Walking thru The Minor Prophets – Conclusion

Preparing the Way for Messiah

With Malachi's final words, the Old Testament canon closes, and no further words of Scripture will be penned for nearly five hundred years, when the earliest epistles of Paul inspired the Galatians and Thessalonians. This Intertestamental Period proved a tumultuous time for Judean Jews, as empires fought over Palestine, the strategic land-bridge between Africa and Asia.

Though the Persian Empire held sway over the land of Judah when Malachi wrote, its hegemony was already being challenged in Anatolia (Asia Minor) by the upstart Greeks. The battles of Marathon (490 bc), Salamis (480 bc), Plataea (479 bc), and Mycale (479 bc) marked the end of Persian expansion into Europe. Beginning in 412 bc, Darius II used political and monetary means to influence existing inter-Greek rivalries, supporting one city-state then another to keep them occupied at home. His heir, Artaxerxes II, and his successors kept the Greeks at bay while the Persian Empire declined amid its own infighting and rebellions in various places.

Matters changed drastically with the invasion of Greek armies under Alexander of Macedon in 334 bc. After subduing Asia Minor, he turned south, defeating Darius III at the Battle of Issus (333 bc) and taking possession of Syria and the Levantine coast down to Tyre, where he was forced to set up a siege. Though this delayed him, he overcame Tyre's resistance by building a causeway out to the island refuge and put all the men to the sword. Except for Gaza, which he besieged and defeated, the rest of Palestine capitulated, including Jerusalem, in 332 bc. By 330 bc, he had not only taken Egypt, but he had also conquered all the Persian Empire to the borders of India.

Alexander, however, died before he could set up a unifying government over all the lands he had subdued. After his death in June of 323 bc, because he had no legitimate heir, his empire soon fell into turmoil. Forty years of war ensued among the Diadochi ("The Successors") before a four-way division of his empire was settled: Egypt under Ptolemy, Syria and the East under Seleucus, Asia Minor and Thrace under Lysimachus, and Macedonia under Antipater and later Antigonus. These Hellenistic kingdoms dominated these lands for the next 200-300 years.

During this time, Judah lay between Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria, and between 323-166 bc, its possession was hotly contested, as Daniel 11 testifies. From about 175 bc, when Antiochus Epiphanes came to the Syrian throne, the Jews suffered many religious and military outrages. These led to the Maccabean revolt in 166 bc, led by the priest Matthias and his sons, who defeated the Syrians in a series of battles, securing the Jews' independence. The Maccabees—Judas, Jonathan, and Simon—and then the Hasmonean dynasty, Simon's descendants, ruled Judah until Roman dominance under Pompey overcame it in 63 bc.

This march of history set the stage for the birth of Messiah, born late in the reign of Herod the Great, an Idumean client-king of Rome. During this time, the religion of the Jews had calcified into a judgmental, law-obsessed distortion of the way of life revealed by God in the Old Testament. It had also splintered into several major factions, among them the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Zealots, with which Jesus contended during His ministry. Because of the prophecies, many from the Minor Prophets as we have seen, the Jews were awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, but due to their many misunderstandings, when He came, "His own did not receive Him" (John 1:11), condemning Him to Roman execution by crucifixion.

Just as Messiah Himself confirmed to His disciples that the Old Testament prophesied of Him (Luke 24:44), in meeting the Minor Prophets we, too, have been directed repeatedly to Christ. In coming to know Him, we have the promise of eternal life in Yahwah's Kingdom.