Parshat Ki Teitzei4 min read

How the Chronicles of Jerahmeel Traced Israel Through Three Empires

Cyrus rebuilds the Temple with five things missing; Alexander bows to a priest; Rome signs a treaty with Judah Maccabee. Three empires, one people.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. What Persia Gave and Could Not Give
  2. Alexander at the Gate
  3. Rome and the Parchment That Bound an Alliance
  4. The Arm Hung at the Gate

What Persia Gave and Could Not Give

Cyrus announced the return in his first year. The exiles came back. The altar went up. The Temple walls rose again over the rubble of the first. A king of Persia had done what no Israelite army could manage while the empire held them, and the chronicler calls it a complete redemption.

Then the chronicler lists what the second Temple lacks.

Five things were in the first house that are absent from the second: the Ark of the Covenant, the heavenly fire, the Shekhinah, the spirit of prophecy, and the Urim and Thummim. Persia could write decrees and move armies. It could open roads and release captives. It could not return the divine presence or put fire back on the altar from heaven. The building stood whole. What filled it remained incomplete.

The next empire understood buildings differently.

Alexander at the Gate

When Alexander defeated Darius and turned his armies westward, Jerusalem lay in his path. The high priest came out to meet him. What happened at that meeting stayed in the memory of every later generation that read this chronicle. Alexander did not demand tribute first. He dismounted. He bowed.

His officers were confused. A king who had walked over every army between Macedonia and Persia was lowering himself before a priest in white robes. Alexander explained himself: this face had appeared to him in a dream in Macedonia before he left home. He had seen it then and knew that this priest's God had given him his victories.

The encounter inverted the usual logic of empire. Power normally flows from armies toward temples. Here the priest stood and the conqueror came forward. The high priest did not fight, did not negotiate, did not send envoys. He walked out in his vestments and waited. The dream in Macedonia had already arranged everything.

Rome and the Parchment That Bound an Alliance

The fourth beast in Daniel's vision was Rome, and the chronicler treats it as such: a thing that devoured, crushed, and trampled. Rome swallowed Greece, defeated Hannibal after eighteen battles it could not win, and grew into the largest force the western world had seen.

Then Judah Maccabee sent envoys to Rome.

Rome was fighting Antiochus. Judah was fighting Antiochus. The logic of the alliance was plain. The Romans received the Jewish envoys and debated in their senate. They voted. They sent bronze tablets back to Jerusalem inscribed with the terms: friendship, no tribute demanded, aid in case of attack, Israel not to be taken as a province. The treaty named Rome and Israel as equal parties.

That inscription on bronze was not salvation and the chronicler does not pretend it was. What it was: an empire that swallowed nations had recognized that this particular people could not simply be absorbed. The Maccabees had fought their way to a table where even Rome made agreements rather than simply issuing orders.

The Arm Hung at the Gate

Before the Roman treaty held, Nicanor came with an army and a mouth full of blasphemy. He stretched out his hand toward the Temple and swore to pull the priests down and build a feast hall in its place. Judah Maccabee prayed, fought, and on the thirteenth of Adar cut him down in battle. Nicanor's head and the hand he had stretched toward the Temple were severed, carried to Jerusalem, and hung at the Temple gate.

The chronicler does not editorialize. The arm hangs there as evidence. Three empires had moved across the map of Israel's story: one that rebuilt without restoring, one that bowed without converting, one that signed without saving. In each case the Temple and the priests who served it outlasted the empire's intentions.

Chronicles Of JerahmeelCyrusAlexanderRomeMaccabeesHistory
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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXXXVChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

The story of Israel's return from exile reads like a cascade of empires, each rising and falling at breathtaking speed. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, Cyrus attempted to rebuild the Temple in the first year of his reign, but Ahasuerus blocked the effort. After God destroyed both Ahasuerus and the wicked Haman, the new king allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the holy Temple, and repair the city without interference. This, the chronicle declares, was "a complete redemption."

The returning exiles rebuilt the Temple and its altar, but the second sanctuary lacked five things that the first had possessed: the Ark of the Covenant, the holy fire, the Shekhinah (divine presence), the spirit of prophecy, and the Urim and Thummim. The Second Temple stood, but it stood diminished.

The chronicle then leaps to the rise of Alexander of Macedon. Alexander waged war against Darius of Persia, defeating him and conquering his entire empire. He then swept through the nations, subjugating peoples across the known world. When Alexander reached Jerusalem, the high priest Shimon the Just went out to meet him in full priestly garments. Alexander dismounted and bowed before him. His stunned generals asked why the conqueror of nations would prostrate himself before a Jewish priest. Alexander replied that before every battle, he saw this man's likeness leading him to victory.

Alexander reigned twelve years and divided his kingdom among four chieftains before his death: Ptolemy received Egypt, Phillipos took Macedon, Seleucus and Nicanor received Syria and Babylon, and Antiochus, the great enemy of the Jews, was given Asia. The prophet Daniel had foreseen it all: the goat goring the ram, the kingdom shattered to the four winds of heaven.

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel XCVIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

The fourth beast in Daniel's vision had arrived. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, the kingdom of Rome rose against Greece just as that terrible fourth animal "devoured, crushed, and trampled upon everything." Rome conquered Antiochus and his 120 war elephants, then turned its ambitions toward the entire known world.

The chronicle pauses to tell the story of Rome's defining struggle: the war against Hannibal of Carthage. Hannibal crossed from Africa to Europe with an army "as numerous as the sand upon the seashore," sweeping through the lands of the Goths and Germania before invading Italy itself. In eighteen pitched battles, the Romans could not defeat him. At the battle of Canusi (Cannae), 90,000 Romans died in a single day, including the commander Aemilius.

When the Roman counselors debated surrendering, a young man named Scipio stood before the 320 elders and proposed a radical strategy: "Give me five legions. I will attack Africa itself. When Hannibal hears his homeland is burning, he will abandon Rome." The gamble worked. Scipio destroyed Carthage, hunted Hannibal to Egypt, and brought him back in chains. Hannibal drank poison and died. Rome became the supreme power on earth.

It was this Rome that Judah Maccabee approached for alliance. The Romans sent a letter of friendship, pledging mutual defense. But the chronicle also records Rome's dark side, the treachery of the priest Alkimos, who ate swine's flesh under Antiochus and then convinced King Demetrius to send armies against Judah. The general Nicanor tried diplomacy first, then treachery, then open war. Judah defeated him and hung his severed head and outstretched arm before the Temple gate, a gate called "the Gate of Nicanor" from that day forward. The wicked priest Alkimos met his own end suffocated in the sacred ashes he had desecrated, "for just is the Lord, who requites man according to his deeds."

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel XCIXChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

After Antiochus Eupator fell to Demetrius son of Seleucus, a new threat emerged. And this time it came from a Jewish traitor. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, a priest named Alkimos had eaten swine's flesh during the reign of Antiochus. Now he went to Demetrius and poisoned the king's mind against Judah Maccabee and the Hassidim, calling them rebels who would never let the kingdom have peace.

Demetrius sent Nicanor with an army to destroy Judah. Nicanor first tried deception, approaching Judah with words of peace and friendship, hoping to lure him into a trap. When Judah's men detected the treachery and the ambush failed, Nicanor turned to open war. He stretched out his hand toward God's Temple and swore an oath: "If you do not deliver Judah and his army into my hands, I will burn this Temple to the ground when I return."

The priests inside the sanctuary heard him. They wept and prayed before the altar: "O Lord, You chose this house to bear Your name. Avenge us against this man and his army." Nicanor marched to battle with full confidence. Judah, outnumbered, prayed for divine intervention, reminding God how He had sent an angel to destroy Sennacherib's 185,000 soldiers in a single night.

The battle was decisive. Nicanor's army was shattered, and Nicanor himself was killed. Judah's men cut off his head and the arm he had stretched out against God's Temple, and hung them before the Temple gate. That gate has been called "the Gate of Nicanor" from that day forward. The people sang the Psalms of David, concluding with "For He is good, and His mercy endures forever." The Jews celebrate this victory on the 13th of Adar, one day before Purim, with feasting and wine.

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