Gifts from Arabia
“Behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”
Tradition says that these wise men, who were also thought to be kings, came from Persia; names have been given them, and one was supposed to have been a negro.
Tradition is usually wrong about such things. The Scripture speaks only of wise men, and does not give their number, and the only clue we have as to their origin lies in the directioh from which they came, and the nature of the gifts they gave.
To the immediate east of Judah lie the mountains and deserts of North Arabia. East of the Jordan and the Dead Sea lay the great north-south highway from the south to Damascus, the trade centre of the eastern world. Most of the travellers along the highway were the Arabians – the North Arabians descended from Ishmael, Keturah and Esau; and the South Arabians of combined Semitic and Hamitic origin. Routes from the great highway branched off at various points; one came into Judah via Petra (Biblical Sela) and the Palestine Negev; another crossed the Jordan near Jericho and ascended to Jerusalem; another branched off further north and went through the plain of Megiddo.
This highway ran parallel to the Jordan valley, avoiding the mountains and deserts further east. No one travelling from Persia or Mesopotamia would cross these, unless he were an experienced nomad. Most travellers followed the Euphrates valley northward, then crossed to Damascus, and then travelled southwards either through the Megiddo valley, or down the highway to a point near Jericho, to reach Jerusalem from the east. Normal travellers would therefore come to Judah mainly from the north – which is why so many invaders of Israel who came from the east were presented in Scripture as northern hosts. Since the wise men of Matt.2 are presented to us as coming from the east, there is more likelihood that they were Arabians than Persians.
The second clue to their origin lies in the gifts they brought, gold, frankincense and myrrh. These three products are probably the greatest of the natural products of Arabia. Myrrh and frankincense trees grow freely there; and the best known gold of the ancient world was that of Ophir in South Arabia. As some of the most famous products of Arabia, these would be the natural choice for gifts from men of Arabia for a child believed to be King of the Jews. If the wise men had come from Persia, they would hardly have chosen typical products of another part of the world, any more than men of Bradford would present the Queen with Sheffield cutlery for a gift.
King of the Jews
Accepting that the wise men came from Arabia, we need to ask now why they should wish to come and worship a child born King of the Jews. We must surely assume that these wise men knew more about this child than that he was heir to the throne of Israel. If there had been no more to it than that, they might have marvelled at the child’s birth being heralded by a new star; they would have wondered; but would they have sought to journey to Jerusalem to worship him? And yet we are not told by Scripture that they had at this time any direct revelation about the child from God; we know only that they saw the star, and therefore came to worship. Indeed, they knew so little about the details of the birth that they went to the palace of the stranger-king Herod to find the child.
Surely we must understand that they knew that the child whose star they had seen had been sent from God – and, indeed, was of divine origin. Why else should they seek to worship him? And if they had been given no direct revelation from God at that time, then they must have been expecting a divine birth because of things already told them in the past by God (that is, told to their forebears).
In past articles I have made out a case for some of the Bene Kedem having been inspired by God. I have given examples of some of their inspired sayings and writings in our Scriptures. Now they could have had further revelations direct from God which are not recorded in our Scriptures; but we cannot reason from the existence of these, and so I would like to show how, from reading the prophecies and sayings recorded in the Bible, a son of Ishmael could understand about the coming Messiah.
First we can look at the prophecies of Balaam. Of Israel he said,
“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num 23:21)
This speaks of the justification of Israel by God, by imputing righteousness to them, and connects this idea with the coming of a king to Israel. Let us look at another of Balaam’s prophecies.
“There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel…. and Edom shall be a possession……… out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shalt destroy him that remaineth of the city” (vv17-19)
In these prophecies there is the idea of a king coming to Israel, through whom Israel would be justified by God; and who would take dominion over other nations, including Edom, and Salaam’s own people. The ‘Star’ and ‘Sceptre’ mentioned here we look at in the next section; perhaps we can turn now to the words of Agur, another of the Bene Kedem,
“Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell? Every word of God is pure, he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.” (Prov 30:4&5).
Here is the faith of Agur expressed in a Qod Who created the earth, and Who was to have a son with His own name. And the means whereby men could make God their shield, their cover, as it were, was by taking heed to the word of God.
Here in these words from only two of the Bene Kedem are the bones of the whole gospel – the gospel preached to Abraham, which could only work out through a redeemer descended from Jacob, who was nevertheless God’s own son; who would both justify sinners, and set up a kingdom on earth and reign as King of Israel. We can assume that the Bene Kedem also knew about these promises made to Abraham, for Balaam quotes from them.
Star and Sceptre
I believe, then, that faithful men and women of the Bene Kedem, from the time of Ishmael, understood that God would one day send a redeemer to the earth who would be born of Isaac’s descendants, and yet who would also be Son of God. They would know about the promises made to Abraham and his seed; they would know the words of Balaam, and those of Lemuel and Agur; and quite probably they would have prophecies of their own, which we know nothing of, to help them expect the birth of the Lord Jesus. Such prophecies would be under-stood by faith; and these proud Arabs would have to accept a Jewish saviour.
We have spoken of the prophecy of Balaam about the ‘Star’ coming out of Jacob. Generally speaking, ‘astral’ prophecies are understood by us in symbolic ways. Jesus, for example, is called ‘Sun of Righteousness’ because he is to come again to the world and bring a new dawn with him. ‘Signs in the sun, moon and stars’ refer to things happening to rulers and other dignitaries. Yet here we have a prophecy by Balaam about a star – and without a shadow of doubt a real, literal star appeared in the sky at the birth of Jesus.
There is surely need for some Scriptural investigation here. One of the earliest symbolic references to stars in Scripture is in the dream of Joseph, in which he saw his father as the sun, his mother as the moon, and his brothers as the twelve stars. When we hear of a star rising out of Jacob, this dream comes immediately to mind.
There are only twelve obvious stars in the sky which come to mind. These are the stars which mark out the twelve months of the year. There are, of course, groups of stars which mark the months, called the signs of the zodiac. But one star in each group which particularly marks the new month – that is, the first star to appear above the eastern horizon at dawn on the first day of the month.
If the twelve sons of Jacob each took one of the monthly stars as his symbol, then the tribes deriving from Joseph and his brethren each used the particular star as its symbol. I believe that it was the symbol of the constellations which mark out the months which the tribes had on their standards in the wilderness.
The sons of Ishmael were also twelve – or rather, counted as twelve. This suggests that a twelve-based organisation was useful for nomadic people, and suggests that perhaps each tribe in the wilderness ruled the camp, and undertook camp duties, in turn every month. So that when, for example, the tribe of Judah took over the administration of the camp, they did so at the time when the Lion constellation had just risen in the sky, and to show their authority, placed the standard with the Lion symbol on it in a dominant place.
Here is the connection between star and sceptre. When their star rose, the authority of the tribe of which it was a symbol rose; and when that tribe took over its authority, the sign on earth of its authority was a pole with the star-symbol on it. And so when Jacob prophesied, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah” he meant that the rod of authority with Judah’s Lion on it would gain the ascendancy over the other tribes, and Judah would possess the kingship, from which no other tribe would oust her.
There is a little more to this connection between star and sceptre. The Hebrew word for ‘sceptre’ is the same as the word for ‘tribe’. From what we have already written it is easy to see why the two ideas came to have one word between them. The basic idea of ‘rod’ is of a branch springing out of a stock of a tree; and the twelve tribes sprang out of Jacob like branches grow out of the trunk of a tree. But looked at from another angle, the monthly stars rise ‘in’ the sun in turn each first day of the month; and so the sun and the twelve stars were a similar symbol for Jacob and his twelve sons, from whom the twelve tribes sprang. And while in heaven the stars marked out the time of the authority of a tribe, on earth the sceptre stood for the symbol of the same time of authority.
The star and sceptre prophecy of Balaam then carried the two ideas
- that at some time a new ruler would take over Jacob’s people, as a star rises in the east above the horizon at a set time, and would never be displaced by the sceptre of another tribe.
- that a new ruler would be born from the stock of Jacob, like a branch grows out of its parent stock.
The star sign is a heavenly sign; the sceptre an earthly one. One derives from God, the other from man.
When Israel became an agricultural people, the old monthly system would not apply, though kings who came later probably carried sceptres as the sign of their authority. But the Bene Kedem, still living the nomadic life of Abraham, may well have continued to use this system right up to the time of Christ. They would then have such a prophecy as Balaam’s in mind, if they were faithful, and remember exactly what each symbol meant. And so they might not only be expecting the birth of a son who would be both son of God, and son of Jacob; but also be watching for a new star to be rising literally in the east in one of the twelve constellations of the sons of Jacob – and in which constellation? Why, in the Lion, to be sure, for did not the ancient prophecy of Jacob to his sons declare,
“Judah is a lion’s whelp …The sceptre shall not depart from Judah ….until Shiloh come; and to him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Gen.49:9,10).
When the wise men saw the star, they did not follow it (in spite of Christmas pictures which depict this scene). They saw the star, and knew that the saviour was to be of Judah’s line, and so went straight to the place where a king was to be expected to be born – to Jerusalem, and Herod’s palace.
When a star first appears above the horizon at dawn, it is seen only momentarily – then the sun rises and the star is lost. As the days move on, the star appears longer and longer in the night sky, until six months later it is seen moving across the sky through the whole of the night. Then it begins to disappear again.
By the time that the wise men had found Herod’s palace, had been given audience, and had gone to Bethlehem, the star could have been out of sight again. Some considerable time must have elapsed from the time the wise men first saw the star, since when Herod found that the wise men had mocked him, he killed all the male children of two years and under, according to the time when the star first appeared. Whether or not the star was in the sky when the wise men set out for Bethlehem, on this journey their faith was rewarded by a direct sign from God. For they saw in the sky before them the star itself, low enough to be followed. And it led them to Bethlehem, and remained stationary over the place where the child lay. There they found Jesus, left their gifts, and joyfully worshipped. The whole line of faithful sons of Ishmael stood behind these few men – maybe the last faithful left in the east – worshipping the son of Jacob whom generations of sons of Abraham had longed to see.
After Christ
After the coming of Christ the faithful line of the Bene Kedem must have been merged into the Christian movement as a whole. Any faithful left in Arabia must have joined hands with the Christians after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. History records large numbers of Christians in Arabia; many of whom in the early centuries of the Church opposed the growth of apostasy. Arabian churches were centred on Antioch, though as Christianity spread the churches of southern Arabia and Ethiopia became autonomous.
It was from North Arabia that the religion of Islam sprang in the 7th century. The Islamic religion is a kind of conglomeration of Jewish, Christian and native Arabian traditions – and among these traditions are stories of Abraham and the patriarchs which are unknown in Jewish writings (canonical and apocryphal). These seem to be older than Jewish and Christian traditions, and may have derived from the culture handed down from mouth to mouth among the Bene Kedem from the time of Abraham – but now sadly distorted.
Islam therefore might be thought of as an apostate form of the true religion once practised by the faithful among the Bene Kedem. But for the truly faithful, the story ends with the Lord Jesus, with the wisdom of the Children of the East bowing in humility before the child born of God.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One