Jewish Beliefs Respecting the Messiah

Ghe distracted condition of affairs in Judea, as described in the preceding chapter, led to a critical examination of the old prophecies as to the time when the predicted Messiah should appear. Many of the most learned believed that Christ would come when Israel was in the deepest distress, when her oppression was greatest, and when calamity, either through natural causes or by the grinding heels of invaders, should make His aid most needful. This direful time seemed now to have arrived, and hence there was a quickening of interest in the prophecies, and in the days of her distraction Israel therefore became buoyant with a refreshing hope of the Messiah’s early appearance to restore the Jews to their former power and independence under David.

The religious and civil condition of the Jews at this time was remarkable even for a people that had passed through so many phenomenal situations, in which miraculous intervention was both conspicuous and frequent. Always an intensely, perfervid, religious race, they naturally drifted into beliefs which transcended the faith founded upon the laws of Moses and the teachings of their prophets, and hence they more easily became the dupes of designing hierarchs, such as the rabbis or learned men of the Pharisaic sect were. These laid claim to preternatural powers almost equal to God himself, which they grounded into the people by appealing to a credulity positively amazing. These pretensions were so well substantiated that they set themselves above kings, and exacted and received the reverential respect of the people. They recited the most astounding miracles as evidence of their powers, and their deluded followers sat dumb with amazed admiration before them, and this extraordinary influence they continued to exercise for a period of four hundred years, and until the mask was torn from them by Christ himself.

While parading their own learning and indefinable and illimitable powers over men and elements, the rabbis still held to and taught the coming of one greater than they, a Messiah and Deliverer, who would be the truly Anointed of God. This claim they made in nearly all their prayers and it became a dominant feature of their teaching, founded as it was upon the Messianic prophecies of Ezekiel, Malachi, David, Micah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah and Daniel. Several times the people thought their hopes were realized in Cyrus,

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the thunder-bolt of war; in Zerubbabel, the “Prince of Captivity;” in Maccabeus, that wondrous son of Judah who brought up the people out of the ashes of despair. All these did great works, but they were not of that fullness which satisfied Israel that her Deliverer was indeed come, and the longing eyes of the people continued strained towards the higher kingdom from whence the Divine King was expected soon to descend.

The idea of a speedy coming of the Messiah became so general that it took possession of the Jews to the exclusion of almost every other ambition. The prophecies of Daniel were a constant theme of discussion, because their fulfillment was believed to be so near at hand. The rabbis were united in their faith that He would be born in the flesh at Bethlehem and come out of the tribe of Judah, but that His Messianic power would not be discovered until Elias and the other prophets came as forerunners to announce His mission. But the Christ around whom centred the hopes of the Jews was pictured as a God of war, who would descend upon the enemies of Israel with fire and sword as did David of old, and with as little mercy. “He girds his loins and descends, and orders the battle against His enemies and slays their kings and their chief captains; there is no one so mighty as to stand before Him. He makes the mountains red with the blood of His slaughtered foes: His robes, dyed in their blood, are like the skins of purple grapes. The beasts of the fields will feed for twelve months on the flesh of the slain, and the birds of the air will feed on them for seven years. The Eord will revenge us on the bands of Gog. At that hour will the powers of the nation be broken: they will be like a ship whose tackling is torn away, and whose mast is sprung, so that the sail can be no longer set on it. Then will Israel divide the treasures of the nations among them, a great store of booty and riches, so if there be the lame and blind among them, even they shall have their share.” This is the language of the Jerusalem Targum (the Chaldee or Aramaic version of the Old Testament), and it is the reflection of a universal belief prevalent at that time. But more than this, the Jews were so selfish that the Pharisees, or rabbis, maintained that when the Messiah should have winnowed the land of its enemies Judah would become a paradise, a heavenly kingdom transplanted on earth, where labor and worry would never more be known to the chosen people. It was a prognostic of the rabbis that on the day of the Messiah’s coming, the earth itself would manifest its joy in a magnificent fruitage, that a handful of corn on the mountain tops would suddenly take root and throw out stalks as large as palm trees and from which innumerable ears would shoot forth which, shaken by a wind from heaven, would be ground into the whitest flour and in such quantity as to feed all the people. Grapes would grow so large that a wagon would not suffice to hold a single one, while a cluster would load a ship, and from them the best wine might be drawn as from a cask. But the surprises that were then to take place were not yet fully enumerated, for greater wonders would be seen in the splendors of the capital which the Messiah would establish. The great mountains of Palestine were to be brought together and a new Jerusalem set thereon, covering an area so great that a running horse could not pass between its limits in a day, and the houses of this grand city would be not only of inconceivable splendor, but the palaces therein would be three miles in height. Around the city, it was declared, would be a wondrous wall pierced by numerous gates, composed entirely of precious stones, while the surrounding country would sparkle with prismatic reflections from diamonds, sapphires and rubies, rivaling in beauty the walls and pavements of heaven itself. To add further glory and grandeur to the New Jerusalem, the people therein would all be made prophets and become as gods, while the millennium would be complete by the banishment of all disease and suffering of whatsoever character. Ah, what a dream! What a vision of carnal attainment, of selfish, material aggrandizement, as opposed to the spiritual

beauty of a loving, suffering, and all-merciful Messiah, whose mission was conceived in the glorification of the noblest attributes of human kind, and whose kingdom was to be founded upon the holy principles of charity, humility, universal love and immeasurable mercy, in direct opposition to the Jewish beliefs and traditions, which were of a political rather than a spiritual character.

It is a noteworthy fact that the belief in the early coming of the Messiah was not entirely confined to Judah, but was conspicuous in the teachings of eastern sects, being no doubt a transmission of the prophecy of Daniel during the captivity, an inference which we are more ready to assume from the fact that the learned men of the East looked forward to Christ’s first appearance in the region about Jerusalem. While there was a universality of belief among the Jews that the sacred advent was near at hand, there was a division of opinion respecting the character which the Messiah would assume. As already described, the rabbis, who composed the learned, or Pharisaic, class of Jews, generally expected His appearance to be made in the person of an all-powerful and self-glorified Prince, whose authority would be immediately acknowledged and through whom the restoration of Israel would be at once accomplished.

But while the rabbis had formerly been accepted as the true successors of the prophets, and to whom the people looked for an interpretation of the laws, the immense influence which their position gave at length led them to an assumption of political as well as priestly prerogatives, and their devoutness gradually gave place to worldly ambitions. At the time of Christ, therefore, the Pharisees had so greatly degenerated that the very name had become a synonym for deceit, flattery, formalism, bigotry, self-complacency and hypocrisy, though a few there were who still held sacred the faith of their fathers and whose piety continued unabated. Among such were Hillel, Simeon, Zacharias, Gamaliel and his pupil.

‘351 Paul. The more devout among the sect, being nearer to the fount of divine wisdom, and with a truer conception of the character and purpose of the promised

Messiah, predicted
His coming in a form
which would prevent
any knowledge of His
Godly attributes until
P^lias should declare
Him to the people.
This idea, however,
was entertained by
very few, though it
was the hope of every
woman in Israel to
become the mother of
the Redeemer. So
great was this maternal ambition that
barrenness was a reproach which, though
always so regarded
among the Jewish
women, was considered a disgrace marking the Divine disfavor at this period,
and barren women
were therefore held
in contempt as victims of an unnatural
failing. We have illustrations ox the
shame which followed
barrenness in the
apocryphal stories
which have been
handed down to us
by ancient writers,
concerning the luifruitfulness of Anna, the mother of Mary-. By these legends it
is declared that Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anna, simple shepherd

A BETROTHED JEWISH GrRT, OE PAI.ESTINE.-

Herald.

-From The On tstian folks, who married at an early age and passed the next twenty years bewailing their childlessness. So great was this reproach upon both that it is said Joachim was ordered away from the Temple and his offerings refused, while Anna was denied association with other women. This exclusion so troubled her heart that she fell into a melancholy which even prayer could not solace. At length, as Anna was weeping one day her maid came to her with the consoling assurance that the I/Drd was about to take away her reproach, and instructed her to put on a headdress and to array herself in her bridal robes and repair to the garden at the ninth hour. Anna did as she was bid, and taking a place under a laurel tree renewed her prayer to the Lord for offspring, among other things saying, * * Woe is me, woe is me, who have no child! Why was I born that I should have become accursed before the children of Israel, and despised, and scorned, and driven away from the Temple of the Lord my God?” As she was praying an angel came to her and announced the glad tidings that a child should soon be born to her, which came to pass in due time, and, as the angel had directed, the babe was called Mary. When she was one year old the infant was blessed by the priests, and two years later was taken to the Temple and there left with virgins until she was twelve years of age, at which time it was said she was possessed of unexampled graces and a piety which was never before equaled. She was distinguished for industry, charity, devotion and modesty, no less than for a melodious voice and a face and form of incomparable beauty. The more exact writers who have attempted to describe her person say she was slender and slightly above middle height, with a fair complexion, blonde hair, rich hazel eyes, ruddy lips and hands of a delicate beauty, while her speech was so gentle and winning that the world might well pause to listen while she spoke.

All this may be tradition, for it is so said, but as the Mother of Jesus we can only picture her to our mind’s vision as an embodiment of all that is beautiful; an incarnation of every charm that draws us affectionately to womankind; with voice tenderer than the dove’s and sweeter than lute strings struck with practiced hands; with tresses rivaling the waves of imprismed light; with eyes that melted into love, and mouth that opened with orisons, and cheeks that caught the blushes of early morning, and brow that bore the signet of God; a blessed being, giving intimation of the bewildering witchery of celestial spirits, the choir invisible.

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