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pilateswife.net>>appendix>>the sources>>behold a righteous king

1. BEHOLD A RIGHTEOUS KING

The movement Jesus briefly led in first century A.D. had its origins in the egalitarian traditions of early Judaism. Much of that tradition was embodied in the Mosaic law, the collection of commandments and covenants which, according to the Old Testament, Moses received directly from God; these legal statutes are interwoven with the narrative of Moses' life in the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Jews of Jesus' time universally attributed authorship of these four books, as well as the first book, Genesis (the five books together comprise the Pentateuch or Torah), to Moses himself. Although Jesus may have challenged Mosaic law regarding ritual cleanliness and healing on the Sabbath, the authors of the gospels were careful to repeatedly claim Mosaic authority for their Messiah. Thus the apostle Philip says in John 1:45, "We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth...." The parallels between the Jesus of the gospels and the Moses of the Pentateuch are certainly intentional: Each survived, as an infant, a tyrant's death decree; both were called to God late in life; both spent forty days alone in the wilderness in order to hear the word of God; both performed magical transformations of water to announce God's power.

Although Moses may well have been an historical figure who led a group of Jewish clans out of slavery in Egypt sometime in the 13th century B.C., the Pentateuch was actually composed over the first half of the first millennium B.C., when Israel had already become a kingdom. But the roots of Mosaic law were in the democratic traditions of a loose confederation of self-governed tribes that settled in Canaan at the end of the second millennium B.C.: "In those days [there was] no king in Israel: every man did [that which was] right in his own eyes" (Judg 21:25). Village elders held near-autonomous political authority in their communities; these elders probably elected a tribal leader for their region. Broader leadership seems to have been exercised by figures like the 12th century B.C. prophetess Deborah, who prodded the tribal leader Barak to lead a coalition of Israeli tribes against the Canaanites, telling him that God had commanded it and would lead him to victory (Judg 4.4-14).

In addition to myriad instructions on ritual practices, moral and health regulations, and crime and punishment, the laws shaped by this tribal confederation included a sophisticated safety net for the poorest members of the community. Jews were forbidden to lend money at interest to the poor. If a poor man pawned his cloak, it had to be returned to him at sundown, so that he would not be cold at night (Ex 22.25-27). Every seventh year was a sabbatical year in which the fields would lie fallow, and the fruit of the vines and trees was left to the poor (Ex 23.11). When the fields were harvested, the borders were left unpicked, and anything missed elsewhere or fallen on the ground was also left for the poor: "Neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger..." (Lev 19.9-10). Jews were admonished to bring the homeless into their homes: "And if thy brother be waxen poor... thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with you" (Lev 25.35).

Several statutes were designed to prevent the abuses of lenders and landlords that plagued rural Jews in Jesus' time. If a man became impoverished and had to sell his land or house, the buyer was obligated to sell it back on demand to the poor man's family; if the seller himself prospered again, he could buy his property back on demand. Even if the seller or his family could not buy the property back, it was supposed to be returned to him or his heirs at the end of seven cycles of seven years -- the so-called Jubilee year (Lev 25.25-34). Significantly, this law of return did not apply to houses in "walled cities," but did apply to houses in unwalled villages.

In its earliest form, the Mosaic law was probably enforced by prophet-judges like Deborah: "And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment" (Judg 4.5). But at the end of the second millennium B.C., the Philistines, their army equipped with advanced military technology -- chariots and iron weapons -- overwhelmed the Jews' tribal confederation. Faced with annihilation, the tribal leaders decided that they required a commander-in-chief -- a king. Their choice was guerilla leader named Saul. Heretofore God himself had been the King of the Israelites, and the difficulty with which they accepted a terrestrial sovereign is evident in 1 Sam 8.9-22. At God's behest the prophet Samuel warned the Israelites of the dangers of monarchy -- forced conscription, forced labor, confiscation of property. Only at the pleading of a frightened populace did God at last allow Samuel to reluctantly anoint Saul as Israel's first king.

Saul's rival and successor, David, established an empire extending from the Red Sea far into Syria, with a capital at Jerusalem. David's successor, Solomon, expanded the Jewish empire, provided it with competent administration, and built the first great Temple at Jerusalem. But after the Solomon's death the empire was divided into two kingdoms, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. Both kingdoms were plagued by internal power struggles and external aggressors. Israel survived for two centuries after the death of Solomon in 921 B.C., finally succumbing to Assyrian invasion; Judah, the more stable kingdom, wasn't overcome until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

Throughout this period of turmoil, the kings of Israel and Judah were anointed, counseled, and confronted by the prophets. The adversarial role was characterized by Elijah (Eliah in Hebrew), an historical figure whose supernatural exploits are chronicled in 1 and 2 Kings. When king Ahab, who ruled Israel in the mid 9th century B.C., permitted Baal worship at the urging of his Sidonian wife Jezebel, Elijah pronounced a drought as a sign of God's displeasure. Pursued by Jezebel's agents, Elijah hid himself in the wilderness, where he was fed by ravens; later he stayed with a widow and raised her son from the dead. After three years of drought Elijah returned to confront Ahab and the prophets of Baal, whom he publicly humiliated by challenging them to light a sacrificial pyre through the power of Baal; when they could not, Elijah soaked the pyre with water and lit it with a fire summoned from God.

Elijah concluded his exploits by ascending to heaven in a whirlwind, but not before passing his prophetic spirit (ruach, or divine breath), to his successor Elisha, who used his authority to depose Ahab's son Joram and anoint a new king in his place. (2 Kings 9.1-27) The coup against Joram is most likely an historical event, and it illustrates the enormous political power that proceeded from the spiritual authority of the prophets, even in an age of monarchy. That authority was in large part derived from the prophets' role as guardians of the Mosaic covenant against the tyranny of kings.

But the Jews were also ruled by righteous kings. Josiah, a late 7th century B.C. king of Judah, destroyed pagan altars and centralized worship in the Jerusalem Temple. During his reign the Mosaic law was systematically revised and expanded into the code found in the book of Deuteronomy (meaning "second law"). The poor were dealt with even more charitably under this new code: Day laborers were protected by a statute requiring their payment at the end of each work day, so that they could feed their families (Deut 25.15). Every three years a tithe of all produce was provided to feed poor, the fatherless, and the widows (Deut 14.28-29). Every seventh year (the sabbatical year), all debts owed by a Jew to another Jew were forgiven (Deut 15.1-2), with this admonition: "Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing... and it be sin unto you" (Deut 15.9).

No Jewish King, righteous or otherwise, could save Judah from the power of Babylon. After a two-and-a-half year siege, Nebuchadnezzar's army burned Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple. Most of the Jewish nobility and educated classes were executed or deported to Babylon, probably to live as tenant farmers. Only "the poorest people of the land" were left behind (2 Kings 25.12). The captivity in Babylon lasted only two generations, until the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 B.C.; Cyrus repatriated the Jews and permitted them to rebuild the Temple. But as a consequence of that captivity, the prophets achieved a voice that would profoundly influence Judaism well into and after the time of Jesus.

That voice is found in the collection of Old Testament books called The Prophets. Although some of the prophetic books are attributed to historical eighth and seventh century B.C. prophets such as Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, and may contain revisions of contemporary accounts of their words and deeds, most of the prophetic books were written and edited during and just after the captivity in Babylon. Authors who had witnessed this historic drama of punishment and redemption had vivid proof of God's hand in human events. In the prophetic book of Isaiah the term "the day of the Lord" appears for the first time in the Old Testament, and we see God as both the universal judge and commander-in-chief -- the prophet-king of the cosmos -- laying low the mighty at a specific moment in human history. Isaiah 13:9-11 forecasts the destruction of Babylon: "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for [their] evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible."

Isaiah is a compendium of poetic images of the certain retribution that will occur "in that day" -- a phrase the editor(s) of Isaiah repeat dozens of times. In Isaiah 30.33 we see for the first time the valley of Hinnom as a place of punishment, in this case for the Assyrian king; the verse refers to Tophet, a flat outcrop on Hinnom's south slope where children were once burned alive in sacrifice to the god Baal-Molech: "For Tophet [is] ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he has made [it] deep [and] large: the pile thereof [is] fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, does kindle it." A far kinder judgment awaited the poor, who would find themselves in a sort of egalitarian Eden: "But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.... The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them" (Isa 11:4-6).

While Isaiah contains many elements of apocalyptic writing (from the Greek apokalypsis, or revelation), it is not the type of eschatological apocalypse so prevalent in the Jewish literature of Jesus' day. Isaiah doesn't describe the catastrophic end of human civilization (the eschaton, or last event) and the establishment of heavenly kingdom on earth, but rather the renewal of history under righteous human leadership. The king of Isaiah 32:1 -- "Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness" -- is an earthly ruler; as we see in Isaiah 45:1, that king can even be a Persian: "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him...." The use of masiach -- messiah -- the Hebrew term for "the anointed", in reference to Cyrus provides an interesting comparison to later apocalypses, in which foreign rulers are far more likely to be agents of Satan.

Isaiah is the Old Testament prophet most frequently cited in the New Testament gospels. John the Baptist's mission in Mark 1.3 is announced with the famous words of Isaiah 40.3: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." When Jesus begins to preach by the Sea of Galilee, it is a fulfillment of Isaiah 9.1-2; he heals as proclaimed in Isaiah 53.4; when the people harden their hearts and ears to him it is also to fulfill Isaiah. The virgin birth of Matthew 1.23-25 is the result of a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14: "Behold, an 'almah shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel." Almah simply meant "young girl" in Hebrew, but it was translated into Greek as parthenos, or virgin.

Without the benefit of these relentless citations to the prophetic scriptures, Jesus' contemporaries most likely saw him as a prophet rather than the fulfillment of prophecy, as in Matthew 21.10-11: "When he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet...." Given that the authors of the gospels were intent on proving that Jesus was no mere prophet but, rather, the Messiah, they would had little reason to propose this association if it did not have some historical basis. Certainly the historical Jesus appealed to and defended the interests of the traditional constituency of the prophets -- indigent workers and impoverished farmers.

But by the time of Jesus, the role of the prophet in Jewish politics and theology had been vastly transformed from the days of Elijah and Elisha. The notion that prophecy was dead -- and the prophets extinct -- at the time of Jesus is one of the most time-worn canards of biblical scholarship. However, only in the narrow, classical definition had the prophets vanished. The new prophets were no longer charismatic political leaders who spoke directly to the people. They were a private, often secretive literati, writing in the invented voices of ancient biblical figures. Like their predecessors, they championed the rights of the downtrodden; unlike their predecessors, they no longer believed that the poor and meek could obtain justice from an earthly sovereign.

Next: THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

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