Luther's Tragic Mistake: Part Seventeen
© Dr. Martin Luther
I have covered the topic of "Who Killed Jesus of Nazareth" in a previous article. Please feel free to read that piece for my thoughts on the topic.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the Discussion Forum. While Luther was a man of great importance and influence, not every thing Luther said, thought, or wrote is inspired by God. This treatise is definitely not from God, nor is it consistent with what God's Word says. Error needs to be pointed out where it exists--even if the error is made by an influential person.
The following is a verbatim reproduction of part of Dr. Martin Luther's treatise entitled On the Jews and Their Lies. It's source on the Internet is The Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Please note that the text is part of the public domain.
Some engage in fantasies here and say that Shiloh refers to the city of that name, where the ark of the covenant was kept (Judges 21 [cf. I Sam. 4:3]), so that the meaning would be that the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes, that is, until Saul is anointed king of Shiloh. That is surely foolish prattle. Prior to King Saul not only did Judah have no scepter, but neither did all of Israel. How, then, can it have departed when Saul became king? The text declares that Judah had first been lord over his brothers and that he then became a lion, and therefore received the scepter. Likewise, before Saul's time no judge was lord or prince over the people of Israel, as we gather from Gideon's speech to the people in reply to their wish that he and his descendants rule over them: "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you" (Judges 7 [8:23]). Nor was there a judge from the tribe of Judah, except perhaps for Othniel [Judg. 3:9], Joshua's immediate successor. All the others down to Saul were from the other tribes. And although Othniel is called Caleb's youngest brother, this does not prove that he was of the tribe of Judah, since he may have had a different father. And it does not make sense that Shiloh should here refer to a city or to Saul's coronation in Shiloh, for Saul was anointed by Samuel in Ramath (I Samuel 10) and confirmed at Gilgal.
