Hanukkah: Flames that Don’t Consume and the All-Consuming Fire
“The Story of Hanukkah,” by Ori Sherman
This article is part of a series on the holidays and calendar of the Hebrew Scriptures. You can read our other articles about biblical Jewish feasts here.
The days are getting shorter and the nights longer, and it has been months since the last Jewish holiday. In the cold, rainy, and dark season of winter, tucked in-between the fall feasts and the spring holidays, is Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication.
Growing up in the United States, I was vaguely aware of Hanukkah as one of the “happy holidays” that came with the snow, like Christmas and Kwanzaa, and I knew the basic story of the miracle of the oil in the menorah. I would eat sufganiyot and play dreidel for chocolate gelt with my Jewish friends from school, but lost any greater significance of the holiday among the Advent and Christmas festivities of my family. Not until my first trip to Israel did I give Hanukkah any serious thought.
I first came to Israel to attend a friend’s wedding but arrived a couple of weeks early to have time to explore the holy land properly. The day I landed was a Friday, and that evening I went to Rabbi Mordechai’s house for Shabbat. Rabbi Mordechai is an American Modern Orthodox rabbi living in Jerusalem, and a large congregation in New York supports him. One of his principle ministries is to host huge Shabbat dinners in his family’s small Jerusalem apartment. That night, I was packed in with what felt like a hundred people, sipping chicken soup, and listening to what the rabbi had to say. Since it was a week or so before Shavuot (Pentecost), I remember the chief topic that the rabbi addressed was that American Jews gave Shavuot, one of the moedim pilgrim feasts listed in Leviticus 23 much less significance than Hanukkah. The scriptures did not even record the origin of the minor holiday. With a heavy air of disapproval, Rabbi Mordechai said, “The giving of the Law celebrated on Shavuot is the pinnacle event of Judaism, where Hashem revealed himself to us at Sinai, and we were born as a nation of priests! What is Hanukkah to that?”
While I was grateful to be in Israel during the celebration of Shavuot, the rhetorical question of Rabbi Mordechai stuck in my brain: “What is Hanukkah in comparison with the biblical feasts?”
The historical backdrop for Hanukkah is laid out in 1 Maccabees 4. Now the books of the Maccabees are not considered canonical by any significant branches of Judaism or Protestant denominations of Christianity. However, they are included in the Apocryphal intertestamental texts that are valuable “for instruction in life and manners, but not for the establishment of doctrine.”[1] So, for our instruction in the history of Hanukkah—but without making any doctrinal claims—let us recount the passage that describes the first Hanukkah.
The book of 1 Maccabees describes the battles at Emmaus and Beth-zur, and how, against all odds, the Judaeans faithful to the covenant of YHWH with their forefathers, led by Judas Maccabee, were able to expel the much larger pagan Seleucid forces. These troops of the evil Antiochus IV Epiphanes had been occupying Israel and wreaking havoc on the Temple and Jewish life. After miraculously defeating these mighty enemies, Judas Maccabee said to his brothers,
“‘Behold, our enemies are crushed; let us go up to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it.’ So all the army assembled, and they went up to Mount Zion. And they saw the sanctuary desolate, the altar profaned, and the gates burned. In the courts, they saw bushes sprung up as in a thicket, or as on one of the mountains. They also saw the chambers of the priests in ruins. Then they rent their clothes, and mourned with great lamentation, and sprinkled themselves with ashes. …Then they took unhewn stones, as the law directs, and built a new altar like the former one. They also rebuilt the sanctuary and the interior of the Temple, and consecrated the courts. They made new holy vessels, and brought the lampstand, the altar of incense, and the table into the Temple. Then they burned incense on the altar and lighted the lamps on the lampstand, and these gave light in the Temple. They placed the bread on the table and hung up the curtains. Thus they finished all the work they had undertaken.
Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, which is the month of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-eighth year, they rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt offering which they had built. At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals. All the people fell on their faces and worshiped and blessed Heaven, who had prospered them. So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and offered burnt offerings with gladness; they offered a sacrifice of deliverance and praise. They decorated the front of the Temple with golden crowns and small shields; they restored the gates and the chambers for the priests, and furnished them with doors. There was very great gladness among the people, and the reproach of the Gentiles was removed.
Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year at that season the days of the dedication of the altar should be observed with gladness and joy for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth day of the month of Chislev.”[2]
Careful readers will be surprised that the most famous miracle of Hanukkah— that the Temple menorah which only had enough consecrated oil to burn for one day, burned for eight days until more consecrated oil could be made—does not make its appearance in this origin story of the Feast of Dedication. In fact, an account of this miracle does not occur until it is put down in the Talmud[3] 600 or so years after the Maccabee defeat of Antiochus in 165 BC, creating significant time gap between the purported miracle and the record of it. However, as early as the first century, the Feast of Dedication was known as a Festival of Lights. Josephus records this in his work, “Antiquities of the Jews”: “From that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that hence was the name given to the festival.”[4]
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Sinai: Fire that Does Not Consume
1 Maccabees and the Talmud chronicle the straightforward history of Hanukkah and its observance. Though this feast does not get airtime in the Hebrew Bible, the miracle of the fire that does not consume the oil does have significant Biblical precedent. Take, for instance, Moses and the burning bush of Exodus 3:1-6. Moses is shepherding the sheep of his father-in-law at the foot of what would later be known to him as the mountain of God, Mount Sinai (here called Horeb), but what must have then seemed like an ordinary mountain. The angel of the LORD appears to Moses, wreathed in flame in a bush. Moses notices that the bush is on fire, but is not consumed, and decides to go in for a closer look. God sees that Moses notices Him and tells Moses to take off his shoes because he is on holy ground. After commissioning Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt, God does an amazing thing—He reveals a part of Himself, His name: I AM WHO I AM.[5]
After the Exodus from Egypt, when Moses returns to the mountain of God shepherding the Hebrew people, God reveals Himself again in a fire that does not consume, this time as a flame on the top of Mount Sinai.[6] This fiery manifestation of God’s presence was also paired with a revelation: the giving of the Law.
Perhaps these were the stories echoing in the minds of the Maccabees as they rededicated the Temple and experienced the miracle of the consecrated oil. For centuries Israel had been without a prophet, and the silence of God during the national turmoil surrounding mighty Seleucid empire’s desecration of the Temple and the attempt to assimilate the holy people to the pagan Greek way of life must have caused pain and doubt among the faithful of Israel. Even their victory in battle, which could only be described as miraculous, had a shadow of a doubt. Was it the hand of the LORD that delivered the Judaeans, or was it the strategic zealotry of the Maccabean revolt? To have the miracle of the light, the quiet assurance of God’s presence in the cleansed Temple, was a testimony, in the midst of the intertestamental period, of God’s continued attention and presence amongst His people.
Zion: An All-Consuming Fire
Nearly two hundred years later, in that same Temple on Mount Zion, Jesus of Nazareth walked along Solomon’s Portico on the Feast of Dedication, that is, Hanukkah.[7] Perhaps, because of the holiday and the location, people surrounded the man rumoured to be the Messiah. Could He be the greater Judas Maccabee, destined to lead Israel to defeat all her enemies and usher in an era of peace and prosperity? “Tell us plainly,” the people demand, “are you the Messiah?”
Perhaps thinking about His recent teaching, revealing Himself as the Good Shepherd, or maybe He was thinking about Moses, shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep or shepherding the people of Israel in the shadow of Mount Sinai, Jesus replied: “I have already told you, and you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.”
Perhaps thinking about His recent miracle where He opened the eyes of a man born blind and told him that He was the Son of Man, a work that revealed the divinity of Jesus and the blindness of its most of its witnesses, or maybe thinking of Moses who had eyes to see Him in the burning bush, Jesus continued speaking to the crowd deaf to His teaching, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
Then in a moment of profound revelation, Jesus declares, “I and the Father are one.”
Nothing Jesus could have said at that moment would have been more wondrous and disastrous. The people had been hoping for a Messiah, a greater Judas Maccabee. Instead, they received a type of antichrist claiming to be God, another Antiochus Epiphanes (Epiphanes means “god manifest”). They immediately pick up stones to kill him, the prescribed punishment for blasphemy.
“For which of my good works are you going to stone me?” asked Jesus sardonically.
“Not for your works, but for blasphemy, since you claim to be God,” answered the people.
Utterly unperturbed by the violent crowd, Jesus begins to argue with them from the scriptures. Drawing from Psalm 82, Jesus says, “Is it not written in the Law that I said, ‘You are gods’?” Jesus was speaking of the divine council, the angelic host that is part of the heavenly family of God. “If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” In other words, Jesus is not only claiming membership in the divine council of God, but also declaring that He is greater than all the other divine beings. By saying, “the Father is in me, and I am in the Father,” Jesus is claiming ultimate authority in heaven, and appeals to the testimony of the miraculous signs of His ministry.
With the charge of blasphemy seemingly confirmed, the people sought to have Jesus arrested, but He was able to escape from the Temple crowds.
Light and Life to All He Brings
The Temple where the crowds sought to kill Jesus was the same Temple that Simeon had prophesied over the child Jesus at His dedication that He would be, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”[8] It was also this same Temple that Jesus left to sit on the Mount of Olives to teach on the desecration and destruction of yet another Temple before the great and glorious Day of the LORD. He warned about the various zealots and Maccabee-like leaders that would claim to be the Messiah of Israel: “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”[9]
When this Son of Man was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected, He instructed His disciples to remain in Jerusalem to wait for the baptism of fire that John the Baptist had prophesied.[10] Then, with the promise of the Holy Spirit coming and a charge to be witnesses of His coming kingdom to the whole world, Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives. The disciples returned to Jerusalem, when the day of Shavuot arrived, they gathered together in one place. They heard a sound of a mighty rushing wind and divided flames of fire that did not consume rested on those present, and they began to speak in tongues, speaking revelation in a myriad of languages.
Many years later, well after the destruction of the second Temple, one of these disciples would be on the island of Patmos, where he would see a vision about the ultimate Revelation of Jesus the Messiah. This Jesus— with eyes like blazing fire and walking among lampstands—showed John “things which must soon take place.”[11] After the tribulation, the Messiah will be revealed in fire with His angels[12], defeat the armies of the Antichrist, renew of the heavens and the earth, cast Satan to his eternal death, and be presented with the new Jerusalem, His bride. There will be no Temple in this New Jerusalem because her “Temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”[13] The city lit by the glory of God is the ultimate fulfilment of Simeon’s prophetic declaration over the child Jesus, the words of the prophet Isaiah (“And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”[14]), the command that the lampstand be kept regularly burning as a statute forever,[15] as well as the culmination of the pattern of the Lord manifesting His presence as light as He reveals something of His nature.
So, though Hanukkah only receives a brief mention in John’s gospel, the story and principles of the feast of dedication permeate the scriptures. Though Hanukkah is not an appointed time laid out by Moses, its lessons are valuable: our God manifests His presence as fire that does not burn out. He reveals Himself. He is greater than Moses. He is God and Messiah, the Son of Man and the Son of God. He is the leader of the assembly of heaven. He is coming again that He would make our faith sight and our darkness light. “Therefore let us be grateful to receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is an all-consuming fire.”[16]
Amen. Maranatha.
Devon Phillips is just a pilgrim longing for the Day of the revealing of the sons of God and the redemption of our bodies. Meanwhile, she is privileged to serve in the Middle East with Frontier Alliance International and contributes regularly to THE WIRE. She can be reached at devon@faimission.org.
[1] This is how the apocryphal books are treated in the 39 Articles of Religion detailed in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, and expressed the general attitudes of the Protestant Reformation pertaining to the value of literature not considered canonical.
[2] 1 Maccabees 4:36-39, 47-59
[3] Babylonian Talmud. Shabbat 21b.
[4] Josephus, “Antiquities of the Jews.” 12:319, 325.
[5] Exodus 3:14
[6] Exodus 19:18
[7] John 10:22-23
[8] Luke 2:32
[9] Matthew 24:26-27
[10] Acts 1:4-5
[11] Revelation 1:1
[12] 2 Thessalonians 1:7
[13] Revelation 21:22–27
[14] Isaiah 60:3
[15] Leviticus 24:3
[16] Hebrews 12:28