Semihazah Watchers

One is Yahweh promise to reunite the twelve tribes of Israel in the messianic age. Second giving the kingdom of God to Israel is a vision of David promises filled by the Son of Man the Messiah. The disciples being Jews have knowledge of the Torah and witness to Christ death, and resurrection are witness to the fulfillment of Old Testament promises.

Consequently it is fair to say that to the Jewish people of Jesus’ time the term ‘Kingdom of God’ was interpreted as a time when God’s rule would be restored through a descendant of David and things would be good again. Macquarrie sums their view precisely when he states, “The coming of the Kingdom would mean the judgement of the existing order, the overthrow of all evil and demonic powers and a new order in which God’s perfect reign would be manifested.”

After conquering northern Israel in 722 B.C.E., the Assyrians engendered centuries of political intrigue and laid the foundation for future unscrupulous kingdoms and idolatrous people.1 Once the Babylonian empire overthrew Josiah, the King of Judah, Habakkuk began to compose a prophetic book, questioning the ways of God. Above all, Habakkuk could not comprehend why “the evil circumvented the just”2; he thought that the impiety of the world did not correlate with a supposedly just God.3 Throughout his narrative, this biblical prophet came to understand that “the just man, because of his faith, shall live” (Hb 2,4). Eventually discovering that righteousness and faith in God lead to justice, Habakkuk cried out to the people of Judah through

Isaianic prophecy aside it is also clear that Matthew above the other three evangelists presents Jesus as the fulfilment of the law, a new Moses. The structure of the book into five sections is intended to help the Jewish readers identify Jesus as an antecedent of Moses. Jesus is according to some scholars a type of Moses bringing about a new exodus and a new Israel. More explicitly however, Matthew portrays Jesus as the only man to have fulfilled the law in its entirety as well as the messianic fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy through the many formula quotations (3:15; 5:17-48;12:17-21; 13:35; 21:5, 16, 42; 22:44; 23:39; 26:31; 27:9, 35, 46).

Jewish tradition passed down the oral and written story of Messianic prophecies for generations. To provide the correlation between the anticipated Messiah and the fulfillment through Jesus, Matthew affirmed prophecies throughout the birth story with two significant fulfillments—Abraham’s promised seed [offspring] and the virgin birth.

Jesus Christ is both priest and King in the Order of Melchizedek. As He rules in the spiritual realm, He ministers to man in order to bring them into unification with God. This is the key to understanding what happens in the end, the day of reconciliation between the Church and Israel.

Messiah/Christ: In the Christian religion, the Messiah was a savoir who would bring the “Last Judgment.” They believed that Jesus, or Christ meaning “God’s anointed” in Greek, was this savior.

The first misunderstanding between Jews and Christians is that Jews are still searching for a Messiah, Jeremiah 23:5 (“the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land). While Christians believe that the Messiah has arrived. The challenge here is that this formulation attributes to the expectation of a Messiah, a prominence and a centrality it has not usually had in Judaism. Christianity is a Messiah associated religion to an extent that Judaism is not. Although in Judaism the rate has varied from a different century to the other and from one branch to the other, the messianic age expectation, of a period of justice and peace, has always been more important (Fisher, 2010). In any case, the coming of messianic age and the Messiah appearance are connected together. When justice and peace arrive, then, will be the period to identify that the Messiah is. Until then everybody has the task

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold he is coming, says the Lord of hosts” ( Malachi 3:1, English Standard Version). Malachi 3:1 is a passage that often brings up dispute and conversation among interpreters and scholars on whether or not it is a key predictive messianic text. This passage has been cited in the New Testament by Jesus, and refers to undefined messengers of YHWH. Through the article “ Is the Messiah Announced in Malachi 3:1?”, Malone breaks down the text by clarifying the characters and evaluating the titles used to identify the messianic connection.

The book of Amos is the earliest preserved example of classic prophetic writings. It consists of nine chapters, but Amos did not write the entirety of them. “A majority of scholars think that not all of the material in Amos goes back to the prophet himself but was added later by ancient editors of the book.” The anthology contains a variation of materials: prophecies, visions and addresses from Amos to the people of Israel. Two major themes of the book are the social injustice in Israel, and the impending doom in Israel’s future.

God’s goodness and mercy far transcends the comprehension of the most brilliant human mind! He “who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth”(Psalm 113:6).Yet in His infinite love for us He stoops down to reveal Himself to us by a multitude of illustration, types, and shadows, so that we may learn to know him. This paper will describe what is meant by the Kingdom of God; examine the religious philosophy of the various sects of Judaism during the Second Temple period: Pharisee, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots, describe the religious philosophy and political philosophy of each sects, it will also describe how the Messianic expectation differ from the Messianic role that Jesus presented, and include an exegesis of

A messiah is a rather ambiguous term. It mainly means an anointed one; usually a messiah is considered to be a son of David and would reestablish Israel to what it once was. Because messiahs are anointed ones they would typically be Jewish priests, prophets and kings. However, a Messiah can also be a warrior, or a man of peace. (CITE) A messiah was to reestablish unity among the Jewish people and navigate through the hardships and oppression that they went through during early Judaism and bring a sense of freedom and relief. An array of messianic claimants came forth during the two peaks of Jewish rebellion, the death of King Herod the Great and the first Jewish war against the Romans.

The passage of Scripture being discussed in the following paper is Daniel 7:1-14. This chapter consists of three literary sections, first, chaos by the sea (7:1-8) followed by the heavenly courtroom (7:9-14), concluding with the visions divine victory and interpretation (7:15-28) which will not be addressed in this paper. The Christian canon locates the book of Daniel within its prophetic writings, however, the Jewish canon includes it within, “the Writings.” The book of Daniel doesn’t necessarily fit in either category, as it is widely considered within the literary category of apocalyptic literature which the subsequent sections of this paper will explore further. Daniel can be divided into three sections, based on language: a Hebrew introduction (Ch. 1); an Aramaic section (Ch. 2-7); and a Hebrew section (Ch. 8-12). Within these three language divisions exist two literary sections, first, the Tales (Ch. 1-6) followed by the Visions (Ch. 7-12). These two sections, though existing within the language divisions appear to have no corresponding connection.

The early beginnings of the Common Era displayed several Jewish expectations of the Messiah that were complex. As compiled in the Dr. Peter Flint, some was expecting the return of Elijah (Mal 4:5-6, Mark 6:15), or even Moses (Deut 18:15-19, John 1:21) and many expected the Messiah to be a descendent of King David, one that would arrive in Bethlehem . Apart from the background of messianic expectations seen in modern Bibles, several sectarian scrolls shed light on such expectations. Four select texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 4 helps shed some light into this area of messianic expectations and will aid help answering this question on who was the Messiah.

John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.