Rewriting the Empires in Second Temple Jewish Literature

In this article I explore the development of the concept of imperial powers being subject to the power of God. God uses these empires to punish Israel, but these empires will themselves in turn be punished for overstepping their mandate. Isaiah 10-11 is one of the earliest iterations of this anti-imperial idea, where it appears in a prophecy against Assyria. In Daniel 7 this concept is applied to all empires. Both Isaiah and Daniel relegate the role of exacting punishment from the empires to God or to a direct agent of God. However, the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 90:19) and the Qumran War Texts expand this concept by giving the elect among Israel a central role in administering divine judgment against the empires. I argue that such texts should also be connected to various Jewish resistance movements that fought against the Seleucids and Romans.