Friday 31 July 2015

Reform & Revival: The Maccabees - Lessons From History



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.




Friday 24 July 2015

First Period of Decline - Lessons From History



First Period of Decline


The  death  of  Prophet  Suleman  (AS)    or  King Solomon, as he is called in the Bible — marks the beginning of the first period of decline for the Israelites. The united monarchy disappeared, and in its place arose two kingdoms — Israel in the north  and  Judah  in  the  south.  The  people  of  the  northern kingdom  crowned  Jeroboam,  an  official  who  had  rebelled against King Solomon and taken refuge in Egypt, and he made Shechem his royal city. The southern kingdom continued to be ruled by the Davidic dynasty, its first monarch being Rehoboam, son of Solomon, with its center at Jerusalem.

Although  both  kingdoms  were  strife-ridden  from  the very beginning, Israel was especially turbulent because of its large population which seldom agreed on anything. Politically unstable, the northern kingdom suffered a prolonged period of internal warfare until 876 B.C., when an army officer Omri got hold of the throne and built a new capital at Samaria. He, however, adopted a policy of compromise with paganism, as a result of which the common people began to assimilate various polytheistic practices of the neighboring communities. The rise of paganism became especially serious under Omri’s son Ahab, who  married  a  Phoenician  princess,  Jezebel.  She  started  a ruthless campaign to wipe out Israel’s traditional monotheism, and to replace it with the Canaanite fertility cult and the worship of Baal. Two prophets, Prophet Elias (AS) or Elijah and Prophet Al-Yasa (AS) or Elisha, rose and tried their best to warn their people,   and   to   check   their   growing   inclination   towards paganism, but the cult of Baal and the associated rituals of licentious dances remained irresistibly attractive for the austere Israelites.

At last, Almighty Allah’s anger manifested itself in the form  of  Assyrians  from  the  north,  whose  takeover  of  Israel started gradually but ended with severe subjugation. Initially, the kings of Israel were forced to pay tribute money to Assyria, but in 721 B.C., the Assyrian armies, under king Sargon, attacked and  plundered  Samaria,  killing  thousands  of  her  inhabitants.

According to an Assyrian inscription, King Sargon carried away 27,290 Israelites into captivity, and scattered them in his eastern provinces, terminating the existence of the northern kingdom as an independent nation.

On the other hand, the history of the southern state of Judah displays a relatively slower degeneration in beliefs and morality. However, they too started to indulge in idol-worship and transgressions of the Divine Law, becoming more and more corrupt with every passing generation. Prophet Isaiah rose and tried to reform his people during the period 740 B.C. to 700 B.C.. His warnings and prophecies — which were collected in the “Book of Isaiah” of the Old Testament — clearly testify to the moral decadence of his times. Here are a few statements from his sermons:

You sinful nation, a people weighed down with iniquity,
a race of evildoers, children whose lives are depraved,
who have deserted the Lord, spurned the Holy One of Israel,
and turned your backs on him!
Why do you invite more punishment, why persist in your defection?
Your head is all covered with sores, your whole body is bruised;
(Isaiah 1:4,5)
Your rulers are rebels, associates of thieves;
every one of them loves a bribe and chases after gifts;
they deny the fatherless their rights and the widow’s cause is never heard.
(Isaiah 1:23)
Once again the Lord spoke to me; he said:
Because this nation has rejected the waters of Shiloah,
which flow softly and gently,
therefore the Lord will bring up against it the mighty flood waters of the Euphrates.
The river will rise in its channels and overflow all its banks.

In a raging torrent mounting neck-high it will sweep through Judah.
With his outspread wings
the whole expanse of the land will be filled,
for God is with us.

Take note, you nations; you will be shattered. Listen,
all you distant parts of the earth:
arm yourselves, and be shattered;
arm yourselves, and be shattered.

Devise your plans, but they will be foiled;
propose what you will, but it will not be carried out;
for God is with us.
(Isaiah 8:5-10)

Then came Prophet Jeremiah, who tried to shake his people out of their perverted ways, idolatry, and apostasy, during the period 627 B.C. to 587 B.C.. His sermons, however, met with an intense opposition from a corrupt society that was addicted to idol-worship to the point of fanaticism. His teachings were later collected as the “Book of Jeremiah” in the Old Testament, from which the following excerpts are taken:

Listen to the words of the Lord, people of Jacob, all you families of Israel.
These are the words of the Lord:

What fault did your forefathers find in me,
that they went so far astray from me, pursuing worthless idols
and becoming worthless like them;
that they did not ask, “Where is the Lord, who brought us up from Egypt
and led us through the wilderness, through a barren and broken country,
a country parched and forbidding, where no one ever traveled,
where no one made his home?

I brought you into a fertile land to enjoy its fruit and every good thing in it,
but when you entered my land you defiled it and
made loathsome the home I gave you.
The priests no longer asked, ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who handled the law had no real knowledge of me,
the shepherds of the people rebelled against me;
the prophets prophesied in the name of Baal
and followed gods who were powerless to help.
(Jeremiah 2:4-8)

Stop before your feet are bare and your throat is parched.
But you said, ‘No, I am desperate.
I love foreign gods and I must go after them.

As a thief is ashamed when he is found out so the people of Israel feel ashamed,
they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets,
who say to a block of wood, ‘You are our father’
and cry ‘Mother’ to a stone.
On me they have turned their backs and averted their faces from me.
Yet in their time of trouble they say,
‘Rise up and save us!’
Where are the gods you made for yourselves?
In your time of trouble let them arise and save you.
For you, Judah, have as many gods as you have towns. (Jeremiah 2:25-28)

Israel, I am bringing against you a distant nation,
an ancient people established long ago, says the Lord,
a people whose language you do not know,
whose speech you will not understand;
they are all mighty warriors,
their jaws are a grave, wide open,
to devour your harvest and your food,
to devour your sons and your daughters, 
to devour your flocks and your herds,
to devour your vines and your fig trees
They will beat down with the sword the walled cities in which you trust.
(Jeremiah 5:15-17)

Despite all these explicit and unambiguous warnings — delivered to the inhabitants of Judah by two of their great prophets — there was no sign of any remorse or repentance whatsoever. Instead, the Israelites stubbornly continued in their pagan practices and disobedience of Divine injunction, thereby inviting the wrath of Almighty Allah (SWT).

Divine punishment first appeared in the form of Babylonian forces marching into Judah in 604 B.C., when King Jehoiakim acquiesced without any struggle and agreed to pay heavy tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylonia. He, however, rebelled against his Babylonian overlords in 601 B.C., resulting in the first siege of Jerusalem that lasted three months. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar entered the Holy City on March 15, 597 B.C., and plundered the Temple of Solomon. They decimated the society by deporting the new King Jehoiachin (Jehoiakim’s son), his family, noblemen, and thousands of influential citizens, soldiers, and skilled craftsmen as captives to Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzar then placed the king’s uncle Zedekiah on the throne of Judah. Soon Zedekiah also became involved in a conspiracy against Babylonia, resulting in the second siege of Jerusalem. This time the city remained under siege for 18 months, and the conditions deteriorated to such an extent that some of the inhabitants were forced to eat human flesh.

Finally, the wall of Jerusalem was breached on July 9, 587  B.C..  The  rebellious  vassal  king  was  captured  and  was forced to watch as his sons were slaughtered. Then he was blinded and taken in chains to Babylonia, where he later died in prison.

Nebuchadnezzar  decided  to  make  an  example  of  the city, and his orders were carried out with cruel thoroughness. The city walls were demolished. The Temple and the palace were stripped of all valuables and burned to the ground. Thousands were killed, and a large part of the population was taken as captives to Babylonia, more than 500 miles away. The kingdom of Judah itself became a Babylonian province, which presented at that time a deeply scarred look. Everywhere, towns were ransacked and burned, crops destroyed, and villages deserted.