All right, I mean, the Lord blessed this time of study through our prayer because we're gonna need it. This particular lesson in lesson three here, we're gonna tackle Maccabees, First Maccabees, chapter nine and a half, chapter nine, verse 23 all the way through the end of the book, chapter 16 verse 24. That's a solid seven chapters there. And there's just a ton of straight history going on.
There's a lot of names and dates and backstabbing and kudatas and sons of sons rising up against their enemies, all these different things going on. So I try to do a really good job in the notes, putting all this down on paper for you. So it's easy to follow along and I'll summarize a lot of those things. But in the midst of all this history, if you love history and you love names and dates and places and can memorize them really, really easily and recall them easily, then you're gonna love this chapter or this lesson.
But there are some serious important historical takeaways beyond the weeds if you wanna lose the force for the trees, right? So some very important takeaway points here is going to be the historical developments of the Hasmonean dynasty. That's why I've entitled this lesson from Maccabees to Hasmoneans because it's a very important shift in the leadership of the Maccabees and again, Maccabees is a word that's usually applied to all of the family of Mattathias because that's just kind of how it came to us from the titles of the books from the Greek and the Latin. But Maccabees really just refers to Judas like we discussed in the last lesson.
He's the big Mac. He is the hammer, he's the military genius. So Maccabees doesn't refer to anyone else really to him. It's just kind of the mystery of history that it was applied to all the rest of the family.
They're really gonna be known as the Hasmoneans. So that's the whole transition here. So understanding the historical development of the Hasmonean dynasty from this quote unquote, Maccabees and family is a huge takeaway point because there's a lot of controversy surrounding this dynasty, how it develops from this rebellion started with Mattathias and Judas and Jonathan and Simon. All of that is not accepted by everybody because time goes on and people make certain compromises and decisions that are gonna anger many and they're gonna make other people happy.
So the controversy around this Hasmonean dynasty is when Simon, especially, we're gonna see later on in the lesson, he accepts the High Priesthood, granted to him by a foreign power. He grants the High Priesthood, he's taken the High Priesthood and then they're gonna make themselves rulers and this is not accepted by everybody because is he a legitimate High Priest or not? And there are arguments for and against it. Is he a legitimate monarch or not?
And there are arguments for and against it, mostly against it. So these are huge takeaway points. And despite the nitty gritty details and the weeds of all the names and dates of people who have the exact same name by the way, there's Antiochus has repeated so many different times. I feel like after this Bible study, if I hear the word Antiochus, again, I'm gonna scream.
There's so many Antiochi, plural Antiochus singular, I guess, but I have a little chart from the Bible dictionary to help us out with that. So the rest is, as they say, history. You have to really understand these big takeaway points that has many dynasty that we're gonna talk about, the fallout, the reactions to it, because those are the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes and the Zellites in general. We can't really understand what is going on in the time period of Jesus Christ without spending a little bit of time understanding these big stroke pictures.
So as I wanted to say about that, I got your notes for you, if you're able to have them in front of you, that's wonderful, if not just, don't blink. And I do want you to take out, if you can, on the last page of these notes here, there is a little dynastic chart that I got from the Catholic Bible dictionary with a little tweak of my own. This is gonna be very helpful, because it's the celicid dynasty. Remember how we explained, after Alexander the Great Diet, he divided his empire into four territories, well, the saluted ultimately become the dominant superpower around the year 200 BC.
So Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, is where we started our story last lesson. And so he's the first name on this dynastic chart. Epiphanes, or Epimani, remember we called him the Madman. And then we saw Antiochus the fifth, his son, Jupiter, Jupiter means of a good father.
So how's that for a little bit of pride? You're going to have the name, Jupiter meaning your father's a good father when he actually, in fact, he was a terrible father, probably in every single way. Probably didn't even hug his kid. I'm owned by didn't even hug his kid.
He was a bad father. And then there's Demetrius the first after that. We talked about those three characters in lesson two in the first half of first Maccabees. Now we're gonna see the political machinations, historical machinations of what happens with all the rest of these characters here.
There's more Antioch coming up, another Demetrius coming up. And there's so many, there's so much deceit as well. So much deceit, oh my gosh, it's very, very frustrating. But there's never deceit by the Maccabean brothers.
You know what I mean? Judas Maccabees is the only Maccabees. He's the only big Mac, but just for the sake of argument here, they're all Maccabean brothers, okay? So there's no deceit committed by them.
It's always the Greek rulers who stab people in the back and kill each other and deceitfully overthrow the other person, whether it's the Jewish treaty that they made with one of the brothers or someone else. It's just absolutely mind-boggling how wicked these people are. All right, so that's all I wanted to say here, the first few minutes of this lesson, just giving you this, I don't know, call it a preface, call it a warning or whatever. There's just a lot of straight history here, but really important takeaways.
All right, now let's just dive in here. We're looking at Roman numeral one, the leadership of Jonathan. He leads the people from 160 to 142 BC. And just by way of quick hook, a reference to Segway Judas was the leader from 166 to 160, so give me a six year right there.
And then Jonathan steps up for way more than that time for solid 18 years. Now, Jonathan has a lot of conflicts that he has to deal with. Obviously, there's still a lot of military battles going on fighting the Greeks and trying to ally with whomever he can, but that's, I guess my point is, he's really, really good at making important strategic decisions for who he should ally with, who he shouldn't. His diplomacy is really, really profoundly spot on.
In fact, you know, our Bible will say quickly that Jonathan period of history is marked not so much by military, as by diplomatic victories. And that's really, really true. If you want some big takeaway points with Judas, he is the military commander, the military genius. He gets the ball going, he has all these incredible victories, kind of like a David and Goliath, a metaphorical reference there.
He's always fighting these Goliaths, and he's always winning because of his trust in God. Jonathan's big takeaway is that he is this master diplomat. He very cleverly and creatively plays against the various claimants to the throne, right? But he's able to watch and to see where the wind is blowing.
In a good sense, I mean, obviously politicians discuss us all. Politicians typically discuss me because they do watch where the wind is going and they don't really care about anything. They just want to line their own pockets. Yes, I am very jaded.
I'll just admit that right now. Politics by and large is a disgusting business, it's necessary to rule the polis, the city. The by and large corruption is just too easy. It's too easy just to read the signs of the times or see where the wind is blowing, and then change your opinions.
Well, I don't think Jonathan is doing that for corrupt reasons. He's doing it to protect his people. He knows when to ally with a particular person and when that needs to change, usually because they deceive him and he has to change alliances as we're going to see here. So he's a lot of these diplomatic victories and that's if you're going to take anything away, take that away from Jonathan.
All right, so with that then, let's look at chapter nine, verse 23, where we left off with the death of Judas. So it says chapter nine, verse 23, after the death of Judas, the lawless, and that's repeated multiple times throughout these books, there's the lawless ones, there's the ungodly leaders, they're usually the ones who bring the people into great calamity. And again, I guess that goes back to my ranting and raving about politics. If you have good leaders, making good decisions for the good of the people, even if temporarily the people don't really like it, but it's for their own good, it's truly aligned to virtue and it's a godliness, then things are going to go well, but when the leadership is corrupt and they bring ungodly practices to the people, everything just goes down the tubes.
All right, so now again here says, the lawless emerged after the death of Judas and all the parts of Israel. All the doers have just disappeared. In those days, a very great famine occurred and the country deserted them to the enemy. In Baccades, we saw him last week, remember Baccades and alchemists, they are the henchmen, the secular religious henchmen of Demetrius I, if you remember that.
Demetrius I right now is the dude in charge. So Baccades chose the ungodly and put them in charge of the country. They saw and searched for the friends of Judas and brought them to Baccades with vengeance on them and we exported them. Thus there was great distress in Israel such as had not been since the time that the prophet ceased to appear among them.
Okay, so with that then, really quickly I just wanted to say things get bad really, really quickly in this vacuum of Judas's death. Clearly a little bit of time has passed here, matter of months or so. Baccades who is the general of the king goes through and just makes sport of anybody who was allied with Judas. Now making sport of them is a very soft way of saying torturing them or brutalizing them in different ways.
So because the, let's see here, the doers of injustice and the lawless men appeared bringing the people to all kinds of crimes, certainly, a famine appears. It strikes me that, I mean, this is not in your commentary or anything like that, but I've noticed it, I've missed it. But the fact that a famine appears as a result, or at least in conjunction with godlessness of the land, very much as a tie-in with the curses of Deuteronomy. So can't get into Deuteronomy too much.
Go check out that Bible study if you want to. But Deuteronomy, one of the big themes here is that Moses will say, look, if you obey the law, if you love God and serve God and have affection and devotion to the one true God, God of Israel, then you're gonna be blessed, but you're gonna be blessed by the fruit of the vine and the fruit of your womb. Everything's gonna go well, you're gonna have peace and prosperity, independence, et cetera. But if you break the covenant, if you disobey the laws and go after other gods and intermarry with the pagans, et cetera, it's not gonna go so well.
You're gonna have all kinds of different curses that come upon you and they're all remedial, they're all meant to sober Israel up and take, wake them up and say, come back to God. But one of those curses is famine. So to my mind, as I, with Deuteronomy in my brain, I'm thinking this is just yet another example, and this is certainly the case in the judges. I'm gonna mention the judges a number of times this lesson.
The pattern is if you walk away from God and rebel against him, you're gonna suffer the curses of the law. And that's what's happening here. They've walked away from God, law is mineralized up, and there's a famine that occurs, so probably during one of the harvest seasons. If this is just a matter of months, which is what I think it is.
All right, so on that point then, in verse 28, let's see here. Yeah, all the friends of Judas assembled and said to Jonathan, since the death of your brother Judas, there has been no one like him to go against our enemies and bocadys and to deal with those of our nation who hate us. So now we have chosen you today to take his place as our ruler and leader to fight our battle. And Jonathan at that time accepted the leadership and took the place of Judas, his brother.
All right, so Jonathan now is appointed by the people to succeed his brother. So I think that points to a little bit of humility, I would say, like you're not really exactly sure what's going on. Perhaps you didn't want to have hubris and step in and say, I'm gonna do it. Simon does later on, we'll get to there later on.
It could be a bad thing or a good thing that's debatable. But Jonathan says, all right, I will put on my brother's sandals. Okay, I'm gonna step into his sandals and we're going to leave the charge. And God blesses him in so many different ways, diplomatically being number one as we saw.
So now it begins Jonathan's early conflicts and what he does for the people. I have to summarize a lot of things here. This is a lot of nitty gritty detail. So I'm just gonna follow the notes as I can here and share with you some highlights.
The first highlight of which is very soon after Jonathan takes the helm, his brother John is killed by these people called the sons of Johnbury. It's very much a deceitful betrayal is what it is. John, you can read this whole story from verses 32 to 42 of chapter nine. But John is going out on a peaceful mission just asking some supposed friends to help and they turn on him and they kill John.
So this is the third brother to die. So if you're keeping track, Mattathias, Grand Puba, father of the family, patriarch of the family, he has five sons. We talked about introduce all of them, last lesson. So you've got Simon's the oldest, and then you've got Judas, Jonathan, Eleazar and John.
I probably missed mixed up the order there, but that's okay. So Eleazar, remember he died because he courageously fought in battle and he stabbed that elephant from the underside and it fell on him and squished him like a bug and he died but he has a glorious name. So it's okay. So there's that brother.
Judas died in battle we just saw. And then now John, the third brother to die is dead from a very noble way. He's great, he's noble but they were betrayed. So that's very ugly and that's very sad.
That leaves these two final brothers which are the main protagonists for the rest of the story. Jonathan now is a leader. And then Simon who is still the father figure, the oldest and he will also be the final leader of the family. Okay, so his brother John dies.
Now we continue on with the conflict between King Demetrius I and his general baccadies. And then there was a usurper high priest alchemist if you remember that from the last lesson. So baccadies is still, he's like a secular armor, the military army if you wanna think of it. But alchemist was the one who usurped the high priesthood.
It should be the family of Onaius. Onaius the third was murdered as we saw. It should be Onaius the fourth. If I remember my history correctly, Onaius the fourth should be the next one in line.
But alchemist takes it through bright re-corruption, all these different things. Well, one thing that baccadies does here in chapter nine is he attacks the Jews on the Sabbath. He's attacking them on the Sabbath because this is an echo of what we saw back in chapter two verse 41 right after papa methias, a patriarch methias right after they start this rebellion. The Greeks attack them on the Sabbath or attacks many of the Jews, not his cohort, but they attack other Jews.
And those Jews decide, you know what, the Sabbath, so we're not gonna defend ourselves, we're not gonna fight back. And a thousand men, women, children are killed. So everyone mourns them and says, look, we in the future must at least defend ourselves on the Sabbath. To my mind, I haven't seen any evidence of them attacking on the Sabbath, I could be wrong about that.
But they never, they resolve to defend themselves at least on the Sabbath. Otherwise it's obvious the Greeks are just gonna attack them on the Sabbath and they're just gonna wipe them out and mow them down. So I think what's going on here is that baccadies tests Jonathan as a new leader to see what he's going to do. But they learned their lesson in verse 43, which has mentioned this, baccadies had heard that Jonathan was in charge essentially, and he came with a large force on the Sabbath day to the banks of the Jordan, but Jonathan fought back.
So there's just a little bit of an echo there. He's a new leader, he's not entirely a rookie because he's been around for a while now, but he's very smart and he learned a lesson from his father. So that's just a quick story about baccadies fighting and attacking on the Sabbath. But there's been a little bit of time on the last action of this evil usurper corrupt high priest alchemists who is completely illegitimate despite his sins, he's also illegitimate.
What he does, let's go out of verse 54 action, and then we'll read it. It says, so chapter nine verse 54, in the 153rd year that's 159 BC if you're counting, alchemists gave orders to tear down the wall of the inner court of the sanctuary. He tore down the work of the prophets, but he only began to tear it down, or at that time alchemists was stricken and his work was hindered, his mouth was stopped and he was paralyzed so that he could no longer say a word or give commands concerning his house. And alchemists died at that time in great agony.
When baccadies saw that alchemists was dead, he returned to the king and the land of Judah had rest for two years. So this is pretty much the end of the story of baccadies and alchemists, but the story about alchemists here is really, really interesting. So he arrogantly decides he's gonna do some remodeling of the temple and he wants to tear down what's called the dividing wall between the court of the Gentiles, which is the most exterior court and the court of the Jews. Now, well then of course in the middle of doing this, he's taking the only dice.
The text seems to indicate it's a stroke, right? He has a massive stroke and he dies in agony. It's like the injustice of God or something like that for tearing down this wall. Now what is this wall?
Well, an asalomonic temple that was rebuilt in the second temple leading up to the time of Jesus actually, you have the main sections of the temple. You have the holy of holies, you have the holy place, and then you have the outer courts, but then out beyond that even larger was the court of the Gentiles because all along, and you can go back to Solomon's prayer of dedication when he built the temple and kings and chronicles both, he knew that the Gentiles were invited to worship the one true God, and this was the whole plan all along that Gentiles would come and worship God. So the Gentiles, they were separated from the Jews. They had their outer court, they could go there, but they couldn't go any further into the courtyard.
Well, what Alchemists is doing here is saying, we're not gonna deal with that anymore because he's a Hellenizer, remember. He's on the side of the Greek king. He wants to make everything Greek and he is the size. You know what, we're not gonna have any separations between Jew and Gentile.
We're all one people, right? So we're all the one people under the Greek king, so we should tear down this wall and that way the Gentiles have access just as much as the Jews do, all right? Which is a very bad thing for obvious reasons. What's interesting about this is that there is some ironic typology with all of this because he wants to unite the Jews and the Gentiles in an unlawful way at this time in Insomnation history, but his actions do foreshadow the future unity of the Jew and Gentile in God's new temple, which is the Body of Christ of Church.
So check out this little quote here I got for you from your Catholic study bible. It says, Here pursues a goal of breaking down the division between Jew and Greek following the wishes of a foreign king rather than those of God. Nevertheless, Alchemists is misguided attempt paradoxically and ironically and even humorously, foreshadow is the word of the eternal high priest, Jesus Christ, whose atoning work brings about the blessing to all nations promised to Abraham. That's what I call world wide blessing.
I'll talk about that in just a second. That goes on and breaks down this very dividing wall by making peace between Jew and Gentile reconciling both to God by his own blood. End quote. All right, so with this reference here to the promise of Abraham in Genesis 12, there's really three promises.
I can't review all of this, but when God calls Abraham, he makes him three blessings or three, yeah, three promises, blessings, later turn into oaths. I will make your descendants great. I'll make you a great name. And then ultimately what is all geared towards the telos, the end of it all is worldwide blessing.
All nations are gonna be blessed through the children of Abraham through the Israelites. All right, so Jesus is gonna be the one who accomplishes this because there is this quote unquote dividing wall. You should underline that if you have your notes. It's very important as I'll explain from Ephesians two in a second.
But there is this so-called dividing wall. There's literal in the temple. There is a literal wall of separating Jews and Gentiles, but it's also metaphorical, right? Because the Gentiles are separated from the Jewish people because they're a bunch of pagans, right?
They're called to renounce their pagan ways and their idolatry and their immorality and embrace the one true God. And that's of course just what we call evangelization. But this is really interesting. Alchemists try to do this for bad reasons, but that in and of itself becomes a type of Jesus Christ who actually accomplishes the tearing down of this division between Jew and Gentile, right?
That's really interesting. And you might think, well, hold on a second. How can Alchemists here be a type of Jesus? When he's a total bad guy, he's a total jerk, right?
So many different ways. He is a traitor, he buys the high priesthood and all these bad things, right? Murder, well, there are types that aren't in the Old Testament in all different kinds of ways, right? So there are good people who are types of Jesus and there are bad people who are types of Jesus, but nevertheless, Jesus is the fulfillment of all things.
And the way I like to think of it is if you have something that's like even Samson is a type of Jesus, Samson's not too good, okay? There's various examples that we could go through. There are some places things in the Old Testament that point forward to Jesus Christ. But the way I like to think of it is God uses, or God is in his omnipotence, is able to bring good from all evil.
And he's even able to use evil bad people or things or situations to bring lessons out of them, right? So even though Alchemists is bad and he does this thing in the temple, he's able to use that as an example of what Jesus will truly do, like the good version of that, right? That's essentially what's happening. And I think that's really interesting.
So Alchemists is a type here by trying to divide this, or tearing down this dividing wall. Now this quote that I just shared with you from the Catholic study Bible really has a fusion chapter two in mine versus 11 through 15 when it says, well quoting Paul Paul says, remember he's speaking to the Ephesians, right? So remember you Gentile pagan Ephesians that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope in without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. There it is. That's the mic drop right there. You can underline that.
He Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. So that is really what Jesus is accomplishing here. This is the point of the commentary here, quoting Ephesians chapter two. Christ will make one man in his own body, in his own mystical body to church.
And thereby really I guess the main point here which is even more exciting. Think of it in terms of this way, in terms of this. He's gonna make one temple, uniting Jew and Gentile. Jesus in his own body will make one temple to church where we all Jew and Gentile will worship God together.
That's what's going on. So this is really beautiful. I want to spend a little bit more time on this because I really get out a little bit to see that Elkomis even as evil as he is and his actions as bad as they are. He is punished for them of course.
They do point forward to what Jesus accomplishes. And I myself have Jewish blood and Gentile blood. So I guess I'm good both ways me personally. But Gentiles generally have a lot to be thankful for.
We take it for granted as Christians who are not descended from Abraham, at least by blood but by faith we are. We have a lot to be grateful for that. We're included into the family of God, the church temple. It's beautiful.
Anyways, I'm gonna stop preaching on that. But here's the actual point of Aquimas. It's the end of his life and it ends in a very ironically typological way. All right, hope you enjoyed that.
So one more point I want to share with you then about this is that in verse 57 it said that when Aquimas was dead, the Boccadias went back to the king. And then it says that the land of Judah had rest for two years. I want you to underline the word rest that's important. And hold on one second because I want to read verse 73.
After all these various little battles here going on they're fighting with Boccadias and all these things, whatever. And verse 73 it says, the sword ceased from Israel and Jonathan dwelt in McMache. And Jonathan began to judge the people and he destroyed the undoddly out of Israel. All right, this I have a little bit of a, it's not a pet peeve so much as a personal theory of mine.
I guess it's personal. I don't think I'm a heretic but I think there's something to emphasize here in the text. Which is what I talked about before in lesson one and I mentioned it in the main themes. So the main themes of lesson one, we talked about it, excuse me, last lesson lesson two about the connection with judges.
And there's two more connections with judges here in regards to Jonathan's leadership. We saw it before, Judas's leadership, now Jonathan again, the book is constantly echoing the judges here. So it says explicitly in verse 73, he judged the people. That's not an accident.
That is an echo to the period of the judges. That was right after Joshua you well know. And in the period of the judges there was a recurring cycle of covenant, of breaking or covenant infidelity. So go back to the judges Bible study for more on that if you want, but suffice to say right now, that recurring cycle, it's a seven fold recurring cycle of covenant infidelity.
It starts with sin, right? The people sin against God. And then they fall, they're in servitude to a foreign power. And then they cry out to God in supplication for help.
And God sends them a judge to save them for salvation. And then there's silence or what the judge is called rest for however many years, 20, 40 years, which is half a generation or a full generation or that's the symbolism there. So sin, servitude, supplication, salvation and silence, round and round it goes. All right, that model is found here also in the books of Maccabees.
The people are sinful, right? Because there's lawless men and doers of immorality and iniquity and justice and all this things. They fall into sin, they try to be Greeks, they reverse their circumcision and everything like this, right? They worship the pagan gods, et cetera, et cetera.
So they commit sin, then they fall into servitude to the Greeks, especially Antiochus and his persecutions, things are really, really bad. Then there's supplication, all right? Like we're gonna see in second Maccabees, the seven brothers and Eliaes and all these other people, they cry out to God that God would have mercy on the people. And then God sends them salvation through new judges, which are the Maccabees and brothers.
And then there's rest in the land. So there's the connection I shared with you in verse 57. There's rest in the land for two years. So I personally think, and this is, I think this is important, okay?
I personally think the proper way to understand the leadership of the Maccabees, the Maccabian period, is as new judges, not as kings, not as high priests, because that's gonna get them into trouble later on. They're new judges. And so that's why you have all these references. There's rest, I'm gonna be more later on, rest in the land, judging the people, et cetera.
So the problem is when they start taking titles that do not belong to them, like high priest, like king, no, that's wrong, it's judge, you are judges of the people. Hey, this is Doc Neck, thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want. So thank you so much, God bless you and keep studying your Bible.