As I stated in the last post, this one is going to be focusing on a different part of the same story, kind of what goes on in the middle. What we covered last time was Moses dealing with the Israelites complaints about not having any meat and how Yahveh answered their whining in a "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" way.
During all this, Moses is having a meltdown of sorts and throws a tantrum, which can be read in verses 11-14. Basically, his point is "I am in way over my head here and need help."
Now while Moses might go a bit far in saying that he'd rather have Yahveh just kill him on the spot if this is how life is going to go, Moses does have a bit of a point. He is taking care of thousands of people essentially by himself. Anyone who has ever been in a leadership role can attest to how frustrating and exhausting that can get, especially when the people in question are as whiny and petulant as the people of Israel (not trying to be a jerk, but let's be honest, they were).
Yahveh, although not entirely appreciative of Moses's tone, acquiesces. "Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers or them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. And I will come down and talk with you there. And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you."
Before we go on, there a couple of questions I'm certain that you might have (I certainly do) that I'd like to address first. Foremost, didn't Moses already have help? I mean, didn't we already do this song and dance routine when Jethro visited? What was Aaron doing in all of this? Why are we going through this again?
As for Aaron, we saw how well his leadership worked out with the Golden Calf (and, I suppose Nadab and Abihu, a story we didn't get into). In regards to the elders, yes and no. Yes in the sense that Moses already had people working under him as sort of local judges, dealing with the mundane, day-to-day issues of life in a massive, 40-year campmeeting.
But that isn't what Moses is talking about here. He's talking about spiritual guidance and leadership, kind of like pastors. I mean, Moses is essentially pastoring a several hundred thousand member congregation all by his lonesome. Again, you might say, "What about the priests?" Fair question. A priest's function is different from what we are talking about. Priests act as mediators between man and Yahveh, specifically mediating the forgiveness of sin. They are busy offering sacrifices, the prayers of the people, and doing other such things in the Tabernacle.
All that is well and good, but dealing a mob of people who want meat to eat isn't exactly in their job description. It is in Moses's. And this is where Moses has the issue. He needs a council of people to take care of the people's spiritual and physical needs on the mass scale, like this. He needs a council of people that will stand with him when the people start acting up again so that he has their strength to lean on.
And so Yahveh tells him to find 70 elders, or leaders, of the people that he can trust and bring them to tent of meeting. There Yahveh pours out his Spirit on them and they begin prophesying. Moses has help.
Now this is where the story takes in an interesting twist. You see, there weren't 70 elders in front of the tent of meeting; there were only 68. Two of them, guys by the names of Eldad and Medad (for future parents out there, great names right here) didn't show. The Bible doesn't specifically list the reason for them playing hokey, but Ellen White in Patriarchs and Prophets says that they didn't feel they were worthy of being chosen. I'll buy that. Not that it mattered in the end because worthy or not, they started prophesying too, which must have confused the willies out of their neighbors.
Joshua, Moses's aide and eventual successor, flipped out at this. To him, Eldad and Medad's absence was a slight to Moses and he did not want them messing with his boss. So he asks Moses to stop them. Moses, with a smile on his face I imagine, turns back to Joshua and tells him to let them be, adding, "Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!" That would certainly make his job a whale of a lot easier.
This short story has many interesting facets that we could explore, but the one I want to focus on is the role we play in who Yahveh calls, which is to say none at all. Yahveh chooses who he chooses because he's Yahveh and he can. He neither needs nor wants any input from us; he will choose who he will choose whether we think them worthy or not.
Just look through the Bible at Yahveh's choices, many of which seem strange. We know nothing of Abraham before he was chosen, but Yahveh chose him anyway. Perhaps the reason that Moses was so understanding of Eldad and Medad was because of his own experience, an exiled Egyptian prince living as a shepherd in the Midian wilderness. Not exactly someone I'd have at the top of my prospects list.
Joseph was a slave. Deborah and Esther were women. David was a shepherd from the hillbilly tribe of Judah in the utterly forgettable town of Bethlehem. Elijah was basically a hobo. Jeremiah was a kid. Mary was an unwed teenager. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were uneducated (by Jewish standards) fishermen. Matthew was a tax collector. Simon was a militant Zealot. Cornelius was a Roman centurion. Saul/Paul was a lawyer, member of the Sanhedrin (elite ruling council), and a violent persecutor of Christians.
Yet Yahveh called all of these people. The only common thread between all of them was that Yahveh called them. They weren't always the best or brightest or most influential. Yahveh didn't care about social norms and customs; he plays by his own set of rules, ones that we are to follow and yet are often strange to us.
Even the Israelites themselves weren't chosen because of their own merit. They weren't the biggest or the most powerful or the nicest people; Yahveh chose them because, well, he did.
We have zero role to play in this process. We are only told to accept his choices whether we like them or not because he is Yahveh and he makes the decisions.
Think of it like a company: the boss is the one who makes decisions on who to hire and who not to hire. If you are not the boss, and in this scenario we aren't, once the decision is made, you have to accept it and live with it, like it or not because the boss is the boss and you are not the boss. Works the same way here.
I bring this up because of the whole debate surrounding women's ordination, a topic I have thus far avoided. At its base foundation, ordination is the community of Yahveh acknowledging his call on someone's life. By denying ordination to any group of people, women in this case, we are essentially saying to Yahveh that he cannot call this person. Not only is this attitude incredibly arrogant, it's also stupid. I mean, try telling your boss whom he can and cannot hire.
Yahveh calls who he calls and sometimes (often) that calling is not what we would expect or even do. But that isn't our call to make, is it? So when we someone who is called by Yahveh and we are tempted to think like Joshua, "We should put a stop to this," maybe we should rein ourselves in a bit and think instead like Moses, "Would that all of Yahveh's people were called like this."
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