The Life & Death of Israel

The People of God vs. The Empire of Man

May 13, 2023

**The Deportation of The Jews to the Babylonian Captivity** **by Eduard Bendemann (1872)**

I. Exile & Return

One of the major motifs in the Bible is the battle between God and Empire. The narrative depicts the rise and fall of a succession of imperial regimes, each of them amounting to the same thing: a demonic parody of God’s abundant reign. As Northrop Frye puts it, “Egypt, Babylon, and Rome are all spiritually the same place, and the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Epiphanes, and Nero are spiritually the same person.”1 That person is leviathan, a devouring monster who swallows everything. In this way, the Bible speaks to the human condition within history:

What is true of Israel in Egypt is typologically true of the human situation generally. All of us are born, and live our natural lives, within the leviathan’s belly. In the political aspect of the leviathan, we live in subjection to secular powers that may become at any time actively hostile to everything except their own aggressiveness, the leviathan being “king over all the children of pride” (Job 41:34).2

Israel knew leviathan all too well. For nearly a thousand years, from late 10th century BCE to early 1st century CE, its political history was one of trial and tribulation, much of it self-inflicted. King Solomon’s construction of an opulent oriental court had been paid for by high taxes and forced labor, which fell on the northern tribes more dearly. They began to resist this oppression, which led to a full-blown split between them and the southern tribes with the accession of his son, Rehoboam, in 928. Two kingdoms emerged: the more populous, powerful Israel to the north, and Judah to the south. While occasional allies, most of their history was marked by rivalry. Judah maintained relative internal stability, while Israel was wracked with turmoil—during just eighty-seven years, ten kings belonging to five different families ruled, and four of them were assassinated.3

The situation beyond their borders was even more dire. Israel and Judah stood at an unfortunate crossroads, sandwiched between great powers to the north, south, and east. One of them, Assyria, gained prominence in the late 8th century; it forced the two kingdoms to pay tribute as vassal states and occupied parts of Israel. A puppet king, Hoshea, was installed in 732, but after acting loyally for a time, he eventually rebelled. It didn’t go well. In 722, the Assyrians captured Israel’s capital, reduced it to ruins, and absorbed the northern kingdom into their empire.

Judah carried on and even flourished for a time. But then a new empire rose in the land: Babylon. After defeating the Assyrians in 605, it moved swiftly to blunt Egypt. Judah was caught in the middle, made a servant first of the pharaoh Neco and then, in 597, of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadrezzar II. As in Israel, Babylon set up a stooge, this time in the person of Zedekiah. And just like Hoshea, Zedekiah—after a period of obeisance—tried to buck his overlords. Babylon’s vengeance was swift. In 587, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, joined by several other vassal states. Judah held out for a year and half, but with the city in the grip of famine, Zedekiah fled with his armies toward Jericho. There he was captured. The enemy destroyed Jerusalem and razed the Temple. Zedekiah’s sons were executed and the king blinded, so that the last sight of the last descendant of David was the extinction of his line. Finally, he was led in chains to Babylon, along with the economic, political, and spiritual elites—some 18,000 souls.

The Bible views the fall of the two kingdoms as the result of Israel’s continued failure to live out the covenant—to make Yahweh alone their security and to enact social justice. Much of the book was edited and compiled by scribes during their internment in Babylon, which is why the theme of exile features so prominently. To them, the destruction of their home—especially of the Temple—was nothing less than the death of Israel. But then something incredible happened: Israel was reborn. In 539, Babylon itself fell to Persia. Its king, Cyrus II, decreed that any exiles who wished could return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1 -2). The people, speaking through Isaiah, interpreted this liberation as a new Exodus, a procession led by Yahweh himself (Isa 40:3-5; 55:12-13). As Frye says, “mythically the Exodus is the only thing that really happens in the Old Testament.”4

Anthichos — **Anthiochos IV Epiphanes Orders the Massacre of the Maccabees** **by Michel-François Dandré-Bardon**

II. Restoration, Rebellion, & Ruination

For nearly 200 years, God’s people lived again in their ancestral land, now called Judea. Yet they were still not free. The Temple was slowly rebuilt, being finally dedicated in 515, with the office of High Priest established for the first time. This figure was now considered the ultimate intercessor between Israel and God. Only he could enter the Holy of Holies—the inner chamber of the Temple, where the Lord dwelt—to ask forgiveness for the people on the Day of Atonement. He was also the intermediary between Israel and its overseers, offering daily prayers and sacrifices for the Persian king. The latter were his backers, an arrangement rife with conflicts of interest often resolved in his favor and not the people’s. For the Persians, the High Priest was their tool for keeping the colony in line. The religious and political collaboration between the High Priest and Israel’s occupiers continued for the next five centuries. As a result, most people questioned its legitimacy and many considered the figure a traitor. This resentment accrued to the entire hereditary priesthood, with large numbers of the poor doubting the loyalty of the priests down to the time of Jesus and beyond.5

In the late 4th century, yet another conquerer appeared: Alexander the Great. In just over a decade, from 336 to 327, he defeated every rival in the region, extending his empire all the way to India. When he died in 323, this vast domain was carved up among various lieutenants. God’s people, once again, were caught in between. During the period of control by the Ptolemies in Egypt, Judea enjoyed a modicum of independence. But when the Seleucids in the north defeated the Ptolemies, this ceased. Greek rule became more severe. In 175, King Antiochus IV imposed hard taxes on the people—taking as much as 33% from each farmer’s produce—and prohibited them from worshipping according to the Law. He built a gymnasium and stadium in Jerusalem, and in 167 installed a statute of the Syrian god Baal Shamem in the Temple. Worst of all, he declared himself “Epiphanes,” or “God manifest,” and ordered each Jewish male to participate in the sacrifice of a pig upon the holy altar—an abomination in their eyes (see Maccabees).

Rather than oppose these tyrannical orders, many of the priests sought to assimilate to the coercive Hellenistic culture, further degrading themselves. As for the peasants, Antiochus dispatched soldiers throughout the land to force compliance. But when they reached the small hilltop village of Modein, a peasant named Mattathias and his sons attacked them and led the villagers in an uprising. Thus began the Maccabean Revolt, named for Mattathias’s oldest son, Judas, called “Maccabeus” (“hammer”). It was a classic guerrilla war, in which the outnumbered rebels used their knowledge of the rugged terrain to their advantage. Over three years, they made one surprise attack after another, leading to eventual victory. They took control of Jerusalem in 164, reconsecrated the Temple, and drove the last Greeks out of the country in 142.

For the first time since 597, God’s people were free of the colonial boot. The laid down their own government, which became known as the Hasmonean regime (from Hasmon, the family name of the Maccabees). Their dynasty flourished for three generations, extending its territory beyond even the holdings of David and Solomon at their pinnacle. But then, a new heathen empire, more terrible than all the others, arose in the west: Rome. After defeating their longtime rival, Carthage, at the end of the third century, this Italian imperium turned its attention east. The Romans gradually conquered the Greek states during the second century, which culminated in the campaign of the general Pompey in 63 BCE. Like his Babylonian predecessors, he laid siege to Jerusalem and sacked the city. He then marched through Israel, despoiled more towns, and subjected the territories of Judea, Galilee, Perea, and Idumea to harsh tribute.

Israel had known imperial tyranny before. But nothing prepared them for the ruthlessness of Rome. In the initial decades of the occupation, entire towns were destroyed and their populations slaughtered, crucified, or enslaved. In 43 BCE, the general Cassius conquered Taricheae in Galilee and reduced 30,000 of its inhabitants to slavery. He enslaved more towns after that, in one case because they missed a deadline to raise new taxes. On top of this, Rome kept the Hasmoneans on the throne (who by now had become utterly corrupt) and handpicked a High Priest, Hycanus II, to administer their interests. Factionalism and infighting arose among the Hasmoneans, some of whom invited foreign intervention from Parthia to aid them.

The hits just kept on coming. In 40 BCE, Hasmonean influence was eclipsed by the rise of a new client-king: Herod the Great. Half-Arab, he was backed by both Mark Antony and Octavian. He was also a megalomaniac. With the help of the Roman army, he vanquished all rivals and established full military control. This involved indiscriminate slaughter throughout Galilee, the locus of popular resistance. He then besieged Jerusalem and massacred its inhabitants upon breaching the walls. The historian Josephus describes the scene: “Masses were butchered in the alleys, crowded together in the houses, and flying into the sanctuary.”6 As a symbol of the rule Herod exercised in Caesar's name, the Romans gave him the title "King of the Jews."

Maintaining his power required that he curry favor with his Roman benefactors, which in turn required that he extract as much wealth as possible from the land and funnel it to the imperial metropole. This he achieved through severe control of the population. As Richard Horsley says, “Herod instituted a police state, complete with loyalty oaths, surveillance, informers, secret police, imprisonment, torture, and brutal retaliation against any serious dissent.” He abused the people to an unprecedented degree, extorting them to underwrite his extravagant lifestyle and shower gifts on his Roman suzerains. He maintained a standing army and engaged in massive building projects. The latter included rebuilding the Temple, which began in 19 CE and continued for decades. To ingratiate himself further, Herod literally took the titles “Admirer of the Romans” and “Admirer of Caesar.” When told of the birth of a potential rival, he ordered the murder of every child under two in and around Bethlehem (Matt 2:13-18). So wicked was his rule, in fact, that Emperor Augustus himself quipped that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son, because, as a Jew, Herod wouldn’t kill a pig.7

The Massacre of the Innocents, after Rubens | Old Masters Day Sale ... — **The Massacre of the Innocents, after Rubens** **by Victor Wolfvoet the Younger (ca 1638)**

III. The Tyranny of Rome

For the 2.5 million Jews under this jackboot, the political situation at the dawn of the first century CE was marked by two overwhelming realities:

Imperial Occupation. The Pax romana declared by Augustus was an oxymoron, as the imperial “peace” was marked by theft, plunder, and constant violence. Around the time of Jesus’ birth, the Romans crucified some 2,000 Jews in Sepphoris after a failed rebellion. The crosses lined the roads for miles, the victims lingering in agony for weeks. As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, their corpses were left to rot, the stench permeating the region. The occupation reached into every facet of life, from robbery to rape to forced labor.
Elite Collaboration. As with the Persians, but now much worse, the elite elements of Jewish society collaborated with their oppressors:
1. Herod Antipas. After Herod died in 4 BCE, his vicious legacy continued under his three sons, Archelaus, Antipas, and Philip. They divided his kingdom among them, with Antipas ruling Galilee at Rome’s behest. It was Antipas who would behead Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, and try to kill Jesus as well. He continued his father’s expensive construction projects, which included coastal cities like Caesarea Maritima, the most technologically advanced of its day. These became sites of the administration of the empire, furthering the extraction of resources and wealth from the people. Antipas also expanded his father’s landholdings, eventually owning 1/2 to 2/3 of the entire realm.
2. The Priests. Meanwhile, the hereditary priesthood in Jerusalem behaved almost as badly. They oversaw the administration of the Temple complex, which served as the political, economic, and religious center of the colony (think the Capitol, Wall Street, and the Vatican put together). The priestly class included the heads of the richest families in Jerusalem, whose wealth gave them entry into the Sanhedrin, the Temple’s ruling council. The priests claimed privileged status, leading avaricious lives in the most affluent section of Jerusalem. They accommodated Roman rule and offered blasphemous sacrifices to Caesar. Herod exerted increasing control of their membership, appointing one corrupt priest after another, including seven High Priests. When he died, rioters demanded the removal of Joazar, his final appointee.
3. The Sadducees and Pharisees. Attached to the priestly aristocrats were Sadducees and Pharisees. The former were social and political conservatives who supported the Herodian regime, backed the priesthood’s control, and enriched themselves through their relationship with Rome. The latter were non-priestly “retainers” who served the priestly class. They observed ritual purity and scrupulously obeyed the laws of the Torah, to a fault. Their approach, rather than liberating, was narrow and elitist, burdening the people with inflexible regulations. In their piety and theology, they differed from the priestly aristocracy, but politically they were in firm alliance.8

The Conquest of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus Painting by Nicolas Poussin — **The Conquest of the Jerusalem by Emperor Titus** **by Nicolas Poussin (1638)**

This noxious mix of foreign domination and domestic collaboration led to catastrophic consequences for the people. By the time Jesus came of age, the landscape had been blighted by numerous economic pathologies, all born of colonization:

Poverty. The population broke down into two categories: the very rich and the very poor. The former contained just 1-2% of the people, including the Roman bureaucrats, aristocratic priests, and a handful of landowners and tax collectors. These tiny few held all political and economic power. The latter contained everybody else. These were mostly famers in the countryside, many of them tenants, having lost their ancestral land. Those that did own property had less than six acres, only 1.5 of which were available to cultivate. Other peasants were day laborers who struggled to maintain a subsistence lifestyle. About 10% of the peasantry was utterly destitute, with no land and no work whatsoever.
Taxation. The major cause of this poverty was the tax system. Roman governors saw their provinces as cash cows to be milked for all they were worth. Palestine, as the colony was named, was no exception, especially under Valerius Gratus (who governed from 15-26 CE) and Pontius Pilate (governed 26-36 CE). These despots wrung every bit of tribute from the people they could. In addition, the peasants were often forced to work without pay on a ruler’s building projects or the military. Like the region’s draft animals, the Romans could impress any male Jew into service they wished at any time. On top of that was the large amount of religious taxation they had to pay to the priestly aristocrats in Jerusalem, which amounted to twelve different classes of tithes and offerings. Between the various secular and sacred taxes, the peasants saw up to 60% of their meager holdings gobbled some years by the rentier class above them.
Commercial Agriculture. Under Herod the Great, peasants were increasingly required to pay their taxes, rent, debt, and other assessments in cash crops or in cash earned from the sale of such crops. Caesarea Maritima facilitated the export of grapes, olives, and grains throughout the empire. This transformation led to monoculture farming instead of biodynamic agriculture, increasing the risks of famine. It also meant the peasants had to purchase their share of foodstuffs. All of this became sources of wealth for the elite and traps for peasants, cheated at every turn by landlords, creditors, and tax agents.
Debt. Of all the evils of the day, debt was the worst. Many farmers had to hire themselves out for wages to supplement their harvest or borrow on credit. Ignoring God’s law, elites made out loans at interest rates of 60-200%. Day laborers, meanwhile, were not guaranteed work, without which they had no income or food. With frequent crop failures, sharecroppers and tenant farmers often ended up in debtors’ prison for defaulting on their loans—or, worse, slavery, and the legalized torture that came with it. In the worst cases, a lender could enslave the debtor’s wife and children, seize members of his extended family and their possessions, and even enslave his neighbors! All lands were foreclosed on and absorbed by the creditors. To avoid this fate, some farmers sold their eldest children into slavery to discharge their debts. Others committed suicide.

The collapse of the economy of reciprocity and mutual cooperation envisioned by God led to the collapse of society. Three pathologies emerged that make for the social backdrop of Jesus’ ministry:

Banditry. Pervasive poverty, hunger, and dispossession that came with debt, trauma, and occupation led to an explosion in crime. Worse than petty theft and robberies, though, was an increase in banditry. Banditry, as Obery Hendricks says, “is a classic symptom of political and economic breakdown.” It arises when large groups of landless poor band together, robbing and killing those they encounter in the backcountry. More than just thieves, such bandits are a phenomeonon of political upheaval and have a political agenda. Many in Israel were "renegades, insurgents, and nationlist guerrillas," says Obery Hendricks. Their primary goal was economic, but "they also had a political goal: to disrupt commerce and discredit the ruling class by throwing social order into disarray."9
Elitism. The solidarity of Israel had sundered into two classes: the 1% at the top, and the 99% at the bottom. This elite-commons divide was also an urban-rural divide, and relations were marked by mutual hostility. City dwellers, especially in Jerusalem, believed they were entitled to superior status vis a vis the country folk. For their part, the latter avoided the cities, going there only when necessary for commercial or imperial purposes. The haughty rich, hated army, and traitorous priests all hobnobbed there, along with the peasants’ absentee landlords (many of whom were also priests).10
Marginalization of Galilee. Of all the rural regions that the elites held in disdain, Galilee was the most stigmatized. An agrarian region with just a few minor towns, it boasted a population that spoke with a distinctive dialect of Hebrew that caused them to slur their words. Because of this, Galileans were actually barred from leadings community prayers outside of their territory. And because it was the most distant region from Jerusalem (and thus from Temple control), Galileans were considered lazy and lax in rendering their tithes to the priests. In reality, they often had to choose between paying their offerings or feeding their families. In short, Galilee was derided as redneck country full of hicks. In fact, it was worse than that. The urban elites labeled them am ha-aretz, “people of the land.” A pejorative Hebrew designation, this insult was worse than being called a thief, because a thief stole from other people. The am ha-aretz, on the other hand, stole from God. The term amounted to the worst racial slurs of our day.11

Taken on the whole, the political situation of Israel by the early 1st century was at a nadir. Darkness had fallen over the land; for the people of God, it was all night forever. And as they had done in Egypt, they cried out for deliverance. Would the Lord hear them as once before? Would he rescue them yet again?

The Similitude

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