Second Exodus

The Catholic Church as Eternal Israel

Finding Deuteronomy


Some time after Moses wrote the Torah on five parchment scrolls, the Book of Deuteronomy was lost. The centuries passed, and God’s people Israel did the best they could using the remaining four books of the Torah that they had. In Moses’ time, God had called for a portable Tabernacle, a place where God could meet with his people Israel. The Tabernacle was portable, so Israelites were free to set up altars and sacrifice to God wherever they were at the time.

Then came the time of King Solomon, and God led him to build a magnificent Temple at an exact location in Jerusalem. The Temple began as the headquarters for Israel’s worship, but the animal sacrifices called for in the Torah, mainly in the books of Leviticus and Numbers, could be done anywhere. Then, in the time of King Josiah, his high priest Hilkiah discovered the original Book of Deuteronomy.

The Book of Chronicles tells us, “Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given through Moses” 2 Chron 34:14. In the original Hebrew, et sefer torat YHWH beyad Moshe. This original Hebrew shows us that it is Moses’ original scroll. Et is “the,” not just any but the one. Sefer is a sofer’s hand written scroll. Torat is the possessive form of torah; followed by YHWH it means God’s Torah. Be means “in.” Yad is “hand.” Beyad moshe means “in the hand of Moses,” or more colloquially, “hand written by Moses.”

Josiah and Hilkiah were reading the Book of Deuteronomy when they saw this passage:
  • “You shall seek the place which the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there; thither you shall go, and thither you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the offering that you present, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herd and of your flock” Deut 12:5-6.
Josiah and Hilkiah knew that God had chosen a place to make his habitation: The Temple in Jerusalem. No longer could Jews celebrate the Passover wherever they lived. From that day on God required every able-bodied Jewish father in the world to travel from wherever he lived to Jerusalem and make his obligatory sacrifices there in the Temple. He could no longer do the sacrifice himself. Now he had to bring it to a priest who would sacrifice the lamb for him.

God had confined all sacrifices to the Temple, and then allowed the Temple to be destroyed. But he had also commanded that the Passover would be an ordinance forever. The Passover sacrifice must have continued in some form. Of course, it did, as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, when the Lamb of God served as both priest and victim. There was only one sacrifice, the Final Sacrifice, re-presented every day on the altars of Catholic cathedrals, parish churches and monasteries all over the world.