At the Cross

 Gilgal. I remembered a long ago sermon about it. I searched deeply into my mind to bring back what I had heard. Something about a rolling away. More specifically about our sins being rolled away. Try as I might, I couldn't remember anything else about it. I knew it had something to do with Joshua, though, so I opened my Bible and rifled through the pages until I found him there. 

Joshua was the brave man of God who led the children of Israel into the Promised Land, after Moses died. They crossed the Jordan River (miraculously on dry ground) and they took stones out of the middle of it and set them up at Gilgal as a reminder of what God had done for them. But before they could go any further, God required something of them. They couldn't actually enter the Promised Land until they were circumcised. Their fathers had been circumcised, but none of the children born on the way had had it done. 

So Joshua told them they had to do it, and they obeyed. And then came the rolling away words that I remembered from that long ago sermon. It was God who said, to Joshua himself This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal, unto this day. Gilgal. I am curious. I look up the name in my little phone concordance app,  and see that it means a wheel. Rolling. I see that the origin of the word is galgal. Also meaning wheel, or whirlwind. And then I see something else. It says beside it Origin; (by reduplication) and then a new word pops up. This word, a slight variant, is GALAL. To roll, roll away, roll down, roll together. Also, to flow down. 

Well, that is very interesting! I said to myself, and thought no more of it. 

Later that day I was watching (wasting time) You tube videos. I was bored. So bored. Sitting in my chair, wishing it wasn't quite so hot outside, and also wishing I would get busy and quit scrolling. And still I scrolled on. And then I came to something that caught my interest. It was a man standing at a bus station in Israel, and he was panning with his phone, the hillside where Jesus died. Golgotha. Golgotha, of course, meaning "The Place of the Skull". You could see it clearly. The eyes, the nose. The mouth now kind of covered due to the passage of time. It really looked like a skull. It was eerie. He read the corresponding scripture about the place they crucified Jesus as he panned. I got out my little phone  concordance again. I looked up Golgotha and was not surprised to see that it says the word means Skull. Yep. I kept reading. The origin of Golgotha is Gulgoleth,  which means Head, poll, skull. Yep. I kept reading. It was then that I almost dropped the phone. The origin of Gulgoleth... GALAL. To roll, roll away. To flow down. 

One of those mouth dropping moments. 

Jesus took the reproach of our sins away at Golgotha by his sacrificial death on the cross. Literally rolled them away with his blood. Golgotha is a rolling away place. 

Jesus and Joshua. Two of a kind with the same name. Joshua leads the children of Israel into a physical promised land, Yeshua, leading His children into a much bigger, better promised land. Joshua circumcising physical bodies, Jesus circumcising our hearts. Joshua with the first Passover in the land, Yeshua, with the last Passover that mattered, because He rolled away the sting of death for all time. Joshua a pale shadow of Yeshua to come. And an unexpected convergence at the cross. 

I'm amazed at all this, and go on my merry way, thinking I have gleaned all there is to know about this story. Foolish me. I should know by  now there are layers and layers and layers to the Bible. So much to learn, and just when you think you have got the story straight, God lays another layer on you. I find that delightful. I love the deepening of the  story. And as you have guessed, (surprise!) there is more to come. 

Tuesday evening. It's hot. I make my way across the grass and knock on the door at my friend's neighbor's house. We meet for Bible study once a week in her converted garage out behind her house. I come in and sit down. There are a few there. We laugh and chat for a few minutes, and then get down to business. Opening prayer, and then our hostess opens her Bible and begins to read. From Joshua. She is reading chapter three, in the leadup to chapter four, where I had just been reading. The COI (Children of Israel from here on out) are standing on the banks of the Jordan River. They are about to cross. It's the big moment. They are about to retake possession of the land they left before they went to Egypt. 

The Priests take up the Ark of the Covenant...

At this point, my eyes got kind of wide. I gave my friend, across the room, a look of "You are NEVER going to believe what I just saw here, between the lines." 

And then our hostess, said what I had been thinking. Now she had no idea that I had spent the last week comparing Joshua and Jesus, Gilgal, and Golgotha. 

We must take up our cross, just as the priests took up the Ark of the Covenant. I was a bit flabbergasted. She had just connected all the dots for me, without me saying a word. 

I shared with the group what I had been studying all week,  And then I went on my merry way, thinking I had gleaned all I could from that story. Oh, foolish, foolish, Julie. When will I learn?

So I was going to add the little update to the first part of this, about going to the Bible study, and decided I would look at the text again in Joshua 3, just to make sure I had read it right. And right off the bat, something caught my eye. A couple of somethings, actually. 

The opening of Joshua 3 begins in a place called Shittim (pronounced Shiteem). I read through the story. They move down to the Jordan. And then on to Gilgal. I had read all this before, of course, but this time I decided to get out my handy little pocket concordance, and look up Shittim. Buckle your seat belts. Prepare to have your mind blown, keeping in mind, that we are in a study about the comparison between Gilgal, where God rolled away the reproach of Egypt,  and Golgotha, the place of the skull, the place of the rolling away of our sins. 

Here is the text. And Joshua rose early in the morning, and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. (KJV)

Shittim=The Acacias. (I'm remembering here, just as a side thought, that the Tabernacle was made of Acacia wood, and possibly the Crown of Thorns).

Origin; Acacia tree, Acacia wood. meaning the sticks of wood, from the same as H7850. I click the underlined H7850. 

1. Scourge. (Excuse me? WHAT? Not what I was expecting!) 

To PIERCE. 

To Flog. 

There's another number. H7752. My finger is almost trembling. I wonder what I'm about to read. I click the number.

1. Scourge, whip. a. Scourge (for chastisement). A lash. A whip. 

And there's more. There's always more. 

They stayed in Shittim for three days. 

Then they moved down to the Jordan. My finger hovered over the word Jordan. I clicked it. 

 Jordan means to descend. A place of descent. They crossed the Jordan and  came to Gilgal, the place where God rolled away their reproach.

My brain was swimming, as I was trying to put all this together. My mouth wasn't working though. I literally had no words, as the implication hit me. This was way deep. Way, WAY deeper than I had casually started out at the beginning of the week.  

I spent a few minutes thinking about how I was going to write this. And here it is. 

The Children of Israel came out of Egypt (Out of Egypt I have called my Son)

They came to Shittim, a place of Scourging. They stayed there three days. 

They crossed the Jordan, descending. 

Then they came to Gilgal, a place of rolling away of reproach. 

I'm just dumbstruck. This whole post, which started out as a casual word search has become something far deeper than I anticipated, and I am speechless. The parallels are stupendous. I don't think I'm reading too much into it. Nothing is by coincidence in the Bible. 

Jesus was scourged. Chastised. Flogged.  He descended into death (and Hades) at Golgotha, the place of the rolling away of our sins, for three days. 

And there's more...How 'bout that stone that was "rolled away"...I didn't even get into THAT!