Today’s post will be from Numbers chapter 7 and various chapters from Joshua. It will be centered on covenant making, then I will circle back to Deuteronomy for the next post.
At the dedication of the Tabernacle, each tribe of Israel brought offerings of lambs, rams, bullocks, and goats for the various sacrifices. Each tribe also brought “one spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense” (Numbers 7:14,20,26,32,38,44,50,56,62,68,74,80). The Hebrew word for spoon is kaph, meaning “palm, hand, sole, palm of the hand, hollow or flat of the hand, or spoon.” See the full definition below from Strong’s Exhaustive Bible Concordance.
Kaph is most often translated as hand, occurring 128 times in the King James Version. In second place is the word spoon, occurring 24 times, mostly due to this chapter. Kaph is representative of power, and this relates to the power of God as a result of covenants. The spoons used in the tabernacle, and later in the ancient temple, were a representation of the hand.
The spoons filled with incense are reminiscent of the hands filled with incense as the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) with his hands full of the incense which he would cast on the burning coals to create a cloud to protect him from the direct presence of God. The Hebrew words male’ and yad (the other word for hand), mean “to fill the hand” and is the word for consecration.
Kaph can also be “hollow or bent objects,” such as “the hollow of the thigh” in Genesis 32:25, 32, where Jacob is touched in the hollow of the thigh by a messenger of God, is given a new name, and “(sees) God face to face.” Kaph is both the hollow of the thigh or the palm of the hand and relates to covenant making.
Kaph (caph or kaf) is also the eleventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet and can be seen immediately before Psalm 119:81. In this psalm, all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are displayed. Hebrew letters are pictographs and can be seen as drawings of the things they represent. For example, the second letter (Beth or bet) represents a house. You can see the floor, one wall, and roof of the house in the pictograph letter. The name Bethlehem means “house of bread,” because the Bread of Life was born there. Kaf represents the hand.
The third-most-common translation of kaph is sole, meaning “sole of the foot.” This appears three times in the Book of Joshua:
“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.” (Joshua 1:3)
“And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap.” (Joshua 3:13)
“And it came to pass, when the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord were come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet were lifted up unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordan returned unto their place, and flowed over all his banks, as they did before.” (Joshua 4:18).
These verses are drenched in covenant-making symbolism. The first passage is the Lord’s promise of His gift of the promised land, symbolizing heaven and celestial glory. The other two passages explain the rite of passage into the promised land. The Ark of the Covenant held the two tablets of stone engraved with the Ten Commandments and God’s law, the Golden Pot of Manna, which sustained the Israelites in their journey, and Aaron’s rod that budded, showing the authority of the Holy Priesthood. The lid of the Ark was the mercy seat (kapporeth or atonement seat). It represented the Lord’s presence and the inherent promise that “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (D&C 84:88).
The covenant of baptism is symbolized here. Here we encounter one of those “beth” words. John 1:28 and 1 Nephi 10:9 indicate that Jesus was baptized in Bethabara, meaning “house of the ford,” or “place of crossing.” It was the same spot where the Ark of the Covenant and the soles of the feet crossed the Jordan as they entered the promised land. The symbolism is clear that baptism is the gateway to heaven.
Joshua renews the Abrahamic Covenant with his people in chapter 24. It follows the covenant model, running parallel to King Benjamin’s speech in the Book of Mormon. It’s complete with the full history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the deliverances from Egypt, the cursing of Balaam, and the enemies of the land. It has a stone for a witness, along with the witness of the people themselves, all of which is recorded in the book of the law.
Joshua gives them a choice: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15). Martin Buber (1878-1965), an Austrian-Israeli philosopher and Bible scholar, coined a term called Leitwort, meaning “leading word” in German. He observed that certain key words or phrases are repeated in Biblical texts, and that they convey specific ideas, leading the reader to a specific theme. This concept has been verified by other scholars, who have determined that the phrase, “this day,” indicates a covenant-making day.
Note the covenant making and “this day” in these Book of Mormon passages:
“And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.” (Mosiah 5:7)
“Yea, I say unto you come and fear not, and lay aside every sin, which easily doth beset you, which doth bind you down to destruction, yea, come and go forth, and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism.” (Alma 7:15)
These are just two examples. I have 124 verses tagged in my Gospel Library of “this day” passages relating to covenants.
Joshua 24:25 states, “So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.”
Archeologists have found these “kaph” ladles at temple sites in Megiddo and other areas in Israel. On the underside of the ladle is the back of the hand.
Please see the ladles, Hebrew word kaph, Hebrew letters kaf and beth, and a YouTube video on the letter kaf by a Jewish scholar.
