In Numbers 11 Moses is struggling under the load of leadership. So God tells him to gather seventy elders to help bear the burden. The Spirit that rests upon Moses is shared with them, and they begin to prophesy. But then something strange happens. Two of the appointed elders, Eldad and Medad, do not go out to the tent of meeting. They remain in the camp. Still, the Spirit falls upon them, and they begin to prophesy there.
This prophesying in the camp bothers Joshua. It appears to him to be a crisis of authority, prophecy occurring in an unauthorized zone, outside the command structure and chains of authority. So he cries out: “Moses, my lord, stop them!”
Joshua seems concerned about renegade, unsupervised prophecy. Moses, by contrast, is unconcerned. His view is wider, more generous, more liberal: “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”
Take note of this pattern. From the very start, the Holy Spirit has this odd habit of showing up in unauthorized zones, creating crises of authority.
This pattern expands in the vision of Joel 2. Moses prayed for a day when the Spirit would be poured out upon “all the Lord’s people.” But Joel takes this in an unexpected and expansive. The Spirit will be poured out not just upon Israel, but upon “all flesh.”
And this outpouring, like in Numbers 11, falls in unauthorized zones, upon groups excluded from power and authority: the young, women, and slaves. The Spirit destroys traditional lines of power—age, gender, wealth—bringing all flesh into the company of the prophets.
As Levison observes, Joel’s vision stretches the story horizontally and vertically. Not just all Israel, but all flesh. Not just the privileged, but anyone at all—sons and daughters, old and young, even male and female slaves. The Spirit is not parceled out to the pious or privileged. It is outpoured indiscriminately. There is not a single boundary—social, economic, or gendered—that can prevent the Spirit from creating a world populated by prophets. It is, as Levison describes, a devastation of privilege, an obliteration of barriers, a kind of inspired anarchy.
This universal, transgressive vision becomes the rallying cry of the church in Acts 2. Peter declares that Joel’s prophecy is being fulfilled. But Acts quickly shows that this is a work in progress. The church continues to struggle with its inherited boundaries.
So once again, the Spirit acts.
In Acts 10, the Jewish followers of Jesus remain constrained by moral, religious, and ethnic prejudices against Gentiles. The vision of Joel 2 has stalled. So the Spirit intervenes, giving visions to both Peter and Cornelius and bringing them together.
And then, while Peter is still speaking, a second and unexpected Pentecost occurs. The Holy Spirit falls upon the Gentiles.
Once again, the Spirit shows up in an unauthorized location. As Peter says, “Surely no one can stand in the way.” But without the Spirit falling in this unauthorized zone, people most surely would have stood in the way. In fact, they do. Acts 15 makes clear that this event creates a massive crisis of authority within the early church, threatening to divide it.
By claiming Joel 2 as the mission statement for the kingdom of God, and by witnessing the Spirit fall in an unauthorized location, Peter and the early church cross a boundary previously unimaginable.
And here is where Levison makes a fascinating observation. The Greek word diakrinó appears twice in this story. In Acts 10, the Spirit tells Peter to go with Cornelius’s men “without hesitation.” But when Peter recounts the event in Acts 11, he interprets the command differently: the Spirit told him “not to make a distinction between them and us.”
The meaning shifts. At first, Peter hears the command as urgency: Don’t hesitate. But after witnessing the Spirit fall upon the Gentiles, he comes to understand it as something deeper: Do not discriminate.
That is the transgressive Spirit at work. The Spirit that falls in unauthorized zones. The Spirit that creates crises of authority. The Spirit that pushes beyond the boundaries we try to maintain.
Go, and do not discriminate.
