Bowling was fun last night, but I was out too late and I was really tired all day today. I forgot that in my new place, I need to wake up especially early. I'll have to be more careful in the future.

Someone told me today, "you've been through a lot", and I inexplicably had to choke back tears. I haven't really experienced that as much as maybe I should since all this started happening. I don't think the person I spoke with noticed, but I had to go let it out in the car later.

I was thinking recently about how God owns the firstborn of Israel (Exodus 13:1-2, 11-16). God required that the Israelites redeem their firstborn children who were otherwise dedicated to the Lord. Interestingly, the Bible details the price to redeem all kinds of animals, but I am unable to find a place where it tells the price to redeem a firstborn person. Redemption of persons in general is priced out in Leviticus 27, but that is for a "special vow", which I think doesn't include the common dedication of every firstborn. Nonetheless we do see that the firstborn sons of Israel were, by law, consecrated to the Lord. That includes Jesus Himself in Luke 2:22-24 -- note that the sacrifice of the doves mentioned in that passage was for Mary's purification rather than for Jesus's consecration (see Leviticus 12).

So what is the consecration? Consecration is described in a whole bunch of places in the Bible, and it seems like each place describes a different ceremonial activity for that specific consecration. In some places it's washing someone, in other places it's sprinkling blood or oil on someone, and in other places it involves a sacrifice for the sins of the consecrated individual. It seems to me that consecration is simply the practice of making an otherwise impure thing holy in preparation for that thing to be in the presence of God.

But there's more! God didn't just want the firstborn sons of Israel consecrated to himself. God wanted all the firstborn sons of Israel to be his own. However, as we read in Numbers 3:11-13, God took the whole tribe of Levi for himself in place of the firstborn children of Israel. This selection was a blessing to the Levites, explicitly because of their behavior in Exodus 32:22-29, when they chose to be for the Lord even though all the rest of Israel was against God.

Another interesting thing about this -- the firstborn is not counted in terms of the first child born to some father, but "the first male offspring of every womb" (Exodus 13:15). That means that both, Isaac and Ishmael were firstborn sons, because they were both the first male offspring from their mother's womb. It also means that Joseph was a firstborn son of Jacob. Jacob's position may seem unusual, but remember that the birthright and blessing did originally belong to Esau, and Esau would have received it if he didn't sell his birthright to Jacob. So, the firstborn seems to have been, in a sense, dedicated to God even before the command was given to consecrate them. Likewise, after the ceremonies were removed, we still have a sort of dedication of the firstborn:  Jesus is called the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29), and the early church was called the "firstfruits" of the gospel (James 1:18). That makes David the odd man out, being the youngest brother and yet the only one chosen.

What got me thinking about this was the story of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac. Isaac was a firstborn son, and God commanded that Abraham dedicate Isaac to God. Then, God provided a ram to redeem the son -- a substitution appropriate for consecration and/or redemption. The question on my mind, then, since Isaac was not asked to be sacrificed on account of some sin recorded in the Bible, is whether Isaac's ram was a regular substitutionary sacrifice in the way that we normally think of it -- a type of Christ's sacrifice on our behalf -- or whether that ram was actually a price for the redemption of a firstborn son otherwise dedicated to God.

I'm pretty tired, though, so I might be making some serious errors here, and I'm really not sure what the implications of that kind of speculation could be.... but I'm going to go ahead and post it, because  I'm confident it isn't heretical, and I intend to investigate the matter more later.

"Its people are like grasshoppers."