The Hasmonean Revolt

The Feast of Dedication

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.—John 10:22

The struggle for freedom in the land of Israel has been a long and arduous one. A land no larger than the state of New Jersey has seen more battles than any other country in the world. The land has been desired and fought over by every major world empire since Abraham was first promised it for a possession. This struggle for independence has been enshrined in major observances in the feasts and festivals of the Jews. The great feast of Passover commemorates their deliverance from Egypt; the Feast of Tabernacles the entrance into the promised land with the hope and assurance of the overthrow of the nations then occupying Canaan; the feast of Esther commemorates the rescue of the Jews from the insidious plot of Haman to ethnically cleanse their race; and the feast of Dedication celebrated their national deliverance from an oppressive regime by the purification of the temple of Jerusalem, the one emblem of their national existence, previously polluted by the Syrian leader Antiochus Epiphanes.

The Hasmonean Revolt

The circumstances that gave birth to the Feast of Dedication belong to the period between the Old and New Testaments, around the second century B.C. Often referred to as the Hasmonean revolt because it was led by a family of the Hasmonean priestly order, it was an ideological and political conflict that led to a brief but significant independence for the Jews of Palestine, but ultimately to Roman domination.

Upon the death of Alexander the Great, his middle eastern empire was divided into the Seleucid (present day Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Israel) and Ptolemaic (Egypt) kingdoms. With the ascension of Antiochus Epiphanes IV (circa 175-163 B.C.), a powerful Seleucid ruler, the Hellenization of Palestine and the Jews commenced. The Seleucid rulers were steeped in the culture of the Greeks which included a common language, philosophy, education, and a belief in polytheism and the practice of "king worship." Even though Antiochus Epiphanes originally granted religious autonomy to the provinces of the kingdom, his goal was to strengthen his crumbling empire by Hellenizing his domain.

In 169 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes decreed a ban on Judaism and took other anti-Jewish measures to bring the Jewish population to its knees. Circumcision was prohibited; proscribed worship of Greek deities, especially of Antiochus Epiphanes as the god Zeus, was instituted; and worship was forbidden on the Sabbath. Antiochus installed an image of the god Zeus in the Jewish temple at Jerusalem and heathen sacrifices were inaugurated. During this time and in protest, there were waves of bloody riotsin Jerusalem. The group chiefly responsible was known as the "Hasidim," or "the Pious," a movement that later developed into the Pharisees and who, at the time, represented the majority of the Jewish population in Palestine.

In approximately 168 B.C. Antiochus sent his representatives to enforce these anti-Jewish decrees. Jerusalem was ordered sacked and Jews were murdered on the Sabbath, knowing that they would not resist. The following year the temple at Jerusalem was officially dedicated to the god Zeus. Approximately a thousand Hasidim refugees, defiant of the new laws, were slaughtered on the Sabbath in their mountain hideout.

Troops and representatives were sent throughout Palestine to force the Jews to sacrifice to Zeus. One Sabbath day, they entered the small town of Modin. In an attempt to gain the cooperation of the inhabitants, arrangements were made for an apostate Jew to sacrifice a pig to Zeus. Here an elderly priest, Mattathias of the Hasmonean priestly family, killed the king’s messenger. Mattathias, his five sons, and a band of their followers fled to the nearby mountains. They were joined by the Hasidim who provided the religious inspiration and ideological purity that the Hasmoneans needed to justify and gain support for their revolt.

In 166 B.C. Mattathias died and the leadership of the revolt passed to his son Judas Maccabeus (meaning the "hammer" which described his tactical methods of warfare). Judas against great odds and the might of the Seleucid army prevailed and in 165 B.C. he captured Jerusalem, the feat for which he is most remembered. There he purified and rededicated the temple previously defiled by the worship of Zeus and the sacrifice of unclean animals. Led by the Hasmonian family, warfare continued and in a few short years Palestine was freed from Syrian oppression, both religiously and politically. But freedom was short-lived. In spite of treaties meant to insure the safety of the Jewish communities in Palestine, they were again forced into bondage under Rome.

Messianic Expectations

The Messianic vision at the time of the first advent was after the tradition of the ancient warriors of history—Moses, Joshua, David, Gideon, and Judas Maccabeus—the mighty who had delivered the nation from their oppressors. Trodden down by Roman oppression, this was again their national hope. At the time of Jesus’ birth all were longing for the Messiah (Luke 2:15; 24:21) but not as the one described in Isaiah 53 who had "no form nor comeliness" and in whom they say there is "no beauty" that they "should desire him." So they hid as it were their faces from him; he was despised, and they esteemed him not. They were not looking for the one who must suffer before he would enter into his glory.

They had misread all the types and prophecies that pointed to their Messiah and they did not welcome the lowly and gentle Jesus, a seeming transient who traversed the craggy hills of Israel with an odd band of poor and unlearned followers, who was "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and for whom it was needed that he be wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." They did not realize that to achieve lasting freedom, they must first be healed from sin and death. And thus the memory of these great victors of the past and their present hope and desire to escape still another unbearable servitude had reshaped their image of Messiah and it was into this atmosphere Jesus was born and reared.

Jesus at the Feast of Dedication

At the culmination of his ministry Jesus attended for the last time the great feasts of Tabernacles and Dedication. Like Moses and Judas Maccabeus who brought deliverance to the nation, he was the true deliverer typified and exemplified in these very feasts.

These two festivals stand related to one another both externally and internally. The feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah as it is called today, is derived from the Feast of Tabernacles. In 2 Maccabees 10:5,6 we read of the origin of the mode of observation of this feast: "And they [Maccabees] kept eight days with joy, after the manner of the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had kept the feast of the tabernacles when they were in the mountains, and in dens like wild beasts." Both celebrated a divine deliverance which once again gave to Israel her land and her freedom, at the hands of God through great deliverers: Moses and Judas Maccabeus. The same series of psalms (called the Hillel) were read at both feasts as well as at the Passover. These psalms (113-118) contain numerous allusions to the nature and work of Jesus their Messiah. At both feasts palm branches are carried, symbolic of victory after overcoming great odds.

More meaningful than the outward observances is the meaning attached to the Feast of Dedication and the Feast of Tabernacles. Both feasts commemorated a divine victory which reunited them in their own land after formidable privations. In symbol at the Feast of Dedication a re-lighting of the great light was commemorated, the one that had been extinguished in the temple because of heathen worship. Now that great light that came into the world to light every man stood before them, the one who had been promised of old (Isaiah 42:6; Malachi 4:2). How appropriate that the last celebration our Lord would attend in his life would be the one where light and purification and national deliverance were the central theme. As that first Festival of Lights celebrated the purification of the temple from heathen defilement by a great deliverer as symbolized in the re-lighting of the temple lamps, here stood in that very same temple the true light of the world, the true deliverer, and the one who would ultimately purify all mankind though his great sacrifice.

As he walked on Solomon’s porch, the scribes and Pharisees again endeavored to entrap him with the ultimate goal of killing him. In essence they asked him, "Just tell us that you are really the Christ, the Messiah." Little did they realize that he was their Messiah in a grander and more loftier sense than they ever thought possible. But he was not the Messiah for which they were looking. Thus on this occasion he does not tell them the answer they wished to hear. Instead he refers them to his teachings and miraculous works which more than anything affirmed that he was truly the Messiah. Had he so proclaimed at this moment and in the sense and with the objects which they required, it is possible they would have instantly welcomed him with tumultuous alacrity as the common people did a few months later when they proclaimed him their king. All the allusions he made to himself, especially at these two feasts, were taken from prophecies from the Old Testament that pointed to the Messiah: living water that would assuage the spiritual thirst and give life (John 7:39; Isaiah 55:1); the light of the world, the true Messiah promised of old (John 8:12; Isaiah 42:6; Malachi 4:2); the one sent from the father to save (Job 33:24; Psalm 118:25) Surely had they known their Scriptures they would have recognized in him their Messiah.

The Sheep and the Shepherd

The image of the sheep and the shepherd runs continually though the Old Testament Scriptures. Here at this feast he continues the reference to sheep from the discourse he had started at the Feast of Tabernacles. The scribes and Pharisees were no strangers to this allusion. The nation was pictured as sheep (Psalm 79:13; 78:52; Jeremiah 50:17) and their leaders were the shepherds (Ezekiel 34:2; Jeremiah 23:1). Had they but realized it the great shepherd now stood before them, the one who truly could save them (Genesis 49:24). The reference to sheep had been there in the first sacrifices (Genesis 4:2); in the ram that replaced Isaac (Genesis 22:13); in the sacrifices of the tabernacle, etc. Had they truly understood their Scriptures, they would have known that the true Messiah must first suffer and die before true liberty and freedom could be effected.

But as they were not the true sheep of his flock, he was not their shepherd. They were hireling shepherds who had not guided the sheep to pasture. Had they been true to their cause, they would have properly led the nation to accept Christ as the great shepherd. Had they been the sheep of God they would have received the eternal life to which he referred. Here at the end of his ministry they again asked him to proclaim himself Messiah. But he had already done that and they had not heard him. In John 10:7 in his parable of the sheep he says, "I am the door of the sheep." In John 10:30 he proclaims that he and his father are one—one in plan and purpose. In John 10:36 he declares himself to be the "Son of God." But now the day for national deliverance was over; it was now the time for the true deliverance, eternal and lasting—a deliverance greater than Judas Maccabeus or any of their great judges and deliverers could ever hope to accomplish. The greater than Solomon, the greater than Moses, and the greater than Judas Maccabeus was about to die for the sins of the world.