Today’s Scripture Reading (January
16, 2020): Hosea 8
As Herod the Great
comes to power in Judea, the Temple is in terrible shape. The Second Temple,
built after the Babylonian Captivity during the time of Prince Zerubbabel, was
never an architectural marvel. It was a rather plain building, and only a
shadow of the Temple that Solomon had built, the one that was planned and laid
out by his father, David. So, one of the first things that Herod decides to do
is not just repair the temple, but to redesign it. Herod planned to transform
the Second Temple into Herod’s Temple. It would be something of which he could
be proud, and something that he believed would honor the Judean God.
And the people supported
the idea in the early days of the rebuilding. But then Herod did something that
he should have known not to do. Herod placed a Golden Eagle over the Great Gate,
the main point of entrance leading to the Temple. The purpose of the Eagle was to
honor Rome, who had graciously allowed Herod to rule in Judea.
The people were
incensed. They demanded that the Eagle be taken down from over the gate, but Herod
refused. The Golden Eagle remained looking down over all of those who came to
visit the Temple. And then, Herod got sick. It was rumored that the King of the
Jews was lying on his death bed. And so about forty men chose that moment to
rebel. They planned to go to the Great Gate and remove the Golden Eagle,
breaking it into pieces with axes. According to Josephus, about forty men used a
rope to let themselves down from the top of the Temple to the place where the
Golden Eagle hung over the main gate. But they were arrested by Herod’s guards.
Herod was so angered by the attempt to remove and destroy the Golden Eagle, that
he ordered the forty, and any others who led the forty into the plan, to be
burned to their deaths. Any other co-conspirators were left in the hands of the
regional officers to be executed in any way that they saw fit. In the end, the
rebels would die, and the attempt on the Golden Eagle seemed to breathe a
little life into the failing body of King Herod.
Prophecy is
hard, and some translations interpret this verse to read that “God will descend
like an eagle on his Temple.” But the New International Version translation
deserves some consideration. And it is not hard to imagine that the forty who
gathered at the Great Gate remembered these words from Hosea. “Blow the
trumpet, call a gathering of the faithful, because an Eagle is presiding over My
house; an eagle that is only there because of the sin of the people.” Looking
up at Herod’s Golden Eagle, it would have been easy to believe that the first
step of repentance was to remove the Eagle and, therefore, remove the sin of
the people. Herod’s actions did not just call judgment down on himself. He had
called the anger of God down on the people of Judea because the Roman Eagle could
only serve to mock the God of Israel, as documented in the writing of a Samaritan
prophet more than seven hundred years earlier.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Hosea 9
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