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Son of David and Messianic Hopes
86 Plays1 year ago
Can a genealogy list present a gold challenge to the powers that be? Matt and Nick discuss the violent and wild history of intertestamental Israel under priests who gained tremendous wealth and power. They consider the varying messianic hopes in Judaism and why the arrival of the Son of David was hoped for by some and feared by others. It turns out that a genealogy list really can be exciting, even if reading through the names is still boring.
Suggested Resource: Bridging the Testaments by George Athas
Interlude Music: Boost by Dream Cave
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to New Series and Context of Jesus
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey there, it's the ReParadigm podcast, and today we're launching a new ongoing series on the Second Temple Jewish context to the Christ event, and then of course to New Testament theology. Today we have a conversation about the son of David.
00:00:27
Speaker
Matthew's Gospel starts with a pretty wild and controversial statement. He declares that Jesus' arrival overturns and supersedes the existing power structures. Matthew 1-1 says this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David. Wait, that versus doing all that?
Jewish Politics and Hope for a Davidic Heir
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, but I think to appreciate just how bold this claim is, we've got to look at what was going on in Jewish politics in the centuries leading up to Jesus' arrival. Yeah, please do that because that doesn't strike me as a particularly controversial or salient political point.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think it's very easy to miss, in part because at the end of the Old Testament, the Jewish people are kind of in a rough way. So once upon a time, the nation had been united and was independent under King David, but things went sour pretty fast after his death. Israel splits into the northern and southern kingdoms, both of which get taken over by foreign powers who exile the Jewish people from their lands. So while a portion of the people were permitted to return to their land, they're still under foreign rule. And their key hope is for a promised heir of David to come to reunite the people and to reestablish the eternal kingdom that God had promised to David. You see these hopes show up all over, right? The Psalms, the prophetic writings, they're all full of this hope of the return of a Davidic descendant. So if you look at 1 and 2 Chronicles, our canon tradition puts these pretty early in our Bible, but they're actually written pretty late. They're written after the return from exile.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, and in the Hebrew Bible, they're the last books of the Hebrew Bible. Yeah, they come right at the end. And not surprisingly, you know written by a people under foreign rule, David is a key focus of these books. So the author of First and Second Chronicles, he writes a lot about David's story. He does kind of skip some of the problematic bits of David's story. And he even traces the lineage of David all the way through the return from exile, probably right up to his current day when he was writing. He was tracking David's lineage because he's looking forward to the fulfillment of God's promise. Living under foreign rule, he's looking forward to the coming day when the promised son of David is going to return to establish this forever kingdom that had been promised. But as long as the Jewish people were under foreign rule, and foreign rulers aren't going to allow the Jewish people to have their own king. That's kind of asking
Power and Corruption of the High Priests
00:02:37
Speaker
for trouble. Especially if it's a people group with prophecies about a coming Davidic king who's going to establish an everlasting kingdom.
00:02:44
Speaker
As the foreign overseers, it's in your best interest to kind of dampen any idea that's going to contribute to the sort of rebellious thinking. Yeah, that's an idea to be worried about. Yeah. So the kind of standard practice for conquering any people group was to remove the people who are best suited for leadership from the conquered people, right? Get rid of the most likely troublemakers. So in fact, in the year 301, when the Ptolemies came and conquered Jerusalem, they deported many Jews to Alexandria. We have a lot of interesting evidence that a lot of the Davidic descendants were deported.
00:03:16
Speaker
Now, as this world empire, you've got to get rid of the most likely troublemakers, but you also can't afford to micromanage everything going on, right? If you're trying to be this king of kings, you're overseeing lots of people groups. So if you try to micromanage, you're just going to encourage revolts. So what you need to do is kind of let the conquered peoples have a limited amount of self-governance. Your goal is kind of to allow them just enough independence that they don't start a rebellion, but you need to have just enough control so that you keep them paying their taxes. yeah And then when you need people for war, you also need to be able to recruit them. It's a bit like holding onto a bird, right? Just tight enough that it doesn't want to fly away, but you don't want to squeeze it any harder than you need to. Multiple world powers had control over Judea, sometime after the Jewish people returned to their land.
00:03:58
Speaker
But in general, they all kind of held to this basic formula. They did not allow the Jewish people to have their own king. So the next highest ruler, the next highest position kind of became the de facto ruler of the people. So in Israel, this meant that that position was the high priest. Right. Yeah. So the high priest basically was granted the powers needed to oversee the people as long as they made sure that all the taxes got paid to this you know ruling foreign power and that they didn't do anything to start encouraging the people to revolt. The basic agreement was basically, make sure you pay us our taxes, don't start any rebellions and you can be in charge. And getting to be in charge comes with a lot of perks. So during these centuries of foreign rule, these priests and their supporters who were in charge, they got to hold a lot of power and they became extremely wealthy in these positions. The priests in charge were responsible for collecting the taxes from the people and they got to skim a nice little fat portion off for themselves along the way.
00:04:48
Speaker
They collected huge amounts of wealth and land. Multiple high priests, in fact, gained their position by simply paying enough to the governing superpowers to be given the position. So if someone wanted to be high priest but didn't have the money to buy the position, what they might do is they'd go promise the foreign power to pay more taxes, and then they could just place a heavier tax burden on the people once they were in charge. Or maybe if they really needed to, they'd go loot the temple treasury to pay this promised bribe. So imagine you're the brother of the high priest, right? You're a little jealous of what he's got. You like his position. So maybe you go to whoever the foreign power that's in charge and you say, hey, I know my brother is collecting 10,000 talents of silver for you, but if you make me high priest, I can increase that payment to 15,000 talents of silver. And what do you know, next thing you get to be high priest.
00:05:34
Speaker
Good deal. So when you picture a high priest being in charge, I think of like Sunday school classrooms, you imagine them in their robes and like yeah performing all these religious tasks. Think more of like a kind of vile, corrupt political figure. Okay. Scheming, killing and doing whatever's necessary to gain and maintain power and wealth. the thug life You could definitely make a Game of Thrones-style TV series around the priest during this time
Divisions Within Judaism and Davidic Prophecy
00:05:57
Speaker
period. I can see it. In fact, one high priest, John Herkinus II, he was high priest when his nephew wanted to take the position from him. So according to Josephus, his nephew bit off a chunk of John Herkinus' ear so that he would be deemed ineligible to serve as high priest.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, because according to Leviticus, like that would disqualify him from being the high priest. Exactly. So if you can deform a guy, then he can't continue to be high priest. So then he gets kicked out and you get the position. A little more unsettling. High priest Alexander Janaeus is fighting a civil war. And after he captured the rebel forces, he had 800 of them crucified. During the crucifixion, while this high priest was eating with his concubines, he had the wives and children of those 800 rebels executed in front of them during their crucifixion. So when I say evil, vile people, I'm not joking.
00:06:44
Speaker
For this priestly ruling class, right, who's taking advantage of the situation, the idea of a Davidic king coming to upset the status quo. Turn tables, so to speak. Exactly. Establish a new kingdom? Like, this is not something they would have gotten excited about. So prophecies and hope for a Davidic king actually became a liability to the priests. It was actually a threat to their power and to their wealth. So this difference of opinion regarding how Israel was supposed to be governed is one of the key reasons that Judaism became so fractured and divided into sects. Right, because there there had to have been a lot of faithful followers of Torah that were really upset at this status quo. Very much so. Here's I think an interesting aspect of this. So, you've probably heard that there was disagreement within Judaism about which writings were considered fully inspired scripture. Sure, yeah.
00:07:30
Speaker
groups like the Sadducees, who were kind of part of this priestly power group, they used only the Torah for their scripture, right? The first five books of the Old Testament. And this disagreement over which writings should be valued was about a lot more than just a theological disagreement over canon. It is actually about the legitimacy of power. In the Torah, those first five books, that's where all the priestly roles and authority are established, right? They're given to Moses at Sinai. There's no king for Israel in the Torah. Right. Oh, convenient for them then. Exactly. It's only in these later writings where Israel gets a king and the kingdom is established, right? All that begins in 1 Samuel. So God's covenant with David and the promises regarding the coming heir who's going to establish the new kingdom, that all comes after the Torah. The later writings also tend to have a lot of criticism of Israel's priests highlighting their disobedience to God. So for example, in the book of Ezekiel, he highlights the priest's idolatry as one of the reasons that God's glory departs the temple.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the prophets are just full of that critique of the religious leaders and the priesthood. Yeah. So if you're kind of among this priestly ruling class and you want to defend your authority, the prophetic writings like the writings after the Torah are not helpful. What you really want to do is emphasize the primacy of the Torah. So their message basically would have been, if you want to know what God really wants for Israel, we need to look at the Torah. And lo and behold, that's where the priests are given the highest position. The split between those who believe in priestly rule of Israel and those hoping for a Davidic heir led to very different views regarding how Israel should be governed, and it led to very different views regarding the hopes for the nation. You get different stories regarding what they're looking for God to come and do for the nation.
00:09:05
Speaker
So for your priestly ruling classes, they are going to see God working in and through their priestly rule. So they actually felt that things were pretty close, right? The high priest was already in charge. So for them, the real missing piece that they're hoping for is just national independence. So in their eyes, God's plan for the nation was that under priestly leadership, people would throw off foreign rule, and they wouldn't have to keep paying these taxes. and Israel would be an independent nation again, and therefore God's kingdom would be established. In fact, for a couple generations between the Seleucids and the Romans being in charge, the Jews did gain independence in a movement led by the Maccabees, members of the priestly ruling class. The high priest during this time became the highest authority in the land. In fact, many actually claimed that this was the arrival of God's kingdom. So their basic hope was God's restoration will come when his people will take up arms and fight to make it happen.
00:09:53
Speaker
The book of Sirach is a book in the Apocrypha. It's written by a sage who was a supporter of the ruling class. He writes about hopes for an independent Israel, but he doesn't express his hope for a new Davidic kingdom. It's interesting,
Davidic Loyalists and Criticism of Priestly Class
00:10:06
Speaker
when he recalls the greatest figures from Israel's history, three he highlights are Moses, Aaron, and Phineas. They're all kind of priestly-type figures. So in Sirach 7, 29 through 31, Yeah, he says, with your whole soul revere the lord and admire his priests with your whole might love him who made you
00:10:24
Speaker
and his ministers do not neglect fear the lord and honor a priest and give him his portion as it has been commanded of you So on the other hand, for Jews who held to the hope of a coming Davidic descendant, God's redemption of the people had to come from outside of the existing power structures, from outside of the priestly group that was in charge. The arrival of a Davidic king had to challenge the status quo as some sort of a radical transformation has to occur. A really good example of this is the hope in Daniel's visions for the coming son of man whose arriving kingdom smashes the existing powers of the world.
00:10:59
Speaker
The Psalms of Solomon were written during this time by a Davidic loyalist. He laments the ways that the priests have corrupted the temple. Yeah, he says, you, O Lord, you chose David, king over Israel, and you swore to him concerning his offspring forever. that his palace would never fail before you. And because of our sins, sinners rose up against us, and they attacked us and thrust us out, to whom you did not promise. They took possession by force, and they did not glorify your honorable name. They set up in glory a palace corresponding to their loftiness. They laid waste the throne of David and arrogance leading to change." And in expressing his hope for the coming heir of David, he writes,
00:11:40
Speaker
See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, at the time which you choose, O God, to rule over Israel your servant, and gird him with strength to shatter in pieces unrighteous rulers, to purify Jerusalem from nations that trample her down in destruction. So you get this kind of interesting twist for the Davidic loyalists, right? Because the sort of radical shift that they're looking for is the sort of thing that only God can make happen. They're looking for somebody completely outside the power structure to come and revolutionize everything. So they actually tend to remove themselves more from power. They tend to be more nonviolent in the way that they act because rather than go out and try to fight today to bring the kingdom of God, they're going to go kind of be more reclusive and wait for God to come and act in the world.
00:12:47
Speaker
So approaching the time of Jesus, right about 60 years before Jesus was born, Rome took control over Judea. The Roman version of this kind of overseer system was to install the client King Herod. And in many ways, King Herod was actually an excellent politician. So he knew that a lot of the Jewish people had hopes for a Davidic ruler. So while he was not a descendant of David, he did in some ways seek to kind of model himself after David. He hoped to be seen as a
Jesus' Davidic Lineage as a Political Threat
00:13:13
Speaker
sort of Davidic ruler by expanding Jewish influence and rebuilding the temple, re-establishing its glory to the days of Solomon, who was David's son. So his hope that even though he wasn't a Davidic descendant, he hoped that the people might come to kind of see him as a sort of spiritual descendant of David. And Judea was actually really prosperous under Herod's rule, and the priests took advantage of that to continue to build wealth and power for themselves.
00:13:37
Speaker
but We tend to think of Herod as the villain, probably because that's what he is in Matthew's Gospel. But for the priestly class, things were actually really good. So it's into this context now, right, where you've got this divide between people who are hoping to work through the status quo and this kind of priestly rule of Israel versus those who are hoping for somebody who will come and challenge those existing power structures, hoping for the coming Davidic descendant. Yeah, yeah. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all highlight the fact that Jesus is a descendant of David. And not just some sort of a spiritual the descendant of David, right? Someone who's sort of like David, but an actual genealogical descendant.
00:14:15
Speaker
Okay, so that's why they front their Gospels with a genealogy. Exactly. The genealogy to us is quite boring, right? Why start with the genealogy? Well, one of the reasons for that is to show that Jesus was the actual descendant of David. He was not just like Herod kind of tried to portray himself, some sort of a spiritual descendant of David, one who could maybe work within the existing power structures. No, no, no, no, no. He's an actual genealogical descendant. an heir to the throne from the promised line. So this arriving descendant of David is not compatible with the existing power structures in place.
00:14:50
Speaker
Makes a little bit of sense then, a little bit of foreshadowing of Jesus' ministry. Maybe not necessarily surprised that Jesus is so harsh in going after a lot of those with political cachet and relevance in that culture. He was always the hardest on the Jewish leaders, not the common people, but it was like the the leaders, the religious leaders, yeah so harsh on them. yeah Matthew goes out of his way to highlight the way Jesus' arrival is in conflict both with the religious leaders, like you say, and also with King Herod, the Roman overseer. Yeah, of course. His claim that Jesus arrives as the descendant of David is a problem for all of the parties in power, and he highlights this conflict. So immediately in his gospel were shown that Jesus' authority is viewed as a major problem by King Herod. Magi from a foreign country show up asking where the new king has been born, and Herod goes to great efforts to try to kill Jesus. And then, I think this is fascinating, when John the Baptist announces Jesus' arrival, he says,
00:15:47
Speaker
I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with an unquenchable fire. Now there's a line in there that is kind of easy for us to miss. He says that Jesus will clear his threshing floor. And now there's a very interesting thing about the temple, which is kind of this center of priestly power. It's that the temple was located in Jerusalem because of David.
00:16:22
Speaker
When David took over, the meeting place of God was still the tabernacle, this mobile tent. So it was David who wanted to build a permanent temple for God. So while he didn't actually build the temple, he did purchase the land for it, he prepared all the materials, and then his son Solomon actually built the temple. There's this interesting story in 2 Samuel 24. When David needed a place to build an altar, he bought this threshing floor from Aruna, the Jebusite. Aruna tries to just give it to him, but David insists on paying him for the property. And 2 Chronicles 3.1 says this about that property.
00:16:54
Speaker
Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Aruna, the Jebusite, the place provided by David. So the temple and its functions which are central to the Sadducee and priestly claims to power, this temple had literally been built by David's son on the threshing floor that David had purchased. And then John comes along and declares that Jesus, the son of David, has arrived to clear his threshing floor. He's cleaning up his house. Yeah. This is interesting, like just threshing in general can kind of get used to signify a lot of things. But John doesn't just say Jesus is coming to thresh. He says he's coming to clear his threshing floor. He's very specific about what Jesus is going to come to do.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, not surprising then when you see the accounts of Jesus clearing out the temple, flipping tables and saying, this was supposed to be a house of prayer for all people, but you guys have made it a den of robbers just incensed at these people acting like it was his space or his father's space. And they had no business being on it, doing what they were doing. Yeah. So I almost imagine the priests, they're very proud of this temple. Like maybe there was this little plaque out front that was like, hey, this was built on the property purchased by David, by David's son. And they kind of like had a little shrub that they like planted in front of it, right? That's kind of like the unfortunate reality of the temple for them. It's like, yeah, you know, this is our source of power. Like, let's not focus too much on the fact that it's actually only here because of David. And then John shows up on the scene and is like, no, he's here to clear his threshing floor. Look out, guys.
00:18:29
Speaker
actually read those verses from Matthew 21. Jesus coming in to confront the very source of authority for the priestly class. Yeah, this is the account as given by Matthew. Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers. The blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things that he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. So I think this passage seems really weird if you don't have kind of a sense of the bigger politics going on. Yeah, it's making more sense now actually with that background. Jesus comes in and he flips the tables and accuses the sellers of making the house a den of robbers. But that's not what Matthew says makes the chief priests indignant. What really gets them mad is that Jesus is doing wonderful things and that he gets celebrated by the people as the son of David.
00:19:30
Speaker
It's his claim to Davidic lineage with the support of the crowds that
Jesus' Political Context and Modern Implications
00:19:35
Speaker
threatens to undermine centuries of their work growing power and wealth. Sometimes kind of come across this idea that Jesus is not functioning within politics, but that he's kind of working spiritually apart from politics. Like his ministry was spiritual rather than political. My kingdom is not of this world. Yeah, rather than my kingdom is not from this world. But I think the more we study Jesus in his context, we get to see that he was absolutely political. Certainly, all the people he's interacting with see him as political. They all see him as threatening their power, whether it's Herod or the chief priests.
00:20:11
Speaker
Now, his approach to politics does not fit into any normal partisan discussions of politics, but his message, his ministry, and his authority should absolutely shape the way we think about power and politics, because that's absolutely the world that he's functioning in. Yeah, and his like political context is obviously nothing like our political context, but that's an interesting point. It is to misread Jesus in his time and place, to think of him as a moral guru that offered some advice to individuals as they walk through the great unknowns of this life in their quest for enlightenment. just Sure, he is a sage and very wise and beautiful sayings by Jesus to meditate on and learn from the rest of our lives,
00:20:52
Speaker
But he very much was an activist, so to speak, in his time and place, flipping unjust systems on their head, turning literally tables upside down, calling for deep and fundamental structural changes of the way things were. He called out the obvious enemies like the Roman oppressors for all their evil and injustice and also the hypocrisy and the power-hungry religious rulers and those that were considered to be the spiritual guides of the people. He went after their position and what they were doing with that position as well.
00:21:29
Speaker
I mean, you're outside of the Bible, obviously, when you do this, but you can't help but to sit back and consider what type of systems of oppression, both within the commonly agreed upon enemy structures, right? The empires of the world, the evil government, so to speak, our government, to consider what he would have to say about that, but also what he would have to say about the caretakers of God's laws, of God's commands, the religious folks, the people like me and you, what he would have to say about the injustice that we willingly partake in and hypocrisy and the power grabs that we frequently make.
00:22:09
Speaker
I also think it's fascinating that in his ministry, he speaks about the coming destruction of this temple. And it's only a generation after he ascends to sit at the right hand of God that we see this temple destroyed. Jewish politics were completely transformed. The people that were in power were no longer in power a generation after Jesus. And he came and he spoke to this impending destruction of both this building and their system. And he transforms the way that people think about it. In the same way, I don't think we can just view Christianity as being something that exists in parallel with politics or on the side, but it's absolutely something that should shape not only the way we think about politics, but the way we live it out and the way the world functions around us. Yeah, may that be a prophetic word to us too, that just as the structures that Jesus was born into in his world, just as they were fleeting
00:22:58
Speaker
They went away. They had their time and place. They lived on the blood and misery of the innocent and the oppressed. So also our systems do the same. So also the powers of our world will have their day and they too will go away with the wind like any other kingdom, like any other power, like any other political entity that would live on oppression and violence. One other thing that I think is interesting about this is the way that the priests and their supporters tried to tell a slightly different version of God's story, one that supported what they were doing and what they wanted to accomplish. They were able to kind of cherry pick God's promises in such a way that it presented themselves and what they were trying to do as a fulfillment of God's plan.
00:23:45
Speaker
I think every power does that in some way, right? The power of a narrative to shape what we hope for and what we imagine the world should look like, I think it's important as Christians that we don't simply look for people who are claiming to be functioning within the story of God. Right, because they could just be reshaping a narrative, doing a good bit of revisionist history, putting themselves as the the people whom God has installed there to fulfill his purposes and his plans. We don't have to be duped by that just like that religious jargon and that language that people use to self-justify. We have actually a paradigm through which to evaluate all claims of authority. Not only authority, but of moral beauty and goodness. Yeah, we should be very suspicious of somebody in power who's trying to tell you a story that presents themselves as the hero of God's story. And the way we'll know whether or not it's from God is when it starts to not look like Jesus, then you know it's not from God. Amen.