When the World Around You Crumbles: A Hanukkah “Haggadah”
We are accustomed to a Haggadah for Pesach. No Haggadah exists for Hanukkah – but the Feast of Dedication is a tale worth retelling in our tumultuous world today!
Just imagine: it is the 2nd century BCE. You are living in Jerusalem, the city David captured and made Israel’s capital.
You are in the line of Levitical priests, descended from Aaron (Exodus 40:12-15). You are entrusted with special duties as you serve in the Temple, the place where G-d set His name, and the only place where He commanded sacrifices may be made to Him.
Can life get any better than this for someone fully committed to serving the G-d of Israel?
You are aware of political upheaval in the world. Positioned on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel for generations has seen waves of invading armies: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Greek. [1]
You don’t care so much about geopolitics, but when Syrian General Antiochus XI Epiphanes comes to Jerusalem in 167 BCE, your life is upended. A pagan ruler with no regard for the G-d of Heaven, Antiochus enters the sanctuary, plundering the Temple’s treasures and the precious vessels devoted to serving the L-RD. He massacres many of your countrymen before returning to Antioch. [2]
Two years later Antiochus sends his chief revenue collector to the Holy Land, accompanied by an army. Speaking words of peace, with evil intent he turns on the inhabitants, destroying Jerusalem’s walls, defiling the Temple. Your countrymen have been slaughtered; women, children, and cattle are taken as booty.
The surviving Jewish people, yourself included, scatter to the winds. In deep mourning at the unimaginable loss, you and your family head west to the town of Modi’in, seeking refuge. Your city, and G-d’s sanctuary, are in the hands of wicked men. As a priest you have lost the only place in which you can serve in the vocation to which you were born.
How could this happen? G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, where are You?
Not content to subdue militarily, Antiochus issues a series of edicts throughout his empire. Local laws are replaced by Syrian law. Native religions are supplanted by Syrian rituals, under penalty of death.
For the Jewish people this means no more Sabbath observance. Circumcisions must cease. Sacrifices must be offered to pagan idols. Sacred texts are ripped asunder and burned.
Surely G-d’s people will not abide these foreign ideas. Who would act contrary to the values and commands of the Almighty?, you wonder.
To your shock, even some of your fellow Jews are swept up in this cultural tidal wave sweeping the empire. They delight to participate in the pagan rituals and revelry, eating unclean foods sacrificed to idols.
When you hear that abominable sacrifices have been made even in the holy Temple in Jerusalem, your heart is broken. You call your five sons together to lament:
”Alas! Why was I born to see this,
the ruin of my people, the ruin of the holy city,
and to live there when it was given over to the enemy, the sanctuary given over to aliens?
Her temple has become like a person without honor;
her glorious vessels have been carried into exile.
Her infants have been killed in her streets, her youths by the sword of the foe….
And see, our holy place, our beauty,
and our glory have been laid waste; the Gentiles have profaned them.
Why should we live any longer?” [3]
Though you have fled Jerusalem, you have not escaped the nightmare. The Syrian officials exert their power throughout the land. They show up in Modi’in, seeking you out. With flattering words they invite you to set an example by making a sacrifice on the pagan altar:
…“You are a leader, honored and great in this town, and supported by sons and brothers. Now be the first to come and do what the king commands, as all the Gentiles and the people of Judah and those that are left in Jerusalem have done. Then you and your sons will be numbered among the Friends of the king, and you and your sons will be honored with silver and gold and many gifts.” [4]
You have a choice to make. Will you surrender to the inevitable and receive the benefits of collaboration, like so many others are doing?
You do not hesitate. With full voice you declare:
”Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to obey his commandments, every one of them abandoning the religion of their ancestors, I and my sons and my brothers will continue to live by the covenant of our ancestors. Far be it from us to desert the law and the ordinances. We will not obey the king’s words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left.” [5]
A fellow countryman, seizing the opportunity for advancement which you are forfeiting, steps forward to slay the sacrificial animal.
Your name is Mattathias. As a priest of the Holy One of Israel, what will you do?
For Mattathias, this sacrilege impels him to action. The offender is dispatched on the very altar of offense.
The Syrian official compelling this travesty next falls by Mattathias’ hand. The altar itself is torn down.
The die has been cast; the revolt has begun. Matthias and his sons flee to the mountains for safety and to organize the rebellion.
Others who seek after justice and are zealous for G-d’s name join the revolution. His third son, Judah “the hammer,” [6] becomes the leader of the Maccabean revolt.
The L-RD grants success in overcoming the Syrian invaders. The Temple is cleansed and rededicated [7] to the sacrificial system ordained by G-d.
What lessons endure?
Mattathias remains an example for all who refuse to conform to a culture decaying with sin. His values were rooted in G-d’s eternal Word. Faith informed his actions as he took a stand for righteousness as did those biblical characters whose examples he followed.
What does not endure? Independent Jewish rule of Judea.
The political government established by Mattathias’ sons (first Jonathan, then Simon) was known as the Hasmonean Dynasty. The dynastic succession lasted only five generations before complete Roman dominion. [8] And already by the third generation the Pharisees led the Jewish population in open revolt against Mattathias’ grandson, Alexander Janneus.[9]
So what may we learn from this?
If we return to what G-d revealed to the prophet Daniel, [10] we see even the greatest empires mankind devises are destined to fall. In our own day, the nations with the greatest wealth and military strength are diseased with the same moral failures and spiritual decay that marked the ancient kingdoms.
The old indictments remain true:
“There is no fear of G-d before his eyes.” [11]
“Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” [12]
Where is the kingdom of righteousness and peace for which our hearts long? What hope do we have when the world crumbles around us?
In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the statue represented successive empires (from Babylon until the remnants of Roman rule) is toppled. “A stone cut out without hands” [13] strikes down earth’s kingdoms, leaving no trace of their existence. The stone then becomes a huge mountain that fills the entire earth. [14]
G-d gives Daniel the interpretation of the vision:
In the days of those kings the G-d of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great G-d has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy. [15]
That day is coming – perhaps sooner than we think! We take great comfort that Messiah promised to usher in a global kingdom of righteousness and peace.
Mattathias and the Maccabees, at the risk of their lives, slew their enemies. In contrast, the Messiah gave His life to redeem even His enemies, bringing many to true worship of the G-d of Israel. We are called to join His non-violent revolution.
Messiah’s kingdom will come in fulness. But don’t wait for that day to experience Messiah’s peace. Messiah Yeshua (Jesus of Nazareth) promised, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” [16]
To learn more of how to have peace with G-d through trusting in Messiah Jesus, click through SHALOM LOST AND REGAINED.
Scroll down for footnotes.
[1] As depicted in Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 2 and 7), four kingdoms would rule the Middle East: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. In the fourth century BCE, the powerful Greek general Philip of Macedon defeated Persia. His son, Alexander (who called himself “The Great”), expanded the empire from Macedonia to India and extended his rule down to Egypt. In 329 BCE he added Israel to his territory before dying in Babylon in 323 at age 32. The Kingdom of Greece then divided into four territories, each ruled by one of Alexander’s top generals. That is the historical setting for our story.
[2] Antioch on the Orontes is in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey).
[3] 1 Maccabees 2:6-12.
[4] 1 Maccabees 2:17-18.
[5] 1 Maccabees 2:20-23.
[6] Judas Maccabeus; “maccabee” means hammer in Aramaic.
[7] “Hanukkah” is Hebrew for “dedication.” The Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah or Chanukah) is also popularly known as the Festival of Lights due to the traditional story that a cruse of olive oil sufficient for one day of lighting the Temple’s menorah lasted eight days while a fresh supply could be properly prepared. (See Leviticus 24:1-4.)
[8] Marc Antony beheaded Antigonus, the last Hasmonean ruler, in 37 BC – apparently the first recorded instance of Rome executing a king. The Idumean Herod (the Great) was installed as Rome’s puppet. See F.F. Bruce, Israel and the Nations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963), pp. 189-190.
[9] Bruce, pp. 173-177.
[10] See Footnote 1.
[11] Psalm 36:1.
[12] Judges 21:25.
[13] Daniel 2:34.
[14] Daniel 2:35.
[15] Daniel 2:44-45.
[16] John 14:27.
