Continuing this look
at the usages of “seventy-seven” in Scripture (in connection to the report of
Jesus calling for forgiveness to be offered seventy-seven times), in regards to
the lambs sacrificed, of which there were seventy-seven as part of the sin
offering, reference can be made to the fact that Matthew has already called attention
to Jesus as a “lamb led to the slaughtering block” (Isaiah 53:7b) with his
reference to the fourth verse of that same chapter of Isaiah’s prophetic work:
“but He lifted up our illnesses, He carried our pain,” which is to be found in
Matthew 8:17.
With the sacrifice of
Jesus becoming so inextricably linked to forgiveness (which is, in turn,
inextricably linked in the historic narrative of Israel to the end of a period
of judgment and exile), this connection becomes quite overt, strengthening the
insistence that Jesus also has Ezra in mind when He uses this particular number
in relation to the offering of forgiveness, which is a point that Matthew is
sure to drive home through his tailoring of the narrative. The twelve
male goats that were put forth as a sin offering are easily connected to the
twelve tribes of Israel, and by extension to the twelve chosen and named
disciples of Jesus. Naturally then, any talk of “three days,” which is
the amount of time spent Ezra is said to have spent in Jerusalem at the initial
point of the return (not to mention Ezra’s connection to the end of exile and
the rebuilding of the Temple), would immediately call to mind the “three days”
between the crucifixion and the Resurrection---the figurative tearing down and
re-building of the Temple.
Finally, as the wider
story of Ezra would be under consideration (if indeed Ezra is in view at all),
then also in view are thoughts of exile and exodus (Babylonian captivity and
return to the land). Though there had been an official decree by the king
of Persia that the Jerusalem Temple was to rebuilt and that the people were to
be allowed to return to the land, there was no sense of liberation communicated
through the historic works that commemorate this declaration and return.
In the ninth chapter of Ezra, just a few words away from the report of the
return to Jerusalem and the associated offerings (according to the way in which
Ezra is presented), Ezra reports on the mindset of the people by saying that
“Although we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our servitude.
He has extended kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, in that He
has revived us to restore the Temple of our God and to raise up its ruins and
to give us a protective wall around Judah and Jerusalem” (9:9).
Though they were indeed
in their own land and though they had been given a degree of liberty, they were
still subject to the king of Persia. As
such, their exodus remained incomplete and their state of exile continued.
So any implicit reference to Ezra would call to mind the general mindset there
expressed and quite possibly still held by the people of Israel in Jesus’ time
as they lived under the occupation of the Romans. While they had a degree
of liberty (based on the way that Rome operated), in no way would they have
considered themselves to be free. They were ruled over by Gentiles and
their tax collectors.
Just because there is
a mention of “seventy-seven” in Ezra, does that really mean that Jesus has Ezra
in His purview with his insistence of “seventy-seven” acts of forgiveness that
follows His directive to treat an at-fault or offending-but-not-yet-repentant
brother as a Gentile or tax collector? Along with that question, one must
continue to consider the potential reasons that stand behind the particular
structure that is to be found here in Matthew, as the author uses the words and
stories of Jesus to construct an ideal in the church community through which
love and forgiveness will be on offer, while also being sure to deal with the
continuously contentious issues surrounding Gentile inclusion within the
covenant people of God.
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