The idea of redemptive death was
familiar throughout the ancient world. The myriad human bones buried under the
gates and thresholds of ancient near eastern cities and temples bear mute
witness to the belief that the death of these victims conferred prosperity on
what was built over their remains. Among Israel’s neighbours, human sacrifice
was routine. It was seen as obtaining manifold benefits for the offerer:
prosperity, fertility of land and people, victory in warfare. Animal sacrifice
was widespread too. But it was held to be less effective than human sacrifice.
The principle was simple: the bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the benefit.
This led to the idea that the
death of a god could bring about the greatest benefits of all. In the city of
Ugarit, the death of Ba’al was regarded as conferring fertility and possibly atonement
for sin to the city (KTU 1.40). And the deaths of Osiris, Dumuzi, and
Marduk were all thought to bestow benefits on their people and their lands.
In Israel, sacrifices were linked
with such benefits as purification from defilement and sin, propitiation of the
deity, blessing, and atonement. Of course, human sacrifice was excluded from
the cult (Deut. 12.31). But the logic of sacrifice as inexorable, and Israel
recognized its awesome power (Gen. 22.12-18; 2 Kgs 3.26-27; Mic. 6.6-7) and
could not always resist it (1 Kings 11.7-13; 2 Chr 28.2-3; 33.6; Jer. 32.35).
In post-biblical times, the books
of Maccabees depict seven martyred brothers and their mother as a redemptive
sacrifice: ‘Let the Almighty’s wrath, justly fallen on the whole of our nation,
end in me and in my brothers’ (2 Macc. 7.37). Their death is ‘a ransom for the
sin of our nation; through the blood of these righteous ones and through the
propitiation of their death the divine providence rescued Israel’ (4 Macc.
17.21-22; cf. 18.3-5).
Aqedah traditions present the
binding and offering-up of Isaac in Genesis 22 as a sacrifice conferring merit
and forgiveness on Israel: ‘When Israel’s children sin against you and enter
into sorrow, remember on their behalf the binding of their father Isaac.
Forgive them and redeem them from their sorrows’ (Midr. Tan. Vayyera 46).
In the Talmud, Moses’ sufferings
and death are presented as atoning. We read that he was buried near Beth-Peor
to atone for Israel’s sin there (Deut. 34:6; Num. 25:1-18).
R. Hama son of R. Hanina also said:
Why was Moses buried near Beth-Peor? To atone for the incident at Peor . . . R.
Simlai expounded: Why did Moses our teacher yearn to enter the land of Israel?
Did he want to eat its fruits or satisfy himself from its bounty? But thus spake
Moses, ‘Many precepts were commanded to Israel which can only be fulfilled by
me.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, ‘Is it only to receive the reward
that thou sleekest? I ascribe it to thee as if thou didst perform them’; as it
is said: Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall
divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors; for he bare the sins of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors (Isa. 53.12). (B. Sot. 14a)
Similarly, the rabbinic sages are
said to have suffered for Israel’s sake. The midrash Elleh Ezkerah tells
of the Tan Martyrs who accepted, as the urging of the angel Gabriel, to be killed
as a sacrifice by Hadrian to atoner for the ancient national guilt of Joseph’s
betrayal. Genesis Rabbah 96.5 tells how Rabbi’s suffering from toothache
for thirteen years spared the women of Israel from death in childbirth and
miscarriage throughout that time, and how, when he was healed by Elijah, ḥiyya exclaimed, ‘Woe to you, you women
in childbirth and pregnant women in Israel.’ Similarly, Pesikta de-Rav
Kahana §9.24 has Eleazar b. Simeon’s widow say of her husband that, ‘When
he would work in Torah-study, having completed all that he could do, he would
go to lie down, and say, “May all the sorrows of Israel come upon me,” and they
would come upon him.’
It was a natural step for Israel
to imagine the ultimate sacrifice: a righteous divinely-appointed king. And
that is just what we find in relation to the Josephite Messiah. Joseph’s
sacrificial firstborn ox, in Deuteronomy 33.17, implies some form of
propitiatory sacrifice. Isaiah’s suffering king 52.13-53.12, whom so many
rabbinic commentators link with Messiah ben Joseph, is certainly an atonement
(Isa. 53.10). Atonement is implied in the death of Zechariah’s Joseph-like
king, modelled on Isaiah’s pierced king, whose death opens a fountain to atone for
the blood-guilt of the house of David and the dweller in Jerusalem (13.1).
In The Testament of Benjamin, we read of the promised saviour from
Joseph that, like Isaiah’s figure, ‘as spotless for the lawless will be given
up, and as sinless for the godless will he die’. Bavli Sukkah 52a speaks of two
deaths in Zechariah 12.10—those of Messiah ben Joseph and of the Evil
Inclination—and implies that the death of the Evil Inclination is linked to the
death of Messiah ben Joseph. In Pesikta Rabbati 37.2, Ephraim Messiah
one the one who ‘bore sins on our behalf and awful sufferings, by means of
which the earliest and latest [generations] are atoned for.’ In Sefer
Zerubbabel, the Messiah, later identified as Ben Joseph, is described as ‘a
man despised’ (ish nibzeh), a reference to Isaiah 53.3. Nistarot
Rav Shimon ben Yoḥai quotes the Talmudic dictum—‘If they are not pure,
Messiah ben Ephraim will come; and I they are pure, Messiah ben David will come—and
then cites Isaiah 53.3 in this regard. Sa’adya says of Messiah ben Joseph that,
He might be compared to one who purges
with fire those members of the nation who have committed grave sins, or to one
who washes with lye those of its constituents who have been guilty of slight
infractions, as it is said thereafter: For he is like a refiner’s fire, and
fuller’s soap (Mal. 3.12).
Likewise, Zohar Ki Tetze §21
and Vayaqhel §355 link Isaiah 53.4-5 with Messiah ben Joseph, as do Alshekh,
Laniado, Altschuler, and Horowitz quite explicitly. (David C. Mitchell, Messiah
ben Joseph [rev ed.; Campbell Publications, 2021], 252-55)
Mitchell elsewhere quoted Schürer (a critic of the thesis the
death of Messiah ben Joseph is propitiatory) who wrote that
It was an idea relating to the
Messiah quite familiar to rabbinic Judaism, namely that the perfectly just man
not only fulfils all the commandments, but also atones through suffering for
past sins, and that the excessive suffering of the just is for the benefit of
others. (E. Schürer The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus
Christ (175 B.C. - A.D. 135) 1901-09 ET [Vermes et al.) II.549, in
ibid., 252)
