Emphasis Preaching Journal

One tradition in the Judaism of Jesus' day maintained that, should any child of Israel successfully keep all 613 ceremonial laws for an entire day, the Messiah would surely come swiftly. It's hard telling whether any pious Jew really believed that, since so many of the laws in the long list seemed to be at cross purposes with one another (one would have had to be a contortionist to keep them all, assuming anybody had the moral rectitude to have a shot at it).