God used Elisheva and Miriam, names for the two women God would use to help bring the Aaronic priesthood and the Mosaic Covenant to earth through Moses and Aaron. This Covenant was based on the commandments of God given to both Israel and the nations at Mount Sinai. The Mosaic Covenant was ratified with the blood of calves and goats. Exodus 24:8 Elisheva from Judah had married Aaron from Levi, and they had four sons. Miriam was the older sister of both Moses and Aaron from the tribe of Levi.
Then when Israel failed to keep and had broken the Mosaic Covenant through the Aaronic priesthood, God used these same two women’s names, Elisheva and Miriam, announcing that He would make a New Covenant! God did this out of His great Love for all of His children of both Israel and also the nations. He saw the many reasons why they could never keep the Mosaic Covenant with its external Torah. So this next time God would put His Holy Spirit with the Torah on the inside of every person, take out the orphan spirit from them and give them a new Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit where they could cry ‘Abba Father’ & come into real sonship with God. God’s New Covenant would never again be broken!
In the beginning days before the New Covenant then Elisheva from the Zadokite high priest family of Aaron miraculously birthed Yochanan, the messenger of the LORD (Malachi 3:1), the one that came in the spirit and power of Eliyahu (Luke 1:17), the mystery last Zadokite high priest of Israel, as God’s witness, to witness both the beginning of Yeshua’s earthly ministry, and also 40 days later to announce Yeshua, as the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world! John 1:29
The Torah would soon be put inside each believer, in their heart. And each believer would be brought into God’s Priesthood, the Melchi Zedek Priesthood (my King of Righteousness) on the earth. God’s New Covenant would be ratified with divine Blood, through the death of God’s only begotten Son, Yeshua. The Eternal Blood of the Son of Man and the Son of God, born from the virgin Miriam, coming from the family of king David, from the tribe of Judah through the virgin Miriam’s father, and also from the family of the Zadokite high priest family of Aaron, through virgin Miriam’s mother. Yeshua was never an Aaronic priest because He had no biological earthly father. But Yeshua’s Blood would be the Atoning Blood sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.
Leviticus 17:11, “For the Life of the flesh is in the Blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make Atonement for your souls; for it is the Blood (of the Messiah Yeshua) that makes Atonement for the soul.”
This New Covenant would also make the Aaronic priesthood obsolete … Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, “A New Covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 7:12 For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the Torah.
The Holy Spirit would now be able to place the Torah within the heart of each ‘born again’ believer, so the Torah could be kept.
God had prophesied and announced all of this prior, back in Genesis in the Garden of Eden to Adam, and Eve, and the serpent.
Genesis 3:14, 15, So the LORD God said to the serpent, …
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed. He (Yeshua) shall bruise your head (death), and you (Satan) shall bruise His heel (on the cross)!”
Yeshua told us in John 12:32 “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all peoples to Myself!”
It is very interesting to note that in the formation of the Aaronic priesthood on earth, that God used two families. He used Aaron from the tribe of Levi who had married Elisheva from the tribe of Judah. God would later birth the Aaronic priesthood through this couple. Aaron, Moses’s older brother, who was first Moses’s prophet before Pharoah, before later becoming the Aaronic high priest. And Miriam was their older sister.
Elisheva’s brother was named Nahshon, the head of the tribe of Judah. Aaron and Elisheva had four sons, coming from the two tribes of Levi and Judah. Two of their four sons died after offering profane fire before God. Eleazar and Ithamar, their other two sons, continued on as Aaronic priests. High priest Eleazar’s family line ran to high priest Zadok in the days of king David (cousins), and priest Ithamar’s line ran on to priest Abiathar also in the days of king David, of whom priest Eli was from Ithamar’s family line. God had told priest Eli that because of the sins of his two sons, that Eli’s priest family line would be stopped forever.
The Zadokite high priest family line would run to high priest Yehoshua, and then on to virgin Miriam’s mother. And also king David’s family line would run on to virgin Miriam’s father. Then through intermarriage Miriam was born with ‘the Seed’ from Eve.
We don’t know the names of the women in Miriam mother’s family line, for the genealogy of the women was never recorded.
God announced through His prophet Jeremiah that He would be making a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah in Jeremiah 31:31-34, not like His covenant which He had made with their fathers when He brought them out of Egypt, which covenant they had broken. In this New Covenant the Torah would be placed into our hearts so that it could be kept and not broken.
Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 31:32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband (ba’al) to them, says the LORD. 31:33 But this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My Torah in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 31:34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Ezekiel 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 36:27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
Also this New Covenant meant that a new Priesthood would be formed on earth, and also a new blood sacrifice would be needed to ratify this New Covenant. What kind of a blood sacrifice would be required which would provide for the Torah to be put inside the heart of each person, with the Holy Spirit of God also being put within each person? That Blood Sacrifice had been prophesied to be done by God’s Messiah, the promised Messiah of Israel, through His death and His Resurrection (Isaiah 53:4, 5), but only after He had placed His Blood on the Mercy Seat in Heaven.
This New Covenant meant a new Priesthood coming from God to be formed on the earth, which would be totally different from the Aaronic priesthood which had been formed by God using His servant Moses through Aaron and Elisheva’s four sons.
Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, “A New Covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
We then see God moving in that direction (Ezekiel 44:6-14), by removing all the Aaronic priest families from His presence, except for only one priest family. All other Aaronic priest families were told by God that they would never again be allowed to come into God’s presence, or ever again serve before God by offering an animal blood sacrifices. They would only be allowed to minister to people. Read Ezekiel 44:15, 16. God said that only the sons of high priest Zadok would be the only Aaronic priest family that God would ever again allow to minister before Him, to come into His presence, and to do a blood sacrifice which God would honor.
God had also prophesied in three different Scripture places that the Messiah, Tzemach would be born coming from this Zadokite high priest family besides being born from the family of king David. See Jeremiah 23:5, 6; Jeremiah 33:17, 18; Zechariah 3:1-9; and Zechariah 6:11-13.
From the days of king David and king Solomon, around 1000 B.C., for 840 years the Zadokite priests were always the Aaronic high priests both when in the Jerusalem Temple and when in exile. But around 165 B.C., the Maccabees threw out the Zadokite high priest and also all the other Zadokite priests, who then went into hiding, perhaps out at Kumran. So just how would God keep His promises to the Zadokite priests for the Messiah to be born to earth from this Zadokite high priest family?
God answered this question with the very first words and with the opening scene of the whole New Covenant, in Luke 1:5, 6 …
Elisheva would birth God’s messenger Yochanan, who would Prepare the Way of the Lord. And also her close relative Miriam would birth Yeshua, the Son of God and the Savior of the world! He would bring the New Covenant and also the Melchi Zedek Priesthood to earth through His death and Resurrection and with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on 120 of Yeshua’s disciples in that Upper Room on Shavuot.
Luke 1:5 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain (Aaronic) priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisheva. 1:6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. 1:7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.
Only one Aaronic priest family of Aaron was called righteous, the high priest family of Zadok, which meant ‘righteous’. The Zadokite high priest family was the only Aaronic priest family, by God’s Word, allowed to come before God. Ezekiel 44:15, 16;
When the angel Gabriel told the virgin Miriam that she will have Yeshua, the Son of God as her child, Gabriel then told her about her un-conceived Child Yeshua’s inheritance first from Miriam’s father’s family. That Yeshua would reign on the throne of His father David and reign over the House of Jacob forever. And then also of Miriam’s relative or ‘karov’ (‘close relative’ in Hebrew) Elisheva, of the daughters of Aaron. Luke 1:36, 6; God had told us that priest Zechariah and his wife Elisheva were from the Zadokite high priest family, the same family as Miriam, from which the Messiah was to be born. For Yeshua is always from the two families of His virgin mother. Also Yeshua could never be an Aaronic priest for He had no biological earthly father.
When Zechariah was ministering in the Jerusalem Temple, God sent His angel Gabriel to speak with him. This proved Zechariah was a son from the Zadok high priest family. But also the fact that angel Gabriel spoke to Zechariah at the Altar of Incense proved that this Aaronic priest Zechariah, after 165 years of Temple priesthood corruption by the Maccabees, was actually the real true mystery Zadokite high priest, (Ezekiel 44:15,16), as would be His yet un-conceived son, who had to be named Yochanan,
to come from the womb of Elisheva, who was also barren and too old to conceive a child. Her son would be the Messenger of the LORD (Malachi 3:1), and the next mystery Zadokite high priest! Isaiah 40:3-5, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the Way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; 40:5 The Glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” Yochanan would also be coming in the spirit and power of Eliyahu (Luke 1:17).
But just why did their un-conceived and unborn child have to be named Yochanan? Was Yochanan the name of the last or one of the last Zadok high priests, just before the Maccabees threw out the Zadokite high priest and all the other Zadokite priests.
[This was sure hinted at in Art Scroll Publication, Yoma Edition, Vol 1, at the end of Chapter 4. Kohanim Gedolim of 2nd Temple.
‘The Gemara notes only four righteous Kohanim Gedolim of the Second Temple, and one was Yochanan the Kohen Gadol.
‘It seems generally agreed that Yochanan the Kohen Gadol lived just before of during the Hasmonean era …’]
But then in the Jewish Virtual Library and in Wikipedia this information is very different. Here the last Zadokite high priest’s name was Jason, and he was corrupt. But his older brother, Onias III, the prior Zadokite high priest was pious. His Hebrew name, ‘Chonyour (חוניר)’, which means ‘his graciousness’, where as Yochanan means ‘God is gracious’, with both names coming from the same Hebrew root word. Their Zadokite high priest father was called Simeon the Just, the Aaronic high priest responsible for Alexander the Great not destroying Jerusalem in his conquests.
Whichever information was the truth, the name Yochanan pointed Zechariah to the time of the last Zadokite high priests, to just before the Maccabees had kicked out the Zadok high priest and all the Zadokite priests from the Jerusalem Temple in 165 B.C.
God had perfectly arranged everything that would be happening in both the life of His Son Yeshua and in Yeshua’s messenger.
Miriam, from the family of king David of the tribe of Judah, in Luke 1:28-37, was most likely the niece of Elisheva of the Zadokite high priest family of Aaron of the tribe of Levi. Elisheva’s miracle born son Yochanan would go before Yeshua to Prepare the Way of the Lord, coming in the spirit and power of Eliyahu, by turning the hearts of the father’s to the children, and also the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, as prophesied by God in both Malachi 4:6 and also by the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:17.
At age 30, Yochanan the prophet had been baptizing for about six months in the Jordan River, when Yeshua, the Son of God, came to Yochanan to begin His earthly ministry with His mikveh.
His mikveh had to be witnessed by God’s prophet Yochanan, the one in the highest order of true Aaronic high priest authority in all of Israel, God’s true mystery Zadokite high priest of Israel. There the Holy Spirit was seen coming down on Yeshua, and there Yeshua’s Father spoke to Him, “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!”
But I also believe that something else may have happened out there at the Jordan River between these two cousins. Could that have been the passing of the mantle of the Aaronic priesthood from Yochanan, the last Zadokite high priest of Israel, into Yeshua, the Son of God, Melchi Zedek, (King of Righteousness) the High Priest of Heaven?
God had prophesied that the Aaronic priesthood would last forever in eight different places in the Torah and the Tanakh (Old Covenant)! Exodus 29:9; Exodus 40:13-15; Numbers 10:8; Numbers 25:11-13; Deuteronomy 18:1,2,5; 1st Chronicles 23:13; Jeremiah 33:18, 20-22; Malachi 2:4; and Malachi 48:10, 11.
Could that have been what also happened out there that day at the Jordan River?
Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 1:16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 1:17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 1:18 And He is the head of the Body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. 1:19 For it pleased His Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 1:20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the Blood of His cross. Yeshua, the Son of Man and the Son of God, whose heavenly title is Melchi Zedek (my King of Righteousness!)
For this was the assignment of Yochanan (‘God is gracious’), the last Zadokite high priest of Israel … as God had arranged all these first steps, which would eventually lead to God establishing the New Covenant and the Melchi Zedek Priesthood on the earth.
Just listen to the words of Yochanan and Yeshua, just before Yeshua’s mikven, witnessed by his cousin Yochanan …
Matthew 3:13 Then Yeshua came from Galilee to Yochanan at the Jordan to be baptized by him. 3:14 And Yochanan tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” 3:15 But 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. 3:16 When He had been baptized, Yeshua came up immediately from the water; and behold, the Heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. 3:17 And suddenly a voice came from Heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” All this was being witnessed by Yochanan, God’s prophet, and the mystery Zadokie high priest of Israel.
All this was leading up to the completion of the works of the last true Zadokite high priest of Aaron who like Yeshua, was preparing the Way for God, and the coming of Heaven to earth.
Yochanan’s important assignment from God, as the last Zadokite high priest of Israel, as the one in the highest order of true spirituality authority in Israel, was to witness, and officially acknowledge Yeshua, God’s only begotten Son, the High Priest of Heaven, the One who would be bringing the New Covenant and also the Melchi Zedek Priesthood of Heaven to the earth.
Then 40 days later Yochanan spoke the following words, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” John 1:29
And shortly afterwards Yochanan the baptizer was arrested by Herod, and soon after he was also murdered, beheaded by Herod.
Yochanan was the last of the Zadokite high priests, and in a very true sense he would be the end of God’s Zadokite high priests from Aaron on this earth … until the Millennial Kingdom!
Read Ezekiel 48:10, 11.
Three ½ years later Yeshua, as the Lamb of God would give His life for both mankind and for redeeming the earth. Yeshua’s Eternal Blood Sacrifice would be totally honored by His Father in Heaven simply because Yeshua, as the High Priest of Heaven was born from this Zadokite high priest family through His virgin mother Miriam’s mother.
But only after Yeshua had first gone to Heaven and applied His shed Blood on the Mercy Seat in Heaven could His Father God then send the Holy Spirit to baptize those first 120 disciples of Yeshua in that Upper Room in Jerusalem on Shavuot, so that they could be Saved, ‘born again’ into God their Father by the Spirit of God, and filled with the Holy Spirit, and also brought into God’s Eternal Priesthood, Heaven’s Melchi Zedek Priesthood, thus ratifying the New Covenant, bringing it into the earth in them. Then these 120 disciples were Saved, no longer orphans!
Yeshua, as our King and High Priest of Heaven, Melchi Zedek (my King of Righteousness), carried in His Blood the physical fulfillment of the line of the Zadokite high priests, along with the physical fulfillment of the line of kings from king David. But His Blood also carried in it God’s contribution of Eternal Life, making all true believers into a divine new Creation, the One New Man!
When the New Covenant was ratified with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on those first 120 disciples, then they all were ‘born again’ by the Holy Spirit, who connected their dead spirit’s into God, the Holy Spirit, so that then their Spirit’s had become Alive with the Spirit of the Living God.
So what has happened to the Eternal Blood of Yeshua?
This Eternal Blood of Yeshua is forever one with the Holy Spirit, within the Spirit of every Saved and ‘born again’ believer.
Here is the Scripture that verifies this Truth, for this is also just how God ratified the New Covenant with the Blood of Yeshua.
Hebrews 9:14 … how much more shall the Blood of the Messiah, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 9:15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the Eternal Inheritance.
Also what has happened to the blood of the Zadokite high priests?
Every ‘born again’ believer now carries in their Spirit, never separated from the Holy Spirit, the Blood of Yeshua, which also contains the blood of the sons of the Zadokite priesthood. That Blood is what Yeshua used in order to ratify the New Covenant through all true believers in Yeshua, both those who are now alive on earth and also those who are in Heaven.
The Aaronic priesthood, from the days of the Maccabees until the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., was corrupted, in violation to the Word of God given only to the Zadokite priesthood regarding all the animal blood sacrifices.
Only the Aaronic priests who were from the sons of Zadok were allowed to perform these animal sacrifices before God. But all the Zadokite priests had been thrown out of the Jerusalem Temple.
Also almost 2000 years ago, in 70 A.D., when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans, so were all the Kohanim records of the Aaronic priests. Therefore today nobody except God really knows who is from the family of Zadokite high priests.
And so today history is about to be repeated again, when the Israeli Orthodox religious Jews re-form their Aaronic priesthood and begin building their temple on Mount Zion hill, in order to do their animal blood sacrifices to the God of Israel. Without the Zadokite priests of Aaron doing these animal blood sacrifices, this will once again all be corrupted animal blood sacrifices and again be in total violation of the Word of God given only to the sons of Zadok, as found in Ezekiel 44:6-14 and Ezekiel 44:15, 16, and in Ezekiel 43:18, 19; and in Ezekiel 42:13; 45:4; and 48:10, 11.
This re-formed Aaronic priesthood with their animal blood sacrifices therefore cannot ever be honored by God’s Word.
Ezekiel 44:6 “Now say to the rebellious, to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “O house of Israel, let Us have no more of all your abominations. 44:7 When you brought in foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in My sanctuary to defile it, My house, and when you offered My food, the fat and the blood, then they broke My covenant because of all your abominations. 44:8 And you have not kept charge of My holy things, but you have set others to keep charge of My sanctuary for you.” 44:9 Thus says the Lord GOD, “No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart or uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter My sanctuary, including any foreigner who is among the children of Israel. 44:10 “And the Levites who went far from Me, when Israel went astray, who strayed away from Me after their idols, they shall bear their iniquity. 44:11 Yet they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, as gatekeepers of the house and ministers of the house; they shall slay the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before them to minister to them. 44:12 Because they ministered to them before their idols and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore I have raised My hand in an oath against them,” says the Lord GOD, “that they shall bear their iniquity. 44:13 And they shall not come near Me to minister to Me as priest, nor come near any of My holy things, nor into the Most Holy Place; but they shall bear their shame and their abominations which they have committed. 44:14 Nevertheless I will make them keep charge of the temple, for all its work, and for all that has to be done in it.”
Ezekiel 44:15 “But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My Sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood,” says the Lord GOD. 44:16 “They shall enter My Sanctuary, and they shall come near My table to minister to Me, and they shall keep My charge.” [Read all the places regarding Zadokite priests: Ezekiel 40:46; Eze 42:13; Eze 43:18,19; Eze 45:4; Eze 48:10,11.]
Yeshua also told us something very important about the last Zadokite high priest, Yochanan the baptizer, that today pertains to all true believers in Yeshua …
Matthew 11:11 “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than Yochanan the baptizer; but he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he!”
Luke 7:28 “For I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than Yochanan the baptizer; but he who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he!”
He who is ‘the least’ in the Kingdom of God is now in the New Covenant! Yeshua’s believers belongs to God’s Priesthood, and not to the Aaronic priesthood. They belong to the Melchi Zedek Priesthood of Heaven, which is Alive and functioning through the Holy Spirit of God in all the believers here on the earth.
John 17:3 “And this is Eternal Life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Yeshua the Messiah whom You have sent.”
Yeshua said in John 12:32 “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all peoples to Myself!”
Salvation and Eternal Life are free gifts from God!
But you must ask God for them just by accepting God’s Son Yeshua as your Lord and Savior. He paid the ultimate price, by dying in your place on the Cross for all of your sins, and by taking all of your sins upon Himself.
Whether you are one of the most religious Orthodox Jews or simply a Jew who has never believed in the God of Israel, if you do not personally know Yeshua, King and High Priest of Heaven, your Creator, as your own personal Savior then say the following prayer, meaning it with all of your heart. Then you will be able to know Him and you will be saved, and also when you die, you can be assured that you will be going to Heaven. You will experience the Love of God from Yeshua the God of Love!
Say this Salvation Prayer:
Dear Lord Yeshua, I ask You to be my Lord and Savior, my Messiah! I confess that I am a sinner, and that I have broken Your commandments and Your laws. I need you as my Savior. I repent to You for all of my sins. Please forgive me of all my sins, and please come and live in my heart. Fill me with Your love and Your forgiveness, and with Your Holy Spirit! Amen.