Week 7: Messianic SigFigs

March 19, 2016

Dear T,

I’ve been thinking about you lately and wondering whether you’re “the one.” I know, I know… it’s a little early for all of that, but my mind has a tendency to escape the chaos of the present moment in favor of organizing the future into picket fences and lakeside retirement cottages. This week in my Old Testament course materials, I’ve been reading about the prophets of the post-exilic era (the mid-500s BCE) after the Hebrew people from the Judean (southern) kingdom had been carted off to Babylon only to see their fortunes reversed when the Persians conquered the erstwhile invaders. I imagine the Judeans/Israelites/Hebrews/Jews (whatever you want to call them) were a lot like me – trying to make sense of the chaos of their present moment by daydreaming about a future that is very much yet to come.

They might have been like me in another way, too: searching for “the one.” They were searching for a person to come and deliver, liberate, and restore them, in the words of my Professor. They were hoping for an anointed one, sent by their God (Yahweh), to do all of this. In a word, they were looking for a messiah. And that word has a lot of theological significance, referring as it does to a leader appointed and protected by God for the purpose of serving God’s people (Fried). Don’t worry – I don’t have nearly the same expectations of you!

Before King David (who was definitely the messiah for a time), priests and prophets were anointed of God and thus messiahs, like Elijah and his prophet successor Elisha, the high priest before him, and the kings who succeeded them (Fried). After David, every king (with very few exceptions) was anointed of God by the prophets, and thus became the messiah. In much of the prophetic tradition, (c.f. Ezekiel, 34:23-24) the messiah is expected to be someone who can unite the two nations of Judah and Israel. Naturally, this person should be a king from the line of David (Stanley, p.460). And yet, as it turns out, that’s not at all what happened.

What’s so interesting about the people’s hope and desperation is that, for the first time in the history recorded by the Hebrew Scriptures, “the one” they hoped to be their messiah-deliverer was an outsider – a non-Jew, a foreigner (LESTER). In the book of Isaiah, the prophet actually declares that Cyrus, a Persian emperor, is God’s messiah (Isaiah 45:1-7). [Note: Messiah literally means “anointed one” (Fried)]. This is a big deal, because the title messiah has always referred to a ruler of Judah, or the southern Kingdom (Fried). And yet, here they were in the mid-500s, after decades of misery, living alone in a foreign place, that they thought they had found the one. Cyrus the Persian (Fried), a warrior-king rapidly expanding his empire by defeating neighboring nations, had overcome the Babylonian empire. For the Hebrew people, the misery was bad enough that they were perfectly willing to set aside some of the prophetic expectation that the messiah would be an Israelite like them.

I guess this is where practicality comes in handy for making sense of the disconnect between the theological and prophetic expectations and the reality of a messy world (pay attention, this could apply to us). Practically speaking, the messiah had one important role: restoration. That’s right – the messiah really only (as if it were easy) needed to restore a lost people to the place where they feel complete and at home. Frankly, with that practical expectation in mind, it shouldn’t matter the nationality of the messiah. And with the misery and messiness that defined their life in exile, it’s no surprise that messiah theology could be co-opted by the people out of their own self-interest to apply to a foreign king. Heck, it happened with the pharaohs in Egypt (Fried) and in Babylon itself. And, if it’s true that the Jews were pretty polytheistic people, there had to be some amount of thinking, on the part of priests and proletariat, that Cyrus and his marauding band had the local gods on their side. Messiah: anointed by god, not just G-d (Fried).

In terms of fulfilling the messianic mandate, Cyrus didn’t do half bad. Measured against Moses, in fact, he did pretty well. Remember, the people already had a great example by which to measure their new messiah: their exodus from Egypt under Moses. My professor made an interesting observation about the parallels between the Egyptian and Babylonian exiles: in both cases, while the Israelites’ iniquities might have predicated their capitulation to foreign invaders, their continued enslavement was a product not of their faults (Lester). In a sense, despite restitution having already been made for their sins, they were still being held, necessitating not “repentance, forgiveness, or restitution, rather in their persecution, vindication and restoration” (Lester). Vindication and restoration were thus the actions required of Cyrus the Persian Messiah, anointed by some god, used by God (Yahweh), to deliver the people from this bondage. Seeing it clearly, the prophet Isaiah named Cyrus thusly (Isa 45:1), and when the people were given their permission to return to Jerusalem and restore their lives, the prophecy was fulfilled.

Considering the exile, the deportation, the loss of life, and the utter ruin of the Judean kingdom, it would be impossible to be a Jew who still believed that Jerusalem was invulnerable to outside influence (Bandstra, 340). That also means it’s likely that people were starting to adopt new theological interpretations about who the messiah could be. Interestingly, though, the interpretation and expectation about what the messiah would do didn’t change very much at all.

Ultimately, restoring of the people offered them a renewed relationship with Yahweh. And this is I guess why I brought you up to begin with. Don’t worry: I’m not expecting you to save me from anything (except maybe loneliness in old age, if it comes to that). I’ve never had a clear idea of who “the one” would be, but I’ve always known what it is I expect the “one” to do (don’t worry, it has nothing to do with vindication or restoration). For me, it’s about offering complementarity and, through partnership, a fuller and deeper knowledge of, and relationship with, the love of God. So, while I still think it’s strange to attach any messianic meaning to you at this point, I’m faithful that my “one” (if it’s you) will offer the same restoration of relationship with God that the Hebrew messiah has offered the Israelites for centuries.

Til soon!
Alex