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February 23, 2014 |
| Intertestamental Period | ||
From the time of the last book of the Old Testament to the birth of the Messiah is a period of roughly 350 years. As the curtain closes on the Old Testament we see Israel is back in Israel but struggling again and God is sending prophets again to warn them. This is all very reminiscent of the time before they were conquered by the Assyrians (in the North of Israel) and later the Babylonians (in the South).
As the curtain opens on the New Testament we find that Israel has been conquered and is under Roman rule. But many things went on during the 3 century gap between the testaments, which is called the intertestamental period. Those events were very significant in forming the Israel that we see in the Gospels.
In this lesson we will first bridge that gap with some prophecy from the last of the Old Testament prophets concerning the coming Messiah and then look at the history of the period between the testaments.
The book of Malachi is generally accepted to be the last written book of the Old Testament but no one really knows for sure. Researchers aren't even sure if Malachi is really a person's name or more like a title. In any case the book ends with some words about the end time.
It's important to understand that Jews of his time would have understood these verses differently than we do now. They didn't understand that there would be a first and second coming of the Messiah. They only expected the one coming. This is because the words about the second coming in the Old Testament are often mixed so closely with the words about the first coming that they aren't easily separated. Isaiah is especially bad for that. It is common for him to speak of the first coming in one sentence and the second coming in the next sentence.
The following verses are the last chapter of Malachi, chapter 4
1 "Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire," says the Lord Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. 3 Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act," says the Lord Almighty.
4 "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 "See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction."
Verses 1 thru 3 have plainly not come to pass so we take them to be references to the second coming, in particular after the second coming, By saying "not a root or branch [of the evildoers] will be left" God is saying nothing will be left for them to grow back from.
Verse 5 and 6 is where it becomes interesting. These verses are the reason that the Jews were expecting Elijah to come before the Messiah. But they were expecting the man Elijah, not a person who would be a type of Elijah.
Jesus speaks to the crowd about John the Baptist in Matthew 11 and says
14 And if you will, he is Elijah who was to come. 15 Whoever has an ear to hear, let him hear.
After his transfiguration, Jesus also speaks to his disciples about this in Matthew 17
10 And his disciples asked him and they were saying to him, "Why do the Scribes therefore say that Elijah must come first?"
11 Yeshua answered and he said to them, "Elijah does come first so that everything may end." 12 But I say to you, behold, Elijah has come, and they have done unto him everything whatsoever they wished; likewise also The Son of Man is going to suffer from them.
Jesus says something here that needs to be noted. He says "Elijah does come first so that everything may end" which means the end of everything cannot come unless Elijah comes first. That cannot be interpreted as a first coming reference. Also note that the verb here is present tense. But then he goes on to say that Elijah has come, by which he means John the Baptist. The verb here is past tense. Jesus seems to be saying that we should be expecting Elijah again, or perhaps a person in the type of Elijah, like John the Baptist was.
Keep all of that in mind while we go back to the verses from Malachi for a while. In verses 5 and 6 we see the phrase "great and dreadful day of the Lord". This is a phrase that is commonly used to describe the second coming. The idea is that it will be a great day for some but a dreadful day for others. This same phrase appears in Joel 2
28 "And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. 29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 32 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; […].
It's even more clear here in Joel that the great and dreadful day has not yet come and is still in the future. We can see more evidence for that in Acts 2, where Peter quotes these verses from Joel after the Holy Spirit is given on Pentecost. It's plain from how he uses the verses that he believes he is in the time Joel describes where the "Spirit is poured out on all people" and therefore the "great and dreadful day" is still future.
So, we'll summarize the prophetic part of this lesson now and then move on. Nothing in Malachi 4 refers to the first coming. Verses 1 thru 3 do not and verses 5 and 6 do not. They are all second coming or later references. But we see that Elijah comes before that second coming.
It could be thought that this is just a prophetic jump through time, jumps like that are very common in prophecy, as we mentioned about Elijah jumping from first coming to second coming in the blink of an eye. When it is thought of that way the coming of Elijah is a first coming reference and then the text jumps to a second coming reference.
That is quite possible but then we see Jesus making a reference to a past tense Elijah, who we know as John the Baptist, and also making a subtle reference to an Elijah who must come before the end.
Therefore we have reason to think that Elijah will come again, or perhaps another person who is in the type of Elijah. This agrees with what some people, including many from first century Christianity, believe about the Two Witnesses of Revelation. One of them is Elijah. Other support for that idea comes from him being one of the only two men who were taken by God and did not die.
At the close of the Old Testament, Israel has returned to Israel from what began as Babylonian rule and ended as Medo - Persian rule. They had been conquered by the Babylonian empire and most people were taken prisoner to Babylon. They spent 70 years in Babylon as prophesied by Jeremiah. After that they were allowed to return to Judea and rebuild.
Being allowed to return home was a new way of thinking by conquering countries. Instead of bringing people back to the home country to be slaves, the Medo-Persian Empire introduced the idea of leaving the conquered people in their country to work their farms and businesses and pay tax to the conquerors. So the Jews were allowed to go back to their country.
Nehemiah is a central figure in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem and rebuilding the spiritual life of the people. They are struggling though. Even when Nehemiah left for a short period the people soon fell away from their promises to God. Thus at the very end of the Old Testament we see the prophets again starting to warn Israel.
Even as Israel was rebuilding itself, a new super power was arising, the Greeks. After the people of Israel had been back in Israel for only about 30 years, the Medo-Persian Empire was conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 330 BC. The Medo-Persians had not allowed Israel to become a military power that might threaten the their control of Israel. Therefore when the Greeks conquered the Medo-Persian Empire Israel was unable to resist and fell under Greek control.
The Greeks introduced Greek philosophy and culture to that part of the world and the Greeks were a pretty reasonable people to deal with. The Greek language became an international language. If you were wealthy or travelled to other places in the world, Greek would be the language to know. Aramaic, which the Jews had known for much longer, remained the language of the common man and the language of business from Egypt to Syria and east to the Arab countries.
The Greek Empire was very short lived, however. It had been built on the skill and daring of Alexander the Great. When he died 7 years after Israel submitted to him, his empire was divided and fell apart.
With the Greek Empire gone, Israel fell to Egypt. Egypt was not a great power at the time like the Greeks had been, nor like the Medo - Persians before them, but they were more than Israel could handle. Greek culture continued on though.
At this time many of the Jews had become very Hellenized (Greek like). These Jews wanted to give up Jewish law and live as Greeks. They even took measures to undo the circumcisions they had been given at birth. This act of rejecting God and chasing after their conquerors would be repeated in Jesus time with the Herodians, a group of Jews who wanted to live like Romans. Of course this caused a great division within the Jewish people.
Then Antiochus Epiphanes came to power in Syria. He had no respect for the Jewish religious practices. After he had done some things to offend the orthodox Jews, they did some things to offend him. "From this point onwards, Antiochus pursued a zealous Hellenizing policy. He made possession of the Torah a capital offense and burned the copies he could find. According to 1 Maccabees, he banned many traditional Jewish religious practices: Jewish sacrifice was forbidden, sabbaths and feasts were banned. Circumcision was outlawed, and mothers who circumcised their babies were killed along with their families. Altars to Greek gods were set up and animals prohibited to Jews were sacrificed on them. The idol of Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple."1 (a type fulfillment of Daniel's abomination of desolation)
The Jews responded with a revolt and fought a long term guerrilla battle with the Empire, eventually driving them out. Antiochus sent a large force to recapture Jerusalem but he died and the force returned without accomplishing its goal.
From this time on Greek culture was despised by orthodox Jews. Josephus records that in his time, which was Jesus time, very few Jews in Israel spoke Greek and any attempt to learn Greek was discouraged. Josephus travelled widely and spoke some Greek but says of himself that he didn't speak it very well. He wrote his historical accounts in Aramaic and later had them translated to Greek for the Roman market.
Finally, after 373 years, Israel was independent again. They were ruled by a group called the Hasmoneans. Religious practices were restored. The Jewish festival of Hanukkah was created to celebrate the re-dedication of the Temple. But things did not go smoothly. There were different opinions on how they should rule themselves. These lead to bloodshed. The sects called the Pharisees and Sadducees were born in this time and they didn't get along well either.
In 63 BC The Roman army intervened to stop a civil war in Israel. Israel became a client kingdom of Rome. The Hasmoneans ruled for another 26 years until Herod the Great was declared king of Judea by the Roman Senate. Roughly 30 years later Jesus would be born.
By the end of all this, Israel had learned a lesson about following God's laws. If they didn't follow God's laws God would turn his back on them and they would be conquered by someone. Unfortunately their solution to the problem was the wrong one. Rigid adherence to the law became the rule and they came to believe, at least within the religious orders, that salvation came by adherence to the laws. They had forgotten faith and love which had been part of Judaism before.
When God gave them over to the Assyrians and Babylonians it was because they were not doing what they should. They only needed to read the scriptures to know that they were doing wrong. But now they had gotten into a new situation. They believed they were doing what God wanted but they were not. They were stuck in that situation and they were not going to be able to get out. God knew it and knew that it was time for the Messiah.
It was the same before the flood when "Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time."2 Mankind had become stuck and it was time for God's intervention.
It appears that it will be the same way when the Messiah comes again. In John 16 Jesus says
2 "For they shall put you out from their assemblies, and the hour will come when everyone who would kill you will think that he presents an offering to God. 3 And they shall do these things because they do not know either my Father or me."
Paul expresses the same sentiment in 2 Timothy 3
1 But you should know this, that in the last days hard times will come. 2 And people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disloyal to their people, rejecters of grace, wicked, 3 Slanderers, captives to desire, cruel, haters of the good, 4 Traitors, impulsive, arrogant, loving lust more than the love of God, 5 Who have a form of God-worship and are far from his power; remove from you those who are such.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabees
2 Genesis 6:5