The Messiah in Jewish Thought [2] – The Leper Scholar

We have been dealing with the passage of the Talmud from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin page 96b, which is the beginning of the major section in the Talmud that deals with the teachings of the rabbis about the Messiah. The first section deals with Bar Nafle, the Son of the Clouds, which is a name given to the Messiah. This idea is also reflected in the New Testament, especially in the epistle to the Thessalonians, where it says that the Messiah will come in the clouds of heaven. This is taken, of course, by the New Testament writers and by the rabbis alike, from the description of the Son of Man coming in the clouds in the book of Daniel.

Now we are continuing our study on page 97a of the tractate Sanhedrin, with a number of sections that give different traditions dealing with the generation in which the Son of David is coming — the generation in which the Messiah is coming. There are different descriptions of that generation, given by rabbis in different periods of the Talmudic era. I will read a few of them and then try to analyze what this means for students of the New Testament.

The Generation of the Son of David

Another tradition, given in the name of Rabbi Nehemiah, says:

This is taken from Leviticus chapter 13 verse 13, in the context of leprosy. One of the signs of leprosy is when white spots appear on the skin, and you have to go to the priest to be diagnosed as to whether you have leprosy or not. And this is taken here by R. Isaac, and Raba supports it, as an indication that the whole kingdom will be converted to heresy — the verse from Leviticus 13:13, "It is all turned white: he is clean." That is about the priest's examination of somebody who comes to him to discern whether he has leprosy or not: if the whole man is white, he is clean; but if he has white spots here and there, then he has leprosy.

"Until Their Power Is Gone"

Here is one more rabbinical tradition about what will happen in the generation of the coming of the Son of David, the coming of the Messiah, from the same page. As you know, the earlier traditions were given in the name of individual rabbis — in the name of R. Nehemiah, of R. Shila, of Rav. Now we have more or less the official, traditional view of the rabbis in the Talmudic era, and this formula always comes the same way — "Our rabbis taught" — bringing a verse from Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 36.

The Talmud continues after this quotation:

In other words, after the rabbis made their interpretation of this verse in Deuteronomy 32:36, a question comes into the picture: how could anybody say that Israel has no one to lean upon? Because the description in this verse seems to indicate that there will be no one left — everybody shut up in heresy and impudence, no money, no power, no scholars — and the indication would be that God had abandoned Israel. And the question is: has God really abandoned Israel, so that Israel has no Supporter or Helper? And then the support for this statement of the rabbis is given.

A Time of Anguish

Now let us go back and analyze these three sections on the same page of the Talmud that deal with the coming of the Messiah. First, there is something in common among these three sections that we need to take into account. What is in common is that all the individual rabbis, and the view of the rabbis collectively, seem to indicate that the time of the coming of the Messiah will be a time of anguish, of suffering, of national, legal, and financial disorder. They all indicate that the Messiah will come when there is disorder, when scholars and righteous people are put aside, not respected, or losing their position in the community.

These things are not unique to the Talmudic scholars. As you may already know, in the New Testament, when Yeshua describes the fall of Jerusalem, in that same context he also predicts the Second Coming and the Judgment Day. And of the time when the Messiah will come, in Matthew chapter 24, one reads of very similar circumstances: that there will be wars, hunger, and persecution of the righteous. At the same time, one reads that people will still be working in the field and living more or less normal lives — like the section here, where there will be plenty of grapes, plenty of fruit, yet the wine will still be expensive. That picture seems to parallel the perspective given in the New Testament of the generation in which the Messiah will come. That is one aspect of this teaching that we see in the Talmud so far; but there are some other interesting insights that seem to be connected to it.

R. Nehemiah's Remarkable Forecast

One is R. Nehemiah's statement that in the Messiah's coming, "the kingdom will be converted to heresy." The Hebrew word for heresy here is minut, and the traditional Jewish commentators of the Talmud say that "the kingdom will be converted to heresy" means the Roman Empire. It is a remarkable forecast. R. Nehemiah, who lived at about 150 BC, speaks of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, which occurred in the days of Constantine the Great in the year 313. One could already see, in 150 CE, the direction in which the Roman Empire was going, and that it would be converted to heresy — where "heresy" here means Christianity.

This is also very interesting, that they connected the idea of converting to Christianity with the second coming — connected it, in their eyes, with the coming of the Messiah. A similar concept is found in Matthew, in the context of the commission on which Yeshua sends his disciples to preach the Kingdom to the cities of Israel. In Matthew chapter 10 verse 34 he says an interesting thing that may be related to this concept:

The context here is that the age of the Messiah, and his presence, will bring into the world the confrontation between good and evil — between those who are committed to God and those who are not. In the same chapter Yeshua says that he will not come until the Gospel, the Good News, has been preached throughout all the cities of Israel. In Matthew chapter 10 verse 23:

In other words, the concept is that there has to be a covering of the land with the Gospel before he will come — and we see the concept here on a much larger scale, speaking of the Roman Empire as the thing turning to heresy. From the point of view of the rabbis, of course, faith in the Messiah was the heresy. So this is the view that R. Nehemiah brings, and Raba supports it, connecting the turning of the whole kingdom to heresy with leprosy. In other words, he connects Christianity to leprosy: it is an infectious thing, it spreads, and eventually it takes over the whole body. That is how Raba looks at it.

The Messiah Called "the Leper"

Now, that is very interesting, because when we get to the next page, we will see that the rabbis think the name of the Messiah is "the leper." Let me give you a preview of what we are going to study later on this issue, when the rabbis discuss what the name of the Messiah will be. This section, which says that the Messiah is a leper, is found in the discussion of what the name of the Messiah is. It comes later, on page 98b, and this is how the text reads:

The word for leper here is nagua [stricken]; in the English translation it is rendered "stricken," but the implication is that he was stricken with leprosy, at least in the biblical Hebrew context. So this quotation, which justifies that the name of the Messiah — or one of the names of the Messiah — is "leper," is taken from Isaiah 53, which is, of course, a messianic prophecy, foretelling the suffering, the death, and the atonement that the Messiah would accomplish for humanity. So this section is very important, in that it connects Isaiah 53 with the Messiah, and with his name being "the leper."

Now we go back to our section and see the significance of this connection that Raba makes. Raba connects the time of the coming of the Messiah with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, and that conversion is described in terms of contracting leprosy — and yet the Messiah himself is identified as the leper of Isaiah 53.

So there is a kind of prophetic cycle going on among the rabbis that, in a way, plays right into the biblical concept of the Messiah, which is in the New Testament as well: that the Messiah is the Suffering Servant of God, and that he fulfills the prediction of Isaiah 53.

The Ethiopian Eunuch and Isaiah 53

As you may remember, the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8 was traveling from Jerusalem after having worshipped in the Temple during the holidays. He was traveling back to Ethiopia by carriage on the road to Gaza, from where he would probably have taken a boat and gone up the Nile to Ethiopia. This Ethiopian eunuch had apparently purchased a brand-new copy of the scroll of Isaiah. So he was reading this scroll of Isaiah when God told Philip the evangelist to go and join himself to that chariot on the road to Gaza. Philip caught up with the chariot and found the Ethiopian reading in the prophet Isaiah, precisely at the passage we today call Isaiah 53. (I say "today," because at that time, of course, they didn't have chapters and verses; he just happened to be in that section.) And the question the Ethiopian eunuch asked was: of whom is the prophet speaking — himself, or somebody else?

And that has been the traditional position of the Jewish world for the last thousand years: they do not want to admit that Isaiah 53 is talking about the Messiah. Yet nobody else in human history has fulfilled that prediction the way it has been fulfilled in Yeshua.

But it is very important, in my opinion, to discern the significance of this prediction of R. Nehemiah. First is the fact that, historically, it did happen — 163 years after R. Nehemiah predicted the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Second, Raba's statement to justify that prediction of R. Nehemiah is taken from the section about leprosy in the book of Leviticus. This is very important. And now I will continue to the next reading, which is an official rabbinical position, not an individual one, taken from this verse in Deuteronomy 32:36.

The Song of Moses as a Courtroom

Now, before I get into this verse a little more deeply, I would like to say something about Deuteronomy chapter 32. It is also called the Song of Moses — not only Exodus chapter 15, which is the song of Moses, that he and the children of Israel sang after they crossed the sea. In this case it is the Song of Moses that Moses recites to the people of Israel before he goes up the mountain to die there. It is the last song of Moses — his swan song, so to speak — and it is built on a riv pattern [riv in Hebrew means judgment, or court, or court case]. Moses is adjuring the people of Israel and inviting them to go to court with him; he calls the heavens and the earth to be judges between Israel and God, and Moses is the chief witness for the prosecution.

God is brought to trial; he is the complainant, and Israel is being prosecuted. Moses is the witness on the side of God, and the heavens and the earth are the judges. That is how the whole song is enacted — as a court case. So when you come to the verse we are talking about, verse 36 of Deuteronomy chapter 32, the context is this: after Israel has made God angry by worshipping other gods — new gods they had not known, gods that were really demons behind them, as verses 17 and 18 proclaim — God says in verse 20 that he will hide his face from them, and in verse 36 God begins to declare the sentence. He shows both mercy toward them and a verdict of their guilt. And so I am going to start reading from verse 34, to take in the context of what the rabbis are analyzing as the time of the coming of the Messiah.

The context, of course, is verse 36: "The Lord will vindicate his people." The Jewish translation, following the Talmudic reading of the same passage, says: "For the Lord shall judge his people and repent himself of his servants." In the RSV English translation it reads, "The Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants"; the original Hebrew is harsher than the English of the RSV, but it doesn't make a difference for our understanding here. In both cases the people's sin has reached a certain crescendo, a certain high level, and God has two emotions that he has to cope with. One is his justice, his vengeance, his recompense; the other is his mercy. And both of these emotions play out in the Song of Moses, and of course in all the prophets. So the rabbis read this passage in verse 36: "The Lord shall judge his people [or vindicate his people] and have compassion [or, in Hebrew, will repent himself of his servants]." Two very different translations — but either way, God at some point says to the people: all right, you have chosen to worship other gods, you have fallen into calamity, into suffering; now I am going to have compassion on you. And that compassion will come in some stages.

The first stage is that you will be able to see that your power is gone. There will be none remaining who is powerful; you will have no one to lean upon; and at that time I will say to you: All right, call upon your gods, the ones you have been worshipping — let's see who really ate the fat of your sacrifices. The gods you have been offering sacrifices to, and giving your devotion to — let's see if they will come and help you. And of course the indication is that when this happens, when all the ropes and all the outlets are gone for Israel, that is the hour when God is going to intervene and have compassion upon his children. Just like that.

"Three Come Unawares"

In the context of the rabbis' discussion, R. Zera's statement is brought in to close the matter. R. Zera says: When you scholars and rabbis are engaged in calculating the end times — discussing when the Messiah will come, and how he will come, and what will happen in that generation — remember that there are three things that come unawares, that come by surprise: the Messiah is one of them; a found article — you are walking down the street, you don't expect to find anything, and suddenly you find something; and a scorpion, which comes like a thief, by surprise. So R. Zera's statement seals this discussion by saying: don't busy yourselves calculating when the Messiah is coming.

You have to be ready to receive the surprise whenever he comes, and not engage in speculative discussions about the specifics of the age and the generation in which the Messiah will come — because he will come by surprise. This is the same thing that Matthew 24 and many other passages of the New Testament teach. He will come like a thief in the night; he will come when people are least expecting him; he will come when people are saying "peace, peace"; he will come when people are plowing in the field. They will not be ready for the end of the world as we know it; they will be preparing for tomorrow. That is why a person goes out into a field and plows: he hopes that eventually the rain will come, and the seed he sows will spread, and he will be able to harvest. If he knew it was going to be the end, he wouldn't be plowing; he is plowing because he expects the world to continue as it is. And therefore, when people are least expecting him, the Messiah will come — like a scorpion, like an article found in the street, like lightning in the sky.

And this seals this portion of the Talmud. The next section is a fascinating one: the Jewish calendar has a concept of the millennium, and it actually explains that concept in terms of biblical interpretation and its Jewish background in the Talmudic era. That is where our study will turn next.