Hellenistic origin. A century later the same joyous confidence, only perhaps more clearly
worded, appears in the so-called `Psalter of Solomon.' Thus the seventeenth Psalm bursts into
this strain: `Blessed are they who shall live in those days - in the reunion of the tribes, which God
brings about.'44 And no wonder, since they are the days when `the King, the Son of David,'45
having purged Jerusalem46 and destroyed the heathen by the word of His mouth,47 would gather
together a holy people which He would rule with justice, and judge the tribes of His people,48
`dividing them over the land according to tribes;' when `no stranger would any longer dwell
among them.'49
39. Book of En. ch. lvii.; comp. xc.33.
40. B. iii. 286-294; comp. B. v. 414-433.
41. B. iii. 732-735.
42. B. iii. 766-783.
43. M. Maurice Vernes (Hist. Des Idées Messian. pp. 43-119) maintains that the writers of Enoch and
Or. Sib. 3 expected this period under the rule of the Maccabees, and regarded one of them as the
Messiah. It implies a peculiar reading of history, and a lively imagination, to arrive at such a conclusion.
44. Ps. of Sol. vxii. 50; comp. also Ps. xi.
45. Ps. Sal. xviii. 23.
46. v. 25.
47. v. 27.
48. v. 28.
49. vv. 30, 31.
Another pause, and we reach the time when Jesus the Messiah appeared. Knowing the
characteristics of that time, we scarcely wonder that the Book of Jubilees, which dates from that
period, should have been Rabbinic in its cast rather than Apocalyptic. Yet even there the
reference to the future glory is distinct. Thus we are told, that, though for its wickedness Israel
had been scattered, God would `gather them all from the midst of the heathen,' `build among
them His Sanctuary, and dwell with them.' That Sanctuary was to `be for ever and ever, and
God would appear to the eye of every one, and every one acknowledge that He was the God
of Israel, and the Father of all the Children of Jacob, and King upon Mount Zion, from
everlasting to everlasting. And Zion and Jerusalem shall be holy.'50 When listening to this
language of, perhaps, a contemporary of Jesus, we can in some measure understand the popular
indignation which such a charge would call forth, as that the Man of Nazareth had proposed to
destroy the Temple,51 or that he thought merely of the children of Jacob.
50. Book of Jub. Ch. i.; comp. also ch. xxiii.
51. St. John ii. 19.