Sibylline Oracle

After the dark days, Baruch saw a last “bright waters” which indicate there will be “eternal peace on the throne of the kingdom” (Chapters 73-76). This is the messianic age when health will descend like dew and joy will encompass the earth. Wild animals will serve men and “asps and dragons” will subject themselves to a child. Those who work the fields will never tire because the produce will shoot out speedily.

Baruch responds to the vision and interpretation in prayer and worship (chapter 75) and he is instructed to wait forty days and he will depart from the earth (chapter 76). He assembles the people and explains to the (briefly) his vision and encourages them to hold to the law, since the reason Zion fell is the people forgot the law (chapter 77). The people understand this and request Baruch write a letter to the “brothers in Babylon” that they too may know this revelation from God. There is a little hint here of a difference between Jews in Jerusalem and Jews in the Diaspora. The Jerusalem Jews are concerned their brothers living far away keep the law and see their responsibility in ensuring the Jews in Babylon keep the Law correctly. Is this a hint at the problems between Palestine and Diaspora Jews in the pre-70 era discussed earlier?

Baruch writes a letter to the nine and a half tribes which are living in Babylon (chapters 78-87) explaining to them the Lord justly chastised the nation because they were unrighteous.  He reports what happened when Nebuchadnezzar invaded the city (79) and his vision of the angels around the city who allowed Nebuchadnezzar to take Zion itself (80). He gives them some word of consolation as well, that the Mighty One is a God of Grace and has shown him the “mysteries of the times and the coming periods” (81).

He describes the coming time of justice for God’s people when everything will be put right and the nation will be avenged (82-83). God is fair in all of his judgments, for “if he judges us not according to the multitude of his grace, woe to all us who are born” (84:11).  The youth of the world has passed away and the coming of the “times” is nearly here: the pitcher is full, the ship is near the harbor, etc. (85). When those days come he will purge the world of sin and destroy those who are polluted by sin (85:15).

Baruch asks a further question about those who face woe and suffering in that time (chapter 52). He falls asleep and has a vision of a cloud coming up from a great sea (chapter 53). The cloud flashes lightning and great water begins to pour out of it. The water alternates between black and bright, finally pouring out a great amount of black water. The lightning grows in intensity and finally occupies the whole world. When he awakes, he asks the Mighty One for an explanation of this dream (chapter 54).

Baruch knows the dream concerns those who are in sin and about to be judged. Verses 19-20 are curious because they teach that Adam is responsible for his own sin and each of us, when we sin, become our own Adam. This is a semi-Pelagian if not Pelagian view of the imputation of sin and quite different than the view of Paul in Romans 5 and 1 Cor. 15:24, in Adam we all sin.

The dream is interpreted by the Lord as encompassing all of the history of Israel in the alternating waters (Chapters 55-74). The great cloud was the length of the days of his world.

• The first black waters – Adam and the first sin (56:5-16).
• The second bright waters – Abraham and his generation, but also the hope of the “world which will be renewed” (57).
• The third black waters – the sins the nation committed in Egypt (58).
• The fourth bright waters – the coming of Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua, and Caleb (59). Moses is said to have been shown all sorts of the “mysteries” of God such as the weight of the winds, the number of the raindrops, the height of the air and the greatness of Paradise along with the worlds to come. This makes Moses into a prototype of the apocalyptic prophet.
• The fifth black waters – the works of the Amorites, which polluted even Israel in those days (60).
• The sixth bright waters – David and Solomon and the building of Zion (61).
• The seventh black waters – The perversion of ideas in the rule of Jereboam (62).
• The eighth bright waters – The righteousness and integrity of Hezekiah (63).
• The ninth black waters – The sins of Manasseh (64-65).
• The tenth bright waters – The purity of the generation of Josiah (66). On account of Josiah “precious glories have been created and prepared.”
• The eleventh black waters – The disaster of the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. (67).
• The twelfth bright waters – The world which is to come when Zion is rebuilt again and the nations will honor Zion, after the fall of many nations (68).

After the twelve waters, Baruch saw some “last black waters” which were blacker than all the others he had seen. These waters are a description of the days which are coming when the “world has ripened and the harvest of seed of the evil ones and the good ones has come . . .” (Chapters 69-72). It is a time when the poor will outnumber the rich, when the wise are silent that the fools speak, the impious will be exalted over the brave. There will be war; those who save themselves from war will die in an earthquake; those who save themselves from the earthquake will die in the fire; those who save themselves from the fire will die in the famine (70:8-9).

Following the common structure of the book, Baruch waits seven days then prays again to the Lord (48:1-24). He acknowledges that God establishes times and commands things that will take place. God is eternal, but humans live short lives; therefore Baruch asks for protection for the people and preservation for the nation (the elect). They will keep the Law of God and they will not mingle with the nations as long as the Law supports the (23-24). The Lord responds to this prayer and answers some of these concerns (44:25-50). Nothing will be destroyed, the Lord says, unless it has acted wickedly.

Baruch himself is to be “taken up” and preserved out of the time which is coming (44:30-31). The last days are described as peaceful, people will not realize judgment is coming. This is similar to Jesus in the Olivet Discourse describing “those days” as the days of Noah, simply a peaceful normal time, the judgment comes suddenly (Matt 24:37, Luke 17:26). Another similar aspect to the teaching of Jesus here is that while the judgment as unexpected, it was not without warnings (Matt 24:6, 11, 24, for example). The people who are judged are simply unaware spiritually and cannot discern the “signs of the times.”

Baruch asks the Lord about the splendor of the coming days (chapter 49). The Lord’s response (chapters 50-51) is a description of the messianic age. The earth will give back the dead (50:2-4) who will live again and recognize each other (50:4). What is more, the righteous dead will be “greater than the angels.”

2 Baruch 51:12-14 And the excellence of the righteous will then be greater than that of the angels. For the first will receive the last, those whom they expected; and the last, those of whom they had heard that they had gone away. For they have been saved from this world of affliction and have put down the burden of anguishes.

Those who despised the Law will be judged and go away to be tormented. Miracles will appear for the saved and the “extent of paradise will spread out before them.” This eschatological reversal is typical of Jesus’ parables; wheat is gathered up and stored in the barn but the weeds are gathered and thrown on the fire.

In order to be prepared for this coming Anointed One and the judgment he brings, people ought to not despise God’s law and “mingle” with the nations. Here we have a reflection of the problem between Jews who sought to keep the Law, probably the Palestinian Jew, and those who made some modifications to the Law so that they could live outside the Land (the Diaspora). Those Jews who lived outside Israel had several “boundary markers” (food laws, circumcision, Sabbath and synagogue worship), but in many other ways they lived and worked alongside Gentiles. It is possible some of these activities were considered to be compromises by those who lived in the Land, compromises which ran the risk of judgment when Messiah comes. The primary example of this sort of belief is Rabbi Saul prior to the Damascus Road experience.

Paul does not merely claim to be a Pharisee – he modifies this claim with the words “according to zeal, a persecutor of the church.” Paul was “zealous” to keep the law to the point that he was willing to persecute those that did not conform to the Law. For a Pharisee to say he was a zealous keeper of the Law, the Jewish listener in the first century may have thought of Judas Maccabees, the forefather of the Pharisees himself, and his zealous defense of things Jewish in the Revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes. In 1 Maccabees 2:24-29, for example, when Mattahias sees the other Jews breaking the Law “he burned with zeal and his heart was stirred . . . he burned with zeal for the law.”

This zealousness took the form of an armed rebellion against the Seleucids and any who supported Hellinization in Israel.  Zeal in the first century was, in the words of N. T. Wright, “something that you did with a knife” (What Saint Paul Really Said, 27). Along with Judas Maccabees, Phineas (Num 25:1-18) and Elijah (1 Kings 19) are examples of Old Testament characters that burned with a zealous commitment to the Lord that expressed itself in a willingness to challenge the evil head-on, killing those that practiced idolatry themselves if need be. If the Jews were to be ready when the Anointed One comes, then the Law needs to be kept now. Zeal might very well express itself in a violent reaction against those on the fringes who were “mingling.”

This zeal for the law reflected in Baruch may play into the background of the book of Galatians and the controversy of Gentiles keeping the Law. As Paul began to move the church into fully Gentile regions (Galatia, in Acts 13, the “first” missionary journey), he taught that Gentiles did not have to keep the Law. We read in Acts 15 and Gal. 1-2 that some believers from the Pharisees disagreed with Paul and went to some of the churches Paul had founded, allegedly under the authority of James, and taught that Gentiles had to be circumcised. The issue is whether Gentiles who believe Jesus is the Messiah are converting to Judaism – if so, they must be circumcised and, as Paul fully recognizes, keep the whole Law. Why would Pharisees care what was happening in synagogues in Galatia?

It may have been the belief that those who “mingle with the nations” will be judged when the Messiah comes, as found in Baruch 42-43. After A.D. 70 this belief could have become even more dramatic since it appears God has in fact judged the Jews for unbelief. Separation from the growing Christian movement would have been critical.

In summary, Baruch represents a Judaism which believes God will send a Messiah at some time to overcome the Romans (the oppressive last kingdom) and establish a time of peace and prosperity in the Land. This Anointed One will judge on Mount Zion and punish all those who have persecuted, but also those who have not kept the Law and “mingled with the nations.”