Texts in Conversation
1 Maccabees describes a time of peace under Simon when everyone sat under their own vine and fig tree, echoing Micah’s vision of future peace and prosperity. This presents Simon’s leadership as the fulfillment of this hope.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Micah 4:4
Hebrew Bible
2 Many nations will come, saying, “Come on! Let’s go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the temple of Jacob’s God, so he can teach us his ways and we can live by his laws.” For instruction will proceed from Zion, the Lord’s message from Jerusalem. 3 He will arbitrate between many peoples and settle disputes between many distant nations. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not use weapons against other nations, and they will no longer train for war. 4 Each will sit under his own grapevine or under his own fig tree without any fear. The Lord of Heaven’s Armies has decreed it. 5 Though all the nations follow their respective gods, we will follow the Lord our God forever. 6 “In that day,” says the Lord, “I will gather the lame and assemble the outcasts whom I injured.
Date: 600–501 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
1 Maccabees 14:12
Deuterocanon
10 He provided food for the cities and furnished them with means of defense, until the glory of his name was known to the end of the earth. 11 He made peace in the land, and Israel rejoiced with great joy. 12 Each man sat under his vine and his fig tree, and there was no one to make them afraid. 13 No one was left in the land who fought against them. The kings were defeated in those days. 14 He strengthened all those of his people who were humble. He searched out the law, and every lawless and wicked person he took away.
Date: 134–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The author celebrates Simon’s achievements even more expansively, asserting that “the land had rest all the days of Simon” (1 Maccabees 14:4), as it had enjoyed in the days of Solomon (1 Kings 5:4). The shalom that had been promised to Israel since the time of the prophets became reality at last under his rule ... These images stem from the prophecies of Micah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, who promised that “old men and old women will sit again in Jerusalem’s streets” while “the land will be sown in peace” and “the vine shall bear its fruit and the ground its produce” (Zechariah 8:4, 12; see also Ezekiel 34:27) and that the people would “all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4). The prophecies about a renewed, restored Zion had come to fulfillment under Simon’s rule ..."
David A. DeSilva, The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 143.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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