Video Transcript: Judaism Lecture 3

The promise of land in the Near East. For the people of God was not then,  therefore simply a promise of real estate. It was a promise of God's continued  favor, and that they would have this land, which would be the kingdom of God  on earth. Because it's where Yahweh would God ruled, and not any pagan  deities. So that was important. After Moses death, it was Joshua, who led the  people on the conquest of this land, the resettling of it in what we now call  Palestine. Joshua, by the way, is the Hebrew pronunciation. For the same name  is Jesus, his name in Hebrew would have been Joshua. What we had then after  Israel migrated into Palestine was what's called a tribal amphictyony. There's  one for the next time you play Scrabble. An amphictyony is a common defense  pact, a defense pact formed around a common religious shrine. And we have  several holy places in Israel, Beth-el, for example. And of course, Jerusalem,  that were holy places. And we have this tribal mutual defense pact around them. But there's no central organized government. And so the people come to the  prophet Nathan. And they say, We would like to have a king like the form of  centralized government. And of course, Nathan is appalled, he says, But God is  your King. So he's thinking of the Suzerainty treaty. And what that means,  means that God is the Suzerain of Israel. When he presents the people's  demand to God in prayer, God says, I'm gonna let them have the king. It  surprises Nathan, very much. But he says, You've got to warn them, that there's  a lot of freight comes along with having a king, you're going to have a royal  court, you're going to have people that are royalty and better than others, and all kinds of things, Kings can oppress you with taxes. People say we, we hear all  that, but we still want a king. So they wanted and got centralized government.  And then we have the story of the first king of Israel, who was Saul, and who  tried to defeat their surrounding tribes, and didn't complete it. But Saul was also  disobedient to God. And so God punished him by having him lose a battle. And  when it was clear to him that he was going to be captured, he committed  suicide. And his successor was the great King David. And of course, we all I  guess from Sunday school, we all know the story of David being selected to be  king and how that when Saul and his armies were lined up against the Philistine  armies, their great champion Goliath, the giant came out and challenged anyone to a fight. And little David, who was only a boy went out with the slingshot and  nailed the giant between the eyes. And he went down. That was the end of him.  And David became famous, even as a youngster. So David succeeds as king.  And God gives His armies success, and he unifies the kingdom and brings it  under Rule, central rule. And if we're putting this in time again, David is around  950. Before Christ, he's a and maybe 1000 may be as old as one as long ago as 1000 but between 1000 and 950 and then we have the the account of the  kingdom and strife within it and so on It can the kingdom divides after David.  The North has its king and the South has its king. And there's the constant battle with the inroads that pagan religion keeps making, into Israel, like a whole 

system of law that had been set down in the Law of Moses, about how to dress,  and how to eat, and what holy days to observe, and not not, you're not to trim  your beard, and don't eat this and so on. All of that was for one reason and the  reason is given. So you will come out and be separate from among all the other  nations, and you will preserve the worship of the one true God, and not be  deceived in the into going after strange and false gods. Nevertheless, that was a constant battle. It was, it was the prophets, who called people back to covenant  faithfulness, when they would stray Samuel, and Saul, for example. And the  Nathan, the prophet with King David, very remarkable that the story of David's  sin with when he saw Bathsheba, and he wanted her to be his wife, and David's  sin wasn't adultery, it was murder. He, he married Bathsheba after he arranged  her husband would be killed and the prophet Nathan appears to him to David in  the throne room. And he says, I have a story to tell you there was a man who  was very wealthy and had plenty of sheep and so on. Goats and camels, and he had guests coming in he, he wanted to prepare a special meal for them. Now  not far away, there was a very poor man who only had one sheep. And that's  what kept him warm at night, gave him milk and so on. And so this rich man  stole the sheep from the poor man killed it, and serve it to his guests. And David  says, Tell me the name of this man, I'll have Him executed. That's terrible. And  Nathan says, You are the man. Of course, this is an analogy. This is a story you, you who could have anything you want you who are wealthy, you go take the  wife away from a man who's relatively poor, and you, you killed him to do it. Now the amazing thing about this story is that he got into the record at all, the king  has control over the royal chronicles over the records of what's done in the  kingdom. How did that story get in there? When it paints David in such a terrible  light when he's the one in charge of the records? And the answer is that the king didn't have absolute authority, that the prophet as the spokesman for God could  say this and have it go into the record. And the king could do nothing about it.  We have no reason to think he tried. But even had he tried, it would not have  succeeded. The prophet had an independent kind of authority. And David  respected that David's reply to the prophet is I repent, I've done wrong. And then we get the penitential psalms that he wrote and so on, and acknowledged his  sin confessed and was forgiven. So but it's remarkable story. And that shows the division of authority that the religious authority trumps the civil authority in  ancient Israel. Of course, David is not the one then to build the temple and to  God that falls to his son Solomon. So it's in Solomon, the temples, maybe 900 to 970. This is maybe 1000 to 950. And Solomon can be 970 to 930. I'm not saying this is when they, this is their lifespan. I'm saying that you place them within  these parameters. as they are best guesses and we have successive stories  then of people being faithful and people not being faithful of kings that walk with  God that promoted the religion of use of God, that saw to the reading of the  covenant. And those that didn't. We get some particularly nasty characters that 

arise here too. The nation, the northern part of the nation is infected by the  worship of Baal, storm god, Palestinian storm god. And you have that famous  story then of Elijah, challenging the priests of Baal to a contest on the mountain,  and, and their defeat their who is the true God. You have then other incursions  of pagan religion. And, chief among those is religion brought into Israel by  Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab. Ahab is described as a wicked king, although we know from history that he was an efficient administrator and good at his job. But  he's, he's been written up by the scribes, who are keeping these records, and  who are writing everything from the point of view of God's covenant. And from  that point of view, he's not a good king, he's, he's an evil one. And he brings in a  pagan wife, who brings pagan worship creates what they call groves and high  places, they put their idols there, burn incense to them, and so on. And Jezebel  threatens to have God's prophet Elijah killed, and he has to run away and hide.  But then there's a reform movement that arises under Jehu. And he discovers  this ancient document. And and part of it is read, it's repeated. It's part of the  covenants part of Deuteronomy. And he restores the worship of God and has  Jezebel executed. This goes back and forth, like this, till finally, the northern  kingdom, because keeps turning to paganism, is punished by God and goes into captivity to Assyria that's roughly 740 BC. So the northern kingdom has fallen  but the southern kingdom, called, and they were then called the northern  kingdom was called Israel and southern kingdom was called Judah. And that's  where Jerusalem was. So the northern kingdom has fallen, but Judah has not.  And the temple still exists there. Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and Jews from all over, still tried to make a pilgrimage there. And it is still the center of, of  worship for Israel. The temple was a remarkable building. It was known all over  the ancient world, as one of the great feats of architecture. And one of the most  elaborate, elaborately decorated, it was decorated with gold and silver and with  precious stones, jewels of all kinds, and as you know, probably already know  this, it had an outer cord. And then it had an inner court. This courtyard out here  is for the people, but then the priests could go in here, and there was a table for  this, what they call the Showbread, and the laver, which was a washbasin, then  inside the inner most part was the ark of the covenant of God with the tablets of  stone on which Moses had rewritten the commandments. And only the high  priest went in here, that only once a year, and the day that the high priests  would go in there was called Yom Kuffar. We say Yom Kippur. It's the day of  covering, and he goes in with a small basin with sheep's blood in it or  something, and He sprinkles it on the top of this Ark of the Covenant, because  that top is where God sits, that's called the mercy seat of God. And if you think  it's grizzly that he sprinkling animal blood there, it's it's not it's to symbolize the  fact that the people deserve to die for their sins, if they have violated the  covenant with God. What they really deserve is death. But God accepts the  death of this animal in their place. It's a substitution. It's, it's a demonstration of 

God's mercy. And that's why it's called the mercy seat of God, Himself in the  temple. Meanwhile, outside in the courtyard, the people, people's worship  includes tying, taking a piece of paper on which they've written their sins, to tie it around the neck of a goat, and let the goat go into the wilderness to die again,  some a goat dies in place of me, I deserve to die for the sins that I've done. But  God allows me to put this off on this goat. The goat's called the scapegoat, it  escapes into the wilderness, we still use that expression for somebody taking  the blame for someone else that has the symbolism, the very rich symbolism  that was involved here in this worship. But then, when Israel falls, the records  then are kept in Judah, in the South and in Jerusalem, the capital, and  Jerusalem, itself lasts another couple of 100 years, 140 years before it is also  conquered this, that by the Babylonians. And again, the people who keep the  records are writing from the point of view of covenant. They're saying it's  covenant unfaithfulness here. That's a judgment of God, that the Babylonians  have now conquered the southern kingdom, they've conquered the the capital,  of Jerusalem. And not only that, worst thing of all the most awful catastrophe  any Jew could think of, they destroyed the temple, the Babylonians destroyed it  in 586. And from this point on, Israel was never an independent nation again.  The Babylonians were toppled there's a succession of, of conquest. The  Babylonians are toppled them by the Medes and the Persians and then they're  topple them. And we keeps going until they come to the Romans take over  everything. And if one after another of these captivities ensues, but what's  important is that after this Babylonian captivity under the when it's over, the  Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. It's takes place  under the direction of two people Ezra and Nehemiah. And they direct the  rebuilding. And it's, it's, of course, it's not Solomon's, but it's still a magnificent  building, and it's still magnificently decorated. And it was once again, known all  over the ancient world as a marvel of architecture. Now, I'm going to come up  later to the developments under these successive captivities, and the  development of Jewish thought and doctrine and the writing. And we'll have  more of that. And we'll begin that with the next talk. We'll see you then.