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Hananiah

The Scriptures often juxtapose two people by the same name either to compare them or show a contrast between them. Such is the case, for instance, with Joshua (Yeshua) and Jesus (Yeshua), where there is both a contrast and a comparison between the type and the antitype. We learn certain truths by such comparisons, because each puts the other into a certain context. It creates a “blackboard effect.”

Two Old Testament Hananiahs

Our study today will point out the contrast between two contemporaries named Hananiah. The first was a false prophet who opposed the word of the Lord through Jeremiah. The second was a godly man and one of Daniel’s three friends, who was willing to die to uphold the word of the Lord.

In Jeremiah 27 the prophet instructed the people of Judah to submit to “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, My servant” because God had sentenced the people to a 70-year captivity on account of their persistent sin. God instructed the prophet to put a wooden yoke on his neck and walk through Jerusalem with a message to submit to the yoke of Babylon (Jeremiah 27:12).

The false prophet contradicts the word of the Lord in the next chapter. So we read in Jeremiah 28:1-3,

¹ Now in the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, Hananiah the son of Azzur, the prophet, who was from Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of the Lord in the presence of the priests and all the people, saying, ² “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. ³ Within two years I am going to bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon’.”

To drive home his point, he took the yoke off Jeremiah’s neck and broke it (Jeremiah 28:10). But God then told Jeremiah to put on an iron yoke. Jeremiah 28:13 says,

¹³ Go and speak to Hananiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘You have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made instead of them yokes of iron’.”

A wooden yoke is a captivity such as what we read in the book of Judges, where the people were able to remain in the land. A yoke of iron is where the people are exiled to a foreign land and treated harshly and unjustly (Deuteronomy 28:48). The message is this: If you agree that God is righteous in sentencing the nation to a captivity, and if you submit to the one whom God has raised up as your master, then your captivity will be light. But if you rebel, your captivity will be far worse.

In the case of Judah and Jerusalem, Hananiah spoke in rebellion on behalf of the nation, and so the people were taken into captivity to Babylon for 70 years.

That Babylonian captivity proved to be longer than 70 years. The first 70 years were spent under the iron yoke. Then Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians, and the people were allowed to return to the old land. But they were still not independent, because they remained under the authority of the king of Persia. The difference is that their yoke was no longer made of iron but of wood.

By contrast, God raised up a second Hananiah—a righteous man—who had been taken captive to Babylon. He had submitted to Nebuchadnezzar in obedience to God. So when the king set up the golden image for them to worship, he and his friends refused. They were then cast into a furnace of fire, but God brought them through the fire alive. Such is the promise given to those who obey God, even if it means submitting to Nebuchadnezzar.

The New Testament Hananiahs

The time of Judah’s wooden yoke ended in 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and put the Jews into an iron-yoke captivity, exiling them and scattering them into foreign countries. The New Testament makes it clear that this captivity was caused by their refusal to respond to God’s invitation to the “wedding feast for His Son” (Matthew 22:2).

In this parable Matthew 22:7 says,

⁷ But the king [God] was enraged, and he sent His [Roman] armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire.

We see the comparison here between Babylon and Rome. Nebuchadnezzar was called “My servant.” The Roman armies, who set Jerusalem on fire, are said to be God’s armies. Yet prior to this destruction, God raised up two men named Ananias, which is the Greek form of Hananiah. The first one lied to God and—like his counterpart in Jeremiah 28—died as a result (Acts 5:1-5).

The second Ananias was a righteous man living in Damascus who prayed for Saul, laying hands on him to be filled with the spirit and to be healed of blindness (Acts 9:17, 18). Though he had some misgivings about obeying this word, he was obedient. This Ananias represents those believers who submitted themselves to the yoke of Rome, according to God’s word. He obeyed the Great Commission, preaching the word, and healing the blindness of Old Covenant religion.

Saul was an Old Covenant believer until Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. God blinded him to illustrate the blindness of the majority of Jews who opposed the church. It was Ananias’ commission to heal that blindness by preaching the word of God.

Saul/Paul explained this many years later in 2 Corinthians 3:12-16,

¹² Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, ¹³ and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away [i.e., the Old Covenant]. ¹⁴ But their minds were hardened, for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. ¹⁵ But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; ¹⁶ but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

The scales that fell from Saul’s eyes are comparable to the veil over the eyes of those who remain subject to the Old Covenant. The veil prevents them from seeing the glory of God in the face of Moses, who is a type of Christ (Deuteronomy 18:15). Saul was blind; Paul was not.

So the two men named Ananias represent the two groups of people: those who obey the word and those who do not because of their blindness. The results are seen in history. The Jews were placed under an iron yoke and were scattered. The church too was scattered, though in a different way. Acts 8:1 says,

¹ Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him [Stephen] to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

Perhaps the believers did not fully understand that God was pushing them out of a city doomed for destruction. New converts replaced them later, and when the Romans surrounded the city in 66 A.D., they too were trapped. But when Nero died in 68 A.D., there was a pause in the siege, and the Jerusalem church remembered Jesus’ warning to flee. History tells us that the church moved to the city of Pella, which was on the other side of the Jordan River.

Daniel’s friend, Hananiah, went into captivity, following the word of the Lord. The church did the same, following the word of Christ. They did not avoid the captivity, but God protected them in captivity.

End-Time Applications

The church is still instructed to fulfill the word of Christ, as illustrated by the important pattern of Ananias who prayed for Saul. Once again, Jerusalem is being set up for destruction according to the word of the Lord in Jeremiah 19:10, 11. This time the city’s destruction will be so complete that no one will be able to rebuild it (vs. 11). So in some ways we are approaching another crisis that is similar—but worse—than when the Romans destroyed the city in 70 A.D.

The underlying issue is the difference between the Old and New Covenants. The one comes with a veil; the other removes the veil. Much of the church fails to recognize the difference, and so we can observe how many can become believers and yet still look at Moses through a veil. If they read the law, they understand it through Old Covenant eyes. They fail to see how the entire law is prophetic. The deep things of God remain unknown to them.

The result is that two groups of Christian believers have emerged: those who are partially blinded by an Old Covenant veil, and those who see. What do I mean? The best way to explain this is to study the great New Covenant passage in Jeremiah 31. I plan to do this in the next series.