Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of January 23, 2022.
SHARING OF THE FOOD ON HOLY DAYS
- Nehemiah: 8:8-10 -
“ So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."
The Book of Nehemiah used to be the Second Book of Ezra, however because some narrative changing in the two parts, from the XVI. Century, mostly in the Calvinist printing houses, the second part became the Book of Nehemiah. The historical Nehemiah was a real court official in the court of Artaxerxes II, the Persian King. Around 444 BC, Nehemiah learned that Jerusalem is still mostly in ruins, so he asked the king for permission to return and rebuild the city. The King was graceful to appoint him governor of Judah, which was at that time a self-governing province within the Persian Empire.
Although the Temple in Jerusalem had been rebuilt already on the orders of the Persian King, Cyrus the Great, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius I, in 516 BCE, but at that time Jerusalem was left without city walls, practically defenseless. Despite the official Persian support, the surrounding nations were not happy to see the Jews to return to their homeland, especially the Samaritans and the Edomites, but others as well, and they tried often violently to thwart the building of the new temple, the city and its walls.
The Book of Ezra, which is the prequel of the Book of Nehemiah begins with the order of Cyrus the Great, as is written that “ ... the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, “Cyrus king of Persia says, ‘the Lord God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has commanded me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. ”
It is even more interesting, that the second part of the Book of Isaiah, at the beginning of chapter 45, calls Cyrus an anointed one, which means not only literally Messiah, but the Hebrew original reads exactly Messiah, whose Greek translation is Christ, which is exactly the case in the Greek Speaking Old Testament, called the Septuaginta, as it reads that ΟΥΤΩ λέγει Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς τῷ χριστῷ μου Κύρῳ, where the transliteration goes like Legei Kurios ho Theos to Christo, mu Kuro (Cyrus or Kuros in Persian) which is in English that the Lord God says to his Messiah, to Cyrus, and the text continues so that “ whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him, and strip kings of their armor; ” .
Cyrus the Great was the monarch who defeated the Babylonian Empire in 539 BC, which Empire, 70 years before Cyrus in 609 BC, destroyed the Temple, ruined Jerusalem and took the Jews captive into Babylonia. The role, Cyrus played in the liberation of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, can be hardly overpraised, but the book of Isaiah calls him an anointed one which title should have gone only to the Kings of the Jews, the High Priest of the Jews, and to the great prophets of the Jews, because these people were traditionally anointed with oil. It looks like that the gratitude of the Jewish people was so enormous toward their liberator, that the Book of Isaiah names Cyrus an anointed one.
Although it is really astonishing in itself, that as a non-Jew, he was perceived as a Messiah figure, and the Greek translation of Isaiah the Greek phrase is exactly Christo(s), still at that time, nobody thought that the title, given to Cyrus, should be meant as we mean today, when we say the Messiah or Christ. He was definitely not the Messiah, but only one of the anointed ones, a tool in the rescue plan of the God Almighty.
Today, we can see a great gap between the Jewish and the Christian interpretation of the required role of the Messiah or in Greek the Christos. We assume that we exactly know today, as Christians, what we mean by the Christ of the world. However, it is quite interesting, how the Jewish understanding and notion of the upcoming Messiah was seemingly shaped by the very figure of the gentile king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian.
What did he do to merit of being named anointed, Messiah, in the Holy Scriptures?
Actually, he did a lot. He defeated the evil forces of the evil Empire, where Babylon, still even today, is an extensive symbol of specific evil forces. Cyrus liberated the Jews from an annihilating and assimilating captivity. He gave the orders in his kingdom that the governors and commanders must let the Jews return to Jerusalem. He gave permission and even the financial means to rebuild the Temple of the Most High in Jerusalem. He also ordered the original golden and silver vessels of the Temple to be returned to the Jews.
Practically, in the Jewish tradition, these consist the pivotal modern requirements of the Messiah, who is still to come.
Like, to re-establish Israel in the Jewish homeland, to gather the Jews back from the four corners of the Earth, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. A little bit more, but it is amazingly parallel, what Cyrus the Great accomplished or helped accomplish.
In this process Nehemiah’s appointment as governor of Judea, who led a new wave of Jews back to Jerusalem, and his efforts to rebuild the city walls in order to seal the Temple behind the new walls, as a defendable center for the next five centuries, these were mostly the last actions under the watch of the Persian Empire, regarding Jerusalem.
Ezra and Nehemiah not only rebuilt the city and the city walls to protect the Temple, but they also restored the Bible, as Ezra came from Babylon to Jerusalem with a full Torah Scroll. Nehemiah, in turn, with the power of the governor, ordered to read the scroll in public, and made the people listen to it.
They listened and wept, as it is written that “all the people wept when they heard the words of the law (of Moses).” However, Nehemiah told them, do not weep, but celebrate this day by having a festive meal, and he added that “and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD”.
It can mean that when we have a Holy Day, we must share our meal with those who has nothing. Reciprocating this, if we wish that every single day might be holy, then we must share our meals with those who has nothing, every day, in order to make every day holy.
Nehemiah continued, that when it is the time of celebration, then “do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
We should then celebrate, when a day is holy. In reciprocation, every day is holy, when we all share the food. And exactly that happened in the Jerusalem congregation, where they were inspired by Jesus, our Master and King, our Teacher and Brother, otherwise the Christ of the Nations. May the Lord grant us to do the same, celebrate every day as a holy day of the Lord, by the Holy Spirit,
AMEN.
