And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in a hill that pertained to Phinehas his son, which was given him in mount Ephraim (Joshua 24:33).
We rejoice in the brotherhood of man, not in the earthly sense of trying to create a heaven on earth, but in the godly sense in which all of God’s people, regardless of age or gender, are ultimately brothers. Our souls will be re-united with our bodies in a wondrous way; we will neither need nor seek procreation. There will be an intensely spiritual and glorified nature about us. It is unknown as to what exactly we will look like, but in a sense it won’t matter because there will exist such a heart of love between us that external appearances will have no bearing upon extent of our love for each other, in Christ. Sadly this is not the case on earth, even among the very best and blessed of believers upon it. We are but a pale shadow of what we will one day become. Our best life is not now but to come, and it will make this present life pale into nothingness by comparison. Aaron, therefore, as we speak, is dwelling in unspeakably perfect union with his once sons-now brothers, Eleazar and Phinehas. Such a concept would have been unthinkable when they were experiencing their existences on earth.
It is a little hard to pin down the etymology of ‘Aaron’, for it seems not to be purely of Hebraic origin. Nevertheless, it is uniquely given to this first proto-pastor, this under-Shepherd, and comes first in the list of the male names of Scripture. Within it exist links to the concept of ‘mountain’ or ‘hill’; other connotations are ‘light’, ‘agility’, and ‘cheer’. Our hearts are certainly uplifted when they are turned to our Shepherd. There are many hills and mountains for us to traverse and pass, as we each wend our way toward the Promised land. Aaron died honourably, having stumbled horribly with the whole ‘golden calf’ fiasco. When we look back at our own lives, if we are honest we will not be satisfied, but when we look at the way in which the Lord has led us, when we gaze up at our Redeemer, we will then be satisfied indeed, for in Him we are complete. We will be gushing with an effluence of praise and thanksgiving, as the name ‘Eleazar’ suggests, id est it is not we who have helped ourselves, but God who has helped us. We, if souls with faith, will admit that we have been helped every single step of the way.
‘Phinehas’ the name connotes the hardness and resiliency of ‘brass’. Surely this Phinehas was called to do great things for Israel. We live in an age in which speech, or rather ‘wrong’ speech is increasingly criminalised, the word of God becoming increasingly hated and rejected. We need more men of brass, willing to tell the hard truths, reveal the solemn but true realities of damnation through sin, salvation through Christ and only Christ. It is easy to talk of heaven, hard to talk of hell. It will be a welcomed thing to suggest that Jesus can be your Saviour; a hard and a hostile thing if you proclaim that He must also be your Lord, the One to whom you must bow and self-sacrificially serve.
Ephraim, we recall, was the apparently lesser of Joseph’s two sons, who would go on to be greater, more blessed than his older, apparently more eminent brother. Dear soul, if you are still clinging to this world then you will certainly retain its approval and respect. Your best life will be lived now; this world will effectively be your only heaven. Yet you will lose it all at the conclusion of your life! If you seek the true blessing from above, shunning the world’s false narratives, then you will be doubly fruitful – a soul not born once but twice. The second birth is a foretaste of things to come, an irrevocable sign that that fearful and irrevocable second death will not come upon you. Praise God.
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