would give Adam the increase of Social and Physical fruit. (More on this in the next post. Also, see Bible Matrix II; The Covenant Key, for an explanation of how a Covenant is a mission, an ethical tour of duty.)
The important thing to notice is that being meek does not make one weak. In fact, the famous words of the disciples in Acts 5:29 about obeying God rather than men are a display of meekness as strength. They were being passive to God that God might be active towards the hearts of men. It wasn’t just about the disciples and their commitment to Christ. It was about being mediators, like Jesus, and allowing the power of God to go to work in the world. This is what Paul meant by “filling up” the sufferings of Christ. It ends in glory not just for the witness but for those who believe their testimony. Bold witness is a sign of meekness. Meekness is a willingness to be pliable under godly authority, and an unwillingness to be pliable under ungodly authority.
This is why Jesus holds the centurion up as an example of faith in Matthew 8. The centurion recognizes true authority. He is pliable to the power of Jesus because he recognizes the Prophet’s ability to change the created order by His mere words.
The Gentile centurion, and the Jewish disciples, humbled themselves under the almighty hand and were exalted. And between these two accounts, historically speaking, Jesus, as a better Adam, did exactly the same thing and changed the course of history.
A Godly Inheritance
This sheds a great deal of light on Jesus’ promise about the meek inheriting the Land. Inheritance is Covenantal. It is the “good success” that the obedient man receives. He obeys, and God gives him a territory (Land), an offspring (womb), and the future, which is what God promised to both Adam and to Abraham, picturing the worldwide ministry of Jesus. (See the chapter “Kids in the Kitchen” in God’s Kitchen for how cooking a kid in its mother’s milk is a sick combination of Land and womb.)
So how do we take this promise of Jesus in its historical context? He is saying that the current rulers of Judah, those who claimed to be children of Abraham, would be disinherited, and that those Jews who had circumcised hearts, who were pliable to ethical shaping by the Spirit, would inherit all the promises currently held by the Jewish rulers. The swap would be as sudden as the leprosy of Naaman finding a new home in Gehazi! This means that a modern Jew has no godly inheritance unless he turns to Christ.
So, Man is called to be passive towards God and active towards Creation. This is the role that Jesus currently fills, representing us before the Father. Such a man is a Mediator between heaven and earth, the sky and the Land. His submission to the cutting hand of the Law opened a new channel for the work of the Spirit in the world. This qualifies him for total dominion because an Adam governed by God is an Adam fit to govern. This means that meekness is in no way related to gentleness. It is simply a submission to authority that one might be given authority, and it brings us back to Moses, the meekest man who ever lived.
The Ministry of Moses
The reference to Moses as the meekest man on the “face of the ground” ties him to Adam. Adam was, in fact, the firstfruits of the Land. God made him out of the dust and placed him into the Garden. Thus, he was not made in the Garden. He was made out of the place for which he was being qualified to rule and to bring fruit (grain and grapes). Adam was made out of earth to be filled with heaven, the perfect hybrid, like Jesus. (See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, for more on “holy hybrids” in the Bible.) The reference to the “face” is expressed later in Exodus as the Table of Facebread in the Tabernacle, which represented the offering of the first righteous man, qualified to face God and to see His face. (You might remember that God veiled His face to Moses, and Moses’ face, as Mediator of the Law, was likewise veiled to Israel until Christ came, the true “face of Adam.”)
We see exactly the same thing in Moses, who was trained in Egypt, and, as Stephen tells us, was “mighty in word and deed” (Acts 7:22). He was not only a hearer of the laws but a doer of them. He was not only submissive as a priest (under authority) but he acted upon what he heard with kingly authority. What was his first act as a ruler? The execution of an Egyptian.
Because modern Christians think all the Old Testament histories are morality fables, they miss the point of many stories. Moses had the authority to pass judgment. It seems he also had the authority to execute the sentence. James Jordan writes:
“The Bible never criticizes Moses for this, but presents his action as righteous and faithful (Acts 7:24ff.; Heb. 11:24ff.). The execution of criminals is never said to defile the land, or to require atonement; such execution is itself the atonement required.” James B. Jordan, The Law of the Covenant, pp. 254-5.
This sounds strange to our ears, but it does play out in the stories that follow. Whom did God punish for this incident? Israel, and Egypt. Not Moses. Because the Hebrews would not have this man to rule over them, they would spend another forty years under the authority of Pharaoh. We see the same thing regarding Israel in the wilderness. They once again rejected the authority delegated to Moses by God, and were once again condemned to another generation of testing and qualification.
There are, however, still some niggling hints that all is not right. Moses “looked this way and that,” and buried the body in the sand. If he was confident in his authority, he would not have done these things. The “to and fro” is a reference to heaven, (see Eye Spy) and the sand is a reference to the earth, whence came Adam. When Moses slew the Egyptian, he was doing the will of God but not with the power of God.
Perhaps Moses merely feared the unjust reaction of Pharaoh, to whose authority he was still committed. He was still under the “eyes” of Pharaoh. Moses was torn between obeying God and obeying a man. This would not be the case one generation later when he would return to slay all the Egyptians. But he would not do it by his own hand. It would be more like the quote above from Isaiah. Through the pliability of Moses, God would carry out the slaying by the rod of His mouth and the breath (spirit) of His lips
Moses’ judgment pictured Christ’s ministry in the first century, who warned Pharaoh (Herod) and then returned one generation later to slay all the “Egyptians.” But Christ waited until He was entirely qualified before passing judgment, which leads to an interesting observation about the lifespan of Moses.
The Faces of God
Priesthood pictures a willingness to be obedient, so that one might then minister the authority of God (as a king) and speak for Him (prophetic). As a priest, God’s face is against you in the Law, to discipline and train you. As a king, God’s face shines upon you, and enlightens you (as the Law did for David). As a Prophet, you actually become the face of God, representing Him among men as his mouth. This is what we see in the 120 year life of Moses.
Moses spent 40 years learning under authority. When he exercised it (shedding blood as a priest at the Bronze Altar) he had to flee, and spent 40 years as a shepherd. In this, God showed him the true nature of kingdom. He prefigured Israel’s most famous king until he saw the burning bush, the Lampstand. When he returned to Egypt, he fulfilled his original judgment in the power of God as a prophet, and spent 40 years speaking the Law as an elder (the Incense Altar). That’s priest, king and prophet, the three faces of the Law, and it puts an interesting spin on the final words between Moses and Pharaoh:
As in Eden, there is no Day 7, no Promised Land, no Covenant Succession (Land, Offspring, Future) for Pharaoh, who would not be meek before God.
Moses prefigured Israel’s history, and the shape of the entire Old Testament. And all because he was the most pliable, the most truly “circumcised” Adam on the Land. He heard God’s Words and acted upon them. He was not merely a hearer but a doer.
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21)
And, finally, we must note that it was Moses, the meekest Adam on the Land, who brought Israel out of the dust of Egypt, the land of grain, and presented him, as “God’s firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22) at the gate of the new Garden Sanctuary, the Tabernacle. But it would be a “meek” Israel, a new generation, who would inherit Canaan and “delight in abundant prosperity.”
