Naked Bible Podcast Episode 436: The Epistle of Jude, Part 5
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the earth, but your sepulcher is from the rising to the setting of the sun, and from
the South to the limits of the North, the whole world is your sepulcher.
That’s the end of the section. So in the Testament of Moses, Joshua is
concerned about where Moses’ body is ending up. Again, it’s not marked in the
Old Testament. He’s just on this other side. He says,
What place will receive you or where will be the marker of her sepulcher? Or who
as a man will dare to move your body from place to place?
So apparently there was this sense of Moses’ body needing to be moved at
some point. They need to find it and move it. Well, where would they move it?
Well, of course they would move it to Yahweh’s territory where it properly
belongs. So I think Joshua, again, is upset as Moses dies and is not buried with
his fathers or among his own people in the land. That thought would lead to,
“Well, if he’s in this other bad place…” (this other unfavorable cosmic
geographical location) “…then the lord of the dead is going to want to keep the
body of Moses in his own turf, robbing Moses of salvation, rest, or afterlife
deliverance from the realm of the dead.” And of course, in later tradition in the
Second Temple Period (going on riffing from the book of Daniel)... If you believe
Daniel was written late, that’s in the Second Temple Period. If you believe it was
written earlier, it’s still precedent. But Michael had charge over God’s covenantal
claim, God’s turf, the Lord’s portion: Israel, Canaan. Michael is charged,
therefore, with contending for Moses’ body to remove it to Yahweh’s domain, for
he is the guardian of Yahweh’s domain. So therefore, logically, if you’re thinking
these thoughts, it would be Michael versus Satan for Moses’ body.
So what is Jude’s point in all this? Why bring it up? Again, I think the tradition is
understandable—it’s parsable—if you’re looking at it from the perspective of
cosmic geography instead of Zechariah 3. But again, what’s Jude’s point? I think
it’s that when contending with the devil, Michael refused to rebuke the devil
personally. I think this is what Jude wants his readers to see because he’s talking
about the false teachers and how they blaspheme the glorious ones. Then he
brings up the example of Michael and says, “Look, even Michael didn’t do this.”
Then he refers to the tradition of Michael contending with Satan over the body of
Moses.
So when contending with the devil, Michael refused to rebuke the devil
personally. He would not utter a word against one of the glorious ones, thereby
committing blasphemy, because the devil is still a member of the divine council in
the sense that he is an elohim. He’s one of these created beings. Now, he’s no
longer in God’s employ; he’s in a state of rebellion against God. But he’s still an
elohim. I mean, you could say (to be technically accurate here) all spiritual beings
are elohim. Again, if you’ve read my work, if you’ve read Unseen Realm, if you’ve
listened to me often enough, you know this is familiar territory to you. But he’s