Messianic Texts and Their Interpretations

The texts that Christians read as messianic prophecies - passages pointing forward to Jesus - are among the most debated in all of scripture. Jewish and Christian scholars have argued about their interpretation for two thousand years, and the debate is not simply a matter of one side reading carefully and the other carelessly. Both traditions have serious readers making serious arguments. Understanding the debate - what the texts actually say in their original context and how each tradition reads them - is both intellectually honest and theologically important.

Isaiah 7:14 is the most famous case. Matthew 1:23 quotes it in the context of the virgin birth: "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel." The Greek word Matthew uses, and that the Septuagint uses, is parthenos, meaning virgin. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is almah, meaning a young woman of marriageable age - a word that does not necessarily specify virginity. In its original context, the passage is addressed to King Ahaz of Judah, offering a sign that the immediate military crisis (the Syro-Ephraimite coalition threatening Jerusalem) will be resolved before a child recently conceived is old enough to know right from wrong. The text addresses Ahaz's present situation and offers a near-term sign. Matthew reads the same text as pointing forward to Jesus, using the Septuagint's translation. Both readings are exegetically defensible within their respective frameworks; neither is simply a misreading of the other.

Isaiah 53 - the suffering servant passage - is perhaps the most theologically significant and most debated of all. Christian tradition reads it as a prediction of Jesus's suffering, death, and atoning work, and the correspondences are striking: the servant is despised and rejected, he bears the iniquities of others, he is wounded for their transgressions, he is led like a lamb to the slaughter. Jewish tradition reads the servant as a collective figure - the people of Israel, who have suffered on behalf of the nations - or as an individual historical figure within Isaiah's own context. The Hebrew text does not resolve the question: the identity of the servant is genuinely ambiguous in the original. Both the collective and the individual readings have ancient roots and serious defenders.

Other frequently cited messianic texts include Psalm 22 (whose opening words Jesus quotes from the cross), Psalm 110 (quoted more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament passage), Micah 5:2 (Bethlehem as the birthplace of the coming ruler), and Zechariah 9:9 (the king entering Jerusalem on a donkey). In each case, the original context addresses a different situation than the New Testament application suggests, and in each case the New Testament authors are doing something more creative than simply reading off a prediction. They are engaged in a kind of interpretive activity - finding in the Hebrew scriptures patterns, types, and echoes that illuminate the significance of Jesus - that was common in their Jewish context and that requires historical understanding to appreciate fully.