 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 206, the 70 Bulls of the Feast of Tabernacles. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. How you doing, sir? Pretty good. This listing of the title made me think that there's a joke in there about bull or no bull somewhere, but what can we do? When I think of it, the first thing that comes to my mind is a slaughterhouse. I can imagine the sea of red after seven bulls. That's because you're from Texas. Yeah. I mean, that's like a feedlot right there. Yeah, I guess it would be. You probably should have got some steak sponsors for this episode. Maybe we can go back and do that. I was just going to say maybe too late for that, but that's not a bad idea, I guess. This is our first of several single topic episodes, so is there a reason why you picked this one? This is something that I can't remember how I got the question. It was probably email. It may have been in some Q&A thing somewhere, but somebody asked about this. Why are the 70 bulls of Sukkot, which is the Hebrew term, the Feast of Tabernacles, in numbers 29? That's our passage, numbers 29, 12 through 34. Is the number 70 significant? Does this have something to do with the sons of God and the nations that were divided and allotted to the sons of God and all that stuff? It actually derives from that question that I got quite some time ago. Here we are. That's how we came to this. This is sort of like an extended Q&A. We needed one full episode for this. As we get into it, we're going to post a link to a couple of things here. There's an online source about this that was authored by Dr. Noga Ayali Darshan, who I believe is over at the Hebrew University in Israel. I think that's where she's still at. But she has a journal article, a published journal article, a scholarly article that's published in 2015 called The 70 Bulls Sacrificed at Sukkot, numbers 29, 12 through 34, in light of a ritual text from E. Now that article is not obtainable for free online, but Professor Ayali Darshan actually sort of created a shorter version of that for the interested layperson. And that is online. So we're going to post a link to that. And that particular article is entitled This. It's kind of an inflammatory title. I guess you need that for online stuff. It's Sukkot's 70 Bulls. The Torah's adaptation of a polytheistic ancient West Semitic custom of sacrificing to 70 gods. Okay, we'll have a link to that online so people can go read that. Now I'm going to interact with both the online source and her journal article. We're going to be referencing Milgram's commentary on the book of numbers. And we'll also put a link to www.jufaq.org about the holiday of Sukkot just so that people can get familiar with it. I'm going to, again, interact with this material and I'm going to disagree with Ayali Darshan as far as her conclusion, sort of the trajectory that she goes off on with respect to this passage. There's something actually in Milgram's commentary that I think at least hints at a better approach than saying the Israelites were offering to 70 foreign gods. So with that as a setup, let's just take a look at the, I'm not going to go through all the verses of the passage because it's, you know, this day they offer this many bulls and this many lambs and all that sort of stuff. The reference is numbers 29, 12 through 34. If you do want to go read through the whole thing, the point is that if you count all the bulls offered in that passage, they add up to 70. And again, the number is what drew the initial interest as far as the question. Now to get us rolling here, I'm going to quote from her online article, Ayali Darshan's online article, the shorter version. And she writes this, this will help set up the whole topic. In describing the offerings for Sukkot, and again, that's the Hebrew term for tabernacles, what we, you know, our English Bibles have as the feast of tabernacles. In describing the offerings for Sukkot, the holiday offering section of Parashat Pinkas stipulates the sacrifice of a total of 70 bulls as burnt offerings spread over the seven day autumn pilgrimage festival. In addition to the other sacrifices of the day. So this isn't the only thing that gets sacrificed, you get 70 bulls and lots of other things. But again, the point of interest is the 70. Back to her, her quotation, this huge number of offerings is striking, especially in comparison with other Pentateuchal festivals, none of which requires more than two bulls a day. Scholars have suggested that the double number of rams and lambs on Sukkot relative to Matsot, again, the bread, the unleavened bread, and the unparalleled 70 bulls sacrificed during the seven day autumnal festival highlight its importance in the Israelite calendar. It is indeed referred to as the festival. The Hebrew there is hachag, without any further identification in the description of Solomon's dedication to the temple in 1 Kings 8, 65, and also in the law of Ezekiel, that's Ezekiel 45, 25, and in certain rabbinic texts. Now, what she's saying there as the end of that quotation, she's saying, look, the fact that you have so many animals offered for this particular festival must mean it had special importance. And it is called the festival as though everybody who's reading the text, when you when you get to the festival, they just sort of would know in the days of Solomon, in the days of Ezekiel, they know we're talking about that one, we're talking about the feast of Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, that was the festival. So this is how she begins, you know, her presentation of the issue. And again, it's the amount, therefore, of the sacrifices. And then she's going to zero in on the number 70. And then this reference to the festival, like everybody knew this was the big one, had special significance. Now, before we get too lost in this, we need to talk about, well, what is this festival about? You know, what's the meaning of the festival? And this is where I'm going to draw on the website, jufaq.org. If you just go to that site, look up Sukkot or Tabernacles or something like that, just even holidays, you would find this. As far as the meaning of the biblical festival, this is right from that website. It says the festival of Sukkot, which is outlined in Leviticus 23, begins on Tishri 15, the fifth day after Yom Kippur, it's the day of Atonement. It is quite a drastic transition from one of the most solemn holidays, Yom Kippur, in our year to one of the most joyous. Sukkot has a dual significance, historical and agricultural. Historically, Sukkot commemorates the 40 year period during which the children of Israel were wandering in the desert, living in temporary shelters. Agriculturally, Sukkot is a harvest festival and is sometimes referred to as Chag Haasif, the festival of ingathering. The word Sukkot means booths. Again, the English Bibles will often have Tabernacles and refers to the temporary dwellings that we are commanded to live in during this holiday in memory of the period of wandering. The name of the holiday is frequently translated Feast of Tabernacles which, like many translations of Jewish terms, isn't very useful. This translation is particularly misleading because the word Tabernacle in the Bible refers to the portable sanctuary in the desert, a precursor to the temple called in Hebrew, Mishkan. The Hebrew word Sukkot and the plural Sukkot refers to the temporary booths that people lived in, not to the Tabernacle. And lastly, Sukkot lasts for seven days. Now that, again, is drawn from the jufaq.org website, just about what the festival is. But another little rabbit trail, Tishri 15, again, that date was noted in what I just read. Tishri, of course, was the first month of the civil year. Tishri 1 is Rosh Hashanah of the civil year. It was also the year of inauguration of Kingly Reigns in ancient Judah, southern kingdom. Tishri is usually September or October on the Gregorian calendar. That's why it was associated with ingathering the harvest. Now, on the Ecclesiastical calendar, Tishri is the seventh month. And so we have this little reference to Tishri. And again, if you're familiar with some of the other things we've done about calendar, you probably were alerted. Your mind was sort of pricked when you heard Tishri. This is, again, in the same month. But for our considerations, the importance of this is going to have to do with the fact that it follows the day of atonement. And again, it's this sort of festival that commemorates the deliverance or the successful traversing of the wilderness, deliverance from the wilderness and being able to successfully navigate that journey and wind up in the promised land. So now back to the fundamental question that prompted the whole topic. Why the 70 bulls? This is where we want to camp on for the rest of the episode primarily. And again, we will have a link to Ayali Darshan's shorter version on our on our episode page, but this is drawn from her scholarly journal article published in the Vedas Testament in 2015. Now, from her online article again, she writes this. Well, the suggestion that Sukkot was the autumnal New Year festival. In other words, again, think of that in the civil calendar. This was Tishri beginning the year while the suggestion that it was the New Year festival, or at least part of the New Year festival, that may explain the double number of rams and lambs offered in relation to other festivals. OK. So she's conceding that, hey, maybe it was a big deal because it was the New Year thing. OK. But she adds it does not explain the additional sacrifice of 70 bulls. Again, the number to her is significant, and I would agree. I think the number is significant. The rabbinic tradition, she writes, was the first to note explicitly that the number of offerings was 70 and the first to draw attention to that. And it links the 70 offerings offered at Sukkot with the 70 nations. You actually have this link created. Somebody in one of the rabbis. This is tractate Sukkot 55 B rabbi El Azar states, quote, to what do these 70 bullocks that were offered during the seven days of the festival correspond to the 70 nations? You actually have that in rabbinical writings. Some rabbi noticed the number, did the counting, did the math and saw it was 70 and wanted to come up with an explanation for that and actually proposed that it had something to do with the 70 nations. Now, that's kind of interesting just to go on a little rabbit trail here, because if you remember from reading Unseen Realm, or maybe some of you have read my article Deuteronomy 32.8 and the Sons of God published in Dallas Seminary Journal back, I guess it was 2001, whatever that was. You know, there's this whole issue of how the Maseridic text, the traditional Hebrew text gets rid of the reference to the Sons of God there. But here you have some sense in this rabbinical writing that, OK, this must have something to do with the 70 nations. And what Ayyali Darshan is going to do is say, yes, we agree with that. And the number 70 is significant because it's not only 70 nations. It's, you know, you have these 70 Sons of El from Mughar, the number of the Sons of God. So you actually have a little bit of a vestige of this worldview, even in the rabbinic writing, even in this rabbinic selection, which I find kind of interesting. You know, some of it survives despite the alteration of the Hebrew text in the Maseridic text tradition. Now, she adds, Ayyali Darshan adds in her journal article the following. She says, rather surprisingly, modern commentators tend to ignore the issue. Unquote. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've found that in a number of cases. When you get into, again, the old ancient Near Eastern Israelite worldview. Yeah, lots of commentators just ignore this. And I think, you know, I think she's trying to be fair here, but I would go further and say a lot of them just aren't even thinking about it. It's just not on the radar. Well, it's it's on her radar and certainly on our radar. So she's well aware of it. And what she's going to do in her article, what she does do, and you can get the shorter version for free, is she will apply this to the 70 nations and not only the nations, but the 70 gods over those nations. And her view is that the Israelites once a year actually offered sacrifices to these other gods. OK, and that's the part I'm going to disagree with. I think that there's something else going on here. Now, in his numbers commentary, Milgrom cites the Midrash in Numbers Rabbah. And this is another Jewish text that's extra biblical, rabbinic material, loosely called. Midra, Milgrom cites the Midrash in Numbers Rabbah for what is presumably his own explanation. I mean, if you read his commentary, it sounds like this is where he's at, too, that this tradition relates the 70 bulls to an atonement offering for the 70 nations of the world. And that's a little bit different. That's a little bit different than saying that Israelites are offering sacrifices to foreign gods in some sort of vestige of polytheism. Milgrom connects this with some kind of atonement offering for the nations of the world. Now, here's the selection that Milgrom cites. I'm going to read it to you. This is from Milgrom's commentary, and he has content from this, again, rabbinic material in his commentary. So I'm going to read you this, the commentary selection. He says, you find that on Sukkot Israel offers to him, to God, 70 bulls as an atonement for the 70 nations. Israel says, quote, sovereign of the worlds, behold, we offer for them 70 bulls, and they ought to love us. The nations ought to love us, yet they hate us. As it says, in return for my love, they are my adversaries. That's Psalm 109.4. So the rabbi Milgrom is quoting, quotes the Old Testament and says, look, you know, Israel's offering these these bulls for the 70 nations for the atonement. Because remember, Sukkot comes right on the heels of the day of atonement for Israel. So you have a Jewish writer saying, well, this is an atonement for the nations, and they ought to love us for doing this, but they hate us. Then he quotes Psalm 109.4. In return for my love, they are my adversaries. Now, continuing with Milgrom, he says, he's continuing with the quotation. The Holy One, blessed be He, in consequence, said to them, says to the nations, now, therefore, offer a sacrifice on your own behalf on the eighth day, one bull. And he quotes that numbers 29, 35 to 36. And Milgrom says this may be compared to the case of a king who made a banquet for seven days and invited all the people in the province during the seven days of the feast. When the seven days of the feast were over, he said to his friend, we have already done our duty to all the people of the province. Let us now make a shift, you and I, with whatever you can find a pound of meat or fish or vegetables in like manner. The Holy One, blessed be He said to Israel, on the eighth day, you shall hold a solemn gathering, make shift with whatever you can find with one bull. Now, again, you have Milgrom mouthing the words of this source. Really, it's actually really drawn from the source. Again, the numbers rabah source. And Milgrom quotes this to sort of say, well, this is what I think it's about. This is what I think it's about. It has something to do with offering atonement for the nations and the nations could care less. They don't, you know, they hate the God of Israel anyway and so on and so forth. Now, Ayali Darshan does not go that direction. She's frankly unsatisfied with that interpretation. And she notes that in her article in the footnotes and whatnot. And she goes through a couple of other options that honestly are, you know, this is me talking now, honestly, are a bit more contrived. And she doesn't like any of them. So she's going to go on and off for her own perspective here. And it's kind of an interesting parallel. She she goes on to cite a ritual text from Imar. Just think, you know, ancient Syria, that part of the world. This is Imar six and then line 373. So she cites this text from Imar as providing a better context and explanation. Now, if you had her article, she summarized the text on pages five through six. She says a little bit about it in her online summary of her article. I'm just I'm just going to summarize it here. I'm not going to go read, you know, the all the details of this particular text. So here are the high points. The text, this this Imar text is about something called the zoo crew festival. It's celebrated in two versions, according to other records that are from Imar. It can be annually celebrated, and it's also celebrated in a seven year cycle. On both occasions that it was celebrated. You have had it go for seven days. And so there's, you know, sort of a match to Sukkot. And it begins on the 15th of the month. It's another match to Sukkot, 15th Tishri. The seventh year festival is elaborated in much more detail. It was celebrated in Imar on the first month of the year, called the Sumerian Sagmu, namely the head of the year, first of the year. On the first day of the festival, when the moon is full, the God Dagon, or Dagon, D-A-G-A-N, who was the supreme God of Syria and all the other gods in the pantheon were taken outside the temple. They take their their cult objects, their statues, or whatever they take it outside the temple and the city in the presence of the citizens to a shrine of stones called Sikhanu. This cultic object, also known in other Syrian cities such as Ugarat and Mari, they were both cities in ancient Syria. This object is best described as a Betel Stella, that's B-E-T-Y-L, a standing stone anointed with oil and blood. The seventy lambs were then sacrificed to each of the seventy gods of Imar. At the culmination of the ceremony, all the gods and citizens returned to the city. On the seventh and final day, Dagon and all the gods of Imar were brought out again to the Sikhanu where a similar ceremony was performed. Over the course of the seven days of the festival, numerous offerings more than any made in any of the other documented festivals of Imar were given to all the gods attesting to the significance of this feast in the city's religious calendar. That's a summary, again, drawn from from the work of Iali Darshan here. Now, on a side note, you know, she in her article, again, if you have that, she makes a comment about 70 patron gods that I think she gets wrong. The gods of these nations were not given to protect the nations. This is something she she goes off on. The text never biblical text never says that. Later Second Temple texts have that idea, but that's not the point. They were essentially placeholders. They weren't, you know, protectors. What are they protecting anybody from? The other God, the God of Israel, it doesn't make any sense. It's not what the text says. But anyway, that's a little bit of a rabbit trail. You can see generally that there's, you know, some similarity here to what's going on in this Imar text and this ancient Syrian festival and biblical stuff. Now, let me just stop here and say now, Imar is a city in ancient Syria, one of its neighbors. Also in ancient Syria was Ugarat, Ugarat is where you have the 70 sons of El, you know, and all that language, again, that we, you know, we have noted both an unseen realm and in podcast episodes and other material that I've written either online or in books and lots of other people have noted it too. I mean, there's this relationship between what's going on in Ugarat and Ugarat. In this case, we bring Imar into the picture and biblical stuff. And again, we've talked about this before and others have as well that the biblical writers are drawing on some of this stuff to make, you know, their own theological case for the God of Israel, being in control of the nations and assigning the other gods. You never have in the Bible, God fathering these other gods with a consort, a goddess or anything like that. You don't you don't have that. So there are there are some clear differences. But there's there's this they're these theological touch points and the biblical writers are going to touch base with that material, both in terms of a of a common idea that they, you know, there's Israel and there's these other nations that got abandoned and disinherited because of the Senate Babel and they're just placeholders now. And then they become corrupt. It's so many to Isaiah 34. They're going to be judged. All that stuff that we've covered a lot on this podcast before. So there there's going to be these common touch points, but there's a theological trajectory that the biblical writers take with that material that is quite different from anything you'd see at Ugarat, that is quite different from religion in ancient Syria. You know, their their theological worldview. They do this because this material was familiar to Israelites. Syria is next door. Again, Baal and, you know, other other gods associated with Ugarat and the Syrian Pantheon. These are the chief competitors to the worship of Yahweh. The prophets are they have their hands full with this stuff all of the time. And so it's very understandable that they're going to be referencing this material, both in a positive and a negative way, you know, positively, like, OK, we've got this shared worldview, the shared idea. But, you know, these are not other gods to worship. They are underlings. They are there. They were actually assigned as a punishment to the nations. These are not, you know, this isn't at the level of the most high and all that all that kind of talk. So there's a reason for, again, the commonalities. But we want to, you know, we want to not miss the messaging that's different, the messaging that the biblical writers have that goes with this. And I think Ali Darshan, that that's kind of what she does. She sort of misses an opportunity to look at some specific messaging that Milgram actually is going to bring up. And she just sort of either she doesn't talk about it in her article. She either misses or she sidesteps or she doesn't think it's important. She does notice it. And I'm going to follow a different trajectory with all this. So what she does, though, obviously, is she takes this material that we've just, you know, overview, we've just summarized. And she says this, here's from her conclusion on page nine of her article, her published article, she writes, in light of the Emerite custom, I would like to propose that the law in numbers 29, prescribing the offering of 70 bulls during Sukkot, which has no parallel in any other Israelite festival, reflects the old Syrian custom of offering 70 sacrifices to the 70 gods. In other words, the whole pantheon of Syria at the Grand Festival, celebrated in the month of the new year. Over time, the polytheistic traces of this ancient custom disappeared from the priestly law from the Torah. And the autumnal New Year festival in the Pentateuchal calendar also lost its significance. The 70 sacrifices, however, have been preserved in the text in the book of numbers here, a sole remnant of the local or the ancient local tradition of sacrificing 70 offerings to 70 gods at the New Year festival. End of quote. So that's her conclusion. That's where she winds up with this. Now, I don't find that conclusion very persuasive. It's really based on a single presumption, and that is that the offerings of these bulls are for or to the nations and therefore, logically, they're gods. That isn't what the text ever says. OK, numbers 29 never actually says that and neither does any of the other texts, because obviously this is the only place you're going to find this. It's unique to the festivals that the text never says that. The text doesn't suggest that the nations and their gods are the object or objects of these sacrifices. And the rabbinic midrash that gets quoted is what it is. But again, that's not the biblical text. And it's it's made up. I mean, it's an effort to do something with the passage to give it meaning to interpret it. And I think Ayala Darshan is allowing that midrash with its idea that these are sacrifices to or for the nations and their gods, these other 70. I think she's allowing that to have a bit too much influence on her reading of what's going on here. So I have a different proposal. Now, a couple of things here before I get to to, you know, sort of where I land, we have the number 70. Again, 70 speaks to the totality of the pantheon. Everybody agrees on on this point. And it even was referenced in Ayala Darshan's, you know, her summary that we just gave 70 refers to the totality of the pantheon, all the other gods. Now, again, this isn't a I want to land here just for a minute because I get this question a lot. You know, what about the other nations that aren't in the Bible? You know, do they have, you know, other gods over them? You know, did they get assigned? Like what about Australia and China and all these places that aren't mentioned in the Bible? Okay, 70 is about totality. The whole point of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview is that any place that isn't Israel was disinherited by God. It's not God's land. It's not the promised land. It's not the land that he chose for himself or his people. That means every other place is under the dominion of something else. So it doesn't matter if you have a nation that isn't, you know, listed in the 70 in Genesis chapter 10. The whole point of it is totality. So the answer is, yeah, all of those other nations are not Yahweh's. I mean, he has disinherited them from his from his loving, covenantal relationship. It's Israel and everybody else. So I get that question a lot. And I think we need to remember that 70 is about the totality here. And in Genesis 10, it is the totality. If you actually count the nations, that's what you get. And if you use the Septuagint, you get 72, which is why the New Testament, when Jesus sends out 70 or 72, it just depends on which text the New Testament translator is giving preference to. The Masoretic text or the Septuagint refers to the same place. Genesis 10, Table of Nations. Another note, the festival, Milgram says, it focuses on man's need and desire to give thanks to God for the year's harvest. Fair enough. But what does it come memory? This I think is the main point. This is the main point I'm going to follow that it gets lost here. We've got Ayali Darshan zeroing in on the 70 and saying, oh, well, this is, you know, this is a polytheistic reflex, a polytheistic vestige. And then she again allows the Midrash to influence her too much. She allows the rabbinic idea that these offerings were to or for the other nations and their gods, I think, to have too much weight. Again, Milgram has this idea of atonement, that the sacrifices are to atone for the other nations. Neither of them really focus on what in the world, Sukkot commemorates. It's not just about agriculture. Remember, even, even, you know, Ayali Darshan, I think it was her. There was a note was the GFAQ. It has two focuses, historical and agricultural. Agricultural, yeah, it's about God meets our needs. We have a harvest. Good. Fair enough. But what does it commemorate historically? This is lost in both Ayali Darshan's take and Milgram's take. Now, Sukkot has this dual significance. We are let's not focus only on the agriculture. Historically, it commemorates. This is back to GFAQ.org. I'm just going to quote it again. Historically, Sukkot commemorates the 40 year period during which the children of Israel were wandering in the desert. OK, they were living in temporary shelters. What does the desert? Symbolize in biblical thinking. And this is also recalling the Day of Atonement. Remember, the Day of Atonement has this wilderness theme in it, too. In the Day of Atonement, which is linked to this festival as well. The Day of Atonement has the goat for Azazel sent out into the wilderness. Why? It's not a sacrifice to Azazel. And again, you can read about this in unseen realm. I'm not going to rehearse all the content there. It's because the wilderness is the place geographically as they're wandering through the desert. Where is the presence of God among his people? It's in the camp. It's in the tabernacle when they camp, you know, the whole that that becomes holy ground with the presence of God is and the people and camped around it everywhere else out there in the wilderness is under dominion of hostels. God's because of the punishment of Deuteronomy 32. The wilderness is where sin belongs because that land, that territory is under the dominion of entities that are hostile to Yahweh and his people. Because of their punishment, they become corrupt. Deuteronomy 32 17. They seduce the Israelites into sacrificing to them. Again, this is all old unseen realm turf. You haven't read the book and you need to go back and do that. Where you can watch the videos here on the podcast site for where to begin. Just click on that tab and you'll know what we're talking about here. The wilderness is where sin belongs. It was associated with ground under dominion of other gods. It was a fearful place. It was associated with death. It's the place where you could find gateways to the to the netherworld, like in Bashan, Asteroth and Eddrai in text that were external to the Bible. You know, the whole gates of health thing. This is where you could go to these places and these are these are ways, you know, places that you could go if you wanted to enter into the netherworld, the underworld, the realm of the dead, again, the scary place, the place where, you know, the Refaim spirits live. Bashan, again, was Refaim territory. All these ideas are part of this matrix that get associated with the wilderness. And Israel has to trek through all of this turf. And they're actually punished, you know, to wander around in it for 40 years, you know, so they can see that God protects them and sustains them while they're again surrounded by enemies, surrounded by cosmic, you know, spiritual enemies. You want to know what spiritual warfare is? This was it. I mean, they're trusting God to to provide for them while they're in the worst possible position they could be in. And that is what Sukkot is about. They're deliverance from this situation. And wilderness is the place of chaos and death and hostility. It is unholy ground. And Sukkot, five days after, you know, the day of Atonement, you have Sukkot which celebrates the deliverance from this place, from these entities, from these supernatural forces, that want death and destruction and chaos for Israel. That's what Sukkot is about. So how in the world, why in the world would they offer 70 bulls to these other entities? They don't need to do that. They were just delivered. They don't need to turn around and say, oh, we better make those entities happy now. No, the entities lost. Hey, the entities were held at bay. They could not defeat the God of Israel and harm Israel. There's no need to placate them now. You don't placate a defeated enemy. It just doesn't make sense. So again, I just think it's a wrong trajectory. Now back to Milgrom. Milgrom writes in his commentary, this is page 247, he says, rabbinic tradition may be correct in stating that the total of the 70 bulls represents all the nations of the world, assumed to number 70. Again, I'm with you. This festival focusing on man's need and desire to give thanks to God for the year's harvest is of universal appeal. Again, I would add, that's not all it's for. It's not just agricultural, Dr. Milgrom, it's more. It's celebrating deliverance from these supernatural forces. Back to Milgrom. It is small wonder. Now this is again an important observation he makes. It is small wonder that Zechariah prophesied that Sukkot would become a universally observed festival at Zechariah 1416 and that the pilgrims at Plymouth modeled the Thanksgiving celebration for their first harvest on the biblical paradigm. So we get Thanksgiving, by the way, that this whole idea, they actually pilgrims actually modeled it after this particular feast. So yeah, we'll give you that it's about harvest. But even the pilgrims, it seems, could recognize deliverance. It's not just about having enough food. It's about deliverance. And the observation in Zechariah 14 is the one I want to sort of key on that Zechariah prophesied that this festival, this particular festival, would become a universally observed festival. So how about this? How about this interpretation? The 70 bowls are offered to commemorate deliverance from the totality of the gods hostile to Israel. It's an expression of joy, not to placate other gods or to kiss up to them. It's not to ask Yahweh to show favor in some act of common grace to those nations and their gods. Rather, it is to thank Yahweh for deliverance from those gods during the wilderness wanderings. Honestly, it just doesn't seem too complicated to me. Now Zechariah 14-16 is interesting if you take that view. Okay, the view that this is my view of it. If you take that view, Zechariah 14-16 becomes kind of interesting. Again, how does the view of Ayali Darshan make sense of that passage, of the Zechariah 14-16 passage? We might as well go to Zechariah 14 and just read that. By the way, Zechariah 14, does that ring a bell? Zechariah 14 ring a bell? I'm going to read the whole thing. And you'll see where verse 16 comes in, the whole thing about the feast of Sukkot. Ayali Darshan's interpretation just doesn't make sense in light of this passage in Zechariah. In fact, it robs it of some real significance here. So here's Zechariah 14. Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst, for I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle. Does it sound familiar? And the city shall be taken, and the house is plundered, and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. That's the idea that is quoted in Acts chapter one, by the way, when Jesus ascends. Men of Galilee, the angel says, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet. That's where they are. They're on the Mount of Olives. So back to Zechariah 14. The Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal, and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. Now this in what follows is the sourcing in Revelation for Armageddon. It's about the transformation of the cosmos and the restoration of the Lord's rule in these awful circumstances. Verse 6, Isaiah or Zechariah 14. On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost. And there shall be a unique day, which is known to the Lord, neither day or night, but at evening time there shall be light. On that day living water shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea, and half of them to the western sea. And this transformation of the cosmos, it shall continue in summer as in winter. Verse 9, And the Lord will be king over all the earth. There is the restoration of the Lord's rule. On that day the Lord will be one, and his name one. The whole land shall be turned into a plain, from Geva to Ramon, south of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site from the gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate to the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananel to the king's wine presses. And it shall be inhabited, for there shall never again be a decree of utter destruction. Jerusalem shall dwell in security. And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. And on that day a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other. Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem, and the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected. Gold, silver, and garments in great abundance, and a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whichever beast may be in those camps. What's the point? The point is that on that day when the Lord returns there will be complete victory and transformation of the cosmos. And then we read verse 16, Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the king, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths, the feast of Sukkot. The point again is the remnant of the nations themselves will keep the feast of Sukkot. You know that the feast that commemorates Yahweh's deliverance of His people from them, from those hostile nations and the gods that rule over them. The nations are forced, the survivors are in a situation where they turn and celebrate Israel's deliverance from them. Now there's a couple of ways you could read this, and part of this depends on how you sort of think about eschatology and really moving more fundamentally. How you think about the New Testament's use of the Old Testament, there we go again. I mean we keep coming back to that issue. I'm going to read a little bit from Boda, Mark Boda, his commentary on Zechariah here. He writes this again just to help us get the flavoring here. While Zechariah 14.9 depicted Yahweh's kingship over all the land of Judah, 14.16 makes it clear that this kingship extends over all the earth. As noted above, in reference to 14.9, kingship is directly linked to victory and war, and so the focus on kingship in 14.16 is appropriate following the depiction of Yahweh's total annihilation of the armies which had attacked Jerusalem. Yahweh's victory establishes him as an emperor over a large territory who receives now obeisance and tribute, expressed and delivered by yearly attendance at the Feast of Tabernacles. This connection between kingship and victory is made clear in the title and name of Yahweh cited in verse 16 and verse 17, the king, the Lord of Hosts. The latter of course referring to his role as the divine warrior at the head of a mighty heavenly army. Again, this is the passage is quoted in the Armageddon section and also I think alluded to in the Revelation 20 section of the Book of Revelation. So what's my point in the Zechariah Rabbit Trail? Rather than Sukkot being a vestige of polytheism, offering 70 bulls to the gods of the nations or for their behalf or to sort of help them out, to chum up to them, the 70 symbolizes deliverance from the gods of the nations by Yahweh. Why 70 bulls? Because Yahweh delivered Israel from every other god. He delivered them from the totality of the other gods and their nations. It has nothing to do with sacrificing to those gods. And if it ever did in the mind of some Israelites somewhere at some point of time, again the biblical text, the worldview expressed in the biblical text as we have it, sets that record straight. This is deliverance from the wilderness, the totality of turf that is not Yahweh's turf. God delivers his people from the totality of every supernatural power. That's what it's about. Again, I don't think it's really that complicated. Zechariah 1416 bolsters this because Sukkot is the festival in which the people of the nations who have been enemies of Yahweh will be required to celebrate. It will be a gesture of submission. This makes better sense if the original offering of the 70 bulls was about deliverance from the nations. At the day of the Lord, the nations will have been defeated. And any remnant that survives Yahweh's judgment, anybody who's allowed to live in the new Jerusalem, I'll catch that idea, anybody who's allowed to live in the new Jerusalem will also thank Yahweh for his victory, the victory of the Messiah, because it is that victory that transformed the cosmos, that makes the world new, that takes us back to Eden. Now I know some listeners just can't divorce the words of Zechariah 14 from a particular or a few particular pop popular eschatological schemes, but I'm going to suggest that to understand it abstractly like this is to make sense of it. You can't literalize everything here because items in Zechariah 14 make no literal sense after the second coming. You just just read the rest of the passage. So I would say, again, try to think a little bit more abstractly. Try to think more like, I hate to say it, but more like an Israelite, more like a biblical, you know, one of the biblical writers. Why are there some Gentiles who are still around in the new earth, in the new Jerusalem, that will celebrate the Feast of Sukkot as both a gesture of Yahweh's victory over their gods, over the gods who had enslaved them? The only answer is because they're part of the remnant, they're part of the people of God. The remnant of the nations after the cross looks different than they did before the cross. And that's okay. The end of Zechariah is transformed in terms of its fulfillment and meaning, I would say, just like Amos 9, 11 through 12 was. And I don't want to rabbit trail into that, but if you remember, we've had a, I think we did a podcast episode on this, or at least it's been part of a Q&A. Amos 9, 11 through 12 is the one that says this, in that day, I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. Now, you think that refers to like a new building, maybe a new temple or something like that, but it doesn't. It doesn't. And we know that because of the way it's quoted in Acts 15, the next verse, you know, so in that day, I'll raise up the booth of David that has fallen at verse 12. Why am I, why is God going to raise up the booth of David, repair its breaches and its ruins, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name? So it sounds like if you're reading Amos, that God is going to, you know, do something that will allow Israel, the national Israel to possess the remnant of Edom. They're like to, to conquer its enemies. And we talked about this. Edom was a metaphor for chaos and Babylon, because, you know, they helped the Babylonians at the destruction of the temple. We, we spent two episodes on Obadiah, where we got into this whole issue. But what does the New Testament do with this passage? It's not about conquest of, of turf anymore. If you look at it in Acts 15, the booth of David turns out to be Jesus. It's not a building. It's Jesus. And, and they don't possess the remnant of Edom. Edom, Edom, olive, dollot, mem, is transformed to Adam, to mankind. It's about mankind coming to Christ. It's about the Gentiles being included in the family of God under the Messiah. And I'm suggesting that's the way we need to read Zechariah 14 here, too. It really helps. It helps make sense of it. That you have, that the Lord's return and revelation quotes Zechariah 14 in relationship to the Second Coming, victory, you know, halting the forces at Armageddon. Again, and I think that that passage is mirrored in Revelation 20. People are going to hear this and go, oh, he's a non-millennialist. No, I'm not a non-millennialist or a post-millennialist. I still believe the kingdom comes to earth. I'm not any system. So throw the systems out. Don't worry about them. Okay. The text is more important than systems. What you have going on though, is you have the Lord returning at that day, day of the Lord. He returns. And the Gentiles who survived this, the vestiges of the other nations who are allowed to live and enter into a transformed cosmos, a new Eden, a new heaven and a new earth, of course, they're going to celebrate the Feast of Sukkot. Of course, they're going to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. Why? Because the Feast of Tabernacles commemorates God's deliverance, His superiority and victory over all other gods. It's how it's supposed to end. And if you're a Gentile, again, who are outside the family of Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham, you're included, again, if you align yourself with the God of Israel, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Okay, it's very coherent and cohesive. If we can, on one hand, not view this through the lens of the rabbis, oh, they're sacrificing two other gods, vestige of polytheism, or they're sacrificing bulls to make God look more favorable on those nations and atone for them in some way. Even the nations hate God, so I don't know how that works. I mean, you need to change your heart here. I don't know how that works. So instead of looking at it in that way, why don't we just take it, take secote for what it is historically, not just agriculturally. Historically, it's about deliverance from the wilderness, through the wilderness, from the wilderness, and just the realm of death and darkness that was under the dominion of other gods. Again, it doesn't seem complicated to me. Of course, they're 70 because the idea is to commemorate Yahweh's victory on behalf of His people over the totality of the powers of darkness, every other supernatural being. And when that's celebrated in the future, at the Lord's return, of course it makes sense, that the Gentiles who are allowed, who are not annihilated, they survive into the new set of circumstances by going up and worshiping the Lord. That implies a switch of loyalty. They're believing loyalty is now in the God of Israel. And of course, they would celebrate the Feast of Secote in His honor and out of gratitude, because look where they are. Look where they are. So again, the subject is interesting. I hope it's been interesting for you, but again, that's my view. That's my view of the whole 70 bowls of Secote thing. So if you want to read Ayali Darshan's article, please do. We'll have the link to that, the one online anyway, not her journal article. That's not freely accessible. And that's my take on it. I think it's really a neat part and again, a cohesive element, a cohesive part of what we call here in the podcast or the unseen realm of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. I think it fits in real nicely. That 70 number is always coming up, Mike, and also you know what is 70 this year, don't you? Well, it isn't me. No, it's the 70th anniversary of what? Oh, yes. Yep. The founding of the state of Israel, yeah. And where will we be? That's a very nice segue. And where will we be on that day? We will be in Israel. And as far as I know, there were still five or six openings left. So that might be where you're angling here. Exactly. We will be in Jerusalem on that exact date. Nicely done. Nicely done. Thank you. All right. Some other things here in my switch gears is I noticed we have over 500 ratings on iTunes for the podcast. So thank you for everybody who has done that and over 200 reviews. So thank you all for taking the time to do that. And if you haven't done so, we're on Facebook. We got almost 2,000 people in our Neck and Bible group having great conversations every day. So go like the Neck and Bible podcast page. Mike's got a public page. So go like his Michael S. Heiser. Yeah, we're trying to put our focus there. Michael S. Heiser. So go like his page, like the Neck and Bible podcast page. We have a paranormal page for those that are interested for that. And then also, you can join the groups for both of those. So get in there and have some great conversations. Subscribe to the newsletter too. Go to drmsh.com. It's on the right hand side. Why should I subscribe? Click on that and it'll tell you. Sounds good, Mike. All right. Well, with that, I just want to thank you everybody for listening to the Neck and Bible podcast. Thanks for listening to the Neck and Bible podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.neckandbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heiser's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.