more quotation from the same Commentary:9 'In that hour, the Holy One, blessed be His
Name, exalts the Messiah to the heaven of heavens, and spreads over Him of the
splendour of His glory because of the nations of the world, because of the wicked
Persians. They say to Him, Ephraim, Messiah, our Righteousness, execute judgment upon
them, and do to them what Thy soul desireth.'
4. Thus Gfrörer can only hope that some Jewish parallelism may yet be discovered (!);
while Keim suggests, of course without a title of evidence, additions by the early Jewish
Christians. But whence and why these imaginary additions?
5. Yalkut on Is. ix. 1, vol. ii. p. 56.
6. Keim (Jesu von Na z. i. b, p. 564) seems not to have perused the whole passage, and,
quoting it at second-hand, has misapplied it. The passage (Yalkut on Is. lx. 1) has been
given before.
7. u. s. col. d.
8. The number is thus reached: as there are seventy nations, and ten of each are to take
hold on each of the four corners of a Jew's garment, we have 70 x 10 x 4 =2,800.
9. u.s. 11 lines further down.
In another respect these quotations are important. They show that such ideas were,
indeed, present to the Jewish mind, b ut in a sense opposite to the Gospel- narratives. In
other words, they were regarded as the rightful manifestation of Messiah's dignity;
whereas in the Evangelic record they are presented as the suggestions of Satan, and the
Temptation of Christ. Thus the Messiah of Judaism is the Anti-Christ of the Gospels. But
if the narrative cannot be traced to Rabbinic legend, may it not be an adaptation of an Old
Testament narrative, such as the account of the forty days' fast of Moses on the mount, or
of Elijah in the wilderness? Viewing the Old Testament in its unity, and the Messiah as
the apex in the column of its history, we admit - or rather, we must expect - throughout
points of correspondence between Moses, Elijah, and the Messiah. In fact, these may be
described as marking the three stages in the history of the Covenant. Moses was its giver,
Elijah its restorer, the Messiah its renewer and perfecter. And as such they all had, in a
sense, a similar outward consecration for their work. But that neither Moses nor Elijah
was assailed by the Devil, constitutes not the only, though a vital, difference between the
fast of Moses and Elijah, and that of Jesus. Moses fasted in the middle, Elijah at the
Presence of God;10 Elijah alone; Jesus assaulted by the Devil. Moses ha d been called up
by God; Elijah had gone forth in the bitterness of his own spirit; Jesus was driven by the
Spirit. Moses failed after his forty days' fast, when in indignation he cast the Tables of the
Law from him; Elijah failed before his forty days' fast; Jesus was assailed for forty days
and endured the trial. Moses was angry against Israel; Elijah despaired of Israel; Jesus
overcame for Israel.
10. The Rabbis have it, that a man must accommodate himself to the ways of the place
where he is. When Moses was on the Mount he lived of 'the bread of the Torah' (Shem.
R. 47).