The Rabbi
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:29 NASB
My yoke – Western readers of the gospels tend to interpret the teachings of Yeshua as if he were a Sunday school instructor or a pulpit preacher. That’s understandable since it is the cultural heritage of the West. But it doesn’t fit any of the historical and cultural situations of Yeshua in the first century. Yeshua teaches like a rabbi because he was considered a rabbi. Therefore, in order to understand what he is saying, we need to read his remarks as rabbinic, not as if they were Christian exegesis. When we read this verse, we need to consider how the audience would have responded to “yoke,” not how we have typically understood it.
Most Westerners read this verse as if “Jesus” is talking about freedom. They consider the yoke of the Messiah to be the symbolic expression of the freedom they will have when their sins are forgiven. Thanks to Luther and others, they think of “yoke” as the “Law,” and they imagine that Yeshua is removing that horrible burden from them so that they can be set free from sin and death. Unfortunately, this is not what Yeshua’s audience heard.
Marc Turnage notes, “His ‘yoke’ refers to His oral Torah, His teachings.”[1] Perhaps this should have been obvious. I suspect it wasn’t. Yeshua is a rabbinic teacher. His commentary on the Torah of Moses is the authorized explanation for his disciples. In other words, like all rabbis of the first century, he provided explanation, elaboration and amplification of the basic Torah of Moses so that it could be executed in the daily life of the first century. His teachings are the final authority for those who followed him. He told his followers what Moses meant for them. He did not remove their obligation to the Torah of Moses. He explained it.
It’s incredibly difficult to read the text without the accumulated centuries of theological bias, but we must make the effort. Why? Why isn’t it sufficient to simply read the Bible as if the words were directed to us? The answer is, hopefully, obvious. While God may direct our thoughts according to our understanding of the text, the meaning of the author and the understanding of the original audience is what God communicated in His word. Without knowing that, we can read the text any way we want, as has clearly been the case in the history of biblical interpretation. On a less technical level, it comes down to this. If you really want to know what Yeshua wants you to know, you must know it according to the meanings of the words he used when he used them. “Yoke” means “oral teaching” to this audience. It means that we cannot set aside the idea of obligation to governing practice. Yeshua did not endorse Luther. He opposed Luther. There are always standards for behavior and Yeshua’s yoke is the summation of his standards. You and I are expected to follow them if we claim to be his disciples.
Topical Index: yoke, rabbi, teaching, freedom, Matthew 11:29
[1] Marc Turnage, Windows into the Bible, p. 266.
The problem with Luther is not that he went, but that he did not go far enough. The Catholic church explains it best when it says that the Protestants are still its true daughters because they did not get all the way out from under its authority; namely its authority when it comes to tradition, as established fully by the Council of Trent. Too bad, for when we start adding tradition, as in the tradition that the Church changed the Law (and uses that change to ‘prove’ its authority!) from Sabbath to Sunday, we automatically have to drop the Scripture. Witness this quote from a writer at Scholacticus.wordpress who writes:
Well, color me a protestant, but it seem to me that the way infallibility and teaching authority works in the catholic church would incline aspiring young priests to read the Bible as a big handbook of prooftexts that just confirm what the magisterium infallibly teaches. I’m not trying to offend here–God knows I spent my teenage years reading the Bible as a handbook full of proof texts for a magisterium much less qualified than the catholic one–my point is merely that there is a very, very good reason that catholic laity didn’t read much of the Bible. That was the priest’s job. And there’s a good reason the priests didn’t exegete much of the Bible–the magisterium’s already done that authoritatively.
The problem wasn’t the protest: the problem was that the protest wasn’t enough of one, and we have been suffering ever since.
Amain Skip, incredibly well spoken!
Thanks for the clarification of what yah YOKE is I always thought it to be he taking away our sins. Very much appreciated
I thought a yoke was to guide and direct… if this be true then Jesus would be saying learn to accept what truly guides us is when we be meek and humble. He be leading through example teaching others to duplicate what he is doing rather than be obedient to his teachings. And this is true for everyone. We truly only grow when we help others for that is God’s compensation for us seeking the truth…
My. 2c.
This is the best articles that I have ever read. Well said sir, well said!!!! They key is spirituality and humbleness, unfortunately the majority of the population is selfish. They reject the truth because it would disrupt their everyday lives, they would realize that He came to enforce His word thereby admonishing their wicked flesh. People want a god of convenience.