Who is Messiah: Jewish and Christian expectations
As we are approaching Easter, I am interrupting our study of Habakkuk to engage with questions relating to what Jesus came to achieve and the various expectations around it. As Christians, we look to Jesus as the Messiah, the Lamb who took away our sins and redeemed us. From this perspective, the Jewish expectation of Messiah as the victorious King who would overthrow Roman rule seems shallow to us, concerned about political freedom and earthly wellbeing as opposed to spiritual matters. However, when we read Old Testament prophecies more closely in context, many of them seem to align with Jewish expectations. The atonement we associate with Messiah is much less obvious looking forward (as Jews did in Jesus’ time) and only becomes clear with hindsight. To be sure, Jews in Jesus’ time missed a crucial aspect of why He came but they saw other elements in prophecies that we gloss over. Thus, reflecting on their perspective can help us recognise our own blind spots and notice scriptural truth that we may have neglected.
God’s rule or human mastery?
To understand where Jewish expectations are coming from, we have to return to the Old Testament story. When God created humanity, He made them rulers over creation as His representatives (the idea of being in the image of God; Gen 1:26). Sin, however, interfered when humanity decided to be their own masters instead of submitting to God. Then God chose one man, Abraham, and called him to become a great nation, a people among whom God could demonstrate His ideal, a society that lives under God’s rule (a theocracy). After a variety of leaders appointed directly by God (Moses, Joshua, judges), Israel demands a king (1 Sam 8:5). As always, the question is, do we submit to God’s rule or want to be our own masters, and Israel here rejects God as their king (1 Sam 8:7). However, they soon discover under their first king, Saul, what it is like to be subjected to power that is grasping and self-seeking (1 Sam 8:10-18).
David and the promise of a king like him
The second king, David, however, rules justly and righteously (2 Sam 8:15) because he submits to God and trusts in Him. Despite his failures, he comes closest to the ideal of what it means to represent God’s rule to His people. The kings that follow after his death largely revert back to the sinful pattern of not submitting to God’s rule. Instead, most of them worship other gods, allow injustices in society and hence do not fulfil the role the Lord has intended for them. Eventually, God’s patience runs out and He punishes His people allowing them to be taken into exile into Babylon. With this move, the Davidic dynasty ceases to rule anymore. Hope, however, arises out of this failure of Davidic kings with God’s promise of a descendant of David who would rule justly and righteously (Isa 9:6-7; 11:1-5). When God takes pity on His people and brings them back from exile, there is restoration that allows the relationship with Him to continue but because of ongoing unfaithfulness and sin, this is only partial. For the most part, the Jews remain a province under foreign domination (Persian, Greek and later, Roman), i.e. under pagan authority as opposed to God directly. Nevertheless, hopes that God will rid Israel of pagan domination and establish His godly Davidic king (Messiah) remain.
Spiritual matters expressed through earthly reality
This broadbrush summary makes it clear that spiritual issues and political/earthly circumstances are closely intertwined in Israel’s story. Exile and the loss of the monarchy was God’s punishment for sin, the return to the land and partial restoration signalled His forgiveness (see Ezra’s prayer post-exile in Ezra 9:7-9 and the people’s confession from the same period in Neh 9:33-37). In other words, Jews did not separate spiritual matters from their physical, everyday and public life.[1] Thus, the rule of this ideal descendant of David, Messiah, was seen in very concrete terms. If we put aside for a moment our spiritualising lenses through which we read famous messianic prophecies, then we can see why Israel’s expectations were so tangible and physical. Isaiah speaks of a figure reigning from David’s throne, leading the country by decisions that are just and fair with peace established (Isa 9:7), so the nation will no longer face wars with other nations (Isa 9:4-5). Zechariah 9:8-10 is even more down-to-earth. It mentions God’s future protection over His temple and promises that no oppressor will subjugate Israel (v.8). In fact, there will be such security that the country will no longer need an army or weapons of war (v.10).
This same perspective is evident at John the Baptist’s birth, when his father prophesies and equates the restoration of a godly Davidic king (Messiah) and liberation from foreign domination with God’s salvation (Luke 1:67-79). This is a spiritual matter not simply a political one because serving a foreign king means submitting to pagan rule rather than God’s rule. Until the latter is established through God’s anointed king (Messiah), they cannot fully serve the Lord or know His complete forgiveness and renewal. Salvation from sin for Jews, then, is a much broader category that is bound up with deliverance and rescue in very earthly terms.
Messiah to Jews and Christians
Given this background, what Jews would have seen as messianic prophecies were the ones that spoke of a Davidic king who will rule on God’s behalf in faithfulness. What they missed in their understanding was how true renewal could come about when sin was so deeply ingrained in the human heart. With hindsight, we understand that something more dramatic needed to happen to atone for sin and break its power over us before God’s kingdom could be ushered in. Thus, as Christians, we appreciate the role of the Suffering Servant, a mysterious figure in Isaiah 53, and the atonement that God Himself brought through his death. However, there is no mention of David in this chapter, nor any indication of a royal figure, so Jews would not have recognised in him the Davidic king, Messiah. Neither is there a clear indication in Old Testament prophecies that Messiah is divine so that much of what seems self-evident to us was hidden from view before Jesus came.[2] Finally, Jews could not have foreseen that the establishment of God’s kingdom will come first as a partial and spiritual reality.
Looking back and looking forward
My point with this exploration is not to suggest that we go back to a Jewish understanding but to create an appreciation for why they could not have imagined all that Jesus came to achieve. It is also to underline an important strand in Old Testament prophecies that presents a broader vision of salvation beyond our standard Christian definition of individual forgiveness and ‘entry into heaven’, to put it crudely. Scripture presents God’s salvation as the establishment of His reign on earth under His King who is aligned with His will. While we only see His reign at present in a partial and spiritual sense among His followers, one day all will be subjected to Him (Heb 2:8). While many of us carry in our head a vague vision of eternal souls living together, Paul speaks of the final renewal of things in concrete terms. Thus Romans 8:18-25 describes the future redemption of creation (animals, nature), as well as of our bodies. This latter point is also affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed where we confess our belief in the ‘resurrection of the body’.
This can give us great hope even in the here and now. Many a time we cry out to God for help because we want that illness healed, that disability removed, that conflict or stressful situation caused by sin (ours or others’) resolved. Jesus in the gospels shows compassion and heals the sick, restores the demon-possessed and raises the dead. He is genuinely concerned for what hurts us not only in spiritual terms but in the reality of our everyday lives. Indeed, His actions in His earthly life foreshadow that cosmic restoration of all things when our tears will be wiped away, death forever removed with no more mourning, crying or pain (Rev 21:4), when God’s kingdom will come down to a renewed earth (Rev 21:1-3). As we remember Easter and look back on the redemption Jesus has already brought in the forgiveness of our sins, we also look forward to the final renewal of all things with hope.
[1] One reason why we might miss the spiritual nature of these expectations is that our modern context divides our life into public and private spheres and religion/spiritual matters have no place in the public domain.
[2] Christians might point to Isaiah 7:14 and the virgin birth as indication that Messiah was meant to be divine, but this passage is mysterious. Hebrew has a specific word for ‘virgin’ (betulah), but it is ‘almah (maiden, young woman) that is used here. While maiden normally implies an unmarried girl and therefore a virgin, the emphasis is not on this factor. Further, in its first, original fulfilment this prophecy was a sign for King Ahaz, so it had to happen in his time for the sign to work (i.e. in the eighth century BC). At that point it would not have been a virgin birth. However, later interpreters came to recognise the importance of this passage as messianic with a fulfilment beyond Ahaz’s time. Nevertheless, it is only with hindsight that we can see the connection clearly between this prophecy as indicating a virgin birth, Jesus’ supernatural conception, and His divinity.
Likewise, the throne names of the messianic child in Isaiah 9:7 are understood by Christians as a reference to Messiah’s divinity, but once again, this is not straightforward. Hebrew names often describe God (e.g. Isaiah means ‘the LORD saves’, Hezekiah ‘the LORD strengthens’, Immanuel ‘God with us’) but it does not follow from this that those who carry such names are therefore divine.
My point is not that we should dismiss these clues to Messiah being more than human, simply to show that peering ahead into the unknown as Jews did before Jesus, they could not have arrived at His divinity. This is all the more so since it was so deeply ingrained in Jews that there is only one God (Deut 6:4), so that any other god next to Him was unthinkable!
Finally, Peter identifies Jesus as ‘the Christ [i.e. Messiah], Son of the living God’ (Matt 16:16), but this did not mean that he recognised Jesus as God. Rather, the title ‘son of God’ was a royal one. When God made a covenant with David, He promised that David’s descendant (in the first instance, Solomon) would be a son to God (2 Sam 7:14). This indicates an intimate relationship between God and the human king though obviously not divinity! Psalm 2:7 also describes the king as God’s son, made so at the time when he became king (Ps 2:6), a psalm that was possibly used during a king’s coronation in Israel/Judah. While this psalm came to be interpreted messianically, the idea that being God’s son could mean divinity was unthinkable because of Isael’s creed that there is only one God. Once again, it is only in hindsight, in the light of what Jesus has achieved and taught that His divinity can be recognised.
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