RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Messalians Messiah
II.
, In the Old Testament. The Original Signification (§1). Failure to Realize the Ideal (§ 2). Early Prophetic Doctrine (§3). Doctrine of the Later Prophets
(§4). Individualization of the Messianic
Idea (§ 5). In the Pseudepigrapha.
MESSIAH, MESSIANISM.
Influence of Eschatology (§ 1). Messianism of Earlier Part of Enoch
(§2). The Psalms of Solomon (§ 3). The Later Part of Enoch (§ 4). The Apocalypse of Baruch (§ 5). The Apocalypse of Ezra (§ 6). III. Late Jewish Messianism.
General Characteristics (§1).
In the First Christian Century (§ 2). Early Rabbinic Ideals (§ 3). The Functions of Elias (§ 4). Duration of Messianic Rule (§ 5). The Person of the Messiah (§ 6). The Messiah's Activities (§ 7). Accompaniments of the Messiah's Coming (§ 8).
I. In the Old Testament: In the Old Testament the word " Messiah " is not used alone as an absolute title, but is usually met in the phrase " the anointed of Yahweh," meaning Yahweh's consecrated king. It is a title of honor of the reigning king of Israel from the time of Saul and David (I Sam. xxiv. 6, 10, and often). Once Yahweh applies the term to the Persian King Cyrus, because he had appointed him to carry out his I. The designs (cf. also I Kings xix. 15, where
Original a heathen is to be anointed king over
Significa- Syria because Yahweh intends to use tion. him as an instrument of punishment). The implication of the term was that something of the sublimity and sacredness of his^/- God had been communicated to the king, and he stood before the people as the representative of Yahweh, governing in his place. The relationship of Yahweh to the people of his covenant became in the case of the king a personal relationship. The religion of Yahweh, which had originated in individual revelations of God to a few, tended, after it had assumed a national form, toward the concentration of this relationship to God in a person. The king was the natural focus for this tendency. He was placed by the word of the prophet in that filial relation to God in which the whole people had long been conscious of standing (II Sam. vii. 14; Ex. iv. 22; Deut. xxxii. 6; Hos. xi. 1 ; see Kingship in Israel). The relationship became in this way a more lifelike and intimate one. This religious idealization of royalty had already attained a high development in the period of the united kingdom, especially under David. As Yahweh had been from of old the king of Israel, so David, who had brought the ark of the covenant to Zion, endeavored to realize the ideal. Psalms ii., lxxii., ex., state the consequences of such a rule: Yahweh rules from Zion over the whole world, and his anointed is unconquerable and virtually Lord of all the earth. This induced the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and others to take their stand upon the synthesis of Yahweh's residence in Zion and his establishment there of a kingdom of the house of David which was never to be overthrown (cf. Joel iii. 16; Amos i. 2; Isa. ii. 2 sqq., iv. 2 sqq.).
But the actuality in the royal person and in his government never corresponded to the lofty ideal of the prophets. Even in the time of David this fact appears, and consequently the consummation of this kingdom was postponed to the future. Thus according to the " last words " of David (II Sam. xxiii. 1 sqq.), the full glory of this kingdom had as yet only dawned, although with great promise; but under Solomon there was brought about the destruction of those beginnings which had been so
full of promise. Only a poor remnant of David's
kingdom remained for his heirs; nevertheless, the
kings of the divided kingdom held
2. Failure firmly to their Messianic relationship to Realize to Yahweh, as is shown by the royal the Ideal, psalms, and the spiritual inheritance
from the time of David remained a nourishing soil, whence new hope in a greater future would arise spontaneously or could be evoked by the words of the prophets. Indeed, the less actualities in the kingdom of Judah corresponded to the sublimity of the ideal, the more probable it appeared that they would be fully and completely realized in the consummation of the kingdom of Yahweh. It is true that this consummation was to be preceded by the judgment of the Day of Yahweh (q.v.). This is the hope which is in a broader sense Messianic. The whole of God's activity in judgment and in mercy, to which the prophets bear witness, points toward such a consummation; but they do not always speak of such a personal Messiah in the language which later Judaism and the New Testament employed in describing the new king from the house of David, in whom the prophetic ideal of a divine and human king was to be fully realized. Some of the prophets are entirely silent regarding this organ of divine rule and speak only of Yahweh as the one to whom will belong universal dominion, while others describe as the Messiah the human bearer of the divine power and mediator of the divine mercy to his people. Indeed, some prophets recognize the Davidic king as the central point of the future kingdom of God, yet in other descriptions of the future speak solely of the coming of Yahweh and of his future residence in the midst of his people.
It was the firm conviction of the prophets of the northern kingdom that the royal house of David, in spite of its political insignificance, had an indestructible support in God's settlement
3. Early upon Zion and his covenant with Prophetic David; and Amos and Hosea discerned Doctrine, there the point of crystallization for
the future kingdom of Yahweh. Amos, however, alludes in more general terms to the reestablishment of the tabernacle of David, whose rule is again to be extended over the lands promised to him (Amos ix. 11 sqq.). Hosea speaks more individually of " the king, David " of the future (iii. 5) under whose rule the whole people will unite (i. 11) and around whom will gather those scattered and driven from the land by the judgment. In Hosea preparation is made for the portrayal of a. Messiah in the later sense of the word, that is, of an ideal future king who will fully realize the sublime assurances of grace because he will be entirely
Messiah