{"id":22,"date":"2009-04-14T20:28:38","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T20:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html"},"modified":"2009-04-14T20:28:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T20:28:38","slug":"tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html","title":{"rendered":"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow, according to Biblical tradition, is the anniversary of the splitting of the Red Sea in 1313 BCE, when Pharaoh&#8217;s army pursuing the escaped Israelite slaves was hurled into the sea by God and drowned. Jews read the relevant passages from the Hebrew Bible,\u00a0Exodus 13:17-15:26, in synagogues for this seventh day of Passover. It&#8217;s all very relevant to a theme of this blog: the Jews and their universal mission.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>As Rabbi S.R. Hirsch asks, the key question is why God felt the need to take the Jews on this roundabout course, by the &#8220;way of the wilderness of the Red Sea,&#8221; or Sea of Reeds, in the first place.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>The answer:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>It was not the sword at their side that was lacking, but the heart underneath that failed&#8230;[A]bove all they lacked the spirit of trustfully putting themselves in God&#8217;s hands under any and all circumstances&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>The <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">object of the establishment of a Jewish nation<\/span> was that amongst the nations of the world who develop their national life unconsciously under the guidance of God, there should be a people who were fully conscious of God in their national life. But the Jews were not ripe for such a life. In such a life one has simply to use all one&#8217;s own powers to the fullest extent of human possibility to the ends which God sets, and leave the success of such efforts to the promised support of God&#8230;.This they were to learn from extraordinary experiences, and this education was the meaning and object of the wandering in the wilderness, the meaning of the detour which God now made them take.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But the lesson of trust was not meant only for the Jews. It was to be carried by Jews to the world. On the verse, &#8220;My victory and song is God, that was my salvation. Henceforth He is my God, I will be His home. He was already my father&#8217;s God, I will raise Him still higher&#8221; (Exodus 15:2), Hirsch writes that:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>[God] had already proved Himself as God to my father. As such was He recognized by my ancestors and handed down to me. But through me the knowledge of His greatness and His sovereign authority and control shall be raised ever higher and higher.\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">Hereby the mission of every succeeding generation in Israel is indicated &#8212; to carry on the spreading of the knowledge of God&#8230;to an ever-ascending height.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow, according to Biblical tradition, is the anniversary of the splitting of the Red Sea in 1313 BCE, when Pharaoh&#8217;s army pursuing the escaped Israelite slaves was hurled into the sea by God and drowned. Jews read the relevant passages from the Hebrew Bible,\u00a0Exodus 13:17-15:26, in synagogues for this seventh day of Passover. It&#8217;s all&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-mission"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tomorrow, according to Biblical tradition, is the anniversary of the splitting of the Red Sea in 1313 BCE, when Pharaoh&#8217;s army pursuing the escaped Israelite slaves was hurled into the sea by God and drowned. Jews read the relevant passages from the Hebrew Bible,\u00a0Exodus 13:17-15:26, in synagogues for this seventh day of Passover. It&#8217;s all&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-14T20:28:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"Tomorrow, according to Biblical tradition, is the anniversary of the splitting of the Red Sea in 1313 BCE, when Pharaoh&#8217;s army pursuing the escaped Israelite slaves was hurled into the sea by God and drowned. Jews read the relevant passages from the Hebrew Bible,\u00a0Exodus 13:17-15:26, in synagogues for this seventh day of Passover. It&#8217;s all&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-04-14T20:28:38+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html","name":"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-14T20:28:38+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-14T20:28:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/tomorrow-according-to-biblical-tradition.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"At the Sea of Reeds, a Jewish Mission"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/","name":"Kingdom of Priests","description":"David Klinghoffer","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454","name":"David Klinghoffer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","caption":"David Klinghoffer"},"description":"David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}