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Two Israels – Two Threads of Prophecy

March 3, 2014
Copyright © 2001 Ronald W. Leigh
Scripture quotations are from the New International Version

A.  The Two Israels

In the Bible there are two groups of people who are called "Israel."  Paul refers to both groups when he says that

not all who are descended from Israel are Israel (Romans 9:6)

In this passage, "descended from Israel" refers to national Israel, while "Israel" refers to true Israel.  Various terms can be used to differentiate these two Israels:

When God called Abraham (originally named Abram) out of Haran, as recorded in Genesis 12, God made a covenant with him which consisted of three different aspects, of which two were physical and one was spiritual.  The spiritual aspect of the covenant had to do with the people of all nations as individuals, not just a particular nation and its land.  God told Abraham that

all peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Genesis 12:3)

This blessing is personal salvation and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, as explained by Paul.

The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."  (Galatians 3:8)

Those individuals who are saved ("justified") make up spiritual Israel, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.  This is "the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16) or, as translated by Charles Williams, "the true Israel of God."

This spiritual aspect of the covenant, providing a savior, was planned by God from before creation.  It was something God was going to do for all mankind no matter what.  In fact, as we will see when we discuss the other aspects of the Abrahamic covenant, national Israel did in fact fail and was destroyed by God.  But God still used the nation of Israel to provide us with the savior, for "from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ" (Romans 9:5) "who as to his human nature was a descendant of David" (Romans 1:3).

The physical aspects of the Abrahamic covenant had to do with the nationhood of Israel and the land she was intended to occupy.  As far as the land is concerned, there were obligations on both God's side and Israel's side.  In other words, it was conditional – a fact which we will verify below in the section entitled "National Israel – The First Thread of Prophecy."  Notice that the Abrahamic covenant explicitly mentions the land, the many descendants, and God's protection.

. . . go to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse ... (Genesis 12:1-3)

And when Abraham arrived in Canaan, God told him

to your offspring I will give this land (Genesis 12:7)

This part of the covenant pertains to national Israel, as distinguished from spiritual Israel.

In the interpretation of Biblical prophecy, and specifically in dealing with the important question of the future of Israel as a nation, there is no more important distinction that can be made.  Paul explicitly asks the question, "Did God reject his people?" and his answer is "By no means!" (Romans 11:1)  However, Paul's negative answer has a different reason than you might expect.  Paul had already raised the same issue earlier (Romans 9:6) when he stated "It is not as though God's word [the promises to Israel] had failed."  And in the next breath he gives the reason, and in doing so he makes this important distinction between national Israel and true Israel.

It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel  (Romans 9:6)

In other words, not everyone who is part of national Israel is included in true Israel, as pictured in the following diagram.

The diagram attempts to picture two important facts.  First, only part of national Israel is included in true Israel.  Second, true Israel includes Gentiles as well as Jews.  These two facts are clearly taught in the following passages:

A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God.  (Romans 2:28-29)

He [Abraham] is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.  (Romans 4:11b-12)

From Genesis 12 on, we can trace two threads of prophecy – one pertaining to national Israel, the other pertaining to spiritual Israel.  These threads are often intertwined, for the messiah and savior for all came through the nation Israel.  Nevertheless, just as Paul made this distinction between two Israels, it is crucial for us to make the same distinction as we analyze the various prophecies of the Old and New Testaments.  Keep in mind that, at this point, we are identifying national Israel as ancient Israel.  The issue of modern Israel will be considered at the end of the next section.

But before we consider national Israel, we need to clarify one matter which is sometimes misunderstood.  Let there be no mistake.  God loves all nations, and is patient with all nations.  This is seen most dramatically when God told Abraham that he would delay the Jewish occupation of Canaan for generations because of his patience with the Amorites.

Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.  (Genesis 15:13-16)

We see the same patience and love many times throughout the Old Testament.  To cite one more example, consider the prophet Jonah who reluctantly went to Nineveh, the "great city" of Assyria, Israel's enemy.  His mission was to warn them of God's judgment.  But the people of Nineveh repented and God had compassion on them, to the disappointment of the all-too-human Jonah.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.  He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.  (Jonah 3:10 - 4:2)

B.  National Israel – The First Thread of Prophecy

The Abrahamic covenant, as it pertains to the land, is repeated and expanded many times.  It takes on its most detailed form when God gave Israel the law through Moses on Mount Sinai.  But it is apparent from the very beginning that it was a conditional covenant involving both blessings and curses – blessings if the Israelites trust God and obey him, and curses if they turn away from God and disobey him.

1.  The conditional covenant, according to the Old Testament

When God gave Abraham instructions regarding circumcision as a sign of the covenant, he made it clear that he and his descendants had something they must do.  If the covenant were an unconditional promise, as some maintain, such human obligations would be entirely meaningless.  But as it stands, the Abrahamic covenant is conditional, and two sided.  God has his obligations, which he lays upon himself, and which are conditioned upon man's faith and obedience to God.  Similarly, Abraham and his descendants have their obligations.  Of course, God will always keep his obligations – that is his nature.  But man will often fail to keep his obligations and thus break the covenant.  Again, if the covenant were an unconditional promise, as some maintain, there is no way a man could break God's promise.  But the covenant is conditional, and man's ability to break it is mentioned at the end of the following passage.

7 "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God." 9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised ....  14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."  (Genesis 17:7-14)

Verse 7 describes the covenant as an "everlasting" covenant, and verse 8 refers to an "everlasting possession."  Other covenants applied only to the parties making the agreement and did not automatically apply to the descendants of those parties, as illustrated by the marriage agreement (Romans 7:1-3;  1 Corinthians 7:39).  However, God's covenant with Abraham would be offered to Isaac and then Jacob and all their descendants, and would in turn be conditioned on the obedience of each succeeding generation.  This is the sense in which it was "everlasting" and is clearly indicated by the phrase "and your descendants after you for the generations to come" in verse 7.  Those who understand the physical aspects of the covenant to be an unconditional promise must deal with the fact that the Israelite's possession of Canaan/Palestine was far from an "everlasting possession."  Their possession of the land was frequently interrupted – the sojourn in Egypt, subjection to surrounding nations during the time of the judges, the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities,  the domination of the Seleucids of Syria, the Roman occupation, and the banishment from Palestine after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.  The history of Israel demonstrates conclusively that the physical aspects of the covenant were conditional.

After Abraham passed God's test, proving his willingness to trust God and sacrifice his son Isaac, God restated his covenant and the conditional nature of the covenant is again clearly seen by the use of the word "because."

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."  (Genesis 22:15-18)

The conditional nature of the covenant is seen clearly in the consequences of disobedience.

But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.  If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.  (Deuteronomy 8:18-20)

The covenant contained both blessings and curses, which Moses clearly spelled out for the Israelites as recorded in Deuteronomy 28.  Moses begins with "If you fully obey the Lord your God ..." (verse 1) and then immediately lists the blessings in various categories (children, crops, cattle, victory in battle, etc.) that the people will enjoy in their promised land.  Then he flips the coin and shows the other side: "However, if you do not obey the Lord your God ..." (verse 15) and then immediately lists the curses in the same categories.  It is as though Moses had drawn a big chart with a left-hand column full of blessings and a right-hand column full of curses, then said to the people, "It all depends on what you do, you can have either the left side or the right side."

Israel disobeyed many times.  After one of those times, God said

Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you.  I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever.  (Jeremiah 17:4)

Israel's Levites, after reflecting on their history up to the Babylonian exile, confessed that God had acted faithfully and the people had no one but themselves to blame.

But as soon as they were at rest, they again did what was evil in your sight. Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they ruled over them. And when they cried out to you again, you heard from heaven, and in your compassion you delivered them time after time. ... In all that has happened to us, you have been just; you have acted faithfully, while we did wrong.  (Nehemiah 9:28, 33)

2.  The conditional covenant, according to the New Testament

The author of Hebrews speaks of the failure of the covenant, that is, the failure of the people.  As a result, God turns away from Israel, establishes a new covenant, and discontinues the old covenant.

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:  "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. ... By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.  (Hebrews 8:7-9, 13; compare Jeremiah 31:31-34)

The new covenant was established by Jesus through his death on the cross for our sins.

After the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.  (Luke 22:20)

Jesus warned Israel's leaders that within their lifetimes their "house" would become desolate (verses 36-38 below).  And, indeed, Jerusalem was destroyed four decades after the death of Christ.  Israel was in the process of filling up the measure of its sins (verse 32) just as the Amorites had done more than a millennium earlier.  But even after strong condemnation (verse 33), Jesus says that prophets and teachers will be sent to Israel in a last plea for repentance (verse 34, compare Acts 14:19; 17:5, 13 where Paul is beaten, left for dead, and pursued from town to town).  But this time, unlike the Ninevites, Israel does not repent.

29 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30 And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!  33 You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.  37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' "  (Matthew 23:29-39)

After living through some of the persecution that Jesus had predicted, Paul also speaks of the Jews sinning "to the limit" and of God bringing a final judgment upon them.

... who [the Jews] killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.  (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16)

Jesus also used a parable to make the same point, and the leaders of Israel got the point (verse 45).  Here Jesus reveals, not only that Israel is coming to an end, but that the kingdom will be given to a different group of people (verse 43).

33 "Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.  35 "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said.  38 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.  40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"  "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."  42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:  " 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes' ?  43 "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."  45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.  (Matthew 21:33-45)

Jesus told his followers that the kingdom which was removed from Israel was given to them.

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  (Luke 12:32, compare Luke 22:29)

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  (Matthew 16:19)

Thus the church of Jesus Christ is the current location of God's kingdom.  Daniel stated quite emphatically that this kingdom would last forever and would never be given to another people.

In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. (Daniel 2:44)

While many speak of the birth of the church on the day of Pentecost (and there is a sense in which that is true), and Jesus did say "I will build my church" (future tense, Matthew 16:18), there is another sense in which the church is not new at all – it is the continuation of spiritual Israel.  This is transfer more than the creation of something new.  Paul makes this continuity very clear when he describes the olive tree, whose roots (believing Israelites) support the branches (believing Gentiles) that have been grafted in, and when he points out the similarity of the ancient remnant and the current remnant (Romans 11:2-6, 17-21).

Because of this transfer, Paul and Peter can speak of believers (the church) in terms that once were more appropriate for national Israel.

... those who believe are children of Abraham ....  There is neither Jew nor Greek ... for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.  (Galatians 3:7, 28-29)

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy  (1 Peter 2:9-10, compare Romans 9:25-26)

In Romans 11:1, Paul explicitly asks if God has rejected Israel.  The answer is a definite No.  But not because God plans to re-gather or re-form the nation.  If that were God's plan, this would be the perfect place for Paul to say so.  But instead, Paul immediately states that he is a Jew.  As he explains throughout the earlier chapters of Romans, he has been accepted by God because of his faith in Jesus Christ as the messiah and savior.

I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people ...  (Romans 11:1-2)

In other words, God has never rejected his true people.  God has always provided eternal salvation for any individual who repents and trusts in him.  This salvation is open to Jew and Gentile alike.  On the other hand, God did reject the Jews as a nation – that was the essence of the old covenant, the right-hand column.  Although individual Jews survive, Israel as God's nation has not survived.  But even so, it was not God who initiated that rejection, it was God responding, as he had promised, to Israel's rejection of him.  Their rejection of God culminates in their rejection of Christ – "his own did not receive him" (John 1:11).

Those who hold that God has revived the nation Israel in its promised land believe that God made unconditional promises to national Israel which must still come true.  However, the old covenant was conditional.  There never were any unconditional promises regarding the land, only blessings if Israel obeyed, and curses if Israel disobeyed.  Israel disobeyed, so the curses were applied, and Israel ceased to exist as God's nation.  The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 signaled the end of national Israel.

3.  Some claim Ezekiel said ...

Some claim that God's plan was to reestablish Israel as a nation at some time after A.D. 70 (which, according to some, turned out to be 1948).  They appeal to such passages as the prophecy about the repopulation of the "mountains of Israel" (Ezekiel 36:1, 8-12, 24-38) and the revival of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37).  In particular, Ezekiel 37:12 says "I will bring you back to the land of Israel."  However, context is crucial.  Ezekiel prophesied around the beginning of Judah's Babylonian exile, which started in 586 B.C.  His message was in accord with Jeremiah's, who prophesied that Israel would return from Babylon after 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10), and with Isaiah's, who predicted that Cyrus would restore Jerusalem and Judah (Isaiah 44:24 - 45:7, 45:13).  This took place as predicted when Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah led groups of Jews back to Israel to rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8-13).

In fact, it is recorded that, as predicted, the people occupied the same mountains from Beersheba in the south up to Jerusalem, that is, up to the Valley of Hinnom which runs along the southern border of Jerusalem

So they were living all the way from Beersheba to the Valley of Hinnom.  (Nehemiah 11:30b)

The phrase "all the way" is quite significant.  The Valley of Hinnom is immediately south of Jerusalem.  However, Beersheba is much farther south (a three day journey) in what was defined at that time as the Persian province of Idumea, well below the reduced Persian province of Judea.  But, of course, Beersheba is within the boundaries of Judea as it existed in the time of David and Solomon.  So the people returned to their ancient homeland, not just to the province of Judea as it was currently defined by the Persians.

In addition, this large mountainous area was productive (Nehemiah 12:44-47; 13:12).  So this prophecy has already had its fulfillment centuries before Christ when the Jews returned from Babylon to "historic" Judah.

The prophecy is not a prediction of some event in our modern times.  And this is the case with many of the isolated prophecies cited by those who claim that God has reestablished Israel in the land in modern times.  This prophecy and similar ones were fulfilled long ago and lend no basis for any modern restoration of Israel as a nation.  (On the subject of double fulfillment, see the paper "'Fulfill,' Matthew 1:22, and Isaiah 7:14", especially the section entitled The Difference between Double Fulfillment and Double Meaning.)

4.  Specific future time periods?

Consider the phrase "time, times, and half a time," or 3½ years (Daniel 12:7;  Revelation 12:14 ).  This phrase is often understood to be a prediction of a specific time period still future to us.  However, as Metzger points out,

This period (three and a half years) is the traditional apocalyptic term of Gentile domination, derived from Daniel 9:27 and 12:7, where its primary reference is to the time of defilement of the temple by the "abomination that desolates" set up by Antiochus IV from 167 to 164 B.C.  (Bruce Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation, Abingdon, 1993, p. 69)

Metzger's point about Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) and the dates of his sacrilege is easily verified (see the Appendix which contains an excerpt from an Encyclopaedia Britannica article about the dates and nature of Antiochus' desecration of the temple).

This is an example of the literary technique of predicting something about the quality of a particular time or event by referring to a well known past period.  It is not necessarily a prediction that the future event will extend for the same length of time.  Here are Gardiner's comments on this technique as it pertains to the mention of 40 years and 430 years in Ezekiel 4:5-6.

… if this be once recognized as the basis of Ezekiel's language – the representation of the future in terms of the historic past, which is so common in all prophecy – there need be no difficulty in the mention of the precise numbers. They become mere catch-words to carry the mind to the period he would indicate. The wanderings in the wilderness were always reckoned at 40 years, and the sojourn in Egypt (see Exod. xii 40) at 430 years. … No precise period whatever is intended by the mention of these numbers, but only a vivid comparison of the future woes to the past.  (F. Gardiner, Excursus B, after his commentary on Ezekiel in Ellicott's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Zondervan, printed 1959, p. 349)

See the papers Daniel 9 and "Fulfill," Matthew 1:22, and Isaiah 7:14.

5.  Did God reestablish Israel in 1948?

No.  Modern Israel should never be equated with ancient Israel.  God's judgment on national Israel was final.  "The wrath of God has come upon them at last" (1 Thessalonians 2:16) and their house has been left "desolate" (Matthew 23:38).  Modern Israel is no different than any other nation that has been created by men in recent history.  How could a nation so thoroughly identified with Judaism, which rejects Jesus the Son of God, be called God's nation?  This issue of the acceptance or rejection of Christ was the ultimate issue which caused God's rejection of Israel (Matthew 21:28-45, quoted earlier) and which was the basis for God's acceptance of Paul or anyone else who believes in Christ.  It can be no different today.

There are some who look for the conversion of modern Jews en masse, after "the full number of the Gentiles has come in."   This mistaken notion is based on a faulty interpretation of the following passage.

Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved ....  (Romans 11:25-26)

But this passage does not say "then all Israel will be saved."  Rather, it says "so all Israel will be saved."  Again, context is crucial.  This passage is in the section (Romans 9 - 11) in which Paul is discussing the two Israels, and his reference here is to true Israel, not national Israel.  In fact, it is the very inclusion of believing Gentiles which completes Israel (true Israel), and "so all Israel will be saved."

See the paper, Ancient Israel and the Abrahamic Covenant.

C.  Spiritual Israel – The Second Thread of Prophecy

God loves "the world," the people of all nations, not just the people of Israel.  So he provided salvation for all mankind.

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

He [Jesus] came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. (John 1:11-13)

Those who believe are part of true Israel, the church.  Here are a few of the prophecies which pertain to this salvation.  First, consider a prophecy of the Christ child being born and ministering in Galilee.

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan – The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. ... For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.  The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.  (Isaiah 9:1-2,6-7)

Isaiah is even more specific when he speaks of Christ's substitutionary death for sinners.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53:5-6)

Then there is this remarkable timed prophecy which explicitly predicts the specific time when the promised Savior would appear.

24 Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.  25 Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. 27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And one who causes desolation will place abominations on a wing of the temple until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.  (Daniel 9:24-27)

The decree to rebuild Jerusalem, mentioned in verse 25, was given by Artaxerxes in his 7th year (Ezra 7:11-26), which was in 458 B.C.  The 483 year prediction (69 'sevens') comes to A.D. 26, the year of Christ's baptism and the beginning of his three and one-half year ministry, which places his death in the middle of the last 'seven', as predicted in verse 27.  The fulfillment of this prophecy accounts for Luke's overly careful dating of the beginning of the ministries of John the Baptist and of Jesus in Luke 3:1-2.  It also explains why Jesus began his ministry by saying "the time has come" (Mark 1:15).  In verse 26, the anointed one who is "cut of" is Christ, who is the same one in verse 27 who confirms a covenant with many and in the middle of the last 'seven' puts an end to sacrifice.  The covenant was the new covenant (Luke 22:20).  The end to sacrifice was indicated by the tearing of the curtain in the temple (Matthew 27:51).  The end of verse 26 and the end of verse 27 refer to the Romans who destroy Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70 – the same desolation of which Jesus spoke (Matthew 23:38).  See the paper, Daniel 9.

As Daniel 9:26 says, Christ was "cut off" from the Father.

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" – which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  (Matthew 27:46)

The Son was separated from the Father, because of our sins.  This is the basis of our salvation.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.  (1 John 2:2)

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Appendix

An excerpt from the Encyclopaedia Britannica article "Maccabees,"
written by the Scottish theologian George Angus Fulton Knight
(available at britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/353829/Maccabees).

Historical context of the Maccabees

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Throughout the 2nd century BCE, the city-state of Jerusalem-Judah lay between the two great powers of Egypt and Syria. The Ptolemies ruled in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. These were residual states that had been left when Alexander the Great's empire had broken up about 20 years after his death. Antiochus IV ruled Syria from 175 to 164/163 BCE. He carried the substitute name of Epiphanes, a Greek word meaning "god manifest." A conqueror of overweening pride, as he is described in the Book of Daniel in the Bible, he set out to seize Judaea (or Judah), which until then had been a province of Egypt. He aimed incidentally to rid the world of the annoying (and, to him, peculiar), exclusive, "nonconformist" religion of the Jewish people. In order to unify his vast and racially heterogeneous empire, which stretched as far as the Caspian Sea, he planned to create one religion for all.

In Antiochus' day the Syrians were devotees of the culture of Greece. Antiochus sought to continue what he regarded as the "civilizing" colonization process of Alexander. For him culture meant the pursuit of the "good." The restless, inquiring, creative spirit of Greece—what might today be called the scientific spirit—was based on the assumption that "man is the measure of all things." The Jewish view of life, on the other hand, was totally in opposition to that of the Hellenism that had spread throughout the Middle East. It, too, was a total way of life, one lived in accordance with what the Jewish people believed was revelation. They regarded Hellenism as a form of nature worship. They saw it as the spiritual continuation of the religion of the Canaanites, who had presented their views against Israel's for all the centuries since the days of Joshua. They were aghast that Antiochus encouraged the Semitic peoples of the Mediterranean coast to regard him as the ancient god Baal of the Canaanites. The Canaanite gods, they asserted, were merely the mythologizing of the anger, hate, lust, envy, and greed of unregulated human hearts.

Israel, its prophets proclaimed, was the chosen instrument of the transcendent God, whose name was Yahweh. Yahweh was utterly "other" than man, that is to say, he was "holy." It was God who had created man, not man the gods, and Israel was God's chosen instrument to be "a light to lighten the nations" (Isaiah). To make the meaning of its special relationship to Yahweh evident to the world was therefore Israel's reason for being. Its task was to put the revelation of God into purposeful use by producing an ordered human society that was ruled by God's justice and love and not by man's force and greed.

Prohibition of Jewish religious practices.

This conception of revealed religion and of loyalty to the Word of God, rather than to a human king, Antiochus could not appreciate, particularly since he himself delighted in the name God Manifest. In order to extirpate the faith of Israel, therefore, he attacked Israel's religious practices. He thus forbade the observance of the Sabbath and of the traditional feasts, for these had been ordained by a "jealous," or intolerant, God. All sacrifices were to come to an end. He forbade the reading of the Law of Moses and gave orders to search out and burn any copies that could be found. He forbade the practice of circumcision, for it was this that set the Jews off from other peoples as the one "people of God." In place of these practices Antiochus encouraged the development of cultural clubs called gymnasia, in which people gathered to study, to learn, and to enjoy each other's company. After competing in various forms of athletics, men and women used to soak themselves in hot baths. But because the pursuit of the "good" included a delight in the body beautiful, such activities were performed naked. A circumcised Jew taking part in the games in a gymnasium could not therefore hide where his loyalty lay. Finally, in 168 BCE, Antiochus invaded Jerusalem and desacralized the Holy of Holies in the Temple. This was the one place on earth about which Yahweh said "My name" (the expression of his Person) "shall be there" (I Kings).

A number of Jews, under their leader Jason, the high priest, took the easy way of conformity with the new universal trends. But with Antiochus' impious act, a strong general reaction set in. Thus, when, later in the same year, Antiochus again entered Jerusalem, this time plundering and burning and setting up his citadel, the Acra, on the hill overlooking the Temple courts, he went too far, for his final act of spite, on Dec. 25, 167 BCE, was to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem to the Olympian god Zeus.

Jewish resistance.

The home of Mattathias, a priest in the village of Modi'im (now an important archaeological site), 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Jerusalem, quickly became the centre of resistance. With him were his five sons, John Gaddi, Simon Thassi, Judas Maccabeus, Eleazar Avaran, and Jonathan Apphus. Josephus, the Jewish historian, gives Mattathias' great-grandfather the surname Asamonaios. From this title comes the name Hasmonean that was applied to the dynasty that descended from the Maccabees in the following century. Mattathias sparked the resistance movement by striking a Jew who was preparing to offer sacrifice to the new gods and by killing the king's officer who was standing by. Then he and his family took to the hills. Many joined them there, especially the Hasideans, a pious and strict group deeply concerned for the Law of Moses. These at first refused to fight on the Sabbath and at once lost a thousand lives. Mattathias then insisted that all groups of resisters should fight if required on the holy sabbath. The guerrilla war that followed was as much a civil war as a war of national resistance. Mattathias treated all degrees of collaborators with the same bitterness as he did the Syrian enemy.

After the death of Mattathias (c. 166 BCE), Judas Maccabeus, the third son, became the leader of the resistance movement. In his first battle he seized the sword of Apollonius, governor of Samaria, the general leading the opposing army. But he was also a man of faith in the God of his fathers. He saw himself as a charismatic, divinely appointed leader, like Gideon of old. He would pause in his guerrilla tactics to assemble his men to "watch and pray" and to read the Torah (the divinely revealed Law of Moses) together. Judas saw his task as that of the successor of Moses and Joshua. "Remember how our fathers were saved at the Red Sea," he told his men, "when Pharaoh with his forces pursued them" (I Maccabees 4:9). Then they would blow their trumpets, as in the days of Joshua, and engage the enemy with renewed vigour.

Moreover, Judas could be as cruel as Joshua was. After the manner of his time and also of his enemies, he was ready to exterminate all the males of a conquered city. Some of his activities are in accord with what today would be called the "rules for holy war" as found scattered in sections of Deuteronomy and as developed in great detail in one of the scrolls from the Dead Sea, written within the century following Judas, and now entitled The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness.

Hanukka: reconsecration of the sanctuary.

In December 164 BCE, three years after Antiochus had defiled it, Judas recaptured Jerusalem, all except the Acra. Judas then had "blameless priests" cleanse the Holy Place and erect a new altar of unhewn stones. They then reconsecrated the sanctuary. The Hebrew word for this act, Hanukka ("Dedication"), is the name still used for the Jewish eight-day Festival of Lights that commemorates the event. Beginning on Kislev 25 in the Jewish religious year, it occurs near or at the same time as the Christian celebration of Christmas.

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