Part 7: Messianic Prophecy

To try and walk through all the ins and outs of prophecy in the Bible would take many volumes. Here I’m just going to summarize a few of the most important issues. The first is about whether Jesus appears in the Old Testament (OT), are there prophecies about him?

Well, there aren’t passages talking about Jesus by name in the OT. However, there are a lot of things said about the coming Messiah. Messiah is simply the word Hebrew word for Christ (which is a Greek word transliterated into English.) Messiah / Christ means anointed one, a person christened to be a leader, and consequently The Messiah / Christ would be a special type leader.

The argument then is transitive. If Jesus is the Messiah, the special coming anointed leader, then yes, the OT predicts his coming. As we discussed last time, if we have detailed predictions we have good reason to think the predictor has special knowledge. If the predictions are such that they would be super unlikely, we have reason to think the predictor had super special knowledge—super natural knowledge.

Now there are a lot of predictions, ‘fulfillments’, issues and whatnot surrounding OT predictions / prophecies of the Messiah. Here I’ll discuss some of the most basic ones. Good predications answer basic questions. The OT might not give Jesus’ name (directly), but it still answers other baisc questions. In particular we’ll look at three. The OT tells us:

1. Where the Messiah will come from
2. Who the Messiah will be a descendant of
3. When the Messiah will come / act

The OT answers the first with great precision; the second with moderate to fine precision, and the third with either moderate precision or very great precision depending on one’s interpretation. Everyone acknowledges that all of the OT (Hebrew Bible) was written at minimum 150 years in advance of the Jesus so there is no question of post hoc prophecy. If these predictions came true, then we have reason to believe it was God speaking about the Messiah in the OT. If the OT then goes on to prophesy that the Messiah will die and rise again then we have good reason to believe that God thinks Jesus will rise the dead. And if God thinks something is true, or God tells us he will do something, then surely its reasonable to believe that thing. So, on to the basic predictions.

(1a) Where will the Messiah come from?

This prediction is about as straightforward as it gets. In Micah 5:2 we get this prophecy,

“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
    from ancient days.”

Scholars agree that this is a Messianic Psalm, as seen by the ruler language in the middle. That it was interpreted this way can be most clearly seen in the first century Jewish Targum of Jonathan, basically a paraphrase, which gives this translation:

“And you, O Bethlehem Ephrath, you who were too small to be numbered among the thousands of the House of Judah, from you shall come forth before Me the anointed one [מְשִׁיחָא, literally ‘Messiah’], to exercise dominion over Israel, he whose name was mentioned before, from the days of creation.”[1]

Here we see the Targum explicitly identifies the ruler as the Messiah. We find the same Messianic understanding in the NT references (see Matt 2:1-6, John 7:42). Consequently we have a defined place the Messiah was to come from: Bethlehem of Judah (as opposed to Bethlehem in Zebulun).[2]

There is no question that Micah was written long, long before the coming of Jesus. The standard account is that it was written in the 8^th century BC. Some scholars see the book of Micah being heavily revised in the 6^th century BC, which, again, is still 500 years before the coming of Jesus.

(2a) Who the Messiah will be a descendant of?

Who did Jesus come from? The Old Testament is clear that there would be a messianic ruler that would be a descendent of King David. This pops up in several places, and makes perfect sense given the promises given to David. This is also why Bethlehem being the place where the Messiah would come from makes sense—it was where David came from.

We can find this promise in Samuel:

8 “Now therefore, thus you shall say to My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people Israel….

12 When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom….

16 Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:8, 12, 16)

Over the course of time, the house of David is unfaithful, and the kingdom gets divided and people are killed. But through it all this promise continues, as we see in the later prophets and writings.

Consider the book of Isaiah (dated between 8 & 6th centuries BC) which says,

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,

    and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.

He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom,

establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness

    from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

And from a few chapters later,

Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse [David’s father],
And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And He will delight in the fear of the Lord,
And He will not judge by what His eyes see,
Nor make a decision by what His ears hear (Isaiah 11:1-3)

That the coming Messiah / ruler would be a descendent of David is very common and uncontroversial.

(3a) When will the Messiah come

The dating of the Messiah is a much more involved discussion than his descent. So hang on, here comes the fun!

Prophecy of the weeks

The main text involved comes from Daniel 9 and the prophecy of the 70 weeks. That this passage is Messianic and chronological can be seen from its content (see below) and its reception history, which has lead to this scholarly consensus, “The preceding survey reveals that a consensus currently exists among contemporary scholarship regarding the interpretation of the seventy-weeks prophecy leading to a climate of messianic expectation among certain sectors of first-century Jewish society.”[3]

Roger T. Beckwith concludes that the various Jewish factions who were looking for the Messiah dated the prophecy of Daniel 9 from between 10 BC to 140AD. However, in a fascinating observation, he notes that the messianic expectations were concentrated at certain times, and those times correspond to major Jewish rebellions trying to setup an independent Jewish leader and state. For instance, the Jewish rebellion that began the Jewish-Roman war that resulted in the destruction of the temple began in 66AD. Beckwith states, “On Pharisaic chronology, the 69th of Daniel’s 70 weeks ended in 63 A.D., so the Messiah was imminently expected between then and A.D. 70. However, the expectation was disappointed. Why? Could it be because they were reckoning the 70 weeks from the beginning of the Exile instead of from the end of it? The Essenes very plausibly argued that the starting point for the prophecy was the end of the Exile, and, since the Exile lasted 70 years, this would mean that they ought to be expecting the Messiah between 133 and 140 A.D. instead — the very time when Bar Kokba rebelled.”[4] The Bar Kokba revolt was the next, and last, major revolt of the Jewish people.

The Text

But what does the text itself say? The prophecy from Daniel 9 is as follows:

²⁴ “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 

²⁵ Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one [messiah], a prince, there shall be seven weeks. And for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 

²⁶ And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one [messiah] shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 

²⁷ And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

As virtually everyone agrees, the weeks here refer to weeks of years. So a straightforward understanding of the 70 weeks is of 490 years. Now the text divides the 70 weeks up into three sections: 7 weeks, then 7 + 62 weeks, and plus one final 1 week. It says in vs 26 that we’re looking for a messiah after the 7+62 weeks, 483 years, and then we have the final week 69+1, which would bring the count up to 490 years.[5]

So far, so good. But the bigger question here is, when does this countdown start? The text says that it is from “the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem,” But when is that? There are different options and dating things in the ancient world can be difficult (thanks to obscurity, juggling different calendars, etc.), which is why there were different times in 2^nd temple Judaism.

The dates given below are the current standard ones (but we need not be dogmatic). There are currently three major options corresponding to three major decrees to restore Jerusalem:

1. The decree of Cyrus when he said the Jews could rebuild the temple (537 BC).
2. The seventh year of Artaxerxes when Ezra went out with Artaxerxes a commission to rebuild Jerusalem (458BC)
3. The twentieth year of Artaxerxes when Nehemiah received permission to build the walls of Jerusalem (usually 445BC, but there are some arguments here as to dating)

The first gives us an end date of 54BC for the 69 weeks, and 47BC for 70 weeks

The second drops us out at 25ish to 33AD.

The third drops us out at 38ish to 45AD (or 33 if we use slightly different dates & 360 day years)

Of note is that the 69 week prophecy (Dan 9:26) includes a messiah who will be cut off, and that sometime following this the city and temple would be destroyed.

There are some who think these dates should be taken approximately, as rounding is common in dating in the Hebrew Bible.[6] Others take very precise accounts of the dates, despite all the difficulties involved in making the calculation. One recent account that takes the 7^th year of Artaxerxes (Nisan 1, as it says in Ezra 7:9) as the starting point, then calculates the fulfillment to be found on April 5^th 33AD.

So what are we looking for?

From just the few prophecies we’ve looked at above, we find that the Messiah is expected to be a descendent of David and to come from Bethlehem. The time window at its widest, if we include both the historical expectation and modern dating, seems to be from 54BC to 140AD. The narrowest range says the Messiah is supposed to do something on a specific day, according to one estimation, April 5^th 33AD. I think the most reasonable range to start with is in the middle. The Essenes expected Messiah somewhere after 10 BC and the Pharisees seemed to date Messiah’s coming to 63-70 AD—the later modern accounting of dates falls nicely in this range. The 140AD number seems not to be an original dating attempt, but a reevaluation because the Messiah didn’t arrive by 70 AD. Add to this that, according to Dan 9:26, the Messiah was to come before the city [Jerusalem] and the sanctuary [the Temple] were destroyed, and this happened at the hands of the Romans in 70AD, this makes 70AD a good terminus ad quem, the ending for our expectation. So, we expect the Messiah between 10BC and 70AD

But what else do we expect of the Messiah? Well, this has a very big answer! Here we’ll look only at the passages we’ve looked at so far, and leave the rest for a different post, including one that deals with objections.

Other expectations

From Micah we have a prediction of the coming of a ruler from Bethlehem. But it doesn’t stop there, it goes on to say “out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (NIV). This could be a reference to the pre-existence of the one coming (sort of like Elijah coming back from heaven). Others try to find a reference to the ancientness of the line of David here. A different translation puts it, “His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity” (NASB)—in this case it looks like the reference is to God himself.

So from Micah we see that the Messiah will:

• Come from Bethlehem
• Be a ruler
• Be from long ago (whatever that means)

From the Isaiah passages we get a long list. The Messiah will:

• Be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
• Be born a descendent of Jesse [David’s dad],
• Sit on David’s throne,
• Establish and uphold that throne with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever
• Have the Spirit of Yahweh on him
• Have the Spirit of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel & strength
• Delight in the fear of Yahweh
• Judge not merely by what his eyes see

From the book of Daniel we see the Messiah:

• Be cut off
• Have nothing
• Have this happen before the city and sanctuary are destroyed
• And he will at some point (there are different opinions as to whether there is a gap between the 69^th and 70^th week)
  • Finish the transgression,
  • Put an end to sin, 
  • Atone for iniquity, 
  • Bring in everlasting righteousness,
  • Seal both vision and prophet
  • Anoint a most holy place

This gives us a starting list of what to look for. Are these all the Messianic prophecies? Not hardly! And some of those prophecies form the Jewish objection to Jesus—again, we’ll get to that in a little while. For now, this gives us the ability to start judging whether Jesus fulfilled the time, place, descent, and some other prophecies of the Messiah.

In sum, we are looking for a messiah figure who arrives on the scene from between 10BC and 70AD. He will be a descendent of David, come from Bethlehem, be a special leader, and have some transcendent properties like ‘being from long ago’ (whatever precisely that means), be exemplary just, wise, and strong, while also in some way dealing with the sin problem and bringing about righteousness.

So how does Jesus fit with all this? That comes next

[1] Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P Gordon, trans., The Targum of the Minor Prophets (Liturgical Press, 1990), 122.

[2] The early Christian tradition also took this is as Messianic, more on this next time.

[3] Hamstra, “The Seventy-Weeks Prophecy of Daniel 9:24–27 and First-Century Ad Jewish Messianic Expectation,” 24.

[4] Beckwith, “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot and Early Christian Computation,” 539.

[5] Some see that there is a time gap between the 69 and 70th year, but that will not worry us much here.

[6] Larson, “Approximate Fulfillment As The Key To Reconsidering The Decree Of Cyrus As The Beginning Point Of Daniel’s 70 Weeks.”