Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/65

Rh MESSIAH moulded that hope into certain fixed forms which were taken with a literalness not contemplated by the prophets themselves. It was, however, only very gradually that the figure and name of the Messiah acquired the pro minence which they have in later Jewish doctrine of the last things and in the official exegesis of the Targums. In the very developed eschatology of Daniel they are, as we have seen, altogether wanting, and in the Apocrypha, both before and after the Maccabee revival, the everlasting throne of David s house is a mere historical reminiscence (Sirach xlvii. 11 ; 1 Mac. ii. 57). So long as the wars of independence worthily occupied the energies of the Pales tinian Jews, and the Hasmonaean sovereignty promised a measure of independence and felicity under the law, in which the people were ready to acquiesce, at least, till the rise of a new prophet (1 Mac. xiv. 41), the hope that con nected itself with the house of David was not likely to rise to fresh life, especially as a considerable proportion of the not very numerous passages of Scripture which speak of the ideal king might with a little straining be applied to the rising star of the new dynasty (comp. the language of 1 Mac. xiv. 4-15). It is only in Alexandria, where the Jews were still subject to the yoke of the Gentile, that at this time (c. 140 B.C.) we find the oldest Sibylline verses (iii. 652 sq.) proclaiming the approach of the righteous king whom God shall raise up from the East (Isa. xli. 2) to establish peace on earth and inaugurate the sovereignty of the prophets in a regenerate world. The name Messiah is still lacking, and the central point of the prophecy is not the reign of the deliverer but the subjec tion of all nations to the law and the temple. 1 With the growing weakness and corruption of the Hasmonaean princes, and the alienation of a large part of the nation from their cause, the hope of a better kingship begins to appear in Judaea also ; at first darkly shadowed forth in the Book of Enoch (chap, xc.), where the white steer, the future leader of God s herd after the deliverance from the heathen, stands in a certain contrast to the in adequate sovereignty of the actual dynasty (the horned lambs) ; and then much more clearly, and for the first time with use of the name Messiah, in the Psalter of Solomon, the chief document of the protest of Pharisaism against its enemies the later Hasmonaeans. The struggle between the Pharisees and Sadducees, between the party of the scribes and the party of the Hasmonaean aristocracy, has been described in ISRAEL (vol. xiii. p. 423 sq.). It was a struggle for mastery between a secularized hierarchy on the one hand, to whom the theocracy was only a name, and whose whole interests were those of their own selfish politics, and on the other hand a party to which God and the law were all in all, and whose influence depended on the main tenance of the doctrine that the exact fulfilling of the law according to the precepts of the scribes was the absorbing vocation of Israel. This doctrine had grown up in the political nullity of Judaea under Persian and Grecian rule, and no government that possessed or aimed at political independence could possibly show constant deference to the punctilios of the schoolmen. The Pharisees themselves could not but see that their principles were politically impotent ; the most scrupulous observance of the Sabbath, for example and this was the culminating point of legality could not thrust back the arms of the heathen. Thus the party of the scribes, when they came into conflict with an active political power, which at the same time claimed to represent the theocratic interests of Israel, were compelled to lay fresh stress on the doctrine that the true deliverance of Israel must come from God and not from man. We have seen indeed that the legalism which accepted 1 In Sibyll., iii. 775, vr]6v must undoubtedly be read for vl6v. 55 Jehovah as legislator, while admitting that his executive sovereignty as judge and captain of Israel was for the time dormant, would from the first have been a self-destructive position without the complementary hope of a future vindication of divine justice and mercy, when the God of Israel should return to reign over his people for ever. Before the Maccabee revival the spirit of nationality was so dead that this hope lay in the background ; the ethical and devotional aspects of religion under the law held the first place, and the monotony of political servitude gave little occasion for the observation that a true national life requires a personal leader as well as a written law. But now the Jews were a nation once more, and national ideas came to the front. In the Hasmonsean sovereignty these ideas took a political form, and the result was the secular ization of the kingdom of God for the sake of a harsh and rapacious aristocracy. The nation threw itself on the side of the Pharisees ; but it did so in no mere spirit of punctilious legalism, but with the ardour of a national enthusiasm deceived in its dearest hopes, and turning for help from the delusive kingship of the Hasmonaeans to the true kingship of Jehovah, and to His vicegerent the king of David s house. It is in this connexion that the doctrine and name of the Messiah appear in the Psalter of Solomon. The eternal kingship of the house of David, so long forgotten, is seized on as the proof that the Hasmonaeans have no divine right. &quot;Thou, Lord, art our king for ever and ever. . . . Thou didst choose David as king over Israel, and swarest unto him concerning his seed for ever that his kingship should never fail before Thee. And for our sins sinners (the Hasmonreans) have risen up over us, taking with force the kingdom which Thou didst not promise to them, profaning the throne of David in their pride. But Thou, Lord, will cast them down and root out their seed from the land, when a man not of our race (Pompey) rises up against them. . . . Behold, Lord, and raise up their king the Son of David at the time that Thou hast appointed, to reign over Israel Thy servant; and gird him with strength to crush unjust rulers ; to cleanse Jerusalem from the heathen that tread it under foot, to cast out sinners from Thy inheritance; to break the pride of sinners and all their strength as potter s vessels with a rod of iron (Ps. ii. 9); to destroy the law less nations with the word of his mouth (Isa. xi. 4) ; to gather a holy nation and lead them in righteousness. ... He shall divide them by tribes in the land, and no stranger and foreigner shall dwell with them ; he shall judge the nations in wisdom and righteousness. The heathen nations shall serve under his yoke ; he shall glorify the Lord before all the earth, and cleanse Jerusalem in holiness as in the beginning. From the ends of the earth all nations shall come to see his glory and bring the weary sons of Zion as gifts (Isa. Ix. 3 sq. ); to see the glory of the Lord with which God hath crowned him, for he is over them a righteous king taught of God. In his days there shall be no unrighteousness in their midst; for they are all holy, and their king the anointed of the Lord (xpiffrbs Ktpios, mis translation of rni&quot;P ITK D). He shall not trust on horses and riders and bowmen, nor heap up gold and silver for war, nor put his confi dence in a multitude for the day of war. The Lord is king, that is his hope. ... He is pure from sin to rule a great people, to rebuke governors and destroy sinners by his mighty word. In all his days he is free from offence against his God, for He hath made him strong by the Holy Spirit. . . . His hone is in the Lord ; who can do aught against him ? Strong in deeds and mighty in the fear of the Lord, he feedeth the flock of the Lord in truth and righteous ness, and suffereth not one of them to stumble in the pasture. . . . So it beseemeth the king of Israel whom God hath chosen to lead the house of Israel. . . . God hasten His mercy on Israel to deliver them from the uncleanness of profane foes. The Lord is our king for ever and ever.&quot; Psalt. Sol. xvii. This conception is traced in lines too firm to be those of a first essay; it had doubtless grown upas an integral part of the religious protest against the Hasmonteans. And while the polemical motive is obvious, and the argument from prophecy against the legitimacy of a non-Davidic dynasty is quite in the manner of the scribes, the spirit of theocratic fervour which inspires the picture of the Messiah is broader and deeper than their narrow legalism. In a word, the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah marks the fusion of Pharisaism with the national religious feeling of the