WHAT LINKS THE ARK OF THE COVENANT, MARY, AND JESUS’ TOMB? By Bobbie Ann Cole
Jesus confirms that the whole Hebrew Bible, starting with Moses and all the Prophets, is a foreshadowing of Himself (Luke 24:27). So what about the Ark? How would that be connected to Him?
The answer is through his mother, Mary. This might not seem obvious at
first glance, but bear with me.
The Ark of the Covenant contained the
Tablets of the Law,
some manna and the staff of Aaron.
The Ark of the Covenant was the Throne of Mercy. It sat inside the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple, for about 400 years before mysteriously going missing during the Babylonian conquest of Israel.
In his book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary, author and academic Brant Pitre* invites us to consider how the contents of the Ark connect to the Messiah. These were: the Tablets of the Law, some manna and the staff of Aaron, the first High Priest. They foreshadow who Jesus was and his purposes here on earth.
· The Tablets of the Law pointed to His new Covenant which obviated our need for the Law cast in stone. Since Pentecost, we carry the Holy Spirit, that conveys God’s purposes to us internally, in our hearts. It is no coincidence that the first Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended to fill the disciples coincided with Shavuot, the Jewish festival that commemorates Moses’ descent from Sinai bearing those weighty tablets.
· The manna in the Ark was a reminder that God fed the Children of Israel
with bread in the desert. This foreshadowed Jesus as our bread: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go
hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,” (John 6:35).
·
As for the High Priest’s staff, when Jesus came
as High Priest of the New Covenant, he also took on Aaron’s staff. A staff is
used by shepherds to comfort and guide their flock, particularly when they, go ‘astray’
as we are all wont to do (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus calls himself the “Good Shepherd,
(who) lays down his life for his sheep,” and who knows his sheep as they know Him,
(John 10:11-18).
These are all aspects of Jesus. But what
about the Ark itself? how does it point to Him? Pitre’s answer is that the Ark is
the holy receptacle that contained these items. And the holy receptacle that
contained Jesus was Mary’s womb. Her womb was holy because she was a virgin.
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go
hungry, and whoever
believes in me will
never be thirsty.”
So the Ark is like Mary’s womb and Mary's womb is like...? I believe we can take this even further. The Ark and Mary’s womb both point to the Tomb. The Bible tells us
that, too, was pristine: “At the place where Jesus
was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no
one had ever been laid,” (John 19:41).
Jesus grew into
a human in Mary’s pristine womb, after God impregnated her, a virgin, through ‘overshadowing’. He was reborn in the pristine tomb to emerge as the Resurrection.
* I don’t agree with everything Pitre says in this book. He asserts that
Mary was a perpetual virgin, whereas it seems to me that Matthew 1:25 confirms
that her marriage to Joseph was consummated. He supports his argument by saying that the (half)
brothers and sisters mentioned when Jesus taught at the synagogue in Nazareth
were the offspring of another Mary. (See Mark 6:3 and Acts 1:14.) I don't accept this.
You can find out more about Christian writer, speaker, book coach and writing teacher Bobbie Ann Cole at http://bobbieanncole.com. She runs several free groups for Christians and Christian writers that foster community.
Find out more about Messiah’s Mother, download and read Bobbie's first chapter. Her blog, Mainly About Mary, launches
this month, at http://messiahsmother.com.
Love this - an expansion of the Ark/Mary connection, and I tend to want to agree with you re His siblings... I suppose for some people though it might have raised the expectation that someone might claim to be 'a half brother/sister of Jesus' and that'd cause problems (in the early church if not now!)
ReplyDeleteMary cannot be a perpetual virgin if Jesus has brothers and sisters. Pitre contends that the people of Nazareth were talking about the children of another Mary. I have also heard it suggested that Joseph brought step-siblings into the marriage with Mary. All this to support the perpetual virgin theory, which Pitre suggests was a vow she took. He has no real evidence for this. It sounds really unJewish to me.
DeleteThe thing about writing 'Messiah's Mother,' which is a memoir-style book of Mary's experiences and feelings is that these have to be invented - with 'fiction' we cannot suggest maybe it was this way or that. We always have to take a position.
Very interesting, Bobbie Ann. I've come across this thinking in Catholic theology - on which I am not an expert, I hasten to add - so it's thought-provoking hearing it from a Messianic Jewish perspective. I confess that I've never been comfortable with the idea that Mary's womb was extra-holy because she was a virgin. That makes it sound like other women's wombs aren't holy, that the act of conception during sex isn't holy. I prefer to think of it this way, that the mother of the Messiah had to be a virgin not because sex would 'sully' her but because there had to be no human intervention, hence the special nature of Jesus' conception.
ReplyDeleteI like your point of view here, Philippa. There are many areas of the Bible where what is true concerning contemporary attitudes rubs up against how we see things today. It's a challenging choice for writers whether to be authentic to the thinking of the time or to our viewpoint. This comes up of course with 'Messiah's Mother' that I am writing about Mary.
DeleteVery informative. Thanks and blessings.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you enjoyed it, Sophia. God bless.
DeleteLove this, Bobbie, very interesting!
ReplyDeleteGlad you found it helpful, Maressa.
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