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283 the situation was certainly not what was expected, not what the biblical prophecies promised. Devout Jews—as Jesus most certainly was—were beholden to the idea of redemp- tion, of salvation by a Messiah, central to which was the special and everlasting bond between God and the House of David. It was clearly and most emphatically expressed in the magnificent Psalm 89 (19-29), in which Yahweh, speaking to His faithful followers in a vision, said: I have exalted one chosen out of the people; Ihave found David, my servant; With my holy oil have I anointed him... He shall call out to me: “Thou art my father, my God, the rock of my salvation!” And I as a Firstborn shall place him, supreme of all the kings on Earth. My compassion for him forever I will keep, My faithfulness I shall not betray; My covenant with him will not be violated, What I have uttered I shall not change .. . I shall make his seed endure forever, his throne [endure] as the Days of Heaven. Was not that reference to the “Days of Heaven” a clue, a linkage between the coming of a Savior and the prophesied End of Days? Was it not the time to see the prophecies come true? And so it was that Jesus of Nazareth, now in Jerusalem with his twelve disciples, determined to take matters into his own hands: if salvation requires an Anointed One of the House of David, he, Jesus, would be the one! His very Hebrew name—Yehu-shuah (“Joshua’”)—meant Yahweh’s Savior; and as for the requirement that the Anointed One (“Messiah”) be of the House of David, that he was: the very opening verse of the New Testament, in the Gospel According to St. Matthew, says: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Jerusalem: A Chalice, Vanished