GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 17 (kings of the earth)

 

“As I watched in the night visions,

I saw one like a human being
    coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
    and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
    and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
    should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
    that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
    that shall never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7.13-14)

     Following the “exodus” from Egypt, the 12 tribes of Jacob[1] settled in Canaan and eventually formed the kingdom of Israel[2], ruled by a monarch whose throne was in Jerusalem, a.k.a. Zion.  The king of Israel was understood to be the “son” of God, i.e., Yahweh’s vice-regent (cf. Ps. 2).  God promised David, Israel’s second king, that his dynasty would be eternal (cf. 2 Sam. 7).  The kingdom of Israel was thus intended to be the “kingdom of heaven” on earth.  Israel’s territory was the claim that the Creator had staked in the world that he had made but had rebelled against him.  Israel was the unique people of God (cf. Dt. 7.6-8), perched precariously between Egypt to the West and the mighty empires of the East – Assyria, Babylon and Persia (and eventually, a world-conqueror from the West…).  The odds were always stacked against the kingdom of Yahweh; indeed, over time, the neighbouring pagan kingdoms would begin to encroach on Israel’s autonomy.  There were also liabilities within the kingdom of God – following the death of David’s son, Solomon, the kingdom split in two, becoming “Israel” in the North and “Judah” in the South.  Not for the last time in the chequered history of the people of God, each of the two estranged kingdoms would sometimes form alliances with pagan empires, either in order to press their advantage over their rival or to form a strategic front against a yet stronger mutual imperial enemy.  Eventually, the Northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the Southern kingdom to the Babylonians in the year 587.  With the sack of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon of Zedekiah, the last of the “sons of David”[3], the kingdom of Yahweh on earth – along with its “eternal” royal dynasty – was ended.  The gods of Babylon and the other nations had triumphed, or so it seemed.

     Babylon would eventually give way to Persia, who in turn would be conquered by a young man from Macedonia (whose first conquest had been the city-states of Greece).  After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. (in the city of Babylon), which came on the heels of his “Hellenization” of the world, Alexander’s empire was divided between four of his generals, with Egypt going to Ptolemy and the region of Syria being left to Seleucus.  Both of these generals formed dynasties which fought over the Levant, which frequently changed hands.  Babylon, Persia, Greece.  Where were the people of Yahweh during all these imperial re-drawings of the map?

     Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon in the year 539, had granted permission to those Judeans who desired to do so to return to their land and restore Jerusalem.[4]  A small minority had taken up the challenge and rebuilt Yahweh’s Temple and the city of Zion.  So, a fledgling Persian province subsisted in what had been the kingdom of Judah before the Babylonian exile.  The Judeans[5] witnessed the sweep of Alexander’s forces into Egypt, and then back northeast along the Fertile Crescent, conquering all in their path.  Despite the seemingly unending succession of empires, the Judeans had largely been left to themselves, until one particular Seleucid king, Antiochus IV (reign: 175—164 B.C.), decided to implement a program of cultural assimilation of which even the Assyrians would have been envious…

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[1] Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, had 12 sons, each of whom became the patriarch of a tribe (2 of the 12 tribes were named for Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh; Levi was the head of the family of the Levites, the ministers of the Tabernacle/Temple; the Levites were not allotted a territory in Canaan).

[2] “Israel” has several meanings in Scripture: first of all, it denotes an individual, Jacob, whose name was changed (by God) to Israel; secondly, it refers to the nation composed of the 12 tribes descended from Jacob; thirdly, it refers to a political entity, the nation-state ruled by the monarch of Jerusalem.

[3] The Babylonians murdered Zedekiah’s sons before exiling him to Babylon (where he died), thus destroying the royal line of Davidic kings.

[4] No such “return” from exile was allowed to the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom.  Assyrian policy, which was quite conventional in the Ancient Near East, was to assimilate captives into the empire and to colonize conquered territories with settlers taken from other regions (producing the Samaritans, whom we meet in the Gospels), thus “uprooting” people from the land that gave them a sense of distinct identity.  Thus were all subjected peoples encouraged to “melt” into the imperial pot of Assyria.

[5] A more accurate rendering of the Greek word usually translated as “Jews” in the New Testament.