Messianic Prophecy. Or, maybe it’s better stated as “Messianic Prophecy?” There’s a certain appropriateness about making the term a question rather than a statement, because if you’re going to look at Messianic Prophecy then you have to define what, exactly, Messianic Prophecy is. Christians view Messianic Prophecy through a completely different lens than Jews, for example. For Jews, Messianic Prophecy is more a process of looking for someone who is going to do something about something. For Christians, messianic prophecy is largely about looking back and seeing something about someone who did something. So, for Jews, Messianic Prophecy is pointed toward the future – this is what we expect of Messiah; who’s doing it? for Christians, it’s oriented toward the past – this is what Jesus did; how does that fit what was written? Both are about fulfilment – how and by whom do certain Messianic Prophecies get fulfilled – but the difference is that Jews are still looking for those prophecies to be fulfilled, and Christians believe they have been fulfilled by Jesus. There’s also the difference that Christians see messianic prophecy as having been fulfilled once and for all time by Jesus; Jews tend to see the potential for messiahs to arise in different times depending on the circumstances. It’s a complicated subject, and it’s obviously the cause of a great rift between the Jewish and Christian communities. As Christians, we call Jesus the Messiah; for Jews, Jesus was most certainly not looked at as a messianic figure. Christians believe Jesus fulfilled Messianic prophecies; Jews say – not even close. I’m going to be trying to consider both perspectives over the next few weeks. Having said that, I obviously look at the Jewish prophecies from a Christian perspective. I have never forgotten the words of my Old Testament professor at Emmanuel College when he said that even if we insist on calling it “the Hebrew Scriptures” the Old Testament is still Christian Scripture as well. We see and interpret the Jewish writings differently than Jews see and interpret them. I think that needs to be said right at the outset of talking about Messianic prophecy.
Part of the problem of reconciling (or at least understanding) the difference between Jewish and Christian understanding of Messianic prophecy is that Jews and Christians have a very different understanding of the role of the Messiah. For Jews, the Messiah played largely a political (and possible even military) role; Christians adapted that in the light of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, so that Christians understand the Messiah’s role as being spiritual in nature. What that means is that there are texts from the Old Testament (and we’ll talk about a few next week) that Jews have never considered to be messianic, but that Christians have claimed as messianic. We reflect on that to some extent every year on Palm Sunday when we contrast the crowds who hailed Jesus as a Messiah-figure when he arrived in Jerusalem for the last time with the crowds who screamed for his execution. That second group rejected the idea of Jesus as a Messiah because he didn’t do the political or military things a Messiah was supposed to do. And even within the Christian community, of course, there are different perspectives. I think it’s fair to say that more liberal traditions (such as our own) are far more sympathetic to the Jewish objections about how Christians have historically interpreted messianic prophecy that more fundamentalist Christian denominations are. In a sense, the historic Christian church has been guilty of a form of cultural appropriation in the area of Messianic prophecy, in that we’ve taken it over and adapted it to suit our own presuppositions and our own circumstances. So, how and why did we do that?
To understand that, we have to understand the Jewish concept of Messianic prophecy. Jews see the figure of Messiah, as I said, as a largely political figure. There’s also no sense of the term “Messiah” being restricted necessarily to one figure in particular; in fact, as I alluded to a couple of minutes ago, I’ve heard it said that in Jewish belief, every generation raises up a potential Messiah. It’s also interesting that in Jewish thought there’s no “requirement” - for lack of a better word - that a messianic figure would even necessarily be Jewish. We can see all of that tied together in one of the clearest messianic passages of the Old Testament, although Christians rarely read it and probably don’t grasp that it’s considered messianic. We find this in the last handful of verses in 2 Chronicles:
In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing: “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them.’”
So, who was Cyrus and why was he important? Cyrus was the King of the Babylonian Empire who released the Jewish people from their exile after their land had been conquered by Babylon about 80 years before. But more than simply release them, he ordered that the Jewish temple at Jerusalem should be rebuilt. This was huge for the Jewish people. The temple was the centre of both their religious and their political life. If you rebuild the temple you are taking the first step toward re-establishing the Davidic kingdom. This becomes, in Jewish thought, the role of Messiah – re-establishing the throne of David; re-establishing Israel as a nation among the world’s nations. Cyrus was not Jewish, but this didn’t prevent Isaiah, for example, from writing in his prophecy “This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus …” the “anointed” is the ways Jews refer to the Messiah. It doesn’t necessarily mean anointed with oil, which is how we often think of it. It means to be specially chosen to play a role in God’s plan. The word “messiah” comes from the Hebrew word “meshiach.” It’s a word that eventually gets applied to Jesus, although we generally use the Greek translation of the word: “Christ:, from the Greek “christos.” So Cyrus is recognized as anointed by God (he is “messianic”) in that he becomes the key player in fulfilling some of the prophecies that Jeremiah spelled out. Just to offer a bit of history – Israel was conquered in about 600BC, Babylon itself fell to the Persians in about 540BC, Cyrus became King of Persia around that same time, and he issued his edict to release the Jews and rebuild the temple in about 520BC. The Jeremiah prophecy that 2 Chronicles refers to is probably a collection of passages that speak of both the fall of Babylon and the Jewish restoration, with Cyrus being the “messianic” figure who brings those events about. For Jews, the work of “meshiach” is largely political, and messianic prophecies speak of the one (or ones) who will bring certain political events about.
But messianic prophecy doesn’t only deal with the restoration of Israel. Jewish prophecy in general has a tendency to work in a cause and effect sort of way. Those who are prophets look at society, see what is happening, identify the problems and say basically “if you don’t do something about this, something bad is going to happen.” Jewish prophecy isn’t really about predicting the future (which is how our contemporary society tends to see it – so you have “prophets” who “predict” things that will happen. Jewish prophecy is more drawing conclusions from social analysis. If you read the Old Testament prophecies you see lots of prophecies directed against not only Israel’s foes but also against Israel itself. These aren’t attacks on Israel; they’re warnings to Israel. “Something’s out of whack and unless you set things right you’re in trouble. Part of messianic prophecy is to offer some thought about what a messiah would do to set things right. A great example of this kind of messianic prophecy is in Isaiah 61:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me (so, this is messianic) he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our
God; to comfort all who mourn; to
provide for those who mourn in Zion - to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the
planting of the Lord, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they
shall raise up the former devastations; they shall
repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many
generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your
flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your
vines; but you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God;
you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. Because
their shame was double, and dishonor was
proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a
double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.
This is the work
of messiah: there is the work of ensuring a just society, blended with some
restorative work (building up ancient ruins, repairing ruined cities, etc.) and
some sense of exacting retribution on enemies (strangers and foreigners are now
going to serve the Jews, for example.) Jesus claimed the first few verses of
this passage as his own work in Luke 4, when he was invited to read Scripture
in the synagogue at Capernaum, and he chose this passage from Isaiah and read
only this part of it: “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favor.”
So Jesus claimed the “justice-seeking” mandate of the prophecy along with the messianic identification, but he rejected nation-building and the taking of vengeance against strangers and foreigners, and this would become a problem for him in a Jewish society that was struggling against occupation and oppression by yet another foreign empire – the Roman Empire.. So, according to Luke 4, Jesus himself took a very different view of what was expected of Messiah than what Jews would traditionally have expected. He likely was raised with this understanding. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, in Chapter 1, we read Mary’s Song (the Magnificat) which Luke says she spoke before Jesus was born, and was probably her understanding of her son’s role, which she likely instilled in him:
He has brought
down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the
hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his
servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.
Mary’s Song foreshadows in a way how Christians would treat the concept of Messianic prophecy, in that it’s kind of a scattergun reading, quoting diverse passages from the Old Testament and suggesting that they are fulfilled by Jesus’ birth. He would be the one to do these things. But he didn’t do what was traditionally expected of Messiah, which became the focal point of why most Jews rejected him as a claimant for the role.
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