CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
“When the Time had Fully Come”
1. The expected deliverance
The coming of the romans to judaea and the downfall of the native Hasmonaean dynasty compelled religious Jews to re-think their situation and try to interpret it with reference to the divine purpose. Some of the Hasmonaeans’ supporters had remained content with their regime for the greater part of its duration. Under John Hyrcanus (134–104 B.C.) many of his subjects, believing that they discerned in him a rare combination of the three offices of prophet, priest and king,1 were disposed to think that with him the messianic age had dawned. True, the great prophets of Israel had foreseen the embodiment of the national hope in a prince of the house of David, but in the earlier years of Hasmonaean rule there was little sign that the house of David had any further part to play in the life of Israel, whereas freedom from the Gentile yoke had been secured under the leadership of a priestly dynasty. Might it not be God’s will that the expected Messiah or “anointed one” of the end-time should be a priest of the tribe of Levi rather than a king of the tribe of Judah?2
But the military ambition and barbarity of Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 B.C.) alienated the best part of the nation from the Hasmonaean cause, and when, after the death of his widow and successor, Salome Alexandra, in 67 B.C., civil strife broke out between their two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, even the supporters of the Hasmonaean cause were divided. It was this civil strife that provided the Romans with the opportunity to occupy Judaea.
The religious groups in Judaea, who had suffered under the Hasmonaeans, saw in their dethronement at the hands of the Romans a divine judgment for their general injustice and particularly for their usurpation of dignities that were not legally theirs. If the Qumran community disapproved of their assumption of the high-priesthood, which belonged exclusively to the family of Zadok, and saw in the Romans the executors of divine retribution on them for this offence, another pious group, apparently akin to the Pharisees, reckoned that they were being punished for having “laid waste the throne of David”.3 This latter group has left us as the expression of their aspirations the collection of eighteen poems conventionally called the Psalms of Solomon.4 These poems show clearly—as indeed the Qumran literature testifies in some degree—that the hope attached to the house of David had not been allowed to die out entirely in Israel, and with the collapse of the Hasmonaean dynasty and consequent dissipation of any hope of a messianic priesthood associated with it, the Davidic hope no longer had this rival to contend with.
While the authors of the Psalms of Solomon, like the men of Qumran, recognized in the Roman occupation the judgment of God on the Hasmonaeans, they cherished no illusions about the Romans and were not surprised to find them more oppressive and rapacious than the Hasmonaeans at their worst. Pompey’s sacrilegious insistence on entering the holy of holies when he stormed the fortified temple area in 63 B.C. was regarded as exceptionally shocking, and when he was assassinated in Egypt fifteen years later it was felt that nemesis had overtaken him at last.5 But the Romans were foreigners, and would dominate the holy land only so long as God permitted. The day of their expulsion would come—and come by divine action. There were varying views about the identity of the divine agent or agents in their expulsion, but one substantial body of opinion expected the Messiah of David’s line to be raised up quite soon for this very purpose. This expectation finds ardent expression in the seventeenth of the Psalms of Solomon;6 it can be recognized also in some of the canticles in Luke’s nativity narrative. Thus, when Gabriel visits Mary to announce the birth of her son (Luke 1:32 f.), he says:
The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Similarly Zechariah (father of John the Baptist) celebrates the impending deliverance in his hymn of praise (Luke 1:68 ff.):
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people,
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David …
For Mary the fulfilment of this promise means the scattering of the proud in the imagination of their hearts, the putting down of the mighty from their thrones and the exaltation of “those of low degree” (Luke 1:51 f.); for Zechariah it similarly means “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” (Luke 1:71).
When, in 40 B.C., the Romans decided to govern Judaea through a Jewish king, it would have taken exceptional powers of mental penetration to discern messianic traits in Herod. Herod may have cherished messianic pretensions himself, and was possibly encouraged in this by some of his supporters, but the general Jewish attitude to him was hostile. He figures in one apocalyptic work, produced twenty or thirty years after his death under the title The Assumption of Moses (because its contents told of Moses’ purported farewell charge to Joshua and assumption into heaven), as an “insolent king”—possibly in fulfilment of the picture of the “king” of Daniel 11:36, who “shall do according to his will”—who wipes out the remnant of the Hasmonaeans and spares neither old nor young in his wicked fury.7
2. The expected deliverer
Towards the end of Herod’s reign Jesus was born—Jesus, acclaimed by his first followers as the expected redeemer of Israel. Although Luke’s nativity canticles heralded him as the promised prince of the house of David, and the same status is given to him in Christian preaching from early days, he does not appear to have made this claim for himself. He did not repudiate the designation “son of David” when it was given to him by others, but his one recorded reference to the widespread belief that the Messiah would be the son of David sets a question-mark against it.8 Davidic descent plays no part in John the Baptist’s description of the Coming One who was to baptize with the Spirit. Paul, for his part, does quote part of a confessional formula which spoke of Jesus as “descended from David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3),9 but in his own understanding and exposition of the significance of Jesus the Davidic descent plays practically no part.
In what sense, then, was Jesus recognized as the redeemer of Israel? When, in his early thirties, he emerged from the obscurity of his home in Nazareth and began his public ministry, the burden of his preaching was that the kingdom of God had drawn near—that it was already present in measure in his works of mercy and power.10 When his hearers heard him speak of the kingdom of God, they would naturally think of the divine order which, according to the visions in the book of Daniel, would supersede a succession of pagan world-empires and in which rule would be exercised by the “saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:18, 27).
There were others in Israel in the first century A.D. who thought along these lines, and whose conception of the rule of the saints boded ill for those who were not included among the “saints”. They could have found inspiration, for example, in the “saints” of Psalm 149:5–9, with the “high praises of God” in their mouths and two-edged swords in their hands,
to wreak vengeance on the nations
and chastisement on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron.
According to Luke, when Jesus shared the passover supper with his apostles the evening before his death, he made it plain that it was they who were to bear rule in the kingdom of which he spoke (Luke 22:28–30):
You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
But those for whom Jesus appointed this rôle had learned from him how it was to be discharged—not in dominating others but in serving them. In this saying he speaks of the kingdom as “my kingdom”, and this brings us to the close relation in his teaching between the kingdom of God and the eschatological figure of “the Son of man”.
In Daniel’s vision of the new kingdom, it is conferred on “one like a son of man” (a human figure in distinction from the wild beasts which denote the pagan empires); it is in the interpretation of the vision that the “saints of the Most High” appear, forming the counterpart to the “one like a son of man” in the vision itself, Jesus did not make an outright identification of the saints of the Most High with the Son of man; his disciples were the “little flock” to whom the Father was to give the kingdom (Luke 12:32), but they constituted the “little flock” by virtue of their association with the shepherd—or, to change the metaphor, with the Son of man. When Jesus spoke of the Son of man, he meant “the ‘one like a son of man’ ” to whom was given “dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:13 f.). As his ministry advanced, it became increasingly clear that he accepted the mission of the Son of man as something which he was personally called to fulfil.11 This was a costly calling: as the kingdom of God had to suffer violence before it was inaugurated in power, so the Son of man had to “suffer many things and be treated with contempt”12 in order to be invested with kingly glory. In this confidence he went to his death: “the Son of man goes as it is written of him” (Mark 14:21). But his investiture with kingly glory would involve no change of character: then as now he would remain “servant of all”, for it is in such self-giving service that true kingly glory consists.13
In so far as Jesus acknowledged the title Messiah, it was in these terms that he acknowledged it. When he was brought before the high priest and his colleagues and asked if he was the Messiah, he replied that he was, since that was the term they chose to use, but that he himself chose to speak of himself as the Son of man, who (although standing there deserted and humiliated) would be vindicated by God before their eyes. And in his vindication it would be seen that he was the one in whom God had visited and redeemed his people.14
Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God did not take place in a vacuum. Galilee, where he spent most of his life, was ruled by Herod Antipas, a creature of Rome; Judaea and Samaria were ruled by the prefect Pontius Pilate, directly appointed by the Roman Emperor. The temple establishment in Jerusalem was in the hands of the Sadducean house of Annas; taxes had to be paid for its maintenance in addition to the tribute exacted by Rome. The popular teachers expounded the religious law according to the “tradition of the elders”. The message of Jesus was so radical that it challenged all those authorities at once.
He did not challenge the Roman occupation like those who tried to meet force with force. That would have meant accepting the Romans’ own conception of power, the only question at issue being who wielded the power. But when he bade the children of the kingdom cultivate righteousness and mercy, poverty and meekness, purity of heart and peace among men, when he taught them to turn the other cheek and go the second mile and requite their enemies by doing them good, when he insisted that the will of God was fully done in the performance of acts of love,15 he turned accepted canons upside down and posed a more deadly threat to the basis of imperial power than those who offered it armed resistance. At the same time he set such little store by material wealth that he made no issue of the payment of tribute to Caesar,16 any more than he did of the payment of the annual half-shekel to the temple.17 But in the end it was the temple establishment and the Roman prefect between them who were responsible for his death.
As for his attitude to the law, it was in some respects not dissimilar to Hillel’s. If Hillel said that everything else in the law was but a commentary on the negative golden rule, Jesus said much the same thing about the rule in its positive formulation: “whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).18 To the same effect he singled out from the 613 precepts of the law two positive precepts beginning with the injunction “you shall love”—“you shall love the Lord your God …” (Deuteronomy 6:4) and “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)—as the first and second commandments of the law on which all the others depended (Mark 12:28–31; cf. Matthew 22:35–40).19
So far Jesus would have commanded considerable agreement among rabbis of the Hillelite school. But in his application of these principles to practical issues he seemed to treat the law with a sovereign freedom which even a Hillelite would have found disturbing.
This was seen with special clarity in his attitude to the sabbath law. The original wording of that law instituted the sabbath as a day of rest, on which no work should be done. “Work” was not defined; presumably it related primarily to the recurring activities of agricultural life: “in ploughing time and in harvest you shall rest” (Exodus 34:21).20 From time to time, even within the period of the written law, it was necessary to define “work” more precisely, until by the first century A.D. we have thirty-nine categories of work distinguished, first of all (it appears) in the school of Hillel, all of them prohibited on the sabbath.21 The school of Shammai had a stricter interpretation, and that in force at Qumran is known to have been stricter still.22 But Jesus did not trouble himself with definitions of work; rather, he reminded his hearers of the original purpose of the sabbath institution—to promote the relief and well-being of men and women—and insisted that any action (such as healing the sick) which furthered this purpose was done most appropriately on the sabbath.23
He laid down the same principle when he was asked for a ruling on the law of divorce. What was the “indecency” or “unseemliness” (Deuteronomy 24:1) in a man’s wife which justified him in divorcing her? The Hillelites interpreted it liberally, of a wide range of defects, the Shammaites interpreted it more narrowly, of pre-marital unchastity, but Jesus, going back behind Moses to the creation narrative, argued from the terms of the institution of marriage that divorce was no part of God’s original intention. To the minds of his male hearers, this ruling was so stringent as to be impracticable: “if such is the case of a man with his wife,” they replied, “it is not expedient to marry” (Matthew 19:10). But the effect of his ruling was to correct a social imbalance which worked for the detriment of women, who had little opportunity for initiative or redress in this matter; from their point of view it was a liberal ruling.
Many of Jesus’ strictures on the scribes and Pharisees of his day were probably directed at members of the school of Shammai. It was they in particular who could be reproached for “loading men with burdens hard to bear” and doing nothing to relieve them (Luke 11:46). But the milder Hillelites, too, must often have found him disconcerting.
One specially perplexing feature of Jesus’ conduct, in the eyes even of liberal Pharisees, was his readiness to associate with people who did not even attempt to respect the law, whose lives were in scandalous conflict with its basic principles. He did not associate with them as a condescending benefactor performing a pious duty; he gave the impression that he enjoyed their company—indeed, that he chose it by preference, accepting invitations to eat with them and so incurring the reproach of being “a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of tax collectors24 and sinners” (Luke 7:34). When he was taxed with giving offence to godly people by such behaviour, he defended himself by saying that it was sick people, not healthy ones, who needed a doctor, and that it was sinners that he came to call. Not only so, but he maintained that God himself acted thus, bestowing his gifts with undistinguishing regard on good and evil alike, even on the ungrateful and selfish. And in parable after parable he drove this lesson home, emphasizing the welcoming grace extended by God to the inadequate and undeserving, the despised and alienated, the insecure and underprivileged. In his teaching and in his example, Jesus’ message was one of good news for the outsider.25 When John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod Antipas in the Peraean fortress of Machaerus, sent messengers to Jesus to ask if he really was the Coming One whose advent John had announced (Jesus’ ministry was so unlike the judgment which John had described the Coming One as executing), Jesus told them to go back and tell John what they had seen and heard while they were with him, but especially to tell him this: “the poor have good news preached to them” (Luke 7:22).
In these words John was sure to recognize the language of Isaiah 61:1, where an unnamed speaker claims to have been anointed with the Spirit of God for this very purpose: “to bring good news to the poor”. Would John acknowledge that Jesus was the one of whom the prophet spoke? If so, he would not feel that Jesus was letting him down by failing to inaugurate “the day of vengeance of our God” forthwith.26
It is most probable that Jesus identified this Spirit-anointed speaker of Isaiah 61:1 with the one whom God introduces earlier in the same book (Isaiah 42:1) with the words:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him …
—words echoed by the heavenly voice which came to Jesus at his baptism.27 This servant is given a mission to discharge both for Israel and for the Gentiles; the fulfilment of the mission involves him in unjust persecution, humiliation and death, but by accepting all this obediently as God’s will for him he accomplishes the divine purpose, which coincides with his own dearest desire. This purpose includes, the forgiveness of many, whose sins the servant bears. Indeed, much of what Jesus says about the predestined suffering of the Son of man is best understood if in his mind he identified the Son of man with the Isaianic Servant of the Lord: in the light of what is said of the latter figure one can appreciate all the more the gospel logion that “the Son of man came not to be served by others but to be a servant himself, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This was the spirit in which Jesus accepted death. And it was this spirit to which Paul was to refer in days to come when he spoke of “the mind which was in the Messiah Jesus, who … emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:5–7) or described Jesus as being “delivered up for our trespasses” (Romans 4:25).28 Before Gamaliel’s pupil came to this assessment of the ministry and death of Jesus, a revolution had to take place in his life and thought. But when it took place, he could sum up the significance of those events in the affirmation that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son …” (Galatians 4:4).