Old Testament Prophecies of Christ

I have just finished reading a very 2002 interesting book The Case for Christ, written in Evangelical style by Lee Strobel.  One of the chapters was about how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, for which Mr. Strobel interviewed Mr. Louis S. Lapides, a Jewish convert to the Christian faith who now has a B.A. in theology from Dallas Baptist University and an M. Div. and a Master of Theology from Talbot Theological Seminary and who is now senior pastor at Beth Ariel Fellowship in California. 

       In that chapter Pastor Lapides spoke of Christ fulfilling many Old Testament prophecies which all pointed to Him being the Messiah.  Some of his exegesis was questionable, such as his application of the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks in Daniel 9 to Christ which supposedly fixed the year of Messiah’s appearance (for more see here).  But overall Lapides’ case was sound.  Here I would like to examine some Old Testament texts which point to Jesus being the Messiah.  I group the prophetic material into three different kinds:  typological, providential coincidence, and prediction. 

Typological

       Under this heading I include broad Old Testament themes, historical realities that point beyond themselves to a future fulfillment found in Jesus such as, for example, that of animal sacrifice.   

Like all religions in the ancient world, the worship of Yahweh was built upon sacrifice—i.e. the killing and skinning of certain animals (e.g. sheep, goats, bulls, doves, but not pigs), the offering of their blood upon an altar, and the destruction of their carcasses, either by burning them entirely in sacrifice, or by eating the flesh in a sacred meal afterward.  It was through these rituals that communion could be affected with God and His blessing procured by those offering the sacrifices.  The entire Mosaic system of a sacred tribe (the Levites), a hereditary priesthood (the House of Aaron), and the (originally) portable shrine with the Ark was established to facilitate this. It was through these sacrifices that Israel sought forgiveness, cleansing, and communion with God.

       It was the insight and insistence of the Christians that such animal sacrifices could not, in fact, procure such spiritual realities as the forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 10:1-4).  Rather such sacrifices were themselves prophecies, pledges, foreshadowings of the final and effective sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which alone could affect what the animal sacrifices promised.  Those sacrifices, therefore, were prophetic, looking forward to Golgotha.

       In the same way the Mosaic shrine and the later Temple were prophetic.  They expressed the desire that God would dwell in the midst of His people, but even the Old Testament itself recognized the difficulty and impossibility of God actually living on earth among men.  The original prayer of dedication of Solomon’s Temple acknowledged the impossibility: “Will God indeed dwell on the earth?  Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).   

Isaiah 66:1-2 said the same: “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool.  Where then is a house you could build for Me?  And where is a place that I may rest?  For My hand made all these things”.

       The earthly shrines built by Israel, whether the portable Mosaic tents or the temple built by Solomon, were pointers and prophecies to the time when God would actually dwell among men—i.e. to the incarnation.  The Lord said so, referring to His own Body as a Temple.  Asked for proof of His divine authority, He replied, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).  He was the new Temple, the true Temple, and the ancient structures were but prophecies of His dwelling among His people after His incarnation and also of His spiritual indwelling of them in His Body the Church.

Providential Coincidence

       There are a number of Old Testament passages which do not directly in their immediate context refer to the coming Christ, but which still contain astonishing coincidences, given Jesus’ actual life.  I refer here to three of them:  the passages in Isaiah 7, in Hosea 6, and Hosea 11.

       The passage in Isaiah 7 has provoked an immense amount of polemical ink-spilling.  It is set with the reign of King Ahaz who feared an imminent and catastrophic invasion from the north of a Syrian-Israel coalition.  He was therefore minded to seek a political solution, asking for help from Assyria, with all the religious and syncretistic compromises such an alliance would bring.   His court prophet Isaiah counselled against such a course of action and said that God would help them, and he said God would give any requested sign to prove it.  King Ahaz refused to ask for a sign, since he had already determined within himself to look to Assyria for help.  

In response Isaiah replied, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign:  behold, a virgin [Hebrew almah; Greek parthenos] will be with child and bear a son and she will call his name Emmanuel [Hebrew for “God is with us us”]…For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken” (Isaiah 7:14-16).  It is apparent from the larger context that the miracle was not biological, but temporal; it had to do not with the mode of conception, but of timing.  Presumably the conception would take place in the same way as any conception.  The Hebrew word used (almah) meant any young girl of marriageable age. 

Nonetheless, the child was to be a sign of God’s saving presence among them.  Though not a prediction of the virginal conception of the Messiah (Israel had no such expectation) it was still a remarkable coincidence given that Jesus was indeed virginally conceived—too much of a coincidence, in fact, to be simple coincidence.  St. Matthew therefore was not wrong in seeing it as a prophetic foreshadowing of Christ’s virgin birth:  in Jesus God indeed was with His people in the flesh, and the sign of this was His virginal conception in the womb of Mary.

       Another such prophetic coincidence is in Psalm 22. This psalm is a cry of dereliction, the lament of the House of David that David had been seemingly abandoned by God and left at the mercies of his brutal enemies.  (A more detailed exegesis can be found here.)  In his despair, David cries out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?...All who see me sneer at me…they wag the head and say ‘Commit yourself to Yahweh; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, because He delights in him’…Many bulls have surrounded me… A band of evildoers have encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet…They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:1-18).

       The final experiences of Jesus on the cross graphically fulfilled this poetry.  The psalm was not intended as a prediction of the Messiah, but as a lament of the House of David, but such an abundance of detailed experience cannot be simply coincidental.  For on the cross, Jesus was mocked and sneered at by those who surrounded Him; His hands and feet were pierced, and His very garments were divided and distributed by the casting of lots.  Even the very words of Christ were those with which the psalm opened.  To attribute all this to simple coincidence does strain honest credulity.

       Next we have the reference in Hosea 11:1 to Israel as God’s son being brought out of Egypt. The immediate context makes it clear that this was not intended as a prediction of the Messiah, but once again, given that Jesus did come out of Egypt as a child after the death of Herod, it is difficult to regard it as yet another extraordinary coincidence. 

       Finally, we find a reference to a resurrection on the third day—not of the Messiah, but of Israel.  In Hosea 6:1-3 we read this: “Come, let us return to Yahweh.  For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has struck us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third may that we may live before Him.  So let us know, let us press on to know Yahweh.” 

       The passage refers to Israel’s apostasy from God and the divine judgments God sent to chastise them for it.  Hosea encourages Israel to repent and return, promising that the God who struck them will also heal and restore them.  But once again, as with the passages previously considered, given that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead on the third day, it seems impossible that this text does not somehow point beyond Israel to Jesus.

In short, when coincidence piles upon coincidence time after time after time, especially in inspired literature such as the Jewish Scriptures, it looks as if it is not simply coincidence, but prophecy.  The God who knew that His Son would be born of a virgin, who would brought out of Egypt, who would be pierced on the cross and be raised on the third day tipped His prophetic hand and buried such things in the text for His people to find later—things through which Jesus could be identified as His Son.

Prediction

       Finally, we examine texts which explicitly referred to the coming Messiah.  They are numerous; here we will look at three of them:  Micah 5, Isaiah 42, and Isaiah 53. 

       In Micah 5:2-5 we find a prophecy that God will protect His people from attack by raising up for them a ruler, the Messianic descendent from the House of David.  Like David, this ruler was to come from David’s hometown of Bethlehem and it was He who would shepherd God’s flock in the strength of Yahweh and be great to the ends of the earth. 

       This prophecy was of course fulfilled in Jesus, who was indeed born in Bethlehem even though His parents’ hometown was Nazareth.  We see this detail referred to obliquely and ironically in John 7:41-42.  Some in the crowd objected that Jesus could not be the Messiah because He came from Galilee and the Messiah must be born in Bethlehem.  John knew of His birth in Bethlehem and expected his readers to know this detail too, which is why he included this exchange here.  One can almost see his ironic smile behind the words of the text.

       In Isaiah 42 we find one of the many so-called “Servant Songs”.  In this collection all things serve Yahweh:  Israel (41:8), the Persian king Cyrus (called God’s “anointed” in 45:1), and Israel’s Messianic King.  In 42:1-9 God declares that He has put His Spirit upon this Messianic King so that the king will establish justice in the earth and become a light to the nations, opening blind eyes and bringing prisoners out of their dungeons.  In particular, this Servant “will not cry out or raise His voice or make it heard in the street.  A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish” (42:2-3).  That is, He will walk humbly, not boasting of His power or threatening His foes.  He will be gentle, and not warlike—something quite unusual in world rulers.

       We see this fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus (see Matthew 12:15-21): when He healed the sick He told them not to spread abroad the news.  He was humble and gentle, offering hope and healing to broken and fragile hearts.

       Finally, we look at the Servant Song in Isaiah 52:13-53:12.  This picture of the Servant is particularly graphic and accords with Jesus’ experience and life with startling accuracy.  The Servant, though the Messianic king, is marred in appearance more than any other man.  He was despised and forsaken, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  He was the one who carried our griefs and sorrows and was pierced for our transgressions and scourged for our iniquities.  It was our own iniquities that fell upon Him and which He bore.  He was oppressed and did not open His mouth and was like a lamb led to slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its shearers.  By oppression and judgment His life was taken away.  His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, and yet He was with a rich man in His death.  His death was a guilt offering by which many were justified. He was numbered with the transgressors and yet bore the sins of many and interceded for them.  Because of this, He will prolong His days. 

The whole picture reads like a précis of the Passion, even down to such tiny details as being buried in the grave of the rich Joseph of Arimathea.

Analyzing the Prophecies 

       It is common, especially among some Jewish circles, to accuse Christians of ignoring the context of their Old Testament citations as they use them to attempt to prove how Jesus fulfils Old Testament prophecy.  It is a reasonable objection, in that in some cases Christians do ignore the context of the citations and treat all the texts as predictions of the coming Messiah.  As we have seen, Hosea 11:1 is not primarily about the Messiah, but about Israel. 

But we have also seen that the Old Testament material we rightly regard as prophetic is not all the same literary genre and are not all simple predictions of what the Messiah will be like.  The material consists of typology, providential coincidence as well as strict prediction and the case for Jesus’ Messiahship rests upon the cumulative effect of all the material.

There is a reason for this.  The material is there in this varied form (and not simply as a series of predictions comprising a checklist of Messiah’s characteristics) to allow room for the verdict of the heart.  Allow me to explain.

The prophecies of Messiah are similar to the prophecies of the coming Kingdom of God in general.  That is, those latter prophecies are unfocussed.  They are multi-faceted, varied, somewhat ambivalent.  What I mean is this.  Some of the prophecies of the Messianic Kingdom give the impression that the Kingdom consists of Israel’s national supremacy among the nations of the world.  Those nations will seek to attack Israel, but God will defend His people and destroy the attacking nations.  The Kingdom is thus political and military in nature. 

See, for example, Psalm 2 and Psalm 83, which envision an international alliance attacking Israel and God scattering the Gentile nations.  Read Ezekiel 38-39 which prophesies the same conflict.  Read Zechariah 14 which again describes military battle and divine defence.  It also insists that survivors from the attacking nations will go up in pilgrimage every year to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh and if they refuse God will withhold rain from those nations (14:16-19). From these few examples we might conclude that the coming Kingdom will be political in nature and based on the supremacy of Israel over the nations.

But the prophetic picture also contains another vision and version of the Kingdom.  In Isaiah 19:18-25 we read that the ancient foes of Israel, Egypt and Assyria, will be accepted on equal terms as Israel and that there will be all the signs of God’s covenant protection found in those nations, including altar, memorial pillar and God sending them national deliverers (v. 19-20).  It even declares that Israel will not even be the first, but will be third among them and that God will say, “Blessed is Egypt My people and Assyria the work of My hands and Israel My inheritance” (v. 24-25).  This stands in flat contradiction to the vision contained in the other more nationalistic prophecies—and indeed to the entire Mosaic covenant which was built upon the separation of Israel from the nations.  Which is correct?  What is going on?

What is going on is the same dynamic that we find in our Lord’s use of parables.  The meaning of those parables was also unclear and somewhat ambiguous.  To understand their meaning, one needed an open and humble heart, an attitude ready to unlearn some things and learn new things.  The humble and teachable would understand them; the proud would not.  The parables were deliberately constructed to divide the people on the basis of their pride or their humility.  The Lord said so: “I speak in parables, because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13:13).  The apparent lack of clarity served to bring out what was in the hearts of the hearers.

All the prophecies of the Old Testament functioned in this way, including the prophecies of the Messiah—they were varied, multi-faceted and unfocussed enough to divide the people on the basis of their teachability.  The humble would accept the claims of Christ and interpret the Old Testament prophecies in accordance with His teaching.  The proud would reject Christ because He did not conform to what they wanted to find in the Old Testament prophecies.  They wanted a political Kingdom, a military supremacy, and focused upon the parts of the Old Testament which seemed to promise that—and rejected Christ because He did not offer them that kind of Kingdom.

We see now why the Old Testament prophecies were not given in the form of a precise and clear checklist, for a checklist would leave no room for the involvement and verdict of the heart.  The prophetic Scriptures did not offer a clear and detailed programme, but a series of visions, pictures, pointers, and clues.  Those drawn to Jesus in humility of heart would search the Scriptures for those clues to see if there were enough clues to point to Him.  The Jews of Berea did that—and found that the clues were there (Acts 17:10-12). 

The lack of focus, the presence of variation of vision in the Scriptures served to divide the humble from the proud.  The abundance of prophetic fulfillment, in all its varied literary genres, served to confirm the faith of the humble.  To such humble souls, the Scriptures confirmed what their heart already knew.