Deuteronomy 33:12 (NIV)
About Benjamin he said: “Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.”
For someone who doesn’t like to camp, we certainly have been sitting around a campfire, telling stories, and eating smores with this verse.
Blessings and the love of the Lord as the source of our security are truths we desire to stick in our brains and in our hearts like the goo of melted marshmallow to our fingers.
Today’s Monday’s Marinate we’re going to look at the graham crackers containing all the gooey marshmallow goodness we’ve already snacked upon. Don’t worry. I am not going to forget the chocolate. A smore just isn’t a smore without chocolate.
Our verse starts with graham cracker number one, “rest secure in him” (the LORD). It is topped off with graham cracker number two, “the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders”. There are times when we hunger for rest. Rest is satisfying. Rest fills us up like a graham cracker satisfies our hunger.
Let’s look at this same verse in its entirety in the New King James Version.
Deuteronomy 33:12 (NKJV)
Of Benjamin he said: “The beloved of the LORD shall dwell in safety by Him, Who shelters him all day long; and he shall dwell between His shoulders.”
Notice, graham cracker number one in the NKJV says “dwell in safety by Him” (the LORD). While graham cracker number two says, “he shall dwell between His shoulders”.
What is it about rest and dwell that are significant?
Before we look at that, let’s take a bite of the calorie-free chocolate mentioned earlier. Oh, don’t you wish all chocolate were calorie free?
When I’m craving chocolate, it can often be contributed to carrying too much stress. When we’re tired and stressed out, our bodies use other signs as well to signal they are weary and need rest.
A number of years ago I was working 18 hour days. I was a stressed out, knotted up ball of tension. I was cranky and definitely needing rest. My body was screaming for relief, but I kept pushing and pushing and pushing until it started to yell back at me. I had left it no choice. I kept pushing my body to its limit.
One of the ways my body tried to get my attention was through the network of knots it accumulated on my back, especially between my shoulder blades. I practically kept a massage therapist in business during that season of my life as I paid to visit her each month. This wasn’t the relaxing spa day you might be envisioning. This was the massage therapist digging in and painfully kneading the knots to release all the stress toxins my body had built up over the previous 30 days.
Maybe, you too, have had times when you’ve carried more than you should. There have been too many to do’s. We can become weighted down with worry about our kids, finances, marriages, and even daily management of all we have to get done. Perhaps, someone we love is ill and our shoulders slump forward from carrying too much. Possibly, the burden between our shoulders feels like it’s a part of us, because we’ve been carrying it around for far too long.
I’m certain God doesn’t want us to have to visit a massage therapist on a monthly basis to maintain some semblance of health. He doesn’t want us carrying burdens that cause our bodies to tense up and hold the stress in so it eventually produces gnarled up knots. (Or some other far worse symptom we exhibit from carrying too much on our shoulders.)
According to Strongs Complete Word Study Concordance the Hebrew word כָּתֵף, kâthêph (phonetic, kaw-thafe’) translated in Deuteronomy 33:12 as shoulder means – are you ready for this? Shoulder. Okay, I had to do that. Sorry. There’s also an unused root form meaning “to clothe”. Part of the Hebrew meaning also states it refers to the “upper end of the arm where the garments hang”.
Like the garment mentioned above, hang in there with me.
Besides looking up the original Hebrew (or Greek) meaning, it’s often worthwhile to investigate other verses where the original Hebrew text appears in Scripture.
One such verse where kâthêph, translated shoulder, appears is 2 Chronicles 35:3. We’re going to look at the verse in context, so we’ll be reading 2 Chronicles 35:1-4. (Bold font was added for highlighting purposes and is not how it appears in Scripture.)
1 Josiah celebrated the Passover to the LORD in Jerusalem, and the Passover lamb was slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the first month. 2 He appointed the priests to their duties and encouraged them in the service of the LORD’S temple. 3 He said to the Levites, who instructed all Israel and who had been consecrated to the LORD: “Put the sacred ark in the temple that Solomon son of David king of Israel built. It is not to be carried about on your shoulders. Now serve the LORD your God and his people Israel. 4 Prepare yourselves by families in your divisions, according to the directions written by David king of Israel and by his son Solomon.
Josiah was a king of Judah, who came after the reign of King David and King David’s son, Solomon. King David was a warrior, called into battle to defend Israel many times. David was a valiant warrior from the time he was a young boy. Later in life, King David wanted to build the temple of the Lord, but that was not what God had called King David to do.
During King David’s reign, the ark of the LORD was transported from place to place by the Levites. There was not a permanent, holy structure. When God directed the Israelites to relocate, they would gather their families, their belongings, and all the holy elements including the ark of the LORD. Each of those responsible for carrying the ark of the LORD would support its weight upon his shoulder as he helped to transport it from place to place. (Click here to see an image.)
After King David’s reign, he passed the baton of responsibility to his son, King Solomon. As much as David desired to build the temple, God had clearly called Solomon to build His holy temple. (See 1 Chronicles 17 & 22) Solomon’s hands had not been bloodied in war. David had made all the preparations, put support in place for his son in terms of workers and materials, and cast the vision to his son sharing all the plans that were given to him by God. (See 1 Chronicles 28:19-21) God’s desire was that Solomon would build the temple during a time of peace unlike Israel had previously seen.
Now we look at our Scripture example with King Josiah and hone in on verse 3. Let’s isolate 2 Chronicles 35:3
He said to the Levites, who instructed all Israel and who had been consecrated to the LORD: “Put the sacred ark in the temple that Solomon son of David king of Israel built. It is not to be carried about on your shoulders. Now serve the LORD your God and his people Israel.
The Levites were very accustomed to transporting the ark of the LORD from place to place. They were used to its weight, as heavy as it was. It’s what they knew how to do. Interesting. God tells them to stop carrying it on their shoulders. The very next thing God says is: “Now serve the LORD your God”. Once they set the weight of the ark down, God was asking them to serve Him in a new way.
God didn’t want them carrying the weight upon their shoulders any longer. If they would have kept doing what they always used to do, they wouldn’t have been able to serve the LORD how He was calling them to serve Him now.
How many times do we keep carrying weight we should set down so we are able to serve the LORD with what He’s asking from us now? God wants us to move where He’s going – not where He’s been. Certainly, it’s important we remember important milestones with Him, but He wants our eyes focused forward. He wants us prepared for what He’s going to do next.
When God gave King Josiah’s people the directive to cease carrying the ark of the LORD and serve the LORD their God, they were celebrating the Passover. In the Archeological Study Bible it states the “observance of Passover is tied to the deliverance of God’s people”. The text regarding Passover also states “the original celebrants – still in Egypt – were to be clothed for travel with shoes on their feet and staffs in their hands, demonstrating that they were ready to depart from the land of their slavery.”
Notice that during the time of Passover, a time we now know was in celebration of God’s deliverance of His people, we see God telling his children to stop shouldering the weight of the ark of the LORD. He was delivering them from that responsibility. God wanted them to serve Him in a different way. He wanted them to prepare themselves for the next leg of their journey with Him as Scripture tells us in 2 Chronicles 35:4.
I am certainly not a biblical expert. However, I found this next bit interesting. Remember back to the Strong’s translation of kâthêph as “shoulder”. Remember there was also an unused root form meaning “to clothe”. Remember part of the Hebrew meaning also states it refers to the “upper end of the arm where the garments hang”.
I find all of that very interesting in light of some of what we’ve been exploring. If Passover, the time celebrating Israel’s deliverance, also required them to be clothed and ready as the Archeological Study Bible states, I wonder if there is any significant correlation to our original verse. The latter part of Deuteronomy 33:12 says, “the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.”
I don’t have a commentary to back this up. This is just a personal theory. I’m wondering if we might look at that last word “shoulders” and think about this theory:
If we are clothed in what God has for us next, prepared to travel so to speak, He delivers us. He provides rest to us, even if we are in the midst of a busy season of life with Him. When we are in the middle of His will, we don’t feel the weight of a burden on our shoulders. He’s carrying it for us. We’re just carrying out the directive, fulfilling the vision He has set before us.
Solomon didn’t have to go search out all of the supplies and resources. God had already provided all of those necessary elements. That was not part of Solomon’s burden to shoulder. Solomon didn’t go out and try to be a great warrior filling the role his father had already fulfilled. Solomon didn’t set out to become a great priest. Solomon was able to accomplish the huge undertaking of building the Lord’s temple because He was right where God had asked Him to be.
So the chocolate for us to chew on all melts down to mulling these thoughts over:
What burdens are we carrying that cause us to feel a weight upon our shoulders?
What things has God delivered us from that He wants us to put behind ourselves so we can be clothed and ready to move forward with where He wants to take us today?
What feels “normal” for us to carry around that God might be asking us to set down so we can serve the LORD our God in a new way? Maybe it’s a problem, but maybe it’s not a problem. Perhaps, we are being asked to stop doing something good (like carrying around the ark of the LORD) because He wants us to do something better (build a temple).
To wrap this all up, we’re going to finish making our smore.
We said the concept of rest / dwell was Graham cracker number one.
We looked at the gooey marshmallow goodness of blessings and the love of the Lord as the source of our security in recent weeks past.
Today, we spent a significant amount of time on the chocolate sandwiched between our graham crackers:
- Not carrying the weight of burdens God is not calling us to carry
- Being clothed (prepared) to move when He asks us to do something different.
The final graham cracker layer we said was the same as number one: rest / dwell.
When we look these concepts up in Strong’s, the translation is defined as the idea of lodging. It’s a verb meaning to settle down, to dwell. It means to lie down or rest (as in peace / security). It means to dwell or abide. To establish.
God lodged with the Israelites when He travelled with them as they transported the ark of the LORD. For us, God abides in us as the Holy Spirit, a deposit left for us as a result of Jesus’ death on the cross. When God is dwelling with us, in us, we do find rest. We can lay our burdens down and rest secure in Him. As the last part of Deuteronomy 33:12 says,
“and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders”
For questions, let’s revisit those we briefly explored above.
What burdens are we carrying that cause us to feel a weight upon our shoulders?
What things has God delivered us from that He wants us to put behind ourselves so we can be clothed and ready to move forward with where He wants to take us today?
What feels “normal” for us to carry around that God might be asking us to set down so we can serve the LORD our God in a new way? Maybe it’s a problem, but maybe it’s not a problem. Perhaps, we are being asked to stop doing something good (like carrying around the ark of the LORD) because He wants us to do something better (build a temple).
Now, go make yourself a smore. You deserve one after all this work!