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thee, saith Jehovah," and yet He who was thus to come is the sent One, " the man whose name is the Branch."

      In the fulness of time one in whom this ideal was fully realised did appear, and before His birth the fol- lowing announcement was made to His mother : " Be- hold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus " (what can be more human ? but it goes on) ; " He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." Here is that One for whose manifestation the ages were waiting, the " Im- manuel," God in man, "He whose right it is," not merely because through His mother He is the true Son of

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      David, but because He is the Son of the Highest ; the irradiated brightness of His glory, and exact representa- tion of the very Being of God, who, as we have seen, is the true King of Israel. Oh, if Israel had known the day of their visitation ! if they had recognised that the child born in such humble circumstances in one of their families was none other than the long-expected Messiah, " the Lord of glory," the long indefinite period of the " many days " would have terminated, and Israel would no longer have been without the longed for king. But Israel did not know, neither did they understand, and instead of hailing Him with acclamation, they said, " Not this man we will not have this man to reign over us." Early in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, impressed by His miracle-working power, they would have taken Him by force and made Him king, but their ideals of the Messianic kingdom were altogether different from His. They wanted a kingdom, but Christ preached the kingdom of heaven, or of God ; and so afterwards, when they saw that their carnal expectations would not be realised, they did indeed put a crown on His head, but it was of thorns. They handed Him over to Pilate, and when that weak Roman functionary ironically remon- strated with them, saying, " Shall I crucify your king ? " they replied, " We have no king but Caesar " ; and having thus deliberately put themselves afresh under the yoke of Gentile rule, they are permitted to have a good long taste of it, in order that they may learn the differ- ence between the rule of God and the yoke of the Gentiles. This is why the children of Israel still " abide without a king," and until they bow their knee in lowly homage before Him whom in ignorance they once despised and scorned, they will continue so to remain. Anyhow, this is an indisputable fact, that the Lord Jesus of Nazareth is the last in Jewish history whose descent

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      from the royal line of David can now be established by sufficiently authentic proof. There are Jews and Gentiles at the present day who cavil at the New Testament genealogies, overlooking the fact that there is ample proof in the New Testament of the Davidic descent of our Lord, apart even from the genealogical records. But the difficulties in the genealogies arise not from inaccuracies, but from obscurities, which could, I believe, easily be cleared up if the national and tribal records from which they were compiled were still extant to appeal to. But since the destruction of the second Temple all these national genealogical records have perished, and apart from a few worthless traditions there is nothing that any Jew now on the face of the earth can appeal to to prove even from which tribe, not to say from which family, he springs. There is neither a tribe of Judah nor a separate Davidic family now existing, and yet the true king of Israel must prove Himself a son of David ! 1

      There is also this fact to be remembered, that when the claims of our Lord Jesus to Davidic descent were first asserted, they could easily have been disproved had it been possible to do so. Now, the Scribes and Phari- sees among whom Christ moved were not at all slow to bring up anything they could possibly adduce which they thought would disprove His claims. Wilfully ignorant, for instance, that He was born in Bethlehem, they stigmatised Him as a " Nazarene," and said, " Search and see, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet " ; yet although he was universally addressed as " Son of David" even by the beggars who sat by the wayside, and by a poor Gentile woman on the borders of Tyre and Sidon, His enemies never even ventured to whisper

      1 See for an examination of this subject, " Die Worte Jesu," by Professor Gustaf Dalman, pp. 260–266.

      3

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      that He was not of the house of David. Afterwards^ when Paul and the other apostles went everywhere pro- claiming " Jesus Christ of the seed of David " as the very foundation of the gospel which they preached (2 Tim. ii. 8), if the Pharisees could have proved this one statement to be untrue, it would for ever have closed the mouths of these men, whom they regarded as a trouble and danger to the nation. They had serious consultations as to what could be done to put a stop to the wonderful movement in favour of Jesus of Nazareth. They threatened the apostles, they beat them, they again and again cast them into prison, but they never once dared say that He whom they preached as the seed of David and heir to His throne (Acts ii. 25–30) was not of the house of David at all. On the other hand we find that down to the sixth century, when the Talmud Babylon was compiled, the fact that Christ was of the Royal Davidic house was written deep on the conscious- ness of the Jewish nation, and shines out even from beneath the blasphemous legends which the Rabbis in- vented about Him in self-justification. 1 And not only

      1 The following passage from Talmud, Sanhedrin, fol. 43, a., is most striking. " There is a tradition : On the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover they hung Jesus. And the herald went forth before him for forty days crying, ' Jesus goeth to be executed, because he has practised sorcery and seduced Israel and estranged them from God. Let any one who can bring forward any justifying plea for him come and give information concerning it,' but no justifying plea was found for him, and so he was hung on the eve of Sabbath and the Passover. Ulla said, 'But doest thou think that he belongs to those for whom a justifying plea is to be sought ? He was a very seducer, and the Allmerciful has said, " Thou shalt not spare him, nor conceal him." ' But the case of Jesus stood differently because he stood near to the kingdom."

      Laible, in " Jesus Christ in the Talmud," renders the last words, "for his place was near those in power," but this is unsatisfactory.

      The name actually used in the original in this passage just

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      is Israel " without a king " (or the king of God's appoint- ment) ; they are also without a prince of their own choice, the Dispersion having made it an impossibility for them to have one head to rule and guide them ; and it is an interesting fact that although since the modern emancipation of the Jews they have a large share in the government of all civilised nations a share altogether out of proportion to their actual numbers, and men of Jewish birth have been successful leaders of great parties, and even prime ministers they themselves are under Gentile rule, and cannot be governed by one of their own nation.

      quoted is W " Yeshu/' which is an abbreviation of " Yemakh Shemoh vezikhroh," " Let his name and his memory be blotted out." This blasphemous substitution of " Yeshu " for the precious name "Jesus" often occurs in Rabbinic literature, but Christian friends will remember that it is not our Lord Jesus as we know Him that poor Israel in ignorance thus blasphemes, but the cari- cature of Him as presented to them by apostate, persecuting Christendom in the dark ages. Often the only way left to the Jews to avenge their terrible sufferings and massacres was to write blasphemously of Him in whose name they were ignorantly perpetrated. Over against poor Israel's ignorant blasphemy of " Yemakh Shemoh vezikhroh " God has uttered His decree that the name of Jesus " shall endure for ever ; His name shall be con- tinued as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in Him ; all nations shall call Him blessed" (Psa. Ixxii. 17).

      That the legend refers to a well-known custom in the procedure of the Sanhedrim in trials for life, there is I think, no doubt, be- cause one of their great maxims was, that "they sat to justify and not to condemn." That this humane custom of calling on those who had anything to bring forward in favour of the accused to come and declare it, was not observed in the trial of Jesus of Nazareth, for reasons well known to readers of the Gospel, is certain, but, as I have already stated, from beneath the blas- phemous legend invented as a justification for poor Israel's blind leaders in reference to their conduct to the Holy One, there shines out this truth, that up to the sixth century, when the Talmud was compiled, it was admitted

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