To the Jew First | 25
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“UNTIL SHILOH COME”
By Joseph Hoffman Cohn
Twenty-three years before the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on
Calvary’s tree, the Sanhedrin had lost the power of passing the
death sentence. This is that power which was envisaged in the
prophecy of Gen. 49:10, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah
nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” So, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Shiloh of Genesis 49:10, was already born,
and was a boy nine or ten years of age, when this great calamity
came upon the Jewish nation – Israel had lost the scepter and the
law-giving power. Josephus in his Antiquities, Book XVII, Chapter
13, 1-5, tells how that Judea had become a Roman Province, and
how the procurators who had administered justice in the name of
Augustus Caesar had now deprived the Sanhedrin of its supreme
power in order that they themselves might exercise the jus gladii,
the right of the sword, that is, the sovereign right over life and
death. Every province annexed to the Roman Empire had to submit
to his stripping of power. Tacitus says, “The Romans reserved to
themselves the rights of the Sword, and neglected all else.”
“WOE UNTO US!”
Rabbi Rachman says, “When the members of the Sanhedrin found
themselves deprived of their right over life and death, a general
consternation took possession of them; they covered their heads
with ashes, and their bodies with sackcloth, exclaiming, ‘Woe unto
us, for the scepter has departed from Judah and the Messiah has
not come’!” Furthermore, Josephus in his Antiquities, Book XX,
Chapter 9,1, says:
“Festus was now dead and Albinus was but upon the road; so
he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before
them the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose
name was James, and some others, and when he had formed
an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered
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