Intertestamental Period

Intertestamental Period

I. Definition

The intertestamental period denotes here the history of postexilic Judaism from the time of the completion of the book of Malachi to the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem (a.d. 70). The period is characterized by the struggle of the Jews in Palestine to attain political and religious autonomy from a series of dominant foreign powers, by the emergence of different movements within Judaism (see Dispersion; Essenes; Sadducees; Zealot), by the process of hellenization carried on by the Macedonians and Romans, and finally by the emergence of Christianity.

Intertestamental Judaism was characterized, not by a continuing stream of OT prophecy, but by the interpretation of prophecy and revelation already given — the correct exposition and application of the OT to all areas of life. The Jews were aware of the cessation of prophecy. Josephus postulated the reign of Artaxerxes I — the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther (465–424 b.c.) — as the time when prophecy ceased (CAp i.8 [41]). This date concurs with the Mishnah (Aboth i.1), which names the men of the Great Synagogue — the scribes of Ezra’s time — as the successors of the prophets (cf. 1 Macc. 4:46; 9:27; 14:41).

The OT canon probably closed before 400 b.c., though some scholars reject this position, postulating later dates for Joel, Jonah, and other OT books. In particular, Daniel is often considered a pseudepigraphon written after 167 b.c. But the appearance of fragments of the book of Daniel at Qumrân that are related paleographically to 1Qisaa argues for a date earlier than the Maccabean period (see Aramaic III; Canon of the OT; Daniel, Book of VI). By a.d. 70 the formation of the NT canon was well underway and Judaism and Christianity had parted company.

II. World History

Persia and Greece were the dominant powers at the beginning of this period. Cyrus had founded the Persian dynasty (559–530 b.c.) and was succeeded in turn by Cambyses (530–522), Darius I (522–486), Xerxes I (486–465), and Artaxerxes I (465–424). Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525, but later attempts to extend rule over the Greek world failed when the Persians were defeated at Marathon (490), Salamis (480), and Plataea. Artaxerxes I was assassinated in 424 and Darius II ascended the throne.

A situation developed in which Persia attempted to play off the Greek city-states, especially Athens and Sparta, against each other. Infighting and intrigue, however, were also characteristic of Persian politics. Darius II sent his son Cyrus II to Sardis with instructions to give increased help to Sparta. While on this mission, however, Cyrus began collecting Greek mercenaries to further his own plans. In 403 Artaxerxes II, brother of Cyrus, ascended the throne. Cyrus soon attacked his brother’s forces at Cunaxa and was defeated (401). The retreat of Cyrus’s Greek mercenaries is described in Xenophon’s Anabasis; most of them eventually joined the Spartans.

Egypt threw off Persian control and began its 30th Dynasty (380). The forces of Artaxerxes II, with the help of Greek mercenaries, attempted to reassert Persian rule in 373, but with mixed success. Artaxerxes III led a second attack in 343 that was victorious, terminating the rule of the pharaohs. The Persian Empire, however, was in a state of disintegration, with continual rebellions in the various satrapies. Artaxerxes III attempted to reorganize the Persian government when he came to the throne (358).

The rise of Macedonia was on the horizon. Philip II of Macedon (359–336), father of Alexander, first conquered the Greek cities of Pydna, Methone, and Amphipolis. He then incorporated into his alliance Thrace, Chalcidice, and Thessaly. The economy of this alliance, supplemented by mines at Pangaeum, enabled him to support a large standing army, which became the army of his son Alexander.

While attending the wedding feast of his daughter, Philip was murdered (336), and Alexander, age twenty, was elected as his father’s successor. He crushed a revolt by Thebes (335) and began his assault against the Persians, defeating them first at the battle of Granicus (334). He met Darius III in battle at the river Issus (333) and defeated him, capturing his family. Alexander then moved to the south, conquering Tyre after a long siege (333/2) and arriving in Egypt in 332. He began the process of hellenization in the Near East by founding Alexandria, his largest colony. After leaving Egypt, Alexander defeated a vast army led by Darius, and thus became master of the Persian Empire. He penetrated as far east as India and then returned to Babylon, where he developed a fever and died (323).

Alexander’s empire was divided among his generals, the Diadochoi (“successors”): Ptolemy (Egypt); Seleucus (Babylon and Syria); Antipater and his son Cassander (Macedonia and Greece); Antigonus (Phrygia and parts of Asia Minor), Lysimachus (Thrace and Pergamum); Eumanes (Pontus). A power struggle developed among them as they attempted to develop their own dynasties.

Palestine assumed the role of a buffer state between the domains of Ptolemy and Antigonus as it had centuries earlier between Egypt and Assyria. First Palestine was under Ptolemaic rule (320–198), but a Seleucid victory at Panion (200) began the period of Seleucid rule which lasted until the end of the Maccabean revolt when the Seleucid king Demetrius II granted Jewish independence and freedom from tribute (142). Antiochus IV tried unsuccessfully to reimpose tribute but his death in 128 brought a final end to the Seleucid dynasty.

The Jews enjoyed relative independence until 64, when Pompey annexed Syria as a province of Rome. Pompey proceeded to Jerusalem in 63 and the Jews came under Roman rule, losing their political independence until modern times. Pompey was killed in a civil clash with Julius Caesar (48), and shortly thereafter Caesar was assassinated (44). Octavian succeeded Caesar and defeated the rival forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31). Tiberius succeeded Augustus (Octavian), and Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were emperors in turn. Nero, reigning from a.d. 54 to 68, initiated the persecution of Christians by the Roman state. Vespasian (69–79) succeeded Nero, and under his direction Titus conquered Jerusalem (70) and crushed Jewish resistance at Masada, ending the First Jewish Revolt. The final attempt by the Jews to throw off Roman rule was the Bar Cochba revolt during the reign of Hadrian (117–138), also unsuccessful (see H. E. L. Mellersh, Chronology of the Ancient World [1976], pp. 96–326).

The process of hellenization initiated by Alexander and continued later by the Romans was of central importance in this period. Its basis was the Greek practice of colonization, already current in classical times. In the Hellenistic period, soldiers were needed in distant areas under Greek control. Land was given to soldiers in return for military service, and this obligation passed to the occupant of the property in succeeding generations. By this method, a Greek population was attracted to cities of strategic or economic importance. Alexandria was Alexander’s first and greatest colony, a trading and administrative center. Other cities developed by colonization included Ephesus, founded by Ionian colonists in the classical period; Corinth, refounded by the Romans as a colony in 44 b.c. after its destruction in 146; and Philippi, subject to colonization by Alexander’s father Philip in 356 and later by Antony and Augustus.

Such colonization brought with it the Greek language, Greek standards of weights and measures, coinage, and the gymnasium (Gk gymnásion), which was a public facility for sports that also provided instruction in philosophy, literature, and music (see Hengel, I, 6–88; Oxford Classical Dictionary, sv “Colonization, Hellenistic” [A. T. Griffith], “Education” [F. A. G. Beck]).

III. Jewish History

The rebuilding of the temple, completed in 516 b.c., was followed in the next century by the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. It is generally agreed that Nehemiah restored the walls of Jerusalem (444), stayed for twelve years, and then returned from Susa after a brief absence (ca 430; Neh. 13:6f). Ezra came to Jerusalem in 457, the seventh year of Artaxerxes I (Ezr. 7:1, 8), and collaborated with Nehemiah in 444 (Neh. 8:1). (For another view see Ezra; Jerusalem III.F.1.) During this period, Malachi condemned the sins of an unrepentant nation and a corrupt priesthood, though a small remnant continued to follow in the footsteps of Ezra and Nehemiah (Mal. 3:16f).

In Palestine during this obscure period the Jews and Samaritans became religiously and ethnically separated, a fact reflected in the Gospel narrative and still quaintly perpetuated by the contemporary Samaritan high priest at Nâblus. Earlier, Aramaic began to replace Hebrew as the vernacular. This development is discernible even within the canon, notably in the book of Daniel. From Alexander the Great onward, Judaism became increasingly threatened by the cultural forces of a highly intellectual Hellenism, both in Palestine and the Diaspora. Jewish resistance to such hellenization often explains the vast bulk of intertestamental literature, much of it valuable and fine, none of it canonical. The discerning reader perceives that divine guidance kept the right books within the compass of Scripture. Eventually, and gradually, Judaism manifested itself in the “Three Pillars of Judaism”: the tripartite OT canon of Law, Prophets, and Writings; the synagogue, with its new, liturgical, and entirely nonsacrificial worship; and Rabbinism, which culminated in the Talmud and Midrash.

The Jerusalem temple and priesthood were corrupt in Malachi’s day, but when Antiochus IV Epiphanes came to the Syrian throne in 175 b.c. their apostasy and deliberate policy of hellenization were even more notorious. The new monarch (nicknamed Epimanes, “the madman”), in a policy of forced hellenization, overestimated the extent to which he could insult the seemingly decadent Jewish religion; and in view of its official representatives, one cannot entirely blame him. From the still faithful remnant was sparked off the celebrated Maccabean revolt, led in turn by Mattathias, Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan, and Simon (168–135 b.c.) (see Maccabees). Daniel’s “abomination of desolation” was proximately and typically fulfilled in the erection by Antiochus Epiphanes (168) of an altar to the Olympian Zeus in the very temple of God, an action that fired the immediate revolt of Mattathias.

By their revolt, God’s chosen people slowly regained a precious if transitory freedom. This liberation culminated under Simon in 142 b.c., when they gained exemption from the taxes, virtually from the overlordship, of the Seleucids (1 Macc. 13:41f). In gratitude to the deliverer, but in violation of the scriptural requirements of direct hereditary succession, the high priesthood, now Hasmonean, became invested and ratified in the person of Simon in 140. This break with tradition, however, was never wholly acceptable to the pious and orthodox, and it was a cause of later frictions. Simon’s life ended tragically; he was murdered in 134 by his son-in-law, an ambitious hellenizer. But his son John Hyrcanus, another intended victim, escaped and became his successor (see Hasideans; Hasmoneans).

During the long dominion of John Hyrcanus (134–104), who was virtually king as well as high priest, the Pharisaic and Sadducean parties became clearly differentiated, with their respective legal and priestly emphases. John abruptly transferred his allegiance from the first to the second. We have seen already that his high priesthood was not entirely satisfactory to the orthodox; neither was his kingship, so far as monarchy could be acceptable at all in a theocratic and covenant community, for he was not of the house and lineage of David. The quarrel with the Pharisees probably flared up on these grounds. There followed the brief reign of Aristobulus I, and the lengthy one of Alexander Janneus (102–76). Alexander, able and successful in many political respects, entirely alienated the Pharisees by his obvious personal unfitness for the high priesthood. Pelted with citrons by the common people for a technical and ritual mistake, he retaliated with defiance and massacre (Josephus Ant. xiii.13.5 [372-76]). At the close of his life, he counseled his queen and successor Alexandra Salome to make peace with the Pharisees. This she did, according them increased powers in the Sanhedrin, which they retained right into NT days (Ant. xiii–16.1 [405]). Her son Aristobulus usurped the place and power of his older brother Hyrcanus and reigned till 63 b.c. Then Pompey intervened, and Palestine, shorn of its recent conquests, was integrated into the Roman province of Syria.

The first phase of Roman domination in Palestine extended from 63 till 37, and then as later the Jews were uneasy under the yoke. Pompey entered the holy of holies in 63, though he seems merely to have looked around, and Crassus, proconsul of Syria, plundered the temple treasury in 54 (Ant. xiv.4.4 [72]; 7.1 [105–109]). During most of this period Hyrcanus II, a pitifully ineffective puppet, held nominal rule, civil and ecclesiastical. Freed from his younger brother, yet now subject to the Roman governor, he tended to delegate such real power as he possessed to the Idumean Antipater, whose Edomite origins gave the deepest offense to Jewish sentiment. The incumbency of Hyrcanus ended pathetically after more than twenty years, when his intending successor Antigonus confined him in bonds and then bit deeply into his ears, thereby rendering him ritually unfit for office (Josephus BJ i.13.9 [270]). Antigonus himself did not last very long, and with him the Hasmonean line came to its end. Herod, a son of Antipater and therefore also of Edomite blood, secured the backing of Rome in 40 b.c., and was able three years later to consolidate his kingship over a torn and troubled Palestine. During his rivalry with Antigonus he had used and equipped the fortress of Masada W of the Dead Sea.

Herod, rightly or wrongly styled “the Great,” was capable, loyal to Rome, and reasonably successful in his control of Palestine. But his political leanings, his Idumean blood, and his ten wives did not commend him to Jewish subjects. He rebuilt in lavish manner the Jerusalem temple, but the heathen sanctuaries that were also indebted to his munificence suggest religious views mixed or skeptical. Filson (p. 22) sums him up by remarking trenchantly, “He preserved order almost everywhere except in his polygamous palace.” Since Herod features prominently in the Matthaean Infancy narratives, his death in 4 b.c. gives a date before which Jesus must have been born. The domains granted to his sons, the various Roman procuratorships in Palestine, in short, the general affairs of relevant history down to about the mid-60’s a.d., are well known and need not be recapitulated here.

About a.d. 66, warned by such predictions as Mk. 13:14, the Christians in Jerusalem fled to Pella. This was the beginning — perhaps effectively the end — of the split between Church and synagogue. The prolonged siege of Jerusalem by Titus followed, culminating in a.d. 70 in the butchery of Jews in the Holy City, and in the total ruin of the cherished temple, even as Christ had predicted (Mk. 13:2).

The conquest of Titus was virtually final, but there were pockets of resistance. Nine hundred sixty Jewish men, women, and children gathered on the summit of the old Herodian fortress of Masada; on the east side was a sheer drop of about 400 m (1300 ft) to the Dead Sea. From here they defied, almost successfully, the embattled might of Rome. Flavius Silva and his men nearly retired in frustration and defeat. But wind, fire, and catapult stones at last smashed the Jewish defenses; and the conquering legions proudly mounted the high platform, only to find that the defenders had committed suicide. Yigael Yadin, with others, uncovered the skeletons of these people in the 1960’s; he aptly calls them an “undying symbol of desperate courage” (EAEHL, III, 806, 810f).

Outside of Jerusalem, Judaism assumed slightly different forms. The Qumrân community, associated by some scholars with the Essenes, carried on its own kind of scriptural exegesis and religious practice with the belief that they were a righteous remnant living in the last days. Large numbers of Jews made up the Dispersion (Gk diasporá), i.e., those who were scattered throughout the countries outside Palestine. Such a group lived on the island of Elephantine in the Nile, close to modern Aswân. Their recovered documents, the famous Aramaic papyri edited by Cowley, reflect their affairs for the quarter century ending in 399 b.c. Thereafter, they disappear from recorded history. Other important Jewish communities existed in Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, and numerous cities in Asia Minor (see Safrai and Stern, I, 117–215; Smallwood, pp. 120–143, 201–255).

IV. MSS Discoveries

Discoveries of MSS fragments at various locations in Palestine have made a great contribution to the study of this period. The scrolls found at Qumrân consist of Scripture texts and commentaries; Hebrew and Aramaic portions or transcripts of apocryphal, targumic, and pseudepigraphical literature, some of it previously known only in Greek; sectarian documents that had long disappeared; etc. This recovered Essene library is filling many gaps in intertestamental history and Christian antecedents and forms an immensely valuable area of biblical study (see Dead Sea Scrolls).

Other Judean caves have yielded fragmentary MSS, letters, and coins. Remains of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic MSS from the Cave of Horror (Naḥal Heber) include a fragmentary Greek translation of the Minor Prophets closer to the MT than the LXX. The caves at Naḥal Ṣe˒ elim yielded a small parchment containing Ex. 13:1–16 in a form almost identical to the MT. More impressive are the discoveries from the Cave of Letters: small fragments of Pss. 15–16, Nu. 20:7f, and letters written by Simon Bar Cochba to his cohorts. The cave at Wâdī Murabba˓ât contained a scroll of the Minor Prophets, other biblical books, and papyri in Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The excavations carried on at Masada (1963–65) under the direction of Y. Yadin discovered fragments of biblical scrolls including Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel. Nonbiblical fragments included a small portion of the book of Jubilees in Hebrew and large fragments of chs 39–44 of the Hebrew original of Sirach. A Hebrew text of Sirach was found in the Cairo Genizah in 1910, and some scholars hotly disputed its genuineness, stigmatizing it as a late translation from the Greek; but this MS from Masada has proved them wrong. Some argue that this book would have been included in the canon had its original been known at the right time (see EAEHL, III, 665–694, 812–14).

V. Theological Concepts

Intertestamental Judaism in Palestine particularly included quiet orthodoxy, fierce Zealot nationalism, subconscious assimilation, and decadent hellenization. OT theology advanced in certain respects, with important NT consequences, partly by internal development, partly by naturalization of Zoroastrian and other elements. Diaspora Jews, devout if less strictly orthodox, attempted allegorically and otherwise to blend Greek philosophy with Hebraic tradition — the extreme example is the Alexandrian Philo. Usually the amalgam was recognizably Jewish. In 1909 Schürer exhaustively examined the Palestinian (HJP, II/3, 1–155) and the Hellenistic (II/3, 156–381) literature. To the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, and Diaspora literature must now be added the Dead Sea Scrolls. (These topics are discussed elsewhere in this encyclopedia under their separate titles. On rabbinic Judaism, oral and secondary at this state, supremely important later, see Commentaries, Hebrew; Talmud; Targum.)

Loyalty to external Judaism reached its pinnacle in the Masada martyrs (see III above); in the butchered thousand who would not break the sabbath by resisting attack (1 Macc. 2:29–38; cf. 2 Macc. 6:11); and in those who endured torture and death, rather than break the law by eating pork (1 Macc. 2:61f; 2 Macc. 6:18–31; 7:1–42). The same spirit sent the Qumrân covenanters to the stricter life of the desert. Aristobulus (104–103 b.c.) exercised on Galileans and neighboring Ituraeans a policy of forcible Judaizing by circumcision, though this was somewhat rare (cf. Mt. 4:15). At the opposite extreme were skeptical hellenizers such as those sporting youths under Antiochus Epiphanes, naked runners so apostate from Judaism as to submit to surgical uncircumcision — Gk akrobystía means foreskin, hence by metonymy the artificial restoration thereof (1 Macc. 1:15; Asm.Mos. 8).

Intertestamental Jewish literature, historically and theologically important, often differs in content from the books that Protestantism considers inspired. Protestantism excludes all of it from the canon, and thus rejects prayers for the dead (2 Macc. 12:43–45) and a doctrine of salvation by works (2 Esd. 7:77; Tob. 4:9–11; etc.), concepts found in the Roman Catholic Church, which regards these books as canonical. That humanistic commonplace of rabbinic Judaism, the good and evil impulse in man, is found in germ. The cor malignum of 2 Esd. 3:20 (NEB “wicked heart”) foreshadows the evil impulse (cf. vv 48, 92; Gen. 8:21); for the so-called good impulse, cf. Sir. 1:14.

Noncanonical apocalyptic, child of OT prophecy, emphasizes national and individual judgment, eternal rewards and punishments, usually postulating imminent eschatological climax. These apocryphal apocalypses — symbolic, dualistic, esoteric, usually pseudonymous, and “history in the guise of prediction” — claimed that they had been written by Moses, Enoch, or some ancient worthy, and hidden since that author’s time for this very emergency — a claim intolerable within the inspired canon and to modern believers yet widely accepted at that time. Such writers of such works, feeling deep spiritual affinity with their prototypes, possessed a unitary Hebraic time sense, with a weakened apprehension of chronological separation. They believed themselves to be God’s chosen instruments to build up the people in dark days. Within Judaism, apocalyptic lost its place to Rabbinism after a.d. 70, yet profoundly influenced Christian theology, where it reached its high-water mark in the book of Revelation. For apocalyptists and time, see Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (Engtr 1960); D. S. Russell, Apocalyptic, pp. 205–223.

Intertestamental Jewry sought to approach the transcendent God through intermediaries; thus angelology became elaborated. In the Ezra Apocalypse (2 Esd. 3–10) the prophet is instructed by the archangel Uriel (cf. canonical Zechariah), and also by Tobit and Enoch. Evil, rebellious angels, including Satan under his various designations, also came to prominence. In certain sources (cf. 1 Enoch; Jubilees) the fallen angels who united themselves to human females are designated “watchers.” They, not God, are the source of evil, which has an extent much wider than this terrestrial globe. In other sources evil is explained by Adam’s original transgression, or by the evil impulse in mankind.

A conception resembling the doctrine of original sin, consistently bypassed by later rabbinic Judaism, is found in 2 Esd. 4:30–32; 7:11, 48, 118; these passages should be compared with key phrases in 1 Cor. 15. Individual responsibility is also stressed, in the spirit of Ezk. 18 (2 Esd. 7:102–106; cf. vv 112–15). Into this doctrine the idea of the treasury of merits inconsistently intrudes (7:77). Comparable with Mt. 7:13f is the stern doctrine of majority damnation; some apocryphal devices to justify the ways of God to man are not appealing (7:49–61; 8:1–3, 40f). The writer also stresses (8:55–60) that most people have abused their free will, spurned God’s law, and brought condemnation upon themselves. Original sin is implied clearly in Sir. 8:5; 25:24; cf. also Wisd. 10:1. The possibility of avoiding direct transgression, or sin with a high hand, is stressed in Tob. 4:5.

Vitally important are the interconnected concepts of Word and Wisdom. The creative Word goes back by implication to the repeated “and God said” of Gen. 1, but assumes firmer contours in the constantly recurring paraphrastic Memra of the Targums — cf. sample passages translated in Targum. The Greek form lógos began probably with the pagan Heraclitus (ca 500 b.c.), passed through the hands of the Stoics several centuries later, reappeared in theological form in Philo of Alexandria (d a.d. 40), then found its highest expression in Jn. 1:1–14. In classical Greek philosophy, logos meant roughly the rational principle undergirding the universe and its lifestream; for Philo, who intermingled metaphysics with revealed religion, the concept, still impersonal, came to mean the rational thought of God, the impress of His creative power on the scheme of things. John ascribes all this and infinitely more to the incarnate Son. The analogous concept of Wisdom, created by God and personified, begins canonically with Prov. 8:22–31, becoming more sharply etched in Sir. 1:1–10; Wisd. 7:22–26. The latter passage makes Wisdom “a pure effluence from the glory of the Almighty … the flawless mirror of the active power of God and the image of his goodness” (NEB). The creative Word is found in Wisd. 9:1f, the decreeing Word in 18:15.

There are three levels of Jewish future expectation — a revived, extended “Golden Age” Davidic kingdom in Palestine; a catastrophic, destructive climax to this world (cf. 2 Pet. 3:5–11), with an eternal age supervening; and the two combined, the first reappearing as some kind of millennium. The popular first view falls below Eschatology proper, but explains some reactions to the ministry of Jesus (cf. Jn. 6:15; Acts 1:6). Bultmann describes apocalyptic eschatology as “a pessimistic-dualistic view of the Satanic corruption of the total world-complex” — but this tabloid statement must not be too blindly generalized.

Outstanding in Christian interest is the eschatology of 2 Esdras. The age to come is first delineated as succeeding this one without pause or interval (6:7–10). Messiah is to appear, inaugurating a reduced “millennium” of four hundred years, after which he, and all living beings, will die. Then after seven days of the silence of death will come a general resurrection, followed by divine judgment (7:28–36). The bliss of paradise is briefly described (8:52–54). These passages should be compared with Dnl. 12; Rev. 20–21; etc. Chapter 6 must mean that there is no interval between the present age and Messiah’s glorious earthly reign — otherwise it would contradict ch 7. A thousand-year millennium is found in the Slavonic Enoch, one of indefinite length in 2 Baruch. Angelology, the precosmic angelic fall, final judgment, the destruction of the world, and eternal bliss and woe are more fully portrayed in the Ethiopic and Slavonic versions of Enoch; the latter incorporates the celestial architecture of the seven heavens (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2–4). The Assumption of Moses (ca 4 b.c.) has probable Qumrânic links. Its lost ending is, according to some scholars, quoted in Jude 9.

Apocalyptic writers frequently recognized two Messiahs, one associated with the priestly tribe of Levi, the other with the royal Davidic tribe of Judah. This is carried over (with variations) into the Dead Sea Scrolls (cf. 1QS 9:11) and into Talmud and Midrash (see R. A. Stewart, Rabbinic Theology [1961], pp. 46–53). Under the new covenant the Messiah is, of course, one and unique. There is, however, a dual strain in the OT, the Suffering Servant, who reflects the passion, atonement, and substitution of Christ’s first advent (Isa. 42:1–4; 49:4–9; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12) and the Son of man, who will come with power and judgment at the end of the age (Dnl. 7:13f), reflecting His second advent (cf. Isa. 63:1–6; Rev. 19:11–16; and innumerable parallels).