Chapter LV: Section LIII: Israel at the Time of John’s Coming

When John came, the Jews had been for four hundred years without a prophet, or any sensible token of God’s presence among them. The captivity and return from Babylon and subsequent circumstances in their history had effectually and finally cured the inveterate tendency to idolatry, which had characterized them from the days of the Egyptian bondage. But this change did not bring with it an awakening of true spiritual devotion to the service of God. Instead thereof an intense zeal of self-righteousness was cherished, under the two forms of a fanatical pride in the blood of Abraham, and an ardent devotion to the external forms and rites of religion, to tithes and offerings, to fastings and purifyings,—to “righteousnesses of the flesh,”—whilst the spirituality and power of the divine law were obscured and set aside by the glosses and interpretations of the elders. Such was the religion of the scribes, who “sat in Moses’ seat,” as the instructors of the people. The great mass of the nation, led by these blind guides, were with them hastening to destruction; while the few who still sought after the God of their fathers were as sheep without a shepherd. In the meantime, Jerusalem and Judea had been the prey alternately of the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Seleucidæ of Syria, and factions among themselves. After the successful revolt of the Maccabees, a brief time of peace and prosperity was enjoyed under the sceptre of that family. But the rivalry and seditions of its members brought in the Romans, under whose patronage the Herodian family, of Edomite origin, had come into power.

During the progress of these events, the whole land had been polluted with crimes and atrocities of every kind, and of the deepest dye. The high priesthood was habitually subject to barter and sale, one possessor of the office giving place to another in rapid succession, as the respective aspirants were able to purchase the office from the kings of Syria, or of Judea, or to seize it by violence or the favor of the rabble. The temple itself had been desecrated by being formally set apart to the worship of Jupiter Olympius. And as though that was not enough, it had been yet more horribly defiled by fratricidal blood; an aspirant for the high priesthood having secured and held the office by the murder of his own brother, in the very precincts of the temple. The entire social system was rotten, and the nation was fast ripening for the developments about to be witnessed, in the denial and crucifixion of the Son of God, the rejection of the gospel, and the crimes which precipitated society into a chaos of anarchy and a reign of terror, ending in the destruction of the temple, the desolation of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the nation to this day.

Thus, when John began his ministry, the land of Israel, the city, the temple, and the nation were lying under the burden of the unexpiated and unrepented crimes of many centuries. (Matt. xxiii, 29-36.) The covenant was forfeited and trampled under foot, and the land and the people were, in every sense, moral and ritual, utterly unclean. At the beginning of the declension, the prophet Haggai had been sent to the priests with a lesson out of the law.—“Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord: and so is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there is unclean.”—Hag. ii, 11-14. After the cotemporaneous ministries of Haggai and Zechariah, the Spirit of prophecy was withdrawn for about one hundred years. Then suddenly, a trumpet note from Malachi broke the silence, with a brief and startling call.—“If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yea I have cursed them already.... From the days of your fathers, ye are gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.—Mal. ii, 2; iii, 7. But they did not return. Thereupon, God their King withdrew from all communication with them as a people, for four centuries following.

Such was the situation of that people at the coming of John. They had the oracles of God, his ordinances, and his temple; of which Haggai had said,—“I will shake all nations; and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”—Hag. ii, 7. But all this was as a piece of holy flesh in the skirt of a garment. It did not purify the nation, while their uncleanness defiled these and all their hallowed things.