Reform & Revival: The Maccabees
The destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the
Assyrians was irreversibly complete and final. The dispersed Jews lost
their distinct identity
as they merged
with and vanished among the
neighboring nations, especially the conquerors. In contrast, the Babylonian
exile was only a harsh reminder
from Almighty Allah
(SWT) to the
inhabitants of Judah.
Although the exiles
were not subjected
to blatant slavery, the impact of
captivity was still soul-crushing for them. They must have felt humiliated and
anguished with the memory of their abject defeat and ongoing bondage, as
depicted in the poetry composed during that period (see “Lamentations”’ in the
Old Testament). In Babylonia, the Jews were made targets of contempt and
derision; they were required to toil hard and pay tribute money in exchange for
their existence. Those of noble origin were particularly treated with
indignity, adding the pain of insult to their already injured souls.
All this must have melted their hearts and caused them
to repent. There were a number of active reformers, both among the captives and
among those who remained in Judah, preaching and exhorting everyone to
fulfill their part
of the Covenant. Most prominent
among these voices
of reform was
that of Prophet Ezekiel, who had
been brought to Babylonia during the first deportation in 597 B.C.. He called
his people towards God, inspiring them to mend their ways and atone for their
sins. He announced that God
is going to
give the Israelites
another chance to repent, and that He will cause them to return to
Jerusalem. The following statements are taken from the “Book of Ezekiel” in the
Old Testament:
This word of the Lord came to me:
O man, when the Israelites were
living on their own soil they defiled
it with their
ways and deeds;
their ways were loathsome and unclean in my sight. I
poured out my fury on them for the blood they had poured out on the land, and
for the idols with which they had defiled it. I scattered them among the
nations, and they were dispersed in many lands. I passed a sentence on them
which their ways and deeds deserved.
(Ezekiel 36:16-19)
It is not for the sake of you
Israelites that I am acting, but for the sake of my holy name...I shall take
you from among the nations and gather you from every land, and bring you to
your homeland. I shall sprinkle pure water over you, and you will be purified
from everything that defiles you; I shall purify you from the taint of all your
idols. I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I shall
remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I shall
put my spirit within you and make you conform to my statutes; you will observe
my laws faithfully. Then you will live in the land I gave to your forefathers;
you will be my people, and I shall be your God.
(Ezekiel 36:22,24-28)
God’s mercy came in the shape of Cyrus, king of Persia,
who, after conquering Media and Lydia, brought the Babylonian Empire to her
knees in 539 B.C., thus laying down the foundations of the Great Persian
Empire. The very next year, Cyrus authorized the
Jews in Mesopotamia
to return
to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple at the expense of the royal
treasury. He then appointed Sheshbazzar, probably the son of King Jehoiachin,
to rule Judah as a semi-independent state. Sheshbazzar led the first group of
Jews back to their homeland, followed by another expedition led by Zerubbabel
in 522 B.C.. However, because of a number of reasons, the rebuilding of the
Temple could not progress beyond the laying down of its foundations. Eighteen
years latter, Zerubbabel became Judah’s governor who, supported by Prophets
Haggai and Zechariah and the
high-priest Jeshua, completed
the second Temple
in 515 B.C..
In 443 B.C.,
Persian king Artaxerxes
I allowed Zehemiah, one of his
Jew attendants, to supervise the building of the walls
of Jerusalem, and
later appointed him governor of
Judah as a separate province. Prophet Uzair (AS) — otherwise known as Ezra —
arrived in Jerusalem in 398 B.C., with the mission of re-establishing religious
purity and obedience to the Mosaic
Law. He persuaded
all Jewish men
to divorce their pagan wives and proscribed mixed
marriages in the future. He also demanded strict adherence to Sabbath and the
dietary laws. He took a pledge from his people that they would worship none
other that God. A major achievement of Prophet Uzair (AS) was that he
re-compiled the five
Books of Moses,
or the Torah, which were lost during the destruction
of Jerusalem.
The process of Jewish revival suffered a set back with
the rise of Greeks, and the defeat of the Persians by Alexander in 333 B.C..
After the death
of Alexander, his
kingdom was divided among his generals.
Egypt came under the control of Ptolemy, whose descendants ruled Judah for the
next hundred years. Seleucus had established his own dynasty over Babylonia and
Syria, whereas Palestine was incorporated into this kingdom by Antiochus III in
198 B.C..
Earlier, Alexander had initiated a policy of implanting
the Greek culture — Hellenism — in his conquered lands. As a result, during all
these years of Greek rule, the Jews became divided into two groups. Those
living in Egypt and other places outside Judah, called “Jews of the
Dispersion,” started adopting Greek
ideas, dress, language,
and life-style. The
sacred scriptures had to be translated in Greek as most of them could no
longer comprehend their original language, Hebrew. Mixed marriages became
common once again, and circumcision was increasingly ignored. A popular
Hellensitic idea — that different nations simply worshipped the same God with
different names — became acceptable among these “progressive” Jews. On the
other hand, there were those orthodox ones — or “fundamentalists” in
contemporary terminology —
who persisted with the traditional Jewish beliefs and culture, as the
spirit of revival infused by Prophet Uzair (AS) was still very active among
them.
In 175 B.C., Antiochus IV came to the throne, and used
Hellenization to wipe out both monotheism and the Mosaic Law. He promoted
Greek customs and
ideas with the
help of his aristocratic Jewish collaborators. Pagan
altars were set up, religious celebrations and services forbidden, circumcision
outlawed, and possession of Torah declared a capital crime. This only sharpened
the distinction between the progressive and orthodox Jews, and motivated the
latter ones to rebel.
An elderly priest
named Mathathias rejected
the attempts to cultivate
and encourage such
outrageous disobedience of the Divine commands. He, along with his five
sons, started a revolt in the form of guerrilla warfare. Soon, a group of
zealous Jews joined them, who were known as “Hasideans,” or the pious ones. An
army of devoted Israelites was formed which began a full-fledged revolutionary
struggle against their Syrian oppressors, and this came to be called as the
“Maccabee” uprising. A long series of battle followed, where these small,
untrained, and ill-equipped group of men were able to defeat their much
superior rivals. This ultimately led to the establishment of the “Great
Maccabee Empire,” marking the second phase of rise and domination for the
Israelites.
The religious fervor and sincerity among the Jews,
however, started to subside with the passage of time. The love of God began to
be gradually replaced by the craving for material comforts and wealth. The
spirit of morality disappeared, leaving behind the empty form of rituals.
Internal conflicts led to a split among
the Jews, so
much so that
some of them invited
the Roman general Pompey
to come to
Palestine. But once
the Roman army had arrived, it would not leave.
