Texts in Conversation
1 Maccabees describes a group withdrawing to the wilderness in search of righteousness and judgment, echoing Isaiah’s call to do justice and what is right. The Maccabean movement deliberately depicted itself as following the Torah and the prophets.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 56:1
Hebrew Bible
1 This is what the Lord says, “Promote justice! Do what is right! For I am ready to deliver you; I am ready to vindicate you openly. 2 The people who do this will be blessed, the people who commit themselves to obedience, who observe the Sabbath and do not defile it, who refrain from doing anything that is wrong. 3 No foreigner who becomes a follower of the Lord should say, ‘The Lord will certainly exclude me from his people. ’The eunuch should not say, ‘Look, I am like a dried-up tree.’”
1 Maccabees 2:29
Deuterocanon
27 Mattathias cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying, “Whoever is zealous for the law and maintains the covenant, let him follow me!” 28 He and his sons fled into the mountains, and left all that they had in the city. 29 Then many who sought justice and judgment went down into the wilderness to live there— 30 they, their children, their wives, and their livestock—because evils were multiplied upon them. 31 It was told to the king’s officers and the forces that were in Jerusalem, the city of David, that certain men who had broken the king’s commandment had gone down into the secret places in the wilderness;
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Notes and References
"... The use of ‘righteousness’ to mean conformity to God’s will, usually synonymous with obedience to the commandments, occurs in the Hebrew Bible with some frequency (see Genesis 30:33; Deuteronomy 9:5; Jeremiah 22:13; Ezekiel 3:20; 18:20; 33:12; Hosea 10:12). Righteousness results from keeping the commandments (Deuteronomy 6:25). To conform to God’s will is called ‘to do righteousness’ (Genesis 18:19; Psalm 106:3; Isaiah 56:1; 58:2; 64:5; Ezekiel 18:22). God loves righteousness, but hates its opposite, wickedness (Psalm 45:7). Reference is sometimes made to the way or path of righteousness in order to describe a life characterized by conformity to God’s will (Proverbs 8:20). The word ‘righteousness’ is often used in synthetic parallelism with ‘judgment’ to mean the same as ‘righteousness’ used alone (Genesis 18:19; Proverbs 2:9; 21:3; Isaiah 5:16; Psalm 106:3; Proverbs 2:9; Jeremiah 22:13; Ezekiel 18:5). Because they have ‘righteousness,’ God delivers individual Israelites from the effects of his wrath on the nation (Ezekiel 14:14, 20). Likewise, in Proverbs having righteousness negatively delivers from danger and death and positively brings reward and life (10:2; 11:4–6). Since David walked in truth, righteousness and uprightness of heart, God shows him lovingkindness (1 Kings 3:6). On account of his righteousness, the psalmist says that he beholds the face of Yahweh (Psalm 17:15). Finally, a person can learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:10), pursue righteousness (Isaiah 51:1) and seek righteousness (Zephaniah 2:3). In non-sectarian texts from the second-Temple period, the term ‘righteousness’ also occurs with the meaning of conformity to God’s will, usually synonymous with obedience to the commandments ... In Sirach 16:22 there is found the phrase ‘acts of righteousness’, which is an objective genitive: doing righteous deeds. In 1 Maccabees 2:29, the author explains that many who were seeking righteousness and judgment went out to the wilderness in support of Mattathias; as in the Hebrew Bible, these two terms function as a hendiadys, referring to obedience to the commandments ..."
* 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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