The Day of the Lord
Genesis 49:1; comp. Genesis Rabbah 98, “the Messianic end” ; Isaiah 2:1; also “the end,” Dent. 32:20; Psalms 73:17; Ben Sira 7:36, 28:6; comp. “Didache,” 16:3): The doctrine of the “last things.” Jewish eschatology deals primarily and principally with the final destiny of the Jewish nation and the world in general, and only secondarily with the future of the individual; the main concern of Hebrew legislator, prophet, and apocalyptic writer being Israel as the people of God and the victory of His truth and justice on earth. The eschatological view, that is, the expectation of the greater things to come in the future, underlies the whole construction of the history of both Israel and mankind in the Bible. The patriarchal history teems with such prophecies (Gen. 12:3, 16; 15:14; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4); the Mosaic legislation has more or less explicitly in view the relation of Israel to the nations and the final victory of the former (Ex. 19:5; Lev. 26:45; Num. 23:10, 24:17-24; Deut. 4:6; 7:6f; 28:1, 10; 30:3f; 32:43; 33:29). But it was chiefly the Prophets who dwelt with great emphasis upon the Day of the Lord as the future Day of Judgment. Originally spoken of as the day when Yhwh as the God of heaven visits the earth with all His terrible powers of devastation (comp. Gen. 19:24; Ex. 9:23, 11:4, 12:12; Josh. 10:11), the term was employed by the Prophets in an eschatological sense and invested with a double character: on the one hand, as the time of the manifestation of God’s punitive powers of justice directed against all that provokes His wrath, and, on the other hand, as the time of the vindication and salvation of the righteous. In the popular mind the Day of the Lord brought disaster only to the enemies of Israel; to His people it brought victory. But this is contradicted by the prophet Amos (Amos 3:2, 20). For Isaiah, likewise, the Day of the Lord brings terror and ruin to Judah and Israel (Isa. 2:12, 10:3, 22:5; comp. Micah 1:3) as well as to other nations (Isa. 14:25, 24-25). In the same measure, however, as Israel suffers defeat at the hand of the great world-powers, the Day of the Lord in the prophetic conception becomes a day of wrath for the heathen world and of triumph for Israel. In Zeph. 1-3 it is a universal day of doom for all idolaters, including the inhabitants of Judea, but it ends with the glory of the remnant of Israel, while the assembled heathen powers are annihilated (3:8-12). This feature of the final destruction, before the city of Jerusalem, of the heathen world-empires becomes prominent and typical in all later prophecies (Ezek. 38., the defeat of Gog and Magog; Isa. 13:6-9, Babel’s fall; Zech. 12:2f, 14:1f; Hag. 1:6; Joel 4:2f [3]; Isa. 66:15f), the Day of the Lord being said to come as “a fire which refines the silver” (Mal. 3:2f, 9; comp. Isa. 33:14f). Especially strong is the contrast between the fate which awaits the heathen and the salvation promised Israel in Isa. 34-35, whereas other prophecies accentuate rather the final conversion of the heathen nations to the belief in the Lord (Isa. 2:1f, 49 46:6-21, Zech. 8:21f, 14:16f).
The general overview of Eschatological matters considered, all things pointing to Christ. While we do take note that various extra-canonical books are included, and we take note that they are cited by these studies (such as Genesis Rabbah 98, or Ben Sira, above), we do not consider them to be “authoritative”. Regardless, we study these these interpretations as they relate to the books of Moses and the prophets which are in the Canon of Christian Scripture. The Jews did find many things right about the coming of Jesus Christ in His first coming–His virgin birth, his origin in Bethlehem, his often ‘unknown’ origin, etc. But, they missed the larger things, such as justice and mercy. Their study is important, but nearly as important as Jesus Himself.