Read the Bible as a Story 5

From the Maccabees to Matthew: How Edom Got the Throne

Keep Reading Past the Victory

In Part 4 we saw two ways to fight, and two answers to Edom. Now let’s see what happened next.

Most of us stop at the happy ending. The Temple is cleansed in Kislev of 164 BCE, the lamps are lit, and we close the book. But 1 Maccabees keeps going, and it gets uncomfortable.

Judas sends envoys to Rome and signs a treaty, to get free of the Greeks (1 Macc 8).

His brother Jonathan accepts the high priesthood, with the purple robe, from a Syrian king (1 Macc 10:18–21). The family that rose up against a Greek king now holds its office by a Greek king’s letter.

Simon is made leader and high priest “for ever, until there should arise a faithful prophet” (1 Macc 14:41). Then his son-in-law murders him at a banquet (1 Macc 16:11–16).

Hold on to that word “until.” Generations later, Jerusalem’s delegation asks John the Baptist, “Art thou that prophet?” (John 1:21). They are still waiting on that clause.

Where the Book Ends, Josephus Picks Up

First Maccabees stops with Simon’s son, John Hyrcanus. Here is what came next.

Late second century BCE: Hyrcanus conquers Idumea, the land of Edom. Stay and be circumcised, or leave.

About 104 BCE: Aristobulus I puts on a crown. The sceptre was promised to Judah (Gen 49:10). The Hasmoneans are priests.

103–76 BCE: Alexander Yannai crucifies about 800 Pharisees in Jerusalem. A Jewish king is putting Jews on crosses.

63 BCE: Two Hasmonean brothers fight over the throne and ask Rome to settle it. Pompey settles it by taking the city and walking into the Holy of Holies.

40–37 BCE: The Roman Senate names Herod king. His father is an Idumean, one of those conversions come home. Herod takes Jerusalem, marries the Hasmonean princess Mariamme, and later kills her.

It took about a hundred years to go from “Stay and be circumcised” to an Edomite king on the throne in Jerusalem. The sword made Edom into Israel on paper, and then Edom ran the place.

The Maccabees beat Antiochus. What the sword won next is what they never recovered from.

The rabbis remembered. Ramban says the Hasmoneans were punished for taking a crown that belonged to Judah, while granting that without them Torah would have been forgotten (on Gen 49:10). The Psalms of Solomon begs God to raise up the son of David (17:21). By then, “son of David” was a protest.

Now Open Your New Testament

Read the openings again with all of that in your head.

“There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea...” (Luke 1:5)

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king...” (Matt 2:1)

Two Gospels set their first scene in Herod’s days, and that is more than a date. Then the magi walk into an Idumean’s court and ask, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” (Matt 2:2). No wonder Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. They all knew how he got the job.

Everything after that reads differently:

The crowd waves palm branches, which Simon’s men carried when they took the citadel (1 Macc 13:51). Jesus finds a donkey (Zech 9:9).

Jesus asks whose son the Messiah is (Mark 12:35), in a city where priests had worn the crown and an Edomite had followed them.

Paul asks Peter, “why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” (Gal 2:14). Everyone in Jerusalem knew how compelling Gentiles had turned out.

James reads Amos, and where the Hebrew has “the remnant of Edom,” the Greek has “the residue of men” (Acts 15:17; Amos 9:12). The apostles open a door for Gentiles to walk through as Gentiles.

The chief priests say, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). That account was opened in 1 Maccabees 8.

The Last Herodian

The story has one more scene. Herod’s great-grandson Agrippa II comes down through Mariamme, so he carries both the Hasmonean conquerors and the Edomites they conquered in one man.

In Caesarea he hears Paul. “King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest” (Acts 26:27). The King James gives his answer as “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (26:28). The Greek is disputed, and it may be a dry remark about how quickly Paul expects to win him over. Either way, he stays where he is. The door James opened stood open in front of Edom’s last king, and he didn’t walk through it.

Then comes the war. Agrippa pleads with Jerusalem not to revolt. When it does, he sends troops to Vespasian and rides with Titus, and Rome rewards him after the Temple burns.

Daniel says an anointed one will be cut off, ve’ein lo, “and he shall have nothing,” and the people of a coming prince will destroy the city and the sanctuary (Dan 9:26). Rashi names the anointed one: Agrippa. Rashi has him slain, but history has him outliving the Temple by decades. Still, he appears to have died childless, the last of Herod’s house, and his lands went to Rome. A dynasty can be cut off and left with nothing while its last king lives on in comfort.

After that, the name moves west. The rabbis begin calling Rome by Edom’s name (b. Avodah Zarah 10a). Is that the history behind Daniel’s words? Perhaps. I’ve explored the question here, and I hold it as a question.

So How Should We Read the Bible?

Don’t stop at the victory.

Read 1 Maccabees 8–16, then Luke 1 and Matthew 2, and notice whose name is on the calendar. Then read Acts 25–26 and notice whose name is still there.

Then ask what was left to be tried. Israel had tried the sword and it worked, and what it produced was Herod. So when Jesus stands before Pilate and says, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” (John 18:36), he is talking about where his kingdom comes from. He has also seen how the other kind turns out.

That’s the King we’re waiting on. His reign comes down from heaven, and it won’t need Edom’s help.

“And the kingdom shall be the LORD’s” (Obad 21).