📖 Old Testament Survey — Unit 13: The Intertestamental Period

I. The Hidden Decades

Open your Bible and look carefully at the page that separates Malachi from Matthew. It is the thinnest page in your Bible. It is also the longest page in your Bible. Between Malachi's closing line and Matthew's opening lie about four hundred years — more time than from the founding of the American colonies to today. The prophets are silent. No new Scripture is written. No fresh oracle breaks the morning. And yet, when the curtain rises again at the end of those four centuries, the world is unrecognizable. The temple is rebuilt. The synagogue exists in every village. The Hebrew Scriptures have been translated into Greek and shipped to Alexandria. Roman roads connect Spain to Syria. A Jewish king has died and a Roman governor sits in his palace. And in a small priest's village in the hills outside Jerusalem, an old man named Zechariah is preparing to walk into the holy place to burn incense.

This is the Intertestamental Period. For most students of the Bible, it is the great unread chapter. We finish Malachi, take a breath, and turn to Matthew, and we lose four hundred years in the space of a single page-turn. This unit is our attempt to honor those years. Because what God was doing in the silence is just as much a part of the story as what God was saying through the prophets. During the Intertestamental Period, God was not silent because He had nothing to say; He was silent because He was preparing to speak His most important Word. "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:1–2). Four hundred years of preparation for one Sermon, one Cross, one empty Tomb.

II. The Persian Settlement (about 430–330 BC)

When Malachi laid down his pen, the Jewish community was a small, struggling province inside the vast Persian Empire. Cyrus had let them go home in 538 BC; Zerubbabel had rebuilt the temple by 516; Ezra had restored the law in 458; Nehemiah had finished the walls in 445. Now Malachi has finished his sermons, the priests are functioning, and the daily round of sacrifice is going on in the second temple. Most of the Jews who had been carried into Babylon never came back. They settled in the cities of the East, where they began what we call the Diaspora — the dispersion. Jewish communities sprang up in Babylon, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, and eventually all around the Mediterranean.

Two enormous things happened during the Persian phase. First, the synagogue was born. Far from the temple in Jerusalem, the exiles needed a way to gather, to read the Scriptures, to teach the children, and to pray. The synagogue (literally "a gathering together") was the answer. By the end of the Persian period, every Jewish village in the known world had one. By the time of Christ, every city in the Roman Empire that had a Jewish population had a synagogue. When the apostle Paul went on his missionary journeys five hundred years later, the synagogue was always his first stop, because the synagogue had already taken the Old Testament to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit was using a system He had built during the silence.

Second, the canon of the Hebrew Bible was finished and recognized. The same Ezra who taught the people the Law also presided over the gathering and arranging of the books we now call the Old Testament. Tradition says he led a group called the Great Synagogue, who collected and copied the manuscripts. By the end of the Persian period, the Jewish people had in their hands the same thirty-nine books we have. They knew that with Malachi the prophetic voice had ceased, and they preserved the Word until it would speak again.

III. The Greek Whirlwind (330–167 BC)

In 333 BC a young Macedonian general named Alexander stormed into Asia and changed the world in a decade. He was twenty-three years old when he broke the Persian Empire at the battle of Issus. He was thirty-three when he died of fever in Babylon, having conquered everything from Greece to India. Daniel had seen him coming three centuries earlier — the male goat with the conspicuous horn between its eyes that came running across the surface of the whole earth, struck the ram (Persia), and broke its two horns (Daniel 8:5–8). Alexander did not just conquer the world; he Hellenized it. He left Greek cities, Greek soldiers, Greek temples, Greek libraries, and above all the Greek language behind him in every land he touched. By the time he died, the educated Mediterranean world spoke Koine — the common Greek of the marketplace.

Two of his decisions had eternal consequences for the Bible. First, when he founded the city of Alexandria in Egypt in 331 BC, he invited Jews to settle there as full citizens. They came by the thousands. Within a generation, Alexandria had the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Judea, and most of those Jews could no longer read Hebrew. About 250 BC, under Ptolemy II, seventy or seventy-two Jewish scholars (so the tradition runs) translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. The result was the Septuagint (Latin for "seventy"), abbreviated LXX. This was the first time in history that the Old Testament had been translated into another language, and it was a translation God was going to use mightily. When the apostles preached Christ in the Roman world, the Bible they opened was usually the LXX. When Matthew quoted Isaiah, he quoted the LXX. When Paul argued from the Old Testament in a Greek-speaking synagogue, he argued from the LXX. The Septuagint took the Hebrew prophets out of one nation and gave them to the world.

The story of the Greek translation, like every act of giving Scripture to the people, was paid for in blood. Sixteen hundred years later an Englishman named William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536 for translating the New Testament into English. His last recorded words were a prayer: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." Three years later King Henry authorized the Great Bible in every English parish church. The Septuagint and the English Bible are stones in the same long road — the road of God's determination to put His word into the hands of every farmer's wife and every shopkeeper's apprentice. The four hundred years of silence were not idle. God was building the road.

The second consequence of Alexander was less happy. After his death in 323 BC, his empire splintered among his generals. Judea ended up squeezed between two of them — the Ptolemies of Egypt to the south, and the Seleucids of Syria to the north — and was passed back and forth like a contested football for a hundred and fifty years. Pressure to abandon the Law and adopt Greek customs grew steadily. Some Jews welcomed Hellenization; many resisted. The crisis came in 167 BC.

IV. The Maccabean Stand (167–63 BC)

The Seleucid king Antiochus IV — who took the title Epiphanes, meaning "god manifest" — decided to wipe out the Jewish religion altogether. He outlawed the Sabbath. He outlawed circumcision, on pain of death. He burned every copy of the Law he could find. And in December 167 BC he marched into the temple in Jerusalem, set up an altar to Zeus on top of the altar of burnt offering, and slaughtered a pig on it. This was the "abomination of desolation" Daniel had seen in vision more than three centuries earlier (Daniel 11:31; 8:13). The Holy Place was defiled. The lamps went out. The bread of the Presence was thrown into the street.

An old village priest named Mattathias, in the hill town of Modein, refused to offer the sacrifice when the king's officers came to enforce the new religion. He killed the officer, killed the apostate Jew who had stepped forward to make the offering, and fled to the hills with his five sons. The third son was named Judah, but he is better known by his nickname — Maccabeus, "the Hammer." For three years the Maccabees waged guerrilla war against an empire. By December 164 BC they had recaptured Jerusalem. They tore down the desecrated altar, built a new one, and rekindled the lamps. The festival of Hanukkah — the Feast of Dedication — celebrates that rekindling every winter to this day. The Lord Jesus Himself walked in Solomon's Colonnade during Hanukkah (John 10:22). He did not condemn the festival. He celebrated the faithfulness of a people who had refused to bow.

For about a hundred years the Maccabean line ruled an independent Jewish state. They were brave warriors and, eventually, mediocre kings. The dynasty ended in civil war between two grandsons in 63 BC. Their quarrel reached the ears of a Roman general who happened to be passing through Syria with an army. His name was Pompey. He took Jerusalem, and the long Roman shadow fell across the land for the first time. It would not lift in the lifetime of any person who stood there that day.

V. The Roman Dawn (63 BC and after)

The Romans were not delicate. They taxed mercilessly, garrisoned heavily, and crucified anyone they suspected of rebellion. But they also did three things that, almost in spite of themselves, prepared the world for the gospel. They built roads. By the time the apostle Paul stepped onto the Egnatian Way at Philippi in AD 50, a Roman citizen could walk on paved highway from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Euphrates River, with way-stations every fifteen miles and military patrols guarding the cargo. They kept the peace. The Pax Romana, the great Roman Peace inaugurated by Augustus in 27 BC, lasted for two hundred years and made it possible for an unarmed Jewish missionary to travel from Jerusalem to Rome with nothing but a cloak, a few scrolls, and the gospel of Christ. And they enforced one law in every province. When Paul appealed to Caesar in Acts 25, he was using a legal mechanism that worked the same way in Caesarea as in Athens as in Rome. The empire that crucified Jesus on a Roman cross was the same empire whose roads carried His resurrection news to the ends of the earth.

In Judea itself, the Romans installed a half-Jewish, half-Idumean strongman named Herod the Great. He was a paranoid, jealous, ambitious king who murdered his wife, three of his sons, and (according to Matthew) all the boy babies of Bethlehem under the age of two. He was also the most prolific builder the Holy Land had ever seen. He doubled the size of the temple platform; the magnificent stones tourists still touch at the Western Wall today were laid by Herod's masons. The temple Jesus walked through was Herod's temple. He died in 4 BC, just months after a star had moved across the night sky and stopped over a stable behind a Bethlehem inn.

VI. The Four Voices of First-Century Judaism

While the empires came and went over their heads, the Jewish people themselves were quietly fragmenting into four very different parties. Each one was an answer to the same question: How do we serve God under Gentile rule?

The Pharisees answered, "By keeping the Law more strictly than ever." They were the lay theologians, the schoolmasters of the synagogue, the spiritual heirs of Ezra. They believed in angels, in spirits, in the resurrection of the dead, and in the absolute authority of Scripture. They are also the group that built what they called "a fence around the Torah" — hundreds of additional rules, designed to keep a person from coming anywhere near the breaking of an actual commandment. Over the centuries, the fence got higher than the building. Jesus' bitterest controversies were with this group, not because their theology was wrong (it was usually right) but because their hearts were proud. Some of them, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, became His disciples. Saul of Tarsus, the man who became the apostle Paul, was a Pharisee.

The Sadducees answered the same question very differently: "By cooperating with the Romans and keeping the temple running." They were the wealthy aristocracy, the priestly families, the men who controlled the temple revenue and the high-priestly office. They accepted only the five books of Moses as authoritative; they rejected the resurrection, the angels, and the supernatural in general. They were the religious establishment that arrested Jesus in Gethsemane. Their party died with the temple in AD 70, and not one of them is heard of after.

The Essenes answered, "By withdrawing from a corrupt nation altogether." They retreated to monastic communities in the desert; the most famous was at Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea. There they copied scrolls, kept ritual baths, ate communal meals, and waited for the Messiah. Their library, hidden in caves at the time of the Roman siege in AD 68 and rediscovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947, has given us the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament in existence. Whether John the Baptist had any contact with them is debated; the parallels are striking.

The Zealots answered, "By picking up a sword and driving the Romans into the sea." They were the revolutionary nationalists, the underground resistance. One of Jesus' twelve disciples, Simon, is called "Simon the Zealot" (Luke 6:15). The Zealot movement reached its climax in the great revolt of AD 66–70 that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple — the most catastrophic event in Jewish history between the exile and the Holocaust.

Four parties, four answers — the Pharisees offered legalism, the Sadducees compromise, the Essenes withdrawal, the Zealots violence. The country needed what none of them had: a Savior.

VII. The Fullness of Time

Step back from all of it now and look at the picture. By the year 5 BC the world had been brought, by silent and invisible providence, to a moment that had never existed before and would never be repeated. "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law" (Galatians 4:4–5). What is the fullness Paul is talking about? Look at what was in place by 5 BC.

There was a common language. Koine Greek was understood from Spain to Syria. For the first time in human history, a missionary could preach in one language to a Roman governor, a Jewish rabbi, and a Greek philosopher in the same room — and all three could understand him. There was a common road system. The Roman highways meant that the message could move at the speed of a fast horse from Jerusalem to the heart of every empire on earth. There was a common peace. The Pax Romana meant that an unarmed apostle could carry a scroll across two thousand miles of foreign country and not be murdered for his trouble. There was a common Bible. The Septuagint had put the prophets, the Psalms, and the Law of Moses into the hands of every literate person in the empire, ready to be quoted. There was a common longing. From Jewish synagogues that read Daniel's seventy weeks every Sabbath, to Greek philosophers tired of dead idols, to Roman housewives weeping over the death of yet another infant, the human heart was reaching for a Savior. And there was a common need. The Stoics had not solved sin. The mystery religions had not solved death. The legalism of the Pharisees had not made anyone holy. The world was ready.

God had been building the road for four hundred years. Every Greek vocabulary list, every Roman milestone, every synagogue scroll, every Jewish boy who memorized Isaiah in Alexandria, every Pharisee who handed his son a copy of the Law on his thirteenth birthday — all of it was masonry in the same highway. "Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me" (Malachi 3:1) had been being fulfilled the whole time. The four hundred years of silence were the four hundred years of road-building.

VIII. The Curtain Rises

And then, one ordinary morning in or about 5 BC, in the second course of the priestly rotation called Abijah, an old village priest named Zechariah drew the lot to enter the Holy Place of the temple and burn the morning incense. He had probably waited his whole life for the chance; the lot fell only once in a priest's career, if it ever fell at all. He stepped through the curtain. The smoke of the incense rose. And to the right of the altar of incense stood an angel. The four-hundred-year silence broke that morning, in a single sentence: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John" (Luke 1:13). It was the messenger of Malachi 3:1 — and Zechariah's son would be the messenger before the Messenger. The Sun of Righteousness was rising.

And the Remnant were waiting. Old Simeon, who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord's Christ, stood in the temple courts and recognized a poor village couple's forty-day-old baby boy: "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel" (Luke 2:29–32). Old Anna, eighty-four years old, a widow who had not left the temple courts in decades, came at that very moment and gave thanks to God. They were the Remnant. They had outlasted the silence.

In Luco di Mugello, Italy, a dog named Fido kept returning to a bus stop after his master died in a factory bombing in 1943. The local tourism guide describes about fourteen years of waiting and a monument in Borgo San Lorenzo. Anna of the temple is one of those tablets in the picture gallery of the King. So is Simeon. So are the unnamed thousands of Jewish believers — and a few Gentile God-fearers — who lit the lamps of their prayer and refused to let them go out through four centuries of darkness, who taught their children Isaiah 53 even when no prophet had spoken in their grandfather's grandfather's lifetime, who showed up in Jerusalem at Passover year after year because the Lord had said come and they were going to keep coming until the Lord told them to stop. They were the Remnant. The Lord they waited for finally walked in.

The Scarlet Thread Reaches Its Thirteenth and Last Station

Now stand back and look at the whole tapestry. This course began in Eden, where God killed an animal to clothe Adam and Eve and a Scarlet Thread of redemption was tied to the very first fig leaves. The thread ran through Abel's lamb, through Noah's altar after the flood, through the ram caught in the thicket on Moriah, through the blood smeared on every Hebrew doorpost the night of the Passover, through the two goats of the Day of Atonement, through the bronze serpent lifted in the wilderness, through the scarlet cord hanging in Rahab's window, through the rivers of blood that flowed under the altars of Solomon's temple for almost four hundred years, through Isaiah's Suffering Servant who was wounded for our transgressions, and through Zechariah's pierced One and the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. Twelve stations. Every animal a promissory note. Every altar a postcard from the future. Every prophet adding another verse to the same song. And now the thread comes to its thirteenth and last station on the bank of a river called Jordan.

A wild-looking man in camel's hair, the son of old Zechariah and Elizabeth, stands knee-deep in muddy water. The crowds have been coming for months — soldiers, tax collectors, prostitutes, scribes — confessing their sins and being baptized. Then John looks up. A man is walking toward him along the riverbank. John has known Him since they were children; they are cousins. But this morning John sees Him as no human eye has ever seen Him before. John raises his arm, points one finger across the water, and speaks the sentence that ties off the Scarlet Thread once for all: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). There it is. The Lamb of every prior station has a name now. The thirteenth station is not an altar; it is a Person. Behold Him. Twelve hundred years of altars are folded into one Man walking down to a river. Look. Look! The Lamb the whole Old Testament has been pointing to has just stepped out from behind the curtain. He is here.

And the next morning, John lifts his arm and says it again: "Behold the Lamb of God!" (John 1:36). And two of his disciples turn, follow Jesus, and become the first to be told what the rest of this Library is going to be about. The Old Testament has done its work. The thread is tied. The Lamb is named. From here on, every story in the New Testament will be the story of this Lamb — born, baptized, tempted, teaching, healing, hated, crucified, buried, raised, ascended, seated, returning. "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen" (2 Corinthians 1:20). The Lamb is the Yes.

IX. The End of the Beginning

We have come to the end of the Old Testament Survey. Thirteen units; thirty-nine books; about four thousand years of human history; and one Story. From the breath of God hovering over the deep waters of Genesis 1:2 to the breath of the Spirit descending on a baptized carpenter at the Jordan, it is one Story. From the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 to Mary's "Let it be to me according to your word" in a Nazareth bedroom (Luke 1:38), it is one Story. From Abraham looking up at the stars and being told that one of his descendants would bless every nation on earth, to a star moving across the sky and stopping over a stable in the hometown of his distant descendant David, it is one Story. From Moses lifting up the bronze serpent so that the dying might look and live, to John 3:14 and a centurion looking at a cross and saying, "Truly this Man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39), it is one Story.

The Old Testament does not end with Malachi. It ends with the Magnificat. It ends with shepherds running breathlessly from the fields. It ends with old Anna in the temple, recognizing her Lord at last. It ends, in fact, only when we have read the four Gospels back to back with Genesis and Exodus and Isaiah and seen that the whole library tells the same story. "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us" (2 Corinthians 1:20). Every promise of the Old Testament finds its yes in Jesus.

We close, then, where Malachi closed, looking east. Behind us are the law and the prophets, the kings and the priests, the captivity and the return, the silence and the synagogue, the road and the road-builder. In front of us is the Sun of Righteousness, rising at last with healing in His wings. The road is done. The Servant has departed in peace. And the King, my friend, is on the throne forever. Press on into the Gospels with the same Lord who walked Abraham home from Ur, who slept in Jacob's pillow of stones at Bethel, who stood with the three in the furnace, who whispered with Elijah on the mountain, and who sang with the morning stars when the foundations of the world were laid. He is your Lord, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amen.

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