The Kohen Gadol - High Priest

The Kohen Gadol

The Letter To The Messianic Jews (called Ivrit) paints a spiritual picture of Yeshua as our Kohen Gadol.

Commandment 331
Sh’mot 30:17-19
    ¹⁷HASHEM spoke to Moses, saying: ¹⁸“You shall make a copper Laver and its base of copper, for washing; place it between the Tent of Meeting and the Altar, and put water there. ¹⁹From it, Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands together with their feet.”
Ur 7:37:38
³⁷And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Yeshua sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil,³⁸and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.

Commandment 25
Sh’mot 27:21
²¹In the Tent of meeting, outside the Partition that is near the Testimonial-tablets, Aaron and his sons shall arrange it from evening until morning, before HASHEM , an eternal decree for their generations, from the Children of Israel.

Mattit’yahu 5:14-16
¹⁴You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.¹⁵Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.¹⁶Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Commandment 28
Sh’mot 30:7
⁷Upon it shall Aaron bring the spice of incense up in smoke, every morning, when he cleans the lamps he shall bring it up in smoke.

Ephesians 5:2
²And walk in love, as Messiah also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

Commandment 376
Vayikra 6:10(17)
¹⁰⁽¹⁷⁾It shall not be baked leavened, I have presented it as their share from My Eshayah-Offering; it is most holy, like the Chatat-Offering and like the Asham-Offering.

Ivrit 10:10-12
¹⁰By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Yeshua Ha'Mashiach. once for all. ¹¹And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹²But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God,

Commandment 316
Vayikra 21:8
     ⁸You shall sanctify him, for he offers the food of your God; he shall remain holy to you, for holy am I, HASHEM , Who sanctifies you.

Mattit’yahu 3:14-15
¹⁴And John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” ¹⁵But Yeshua answered and said to him, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him.

Commandment 318
Sh’mot 28:2
²You shall make vestments of sanctity for Aaron your brother, for glory and splendor.

Mattit’yahu 14:35-36
³⁵And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, brought to Him all who were sick,³⁶and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well.

Commandment 590
Vayikra 21:1-3
     ¹HASHEM said to Moses, “Say to the Kohen, the sons of Aaron, and tell them: ‘Each of you shall not contaminate himself to a [dead] person among the people,

Commandment 587²except for the relative who is closest to him, to his mother and to his father, to his son, to his daughter, and to his brother;³and to his virgin sister who is close to him, who has not been wed to a man; to her shall he contaminate himself.

Mattit’yahu 12:48-50⁴⁸But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” ⁴⁹And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! ⁵⁰For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”

Commandment 171Vayikra 21:13
¹³He shall marry a woman in her virginity.

Yochanan 3:29
²⁹He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.

The prime rule for Spiritualizing is that the Scriptures are both Spiritual and Physical. In other words, for every Spiritual passage, it has a physical application as well. The Midrash employed by Sha'ul in Messianic Jews shows Yeshua's sacrifice in a peculiar sense:

Mattit’yahu 20:28
²⁸just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

And again,

Yochanan 10:17-18
¹⁷Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.¹⁸No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.

This shows us the primary function of the Kohein Gadol — the offering of sacrifices. And what sacrifice can have more lasting impact than Messiah ben Joseph? (It is theorized in the Talmud that if Yisra'el was worthy, Messiah ben David would come — this is why the crowds called Yeshua Messiah ben David. But He did not respond. Because the other half of the theory was that if Yisra'el was not worthy, they would get the suffering servant, Messiah ben Joseph. What they failed to do was take the hypothesis a step further and realize that Israel's worthiness would come through the atonement of Messiah ben Joseph, to enable the coming of Messiah ben David. They also did not realize that they would be the same man!). But the Kohen had other functions and roles, and to our surprise, we find parallels to Yeshua in all of them! Such as the resolving of debates on the Torah Mattit’yahu 5-7,

Mark 14:48-49
⁴⁸Then Yeshua answered and said to them, “Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take Me?⁴⁹I was daily with you in the Temple teaching, and you did not seize Me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.

This role is also alluded to in Talmud, in the theorizing that when Messiah came, he would solve many disputes in the Torah and their application. We find this in the Sermon on the Mount as well!

Vayikra 21:10
¹⁰The Kohen who is exalted above his brethren — upon whose head the anointment oil has been poured or who has been inaugurated to don the vestments — shall not leave his head unshorn and shall not rend his garments.
Mark 14:63
⁶³Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses?”

Caiaphas obviously WAS NOT the true Kohen of Yisra'el!

B’midbar 35:25
²⁵The assembly shall rescue the killer from the hand of the avenger of the blood, and the assembly shall return him to his city of refuge where he had fled; he shall dwell in it until the death of the Kohen Gadol, whom one had anointed with the sacred oil.

Now, if that doesn't show a Messianic application...
The Congregation was to anoint the Kohen with oil, as part of the consecration. We see two references to Yeshua being anointed:

Ur 7:36-38
³⁶Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat.³⁷And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Yeshua sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil,³⁸and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.

and

Mattit’yahu 2:11
¹¹And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, levonah, and myrrh.

Did this anointing make Yeshua the Messiah, the anointed one of God? Not at all. Rather, it was the desire of both the Gentiles (the Iranian Magoi) and the Jews (The woman at Shim'on's) to honor this commandment.

B’midbar 35:26-28
²⁶But if the killer will ever leave the border of his city of refuge to which he had fled,²⁷and the avenger of the blood shall find him outside of the border of his city of refuge, and the avenger of the blood will kill the killer — he has no blood-guilt.²⁸For he must dwell in his city of refuge until the death of the Kohen Gadol, and after the death of the Kohen Gadol the killer shall return to the land of his possession

It appears the death of the Kohen Gadol in some way was a tavneet (type) of atonement. For some reason all wrongs were considered cancelled by the death of the Kohen Gadol. The fulfillment spoken of in Scripture shows that Yeshua is the perfect example of such a prophecy; that He has shown by his very kapporah how such scriptures were an empowerment. This is what Ivrit means when discussing the inability of the sacrifices/Kohen. They were only the Shadows of the coming enablement. This is why an old man dying in a bed shows he is not Mashiach, no matter how good or kindly or wise; the Mashiach must indeed keep/guard/bring to pass all scripture, as only Yeshua has! However, we even find Yeshua in types of the Kohen Gadol in the Haftorah, as well!

M’lakhim Shanee 22:3-4
     ³It happened in the eighteenth year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan son of Azaliah son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the Temple of HASHEM , saying: ^4“Go up to Hilkiah the Kohen, and [tell him] that he should collect all the money that is brought to the Temple of HASHEM , which the gatekeepers have collected from the people.^”
M’lakhim Shanee 22:8
     ⁸Hilkiah, the Kohen, said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found a Scroll of the Torah in the Temple of HASHEM .” Hilkiah gave the Scroll to Shaphan, and he read it.

Ur 4:14-16
¹⁴Then Yeshua returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.¹⁵And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. ¹⁶So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.

M’lakhim Shanee 23:4
     ⁴The king then instructed Hilkiah the Kohen, the Kohen'im of the second rank, and the gatekeepers to remove from the Temple of HASHEM all the articles that had been mad for the Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of the heavens. He had them burned outside Jerusalem, in the plains of Kidron, and their ashes carried away to Beth-el.

Mark 5:11-13
¹¹Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. ¹²So all the demons begged Him, saying, “Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.” ¹³And at once Yeshua gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.

Ivrit 10:19-25
¹⁹Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Yeshua, ²⁰by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, ²¹and having a High Priest over the house of God, ²²let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, ²⁵not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

Cha’zon 22:20-21
²⁰He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming quickly.” Amen. Even so, come, Adon Yeshua! ²¹The grace of our Adon Yeshua Ha'Mashiach be with you all. Amen.

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