Note 58 — IV THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH

Plato had already in his “Republic” sketched the picture of a “just man” passing his life unknown and unhonoured amidst suffering and persecution. His righteousness is put to the proof and he reaches the highest degree of virtue, not allowing himself to be shaken in his conduct. “The just man is scourged, racked, thrown into prison, blinded in both eyes, and finally, when he has endured all ills, he is executed, and he recognises that one should be determined not to be just but to appear so.” In Pharisaic circles he passed as a just man who by his own undeserved sufferings made recompense for the sins of the others and made matters right for them before God, as, for example, in the Fourth Book of the Maccabees the blood of the martyrs is represented as the expiatory offering on account of which God delivered Israel. The hatred of the unjust and godless towards the just, the reward of the just and the punishment of the unjust, were favourite themes for aphoristic literature, and they were fully dealt with in the Book of Wisdom, the Alexandrian author of which was presumably not unacquainted with the Platonic picture of the just man. He makes the godless appear conversing and weaving plots against the just. “Let us then,” he makes them say, “lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not to our liking and he is clean contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending the law and reproacheth us with our sins against our training. He professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He proved to be to us for the reproof of our designs. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits; he abstaineth from our ways as from filth; he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed and maketh his boast that God is his father. Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what will happen in the end of him. For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his enemies. Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture that we may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death: thus will he be known by his words.”58 “But the souls of the just,” continues the author of the Book of Wisdom, “are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us for utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men yet is their hopes full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them and found them worthy for himself. As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people and their Lord will rule for ever.”59 It could easily be imagined that these words, which were understood by the author of the Book of Wisdom of the just man in general, referred to the just man par excellence, the Messiah, the “son” of God in the highest sense of the word, who gave his life for the sins of his people. A reason was found at the same time for the shameful death of the Messiah. He died the object of the hatred of the unjust; he accepted contempt and scorn as did the Haman and Barabbas of the Feast of Purim, but only in order that by this deep debasement he might be raised up by God, as is said of the just man in the Book of Wisdom: “That is he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach: We fools accounted his life madness and his end to be without honour: Now is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints.”60