Jesus and the Tribe of Levi and Paul's conversion

Continued on in the reading of Numbers.  After the census of the entire tribe, comes the census of the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe.  It is a very interesting description to be made of that tribe.  They are the replacement of the first born of the tribes of Israel.  The law of Moses calls for the dedication of the first born to God.  Levi is the tribe dedicated who now takes the place of every other firstborn son, human and bovine, except that the numbers didn't quite match up, so there was a cash bonus to redeem the firstborn that the Levites couldn't cover...




Does that sound really complicated?  Well, here is the punch line.  The Egyptian firstborn killed in the final plague, well, let me quote the Big "when I killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel...they shall be mine.  I am the Lord."  There is another firstborn who was killed to the consecration of the rest of us.  Am I reading the death of Jesus on the cross back into an obscure passage from the Torah or does the bible rotate around Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man?

You decide.


Over in Acts, we've moved beyond the death of Stephen. Saul scatters the church, Simon the Magician (from whom the term 'simony', a medieval church sin, is derived) was converted, the Ethiopian eunuch was converted, the Holy Spirit spread to Samaria, the third sphere of influence (From Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the Earth), and Saul is converted.


First, he gets a warrant to go hunt followers of the Way (not yet Christians) over in Damascus, to bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.  There, he is struck blind and sees Jesus (I love the blind seeing thing), is converted, scares the local followers because he was THE bogeyman to the followers of Christ, almost gets killed once, then is shipped back to the heart of the church in Jerusalem.


Chapter 9 concludes with Peter healing a paralytic and raising a woman from the dead, performing miracles very much in the image of Jesus.


So, three conversions, a magician who wants the tricks and signs, a foreigner seeking to understand the Word, and a persecutor turned most fervent servant of Christ.  It kind of feels like Luke has woven together a few narratives into a chronological tale for the book of Acts.