CHAPTER 19

HOPE IS ON THE WAY

The bad sons of a bad earthly father stood in stark contrast to Mary, the good daughter of her good Father in heaven. Mary behaved toward God the way all Israelite girls were expected to behave toward their fathers: with respect and obedience, leading to blessing. Mary knew that her God was worthy of devotion, no matter what he might ask of her.

Mary’s faith was tested one day when she was alone in her house. Now that she was legally betrothed to Joseph, she had moved from the Jerusalem area to Galilee in the north, to a tiny Galilean village called Nazareth. Joseph was living there for a while even though his hometown was Bethlehem. As Joseph’s fiancée, Mary was expected to live there too—though, of course, she hadn’t yet consummated her union with her husband-to-be.

On the day of her testing during Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights in December, a man startled her by showing up in her house unannounced. Mary knew that as a young woman, she was expected to provide hospitality to all guests, which in that culture would have included expressions of esteem. But this man seemed more intent on honoring her than being honored. “Grace to you, highly graced one,” the visitor said. “The Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” (Luke 1:28, author’s translation).¹ This greeting sounded strange to Mary’s ear. Why did he say I’m “graced”? And why did he single me out among all women? What is this stranger doing here in my house? Does he wish to do me harm?

When Mary shrank back from the suspicious man—admittedly, he was also an extraordinarily handsome man—the visitor stepped forward with comforting yet authoritative words: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God” (v. 30, author’s translation). There’s that word grace again! How does this outsider know my name? Who is this strange man?

As if these words and this behavior weren’t troubling enough, the man now made a stunning announcement that shook Mary to her core. “Behold,” he said, “you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (vv. 31–33).

Shocked, Mary gripped her garment in her fists and staggered backward. Her marriage to Joseph was at least a year away, but Mary realized the strange visitor was talking about events in the near future. The “grace” he had spoken of was coming soon—but it was no grace at all! To conceive a child out of wedlock would result in terrible shame, possibly even death by communal stoning. Certainly, Joseph would call off the marriage, resulting in a life of poverty and rejection as a tainted woman who couldn’t keep herself chaste. Even if the illegitimate son went on to become a great king like the visitor said, Mary knew she would still have to contend with the immense cultural disgrace of an unwanted pregnancy. Can such a thing really be from God?

One fact of nature helped Mary cling to the hope that these things might not take place. Since the inspired visitor, whoever he was, had blessing in his mouth, not cursing, Mary knew the pregnancy wouldn’t happen by human force. That meant as long as she kept herself chaste in her relationship with Joseph, a pregnancy could not occur. The realization prompted a question to the messenger. Using a euphemistic verb so as not to be too forward with her male guest, Mary asked, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” (v. 34).

Unfortunately, the visitor—was he actually an angel of God?—had a ready answer. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible” (vv. 35–37).

The messenger’s announcement sobered Mary. She realized a great mystery was taking place. The words from the synagogue readings sprang to her mind, the oracle of the prophet Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (7:14).

Immanuel—“God with us.” Jesus—the “Savior.” The Holy One. The Son of the Most High. The Son of God. The heir of David. The true King of Israel!

In a flash, Mary perceived why she was being hailed with the word grace. Her body was destined to be the vessel of grace for the entire world! The names that the angel had been using were messianic. They spoke of God’s Anointed One who was promised to save his people. Now that very Savior was coming into the world, and according to the ancient prophecy, God was using Mary’s virginal body as the instrument of salvation. By human means, this would have been impossible. But as the angel had said, “With God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37). God had already put life into the barren womb of Elizabeth. Now he would bring forth life from her own immaculate womb.

Since God was clearly at work here, nothing remained to question or resist. With a deep sigh of determination, Mary resolved to take the plunge. She would allow this promised “Jesus” to enter the core of her being, to become one with her, to guide everything about her destiny. The festival of Hanukkah now had a new, more personal meaning: not just the rededication of the temple after the Greeks had profaned it but the dedication of her own body to become a temple in which the Divine Presence would dwell. Once Mary gave her assent to this heavenly commission, there would be no going back. Little Jesus, “God with us,” was going to change everything—forever.

“Very well,” Mary said meekly to the angelic visitor. “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). And upon hearing those words of humble assent, the angel departed from her.

A pious Jewish girl like Mary could sense that God was up to something big even if she couldn’t yet see what it was. In this way, she was like all her people, who were constantly trying to discern the signs of the divine hand. Collectively, the Jews longed for deliverance. People under the thumb of a more dominant power like the Jews under the Romans (and before that, under the Hellenistic Greeks) have essentially four possible ways to relate to their overlords. The first is collaboration. Herod chose this path throughout his life, learning early from his father, Antipater I, that the best strategy was to get along with the Romans and grab as much peace and prosperity for the nation as possible. Herod was a pro-Roman collaborator par excellence.

The second route is separation, with two potential avenues for doing so. The dominated people can separate themselves within their society by going about their private business and rubbing shoulders as little as possible with the oppressors. Or, as a third option, they can remove themselves to remote areas and maintain their vigorous nationalistic hopes while prepping for an end-times restoration of the righteous ones.

The dominated nation, fourthly, can resort to insurrection. The Maccabees had chosen this path when the religious oppression of the Greeks had grown intolerable. Later, several decades after the time of Herod, the Jewish people would once again choose this route, rebelling against Rome only to lose badly and see their temple destroyed in AD 70. All four of these options were represented by leading sects of the Jews—collaboration by the Sadducees, internal separation by the Pharisees, external separation by the Essenes, and insurrection by the Zealots.

Herod, who was proclaimed king of the Jews by the Roman Senate and always curried the favor of whoever steered the ship of state, did find success through his strategy of getting along. In terms of achieving general well-being and peace for Israel, collaboration had its merits. Yet for those who hated Rome no matter how much national prosperity was bought in exchange for subservience, the collaborative option could never be a long-term solution. For most of Herod’s reign, the advocates of separation from Rome’s paganism quietly bided their time. But as Herod grew older, fatter, and weaker, the separatists saw their chance—and the steely eyed insurrectionists weren’t far behind them.

The name “Pharisee” came from the Hebrew word for separation. Although they didn’t advocate flight to the desert like more radical groups, they nonetheless achieved separation from contaminating Roman ways through rituals and purity regulations that added extra strictures to the Mosaic law. These, it was believed, would keep faithful Jews from violating God’s command to be a distinct people. As the apostle Paul—himself an excellent Pharisee—would later put it, “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).

A terrible incident just a few months before Herod’s eventual death galvanized the separatist Pharisees against Herod the Roman collaborator. It brought violence not just to the halls of the Herodian palace but to the public squares of Jerusalem.

Herod’s sickness had continued to worsen and the prognosis didn’t look good. His body had bloated up like a wineskin, his feet ached, his limbs convulsed, his skin itched, and the increased pressure on his lungs made breathing difficult. Herod’s old age of seventy years didn’t help matters either. I might not make it past this one, he realized, and the thought maddened him. People across the land would gloat at his demise. Why do they hate me so unjustly? he wondered bitterly. After all I’ve done for them—the cities I built . . . the gifts I gave . . . the temple I set upon Zion!

The king’s severe illness, compounded by the distraction of his son’s trial, gave the separatist-minded Pharisees the perfect opportunity to rectify a matter that had long bothered them. Good Jews weren’t supposed to make graven images of any kind. For the most part, Herod had tried to comply with that ancient law. Yet here and there, he had crossed the line and allowed decorations to be made in the form of animals.

One image that particularly rankled the Pharisees adorned the temple itself: a shining golden eagle on a high pediment. Eagles could, of course, represent good things. “But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles,” said the prophet Isaiah (40:31). And Moses, in a beautiful song, had even compared God to an eagle who “stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings” (Deuteronomy 32:11). Yet the eagle was also the primary symbol of Rome, associated for centuries with its cruel army and the impostor god Jupiter. The Pharisees hated seeing the idolatrous Roman eagle adorning Yahweh’s glorious temple.

With Herod on his sickbed, two eminent Pharisee scholars, Judas and Matthias, saw their chance. They used their high status among their disciples, who hung on their every word, to call for immediate removal of the eagle. Not only would anyone who achieved this glorious deed go down in history as a hero but the rabbis also promised that his soul would be welcomed into immortality for such pious faithfulness.

Then the rumor began to circulate that Herod had died. Now was the time to act! The riled-up students clambered onto the temple’s roof, lowered themselves by ropes, and began to hack at the golden sacrilege. As soon as it hit the ground, other holy warriors smashed it to bits with axes. The exuberant students rejoiced in the greatness of God’s victory—until the sound of hobnailed boots on the pavement drained the color from their faces.

About forty of the rebellious students were arrested by the temple guards, along with the two Pharisee professors who had instigated the action. The rebels were taken down to Jericho for interrogation. “Why did you do it?” Herod demanded. Their smug, self-righteous answers about “God’s will” infuriated him. Empowered by a rage that overcame his debilitating sickness, Herod appeared before a public assembly and denounced the youths and their teachers as sacrilegious temple-robbers, not national heroes. “How dare you disregard all I did for you in building the great temple!” Herod screeched. “How dare you ignore the vast sums I paid for it! For 125 years, the Hasmoneans ruled, and they gave you no temple like that. But I did! I gave you that glorious edifice! When you insult the temple and its decorations, you insult me!”

The crowd of onlookers in the public assembly began to grow nervous as they discerned the agitated state of their king. Fearing widespread reprisals and bloodshed, they asked Herod to relent. Begrudgingly, he decreed a lighter, more merciful penalty than what they had feared. The two professors and the students who had actually climbed onto the roof would be publicly burned alive. The rest of the captured students would be executed by normal means. Much to the relief of the crowd, no one else would be harmed. As if to signal God’s approval—or maybe his disapproval?—of these executions, that night there was an ominous eclipse of the moon.

Exhausted by the affair of the eagle and the ungratefulness it represented, Herod sank back into the throes of his afflictions. With horror, he found beneath his robe that his genitals were rotting from within. His gangrenous groin was beginning to look like raw meat instead of the flesh of a man. Herod was also afflicted by terrible, burning pains in his gut. Food only made the stabbing agonies worse, so while he craved nourishment, he could take none lest it stir up the inner fires. Like the mythological figure of Tantalus in hell, Herod was always hungry and never able to satisfy his cravings. The decay inside his body also made his breath a repugnant vapor that no one could stand to be near. Yet Herod no longer cared about that. Just gasping for air was hard enough. Why should he worry about its stink?

Despite his many ailments, Herod clung to the hope of healing. Perhaps God would use a natural means? Herod ordered his attendants to transport him to Callirrhoe, a spa town not far from Jericho. Its mineral waters were reputed to be healthy, even sweet enough to drink until the moment they ran into the salty expanse of the Dead Sea. Surely here was a solution!

Unfortunately, the spa waters had no effect. The doctors even had Herod lowered into a bath of warmed olive oil. When the heat overcame him and he fainted, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and everyone took him for dead. The mournful wail that arose shook Herod back to awareness. But he had been revived from his stupor only to be returned to hopeless despair. Now that every natural means had failed him, no hope for a cure remained. Returning to Jericho, Herod’s darkened mind began to brood over what kind of legacy he could leave after he died.

Soon, he hit upon a devious plan. He called for his faithful sister Salome to help him, along with her husband. Herod ordered all the leading men from every Judean village rounded up and brought to Jericho. He put them in the city’s chariot stadium and locked the doors with guards stationed outside. “Death is common to all men,” Herod told Salome and her husband, “but that I should go on without being mourned is a bitter thought. I have done too much for my people to die without their shedding of tears!” Then Herod drew the conspirators closer to his sickbed. “I know that the Jews will celebrate my death by a festival. Yet I can obtain a vicarious mourning and a magnificent funeral if you consent to follow my instructions. You know these notable men whom I am holding here in custody? The moment I expire, I want them surrounded by soldiers and massacred. Swear this to me!”

“We will do it, beloved,” Salome promised as she squeezed Herod’s sweaty hand, even as she vowed in her heart never to carry it through.

“Good . . . very good indeed,” Herod wheezed. “So shall every household in Judea weep for me, whether they want to or not.”