For example, the Lord spoke through the prophet Zechariah, saying, “I am returning to Jerusalem with mercy” (Zech. Many of the prophets took up this theme as well, pointing out that the return of God to His covenant people would be marked by the end of exile and the vindication of His chosen ones. 7:13) to assume dominion of His kingdom and to make a judgment in favour of the saints of the Most High. This too would be marked by the Lord coming back to His people: specifically the “the Son of Man coming” (Dan. After the people of Judah were exiled to Babylon in BC 586, Daniel took up this same theme, showing that there would be a return from exile when God vindicated His people (Daniel 9). There the Lord promised that YHWH’s return to His people would be marked by an end of captivity, blessing in the land God has given them and judgment on his enemies and theirs. The theme of YHWH returning to bless His people and judge His enemies goes back to the great covenantal blessings of Deuteronomy 30. Jesus is drawing on themes that would have resonated deeply with a 1st century Jewish audience. Clearly, the returning king is Jesus, who comes as YHWH’s representative to vindicate His people and to judge His enemies. 21:33-44), the wedding feast (22:1-14) the foolish virgins (25:1-13) and the talents (25:14-30) all invoke this idea of a king returning in judgment. The idea of a king returning after a long absence is, of course, a recurring motif throughout the parables which Matthew records. “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.” The key to understanding the parable is verse 31. Nor would they have heard it as referring to final rewards and punishments meted out to individuals at the end of the present age. A 1st century Jewish audience would not have taken this parable to be about Jesus’ final coming at all. My suggestion is that this reading of the parable is anachronistic. If we understand the parable as referring to the second coming, then it is hard to escape the force of this interpretive tradition, even if we want to nuance the meanings of salvation and damnation to encompass more than merely heaven and hell. Indeed, Matthew 25:46 is frequently detached from the rest of the parable (as well as the corpus of kingdom parables to which it belongs) and then used as the most-cited proof text for the doctrine of endless hellfire. The converse of this is to see Jesus’ pronouncement of damnation primarily or exclusively in terms of certain people going to hell when they die. This salvation, in turn, is understood primarily or exclusively to be a matter of going to heaven when you die. Like so many of Jesus’ parables, the parable of the sheep and the goats is routinely read with the assumption that Jesus must be talking about personal salvation at the end of the eschaton. Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46)
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