Of Kings and Queens and Jubilees

Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee 1897

I spent a few weeks in England recently and was inevitably caught up in the four day public holiday marking Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee - the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.  Elizabeth is one of only two British monarchs to have reached their Diamond Jubilee.  Only her great-great-grandmother Victoria reigned for that long a time.

Thames Pageant. Photo: John Pannell

The celebrations were spectacular and reflected Britain’s love of ceremonial splendour mixed with a warm and genuine affection for the Queen herself.  They included a pageant of 1,000 ships on the River Thames and a huge concert ending in a stunning firework display outside Buckingham Palace.  Street parties were held across the country.  Thousands of beacons were lit creating a river of fire that linked all the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations.  The finale was the appearance of the Queen and the Royal Family on the palace balcony to acknowledge the cheers of the many thousands of people who had gathered there and to watch a fly past by planes of the Royal Air Force.
 
Nowadays in the world at large a jubilee has come to mean something quite straightforward - the celebration of a special anniversary.  The original concept from the Torah is at once more specific and more complex.

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and you shall return every man unto his possession, and you shall return every man unto his family.  Leviticus 25, v10..

The Torah details laws relating to agriculture, to the ownership of property and to the ownership of Israelite slaves in the jubilee year.  It was a year in which the earth itself rested, in which real estate was returned to its ancestral owners and in which those who had sold themselves into slavery to pay off their debts were granted their freedom.  The last jubilee was celebrated in the time of the prophet Ezekiel. 
 
No king of Israel or Judah during the biblical period reigned for as long as Elizabeth.  Two kings of Judah, Uzziah son of Amatzia and Menashe son of Hezekiah, ruled for more than 50 years and so reached what in modern terms would have been their Golden Jubilees.  They each came to the throne whilst they were still young.  Uzziah was sixteen years old at the start of his reign and Menashe only twelve.  Menashe’s grandson Josiah, however, was even younger - just eight years old when he began to rule over Judah.

Rembrandt's Uzziah

 
Uzziah started out well.  He “sought G-d” and took advice from the prophet Zechariah.  He became financially and militarily successful and developed Jerusalem and the whole of his kingdom.  His fame spread far and wide.  His great success, however, made him proud and his pride led him into a transgression that was his downfall.  He entered the Temple and offered up incense there on the golden altar – a task reserved for the priests.  Whilst the chief priest Azariah upbraided Uzziah and he was full of anger, for no king likes to be criticised, he was struck with tzara’at, an affliction that resembled leprosy.  He spent the rest of his life in isolation.

Menashe by Guillaume Rouille

 
In contrast to Uzziah, Menashe began his reign by doing “that which was evil in the sight of the Lord”.  He reversed the religious reforms that his father Hezekiah had instituted.  He reintroduced pagan worship, built altars to pagan gods and set up an idol in the Temple.  The Book of Chronicles relates that because of Menashe’s transgressions the Lord brought the hosts of Assyria against his kingdom.  Menashe was taken off in chains to Babylon.  There, in captivity, he repented and humbled himself and prayed to the Lord.  He returned to Jerusalem a changed man.  He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and strengthened the defences of the cities of Judah.   He removed the strange gods and the idol from the Temple and tore down the pagan altars.  He repaired the altar in the Temple, sacrificed offerings on it and commanded the people to serve the Lord. 
  
Walk through the streets of the Greek Colony in south Jerusalem and you will come across the names of the kings of Judah – not all of them, only those who “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord”.  Uzziah just makes it because he started out doing good even though he transgressed in his later years.

The Uzziah Tablet

In the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is an ancient inscribed limestone tablet.   It was found in 1931 amongst the collection of the Russian convent on the Mount of Olives by Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, the archaeologist who first recognised the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The Aramaic inscription reads:

“To here were brought the bones of Uzziah King of Judah. Do not open.”

We don’t know whether this tablet really marked Uzziah’s burial place.  There is no record of how it came to be in the convent’s possession.  The archaeologists tell us that it dates from the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE.  Uzziah died centuries earlier in about 740 BCE and was buried in “the field of burial that belonged to the kings” in a grave that was set apart.  It is likely, however, that at the end of the Second Temple period when Jerusalem was expanding, his bones were moved for reasons of ritual purity to a place outside the city boundary.  This tablet then could have formed part of their final resting place. 
 
To find Menashe Street you have to cross the railway tracks from the Greek Colony into Baka but in this neighbourhood the streets are named for the tribes of Israel.  This street is not named for Menashe the king but for Menashe son of Joseph, the grandson of Jacob and the brother of Ephraim.   It’s just as well that his name found a home here.  King Menashe would not have qualified to have a street named for him amongst the righteous kings of Judah.