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The three movements and Messianic hopes just discussed (Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees) reveal in themselves how deadly serious had become the desire to merit God's intervention. We should be out of tune with the temper of the time if we did not realize this. It was the study of the manner of the redemptive intervention which now accented the advent of messianic figures.
The Sadducees looked for only one "Messiah" or "anointed one". The Sadducees, proving everything from express statements in the Law, looked for the coming of the Prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:15).
The Pharisees and Essenes looked for two Messiahs. The Pharisees and Essenes ranged more widely and brought into prominence the perpetual covenants with Levi and David. The prophecies of Jeremiah had further contained this promise:
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of Righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgement and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely….For thus saith the Lord; David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel [King Messiah]; neither shall the priests the Levities want a man to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually" [Priestly Messiah] (Jer. 33:15-26).
Therefore, it was held, God would intervene by means of Anointed Ones (Messiahs) of the tribes of Levi and Judah. One writer declares: 'And now, my children, obey Levi and Judah, and be not lifted up against these two tribes, for from them shall arise unto you the salvation of God. For the Lord shall raise up from Levi as it were a High Priest, and from Judah as it were a King: he shall save all the race of Israel" (Test. Simeon, vii. 1-2 [Testaments of the XII Patriarchs, edition Charles]. Cp. Test. Naphtali, viii. 2-3; Test. Joseph, xix. 11)..
For the Essenes the Priestly Messiah would be the superior of the Royal....Kingly Messiah, while for the Pharisees, who became disillusioned with hierarchical government, it was just the opposite. For the Pharisees it was the Kingly Messiah par excellence who would be the ideal king of the line of David (Isa. 11). But they admitted the priority of a Levitical messianic personality to the extent that the Davidic Messiah would be preceded by a priestly forerunner in the form of the returned Prophet Elijah, whom they held to have been a priest. A late commentary on the Psalms illustrates the positron taken by the Pharisees. 'To that generation (in Egypt) thou didst send redemption through two redeemers, as it is said (Ps. cv. 26), "He sent Moses his servant and Aaron whom he had chosen." So also to this generation (of the Last Times) he sendeth two, corresponding to those other-two.
"Send out thy light and thy truth" (Ps xliii 3). "Thy light", that is the Prophet Elijah of the house of Aaron ... and "Thy truth", that is Messiah ben David, as it is said (Ps. cxxxii. 11), "The Lord bath sworn unto David (in) truth, he will not turn from it." And likewise it is said (Isa. xlii. 1), "Behold my servant whom I uphold"' (Midrash Tefillin, xliii. 1.) The return of Elijah is predicted in Malachi iv. 5-6.
For a brief period in the latter part of the second century B.C. the greatest hopes were entertained as a result of the victories of the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I, under whom the Jews not only regained complete independence, but also a territory larger than any under Jewish rule since the reign of Solomon son of David. Not a few were ready to see in John one who combined all the messianic offices, being Prophet, Priest and King. "John Hyrcanus was esteemed by God worthy of the three privileges, the government of his nation, the dignity of the high priesthood, and prophecy; for God was with him, and enabled him to know futurities" (Josephus, Antiq. XIII. x. 7.).
But John Hyrcanus was no paragon, and his successors proved to be thoroughly unsatisfactory rulers, despotic, ambitious and unjust. Instead of the Kingdom of God there was war in Israel, and the Essenes had justification for their view that Satan had been let loose on the country.
From this time national affairs played an increasing part in the exposition of the Messianic Hope. It acquired a more personal and political coloring. The cry was raised, 'Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the Son of David, in the time which thou, O God, knowest, that he may reign over Israel thy servant; and gird him with strength that he may break in pieces them that rule unjustly (Psalms of Solomon, xvii. 23-4).
The change of emphasis in messianic expectations caused much thought to be given to the conditions which the Scriptures indicated would prevail when the Messiah would be revealed. There would be wars and tumults, public strife and divided families, pestilence and famine, persecution of the saints, a host of tribulations. These would be the Woes of the Last Times; imminent just prior to the coming of the Messiah. As Jewish affairs went from bad to worse by so much more were messianic convictions intensified. Those who looked for signs could find them in abundance. In 63 B.C. the Romans were called upon to aid John Hyrcanus II against his ambitious brother Aristobulus. There was internal conflict, the siege and capture of Jerusalem, with the Roman general Pompey committing the enormity of entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple. The Jews lost their brief independence, and their land became a vassal state of Rome. Once more Israel was subject to the heathen, and finally forced to accept at Roman hands a king, who, though he was a professing Jew, was of alien Idumean origin.
The reign of Herod the Great (37-4, B.C.) was from the beginning attended by disorders. Not only had he to preserve his throne by skillful manoeuvre and political intrigue in relation to the struggle then going on in the Roman world, he had to govern a people intensely hostile to his regime, only too willing manifestation of diabolical sovereignty.
Herod was an ambitious man and a clever one, brave, with regal bearing and qualities of leadership, but he was impulsive and had neurotic tendencies which the circumstances of his reign so aggravated as to convert him into something like the raging ruthless monster his apocalyptic-minded subjects believed him to be. With real and imagined plots against him he could not feel secure until he had destroyed the Hasmoneans around whom popular support could still gather. First to be got rid of was Antigonus, then the boy Aristobulus whom he had made high priest at the age of sixteen, and then the aged former high priest and king, the inoffensive Hyrcanus II. Later the Hasmonean princess Mariamne, whom he had married and genuinely loved, was executed, followed by her mother Alexandra; and to the end of his days the king's fears of conspiracy by family and friends led him on to the destruction even of his own children.
Successfully switching his allegiance from the vanquished Marc Antony to the victorious Octavian, afterwards the Emperor Augustus, Herod reached a height of political power and prestige.
But as the friend of Caesar, devoted to the Romans and to the Hellenic way of life, he made himself ever more noxious to his people, who would not be placated even by his grandiose rebuilding of the Temple. They hated and feared him, and were kept from revolt only by the strongly manned fortresses which Herod constructed at strategic points and by his conversion of the country into what we would now call a police state. "'At this time Herod released to his subjects the third part of their taxes, under presence indeed of relieving them after the dearth they had had; but the main reason was, to recover their goodwill, which he now wanted; for they were uneasy at him, because of the innovations he had introduced in their practices to the dissolution of their religion, and the disuse of their own customs, and the people everywhere talked against him, like those that were still more provoked and disturbed at his procedure. Against which discontents he greatly guarded himself, and took away the opportunities they might have to disturb him, and enjoining them to be always at work; nor did he permit the citizens either to meet together, or to walk, or eat together, but watched everything they did, and when they were caught they were severely punished; and many there were who were brought to the citadel Hyrcania, both openly and secretly, and were there put to death. And there were spies set everywhere, both in the city and on the roads, who watched those that met together ... and those that could be in no way reduced to acquiesce under his scheme of government, he persecuted them in all manner of ways" (Josephus, Antiq. XV. x. 4).
The pious attributed to the wrath of God the great earthquake in Judea in the seventh year of his reign and the persistent droughts followed by pestilence in the thirteenth year of his reign. Such calamities seemed like the plagues of Egypt, and Herod appeared as another Pharaoh of the Oppression. "An insolent king [Herod] will succeed them [the Hasmoneans], who will not be of the race of the priests, a man bold and shameless, and he will judge them as they deserve. And he will cut off their chief men with the sword, and will destroy them in secret places, so that no one may know where their bodies are. He will slay the old and the young, and he will not spare. Then the fear of him will be bitter unto them in their land. And he will execute judgements on them as the Egyptians executed upon them, during thirty and four years, and he will punish them" (Assumption of Moses, vi. 2-6, edition Charles).
The signs seemed certainly to confirm the current interpretation of the prophecies that the Last Times had begun.
For the extreme pietists these days were 'the Period of the Wrath'. Many abandoned the cities and took to the wilderness. Sectarian communities, like that at Qumran by the Dead Sea, flourished as fresh recruits joined them. Such communities had long existed on the eastern fringe of the country; but now they were multiplied and increased in variety, holding themselves to be the faithful Elect of the Last Times (again they considered themselves the remnant; the Messianic hope of Israel). The Manual of Discipline from Qumran declares: 'And when these things shall come to pass to the Community of Israel, in these determined moments they shall separate themselves from the midst of the habitation of perverse men to take to the wilderness to prepare there the Way of Him as was written: "Prepare ye in the wilderness the Way of the Lord: make straight to the desert a highway for our God" (Isa. xl. 3). This Way is the study of the Law... so as to act according to all that was revealed time after time, and according to what the Prophets revealed by His Holy Spirit.'
Answer for yourself: Did you notice how they believed they were to "prepare" the way for the coming of the LORD? It was through the study of the Law! Coupled with this would be the result of such study of the Law…the repentance of Israel which was to be the fruit of such study where the Laws of God were renewed and written on their hearts (Jer. 31).
Answer for yourself: Did you happen to notice that we just ties together everything we have said so far in these articles? Did you notice that these saw that the only hope for Divine intervention whereby the Kingdom of God was to be manifested along with Israel's King was a return to the Laws of God and obedience to His Commandments?
This is terribly important to understand as again Israel's failure in this regard is the reason why the Kingdom did not appear nor Israel's Messiah revealed along with the prophecies remaining unfulfilled.
Let me now quote the famed author Hugh Schonfield: "Through the sources of information at our command we obtain a picture of the situation in Palestine towards the close of the first century B.C. which, if it could be put on canvas, would seem to be the work of a madman, or of a drug addict. A whole nation was in the grip of delirium. The king on this throne was a sick and gloomy tyrant. His embittered subjects feared and detested him to an extent that was almost maniacal. Religious fanatics fasted and prayed, and preached wrath and judgement. Obsessed with conviction that the Last Times had come terror and superstition overcame all reason among the people. Self-recrimination accompanied messianic fervor. No wonder that when Herod died all hell was let loose" (Schonfield, The Passover Plot, pp. 35-36).
At first a cry of relief went up throughout the land, and then in a moment all was tumult and disorder. Soldiers went on the rampage. Bands of brigands plundered. In the name of liberty from Rome and the Herodians various leaders set themselves up as king and readily got together a multitude of armed followers. 'And thus', writes Josephus, 'did a great and wild fury spread itself over the nation, because they had no king to keep the masses in good order; and because those foreigners, who came to reduce the seditious to sobriety, did, on the contrary, set them more in a flame, because of the injuries they offered them, and the avaricious management of their affairs" (Josephus, Antiq. XVII. x. 5). In punitive actions by the Romans thousands were killed in different parts of the country, and at Jerusalem two thousand were crucified.
The circumstances I have outlined, which used, perhaps, to be more familiar to previous generations of Christians than they are today, have an obvious bearing on the understanding of the life of Jesus, and must be allowed their full weight in any attempt to comprehend him. We have seen what strange imaginings had gripped the Jewish people at this time, the time Jesus came into the world, fed by those who interpreted the Scriptures to them. According to many preachers, the eleventh hour had come, the Last Times had begun, the Kingdom of God was at hand. The world was on the eve of Wrath and Judgement. The Messiah would appear. Times could not get any worse. The setting was ripe for the appearance of Israel's Messiah. All that was needed was a righteous Israel. All that was needed was for Israel to merit the Kingdom and her King. All that was needed was for a righteous Israel to assume her Divine mandate as a Royal Priesthood. All that was needed was for Israel to be a Holy Nation.
More to follow.