To get into our study of Matthew, I did a deep dive into the "400 Silent Years," the centuries between Malachi and Jesus.  I wanted to understand the world that Jesus was born into: to know what people knew.   I hope this helps you understand the Gospel better, as you understand the world in which they took place. - DCM

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To get to the world that Jesus was born into, I need to bridge a gap between the Old Testament and New Testament, because there’s about 400 years where God didn’t speak through the prophets.  They’re called “The Silent Years,” but I think of them more as the “Stage-setting Years,” when history’s stage is set up just how God wants it.   

So when the lights come up, they show Nehemiah setting things straight in Jerusalem.  The Jews were still ruled by Persia – no question there, no hint of rebellion – but they were allowed to clean things up.   And after Nehemiah rebuilds the city walls he sets out reforming the place: no work on the Sabbath; make sure the priests get paid; keep the Temple sacred; don’t make alliances with the ungodly, especially marriage alliances.

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Life had never been easy under Persian rule, but it had been simple.  For two-hundred years they had kept the peace, and had allowed the service of the Temple to continue undisturbed.  Cyrus, the first great Persian king, was held in such high regard by God’s people that he was named in their Scriptures.  And Persia was the largest and best-administered kingdom the world had yet known – ruling territory from the Indus valley to the east, through Egypt to the south, and even across the Bosporus in the west, encroaching on the borders of Greece.   

But it was beginning to show its age.  The Achaemenid dynasty that Cyrus had founded was unable even to rule its own house: assassinations were piling up, surely committed by someone close to the monarchs.   And the stories from the west were more troubling.  A young monarch named Alexander was continuing his father Philip’s cause, employing the armies of Macedonia to take as much Persian territory as they could.   The region of eastern Greece first; then across the Black Sea through Asia Minor.  After a great battle with the regional armies of Asia, Alexander had faced minimal resistance.  Would King Darius not rally the Persian army to defend the west?   

Tyre was next, and here Alexander stalled.  The Tyrians didn’t defend their city; they simply abandoned it, relocating to an island offshore.  Alexander had a simple request: allow him to enter the city and make a sacrifice to the god Melqart, and he and his army would be on their way.  They refused, enraging Alexander.  His army wasted months trying to build a causeway to the island, but, under constant assault, could not complete it.  Alexander sent emissaries to surrounding provinces with an offer: Help me conquer Tyre, and I will treat you favorably when it’s your turn to be conquered.  But the leaders of Jerusalem demurred; it was a difficult gamble, but they would remain loyal to Persia.  And Alexander would not forget.   

After more than six months, Tyre was finally taken, and Alexander turned southward toward his next major target: Egypt.  But along the way he intended to secure the allegiance of two minor powers, thus protecting his rear: the Samaritans, who had helped Alexander at Tyre; and the Jews, who hadn’t.  Since it was now obvious that the Persian army would not come marching to their rescue, God’s people were on their own.  

 But oddly enough, God’s word had provided them an unlikely defensive weapon.  The High Priest, Jaddua, threw open Jerusalem’s gates and walked out to meet the conquering king as he approached.  He wore the priestly garments, complete with his turban that buckled the name “Yahweh” across the front. And he carried with him the scroll of Daniel the prophet, dead these 200 years.  And Daniel recorded that he saw in a vision:

"...a ram with two horns, charging westward and northward and southward, and no beast could stand before him… then a male goat in the west, with one large horn between his eyes, challenged the ram, and threw him to the ground… and no one could rescue the ram from the goat’s power.  

As Daniel struggled to understand, the angel Gabriel explained the vision:

"The ram with two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia.  And the goat is the king of Greece.  And the great horn between his eyes is the first king."  
- Daniel 8:20-21

Alexander was thrilled with everything he saw.  Jaddua, the priest, Alexander himself had seen in a dream… Alexander also immediately captured Daniel’s meaning: the Jewish prophets had foretold Alexander’s victory.  And unlike at Tyre, Jaddua and the Jewish leaders had thrown open the gates of Jerusalem. 

Instead of destroying them, Alexander offered the Jews whatever they asked. And all they requested was to be left alone: to retain the same rights and life as they had under Persian rule.  Alexander agreed; new rulers, same rules.  Everything would be fine.  

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But everything would not be fine.  Just nine years later, while returning from his successful conquest of the entire Persian empire, Alexander fell ill at Babylon, and died.  He left no heir.  His empire was thrown into chaos.

The Jews’ troubles, it turns out, were just beginning.  

Until the time of Jesus, for the next four centuries, the Jews would be consumed with one basic question: Who can we count on?  For the simplicity of life under the Persians was replaced by a never-ending struggle between warring parties: between the Ptolemies who secured Egypt and the Seleucids who controlled Syria.  The Jews, and the Holy City of Jerusalem, sat at one of the busiest intersections of the world; the Egyptians pushing through one year, the Syrians pushing back the next.  Who do we side with?  The king of the north or the king of the south?  If we back Egypt and Syria wins, there will be revenge when the pendulum swings back.  Jewish exiles by the thousands were transported eastward by the Syrians, or southward, to Alexandria, when the Egyptians were in control.  The Jews were always in the crosshairs of someone’s sights.    

But Alexander’s wake produced another struggle, one more seductive and possibly more dangerous: Greek customs were sweeping the world.  Education, philosophy, reading, language – the Greek ways forged a powerful union for the Mediterranean basin, and, critically, provided a path for people from all backgrounds to take part in the larger world.  For the first time on such a massive scale, people from all backgrounds could participate in every arena of public life.  Culture, language, religion – these were not the barriers they once were.   

The Seleucids understood this perfectly – common culture was a victory for individuals, but also a necessity for effective governance.  For their empire covered vast and disparate territory: from Syria, their kingdom encompassed the ancient lands of Assyria and Babylon, eastward through Bactria and what is now Afghanistan.  The Buddhists and Hindus, the worshippers of Mazda and Marduk and the Baals, would all be more easily controlled if they thought in the Greek way.  While local customs were tolerated, Greek language and religion were preferred, and the ruling class was dominated by the Greek educated, and even by immigrants from Greece.   

The Seleucids carried this priority into Palestine when they took firm control of Judea about a century after Alexander’s death.  At first the Jews were elated – better than the Egyptians, at least! – but they soon faced impossible choices: Greek culture wasn’t a choice.  It was an obligation.  And this decision split the Jews apart.  Some favored accepting reality and giving in: “Look, just go along with this Greek thing, keep the peace with the foreigners, play politics however we have to in order to keep our land, and they’ll hopefully leave us alone.   What’s the big deal? The Jewish exiles in Alexandria have already produced a Greek translation of our Bible – they call it ‘The Septuagint.’  And everyone prefers it!  We don’t need to get worked up about this.”   

Others rejected this syncretism, this collaboration: they preached resistance.  “We’re not going Greek, no matter how much it costs us.   There is a principle at stake: we are supposed to be a people set apart, holy to the Lord.  Our language, our dress, our customs, cannot be divided from our Law.  They are all part of the same, single cloth.  And the more we become like the nations around us, the angrier God will be with us.”    

This tension simmered, and might have been contained, if not for the emergence of a ruthless king of the Seleucids that brought everything into focus: Antiochus IV, who called himself “Epiphanes,” or “God manifest.”  In 171 B.C. he replaced the High Priest in Jerusalem with one he could count on.  In 168, Antiochus led his army to conquer Egypt but was rebuffed.  A rumor circulates back in Jerusalem that Antiochus has been killed, and the Jews rejoiced.  Antiochus hears of their celebration and on the way back from his Egyptian failure, takes out his frustration on Jerusalem.  The Temple is plundered, 40,000 are killed and 40,000 more are sold into slavery.   

But more is in store.   Antiochus perceives rightly that the Jews can be divided: by supporting the Hellenizers, he can buy their backing if he makes the traditionalist’s lives difficult.  He decrees an “Act of Uniformity” that forbids Sabbath observance, circumcision, and demands the Jews worship Jupiter and the gods of the Greek pantheon.  A pig is sacrificed in the temple, and its blood is sprinkled on the altar.  The abomination that causes desolation, about which Daniel had warned, had been placed – and a gauntlet had been thrown.    

That challenge is picked up by an unlikely hero.  Outside Jerusalem, in the town of Modi’in, a village leader by the name of Mattathias had had enough: he killed a local trying to sacrifice to a Greek god, as well as the Syrian official accompanying him.  Mattathias and his five sons fled to the wilderness, followed by thousands of others who longed for stricter commitment to God.  Taking advantage of intrigue back at the palace, Mattathias’s sons – known by their Greek name “Maccabees” – the Hammer of God – are able to return to Jerusalem, retake the Temple, and rededicate it on the 25^th of the month Chisleu – December 25^th – and inaugurate the first Feast of Dedication – Hannukah – the Festival of Lights.    

But a cleansing only goes as far as its leaders pursue it, and almost immediately Jacob, Mattathias’s middle son and now leader of the revolution, makes a deal with an emerging power in the west: Rome.  With Roman support, he hopes to keep Antiochus at bay.  And security today is purchased with slavery in the future.   Peace in our time… Nothing is new under the sun.  The Syrians take revenge, again besieging Jerusalem, but are finally driven out in 143.   The Jews are as independent as they have been in five centuries. 

Now you might have noticed… I haven’t mentioned God much so far.  He’s not really going to come up.  As H.A. Ironside observes: 

“For us, who are seeking to learn the practical value from all this, one thing stands out as a solemn warning: the people of the Jews had largely lost that godly separation and dependence which should have been their sanctification.  In their distresses, in place of implicit reliance on the God of their fathers, they turned to alliances with the heathen, depending on an arm of flesh that often failed them, and was to their ruin in the end.   Who that is even ordinarily familiar with the history of the Church, can fail to see that the same snare has ever been the bane of every movement which in its early beginnings was marked by devotedness to Christ and reliance upon the living God, but which as the freshness of early days passed away, and numbers were added who had obtained the truth at little cost (often coming into it almost by natural birth), lost this peculiar link with the Divine, and depended more and more on what was merely human?  This is the weakness of practically every religious society, and no company of Christians can afford to be indifferent to the danger of such a course.  Power and blessing, victory and spiritual freshness are the portion of those who cleave to the Lord alone.  Weakness and barrenness as surely follow upon amalgamation with the world, as in the case of the Jews in the days upon which we are dwelling."

-H. A. Ironside, The 400 Silent Years, 64-65

At this point, the separatists, the purists, held power in Jerusalem.  The Maccabees’ were granted the High Priesthood as a hereditary inheritance: it would be theirs forever.  But within 40 years John Hyrcanus, a son of that great generation, as high priest showed sympathies toward toleration of Greek culture, of Hellenization.  His own party – the conservatives, now known as the Pharisees – was outraged, and did not support him against slanderous accusations.  So a wounded Hyrcanus got back at them, and publicly and openly switched parties to the liberal Hellenists: the Sadducees.   

Years later the Pharisees were further outraged when Hyrcanus’ son, Alexander, was careless with the water of the Pool of Siloam.  There were riots – imagine that, religious riots! – and instead of trusting God, the Pharisees turned to Syria for help.  The Seleucids said, “Yeah, sure, we’ll help,” and planned to retake the land they had lost.  But even they couldn’t subdue the situation, and when the people of Jerusalem turned on both the Pharisees and the Syrians, the Syrian troops left, and Jerusalem was firmly in control of the Sadducees.   

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Interlude: 

I hope you notice something: Nothing goes right when God’s people look to earthly forces to protect them.  Remember how Nehemiah warned God’s people that making alliances with the ungodly was a bad idea?  Turns out, making alliances with the ungodly was a bad idea.  Mutual-benefit treaties are always a bad idea for God’s people, because God’s people always find themselves getting dragged into fights they don’t want to be a part of; before someone wants you to be in league with them, ask, “What will I do when they go in a direction I’m not comfortable with?   Will I have to go along with it, even though I know it’s not right?”  Be careful who you sign up to be loyal to.   

All through this history, God’s people wrestled with the wrong decisions: “Do we back this ruler, or his cousin?  Who will win?   Who will give us the best deal?” Instead, they could have been trusting in God continually: “Lord, we don’t know which way to turn, but we trust in you. Grant us your wisdom.  Show us your power.”   

If you can’t be sure that you will be able to keep your integrity before God… if you can’t be sure that you will be able to embrace God’s image in you… If you can’t be reasonably sure that you will be able to obey Him… then don’t make that agreement; don’t sign that contract; don’t promise your vote; don’t make a covenant; don’t get serious with them.  Make sure they want the same things you do.  Make sure they have the same priorities you do.  Be careful who you sign up to be loyal to.   

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There’s eventual peace, as two sons of Alexander decide to split power: Aristobolus would be king and Hyrcanus II would be high priest.  But Hyrcanus had a friend – Antipater – who was bad news.  He convinced Hyrcanus that his life was in danger, who fled to Arabia and returned with an army to take Jerusalem by force.   Aristobolus barricades himself in the city – Jerusalem is besieged again – and reaches out to a new friend who just happened to be in Syria at the time: Roman general Pompey.  The Romans arrive, help Aristobolus, then switch sides to Hyrcanus and Antipater, and finally just take Judea as a Roman province. 

Ironically, the land is now more peaceful under Roman rule than it was under their own rulers – have we heard that before?  And it would have stayed that way if there wasn’t big trouble brewing in Italy.   Julius Caesar is trying to set himself up as king.  Pompey fights him and is killed in Egypt. Crassus picks up the cause and fights Caesar himself.  He needs money and raids the Temple, and  Antipater takes Julius Caesar’s side and is made procurator of Judea. But he is soon poisoned, and his son, Herod, takes his place.   

But we’re not there yet!   One of the Maccabees reemerges, partners with the Parthian empire, and drives Herod into exile.  So now Parthians are in charge of Jerusalem.  Herod goes to Rome to ask for help and petitions Marc Antony – Caesar is dead by now Et tu, Brute? – and Antony sends his legions to recover what is, officially now, a Roman province.  Herod and the Romans win Jerusalem decisively – the slaughter is so great that only two of the Sanhedrin live, and even Herod pleads with the Romans to call off their dogs.  For his efforts, Herod is granted a new title and status: King of the Jews.  It is 37 B.C. 

For a while Herod is frustrated in his effort to consolidate power.  The remaining Maccabees try to withstand him, even asking for help from Cleopatra, who can’t stand Herod, but resistance collapses right about the time Marc Antony and Cleopatra are dying in Egypt.  Forged in a world of suspicion and intrigue, Herod becomes more paranoid as his power grows: killing his wife Mariamne, the last of the Maccabees… and arranging the execution of his sons Alexander and Aristobolus and Antipater.   The Sadducees party – the collaborators who are sometimes pure – are in charge of Jerusalem.  The Pharisees party – the purists who often collaborate with worldly powers – have plenty of influence in the countryside.   

It’s now 6 B.C.  In the past sixty years, Judea has undergone three total revolutions, hosted four invading armies, and been hit up three times for troops to support some Roman general who hopes to save the world… The current local king, Herod, is a paranoid genius who both builds amazing structures and kills anyone he suspects is a threat… His overlords in Rome won’t do anything about it, because he keeps the peace and keeps taxes flowing… They pay a head tax, a customs tax, produce tax, taxes on meat and salt and auctions and inheritances, road taxes when they transport good by land; port taxes when they moved good by sea… and they still pay that 10% Temple tax… And tax collection is farmed out to the highest bidder; Those tax collectors?  They won an auction for it: collaborators who promised a total amount to Rome and then shake down the people to make sure they get that amount plus a handsome profit… And thousands of Gentile soldiers are stationed here, half of them are Samaritans, auxiliary units that the citizens of Judea are expected to support…

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We think it’s all about the Pharisees and the Sadducees?  Most people were just worried about how they were going to make it.  This is the world that Jesus was born into. 

It can’t get much darker.   It's just about time for a star to rise.