1.01. In the Scroll of the Book, or Predicted and Fulfilled
CHAPTER I.
“IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME,” OR PREDICTED AND FULFILLED. The most wonderful thing about Christianity, which makes it absolutely unique among the religions of the earth, is, that it has what one may call a reflex history—a history before its actual history commenced—a life before its birth. Its history is composed of two separate periods, each of which is written in a separate volume, but not only do the two make one complete whole, but they stand in such relation to each other that the truth of the one is attested and demonstrated by the testimony of the other. Without the first, the second would be without foundation and unintelligible; without the second, the first would have no corner-stone to keep its sides together, and no headstone, which it absolutely needs to give it a finished and perfect appearance, and so seal it as the workmanship of Him Who is perfect in all His ways.
I have said that Christianity had a life before its birth. That life which it had did not cease, but still pervades its present existence. The child of promise is still nourished from the breasts of the mother of hope, who in turn is revived and quickened with the new life which she receives back from her own offspring. The Christ of history is merely the fruit of the tree of prophecy, and Christianity is only the realisation of a plan the first outlines of which were sketched more than a thousand years before. Now if the tree be good, the fruit, if it really be the produce of that tree, must be good also; and if once the plan be acknowledged to be drawn by the Divine Architect, all that we have to do, in order to ascertain whether the building raised by Jesus of Nazareth be of God, is to compare and see if it corresponds in every particular with that plan. Of course there are some who deny the Divinity of the Old Testament prophecies, but we may be allowed to tell them that a mere denial is not sufficient, and that their judgment can scarcely be received before they have accounted, not only for Christianity and its Founder as facts, but for the origin of the ideas and hopes which were in existence long before the facts, and with which they are so intimately connected. The historical bulwark of Christian defence has two sides, and I venture to think that the most impregnable side of that bulwark, which the enemy too often ignores, from a consciousness, perhaps, that it is too strong for attack, is that which commences in the garden of Eden, where, shortly after the creation of man, one of the corner-stones of its foundation was laid (Genesis 3:151), and which extends to the time of Christ’s advent.
1See Appendix, Note 1. That side of the bulwark on which is engraven as with a pen of iron, first, and most prominently, the records of the life, death, and resurrection of Him Who was and is “Wonderful;” the early spread of the faith He has founded, triumphing as it did in spite of principalities and powers and the opposition, not only of men collectively, but of man individually (for it had to contend not only with artificial institutions, but natural propensities, and thus had to conquer enemies in every bosom as well as in every state2); the continuance of the Christian religion unaltered in its essentials by the changes of realm and the chances of time; and the incalculable benefits it has bestowed on the human race,—this side is marvellous and firm as a rock; but the other side, on which was clearly and unmistakably inscribed hundreds and thousands of years before the events happened that so it should be, is even more marvellous and firm still—it is as firm as the Word of the living God which cannot be broken, though heaven and earth may pass away.
2 “Christianity, while it coalesced with all that is pure in humanity, had to struggle as decidedly with all that is ungodly in man’s nature, and with whatever issued from it and was connected with it. It announced itself as a power aiming at the renovation of the world; but the world sought to maintain its old ungodly ways. Though Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil, yet He came not to bring peace upon earth, but a sword. Hence a collision with the prevailing modes of thinking and manners was inevitable.”—NEANDER.
I am aware also that in recent times many intelligent Jews, backed by rationalistic, so-called Christians, who, in this respect, are even less conscientious and consistent than their Israelitish champions, deny that there is the hope of a Messiah in the Old Testament Scriptures, and assert that the prophecies on which Christians ground such a belief contain only “vague anticipations and general hopes, but no definite predictions of a personal Messiah,” and that consequently the alleged agreement of the gospel history with prophecy is imaginary.3 But on this I may be permitted to ask, first of all, How is it that it is only within very recent years, since special efforts were beginning to be made on the part of Christians to show that in Jesus of Nazareth the predictions have received their fulfilment, that attempts are made on the part of some representatives of the synagogue to eliminate the Messianic meaning from those predictions? Does it not appear very much as if this new mode of interpretation was adverted to as a convenience and for argument’s sake rather than from a desire to arrive at the truth or from a sincere belief that it is more in accordance with facts?
3 The first trace of veiled scepticism on the subject is to be found in the mystic saying of Hillel the first, who lived in the first century of the Christian era. He said, “There is no Messiah for Israel, for they have already enjoyed Him in the days of Hezekiah” (Sanhedrin 98. col. 2). The famous Joseph Albo, of the fifteenth century, author of the “Hikrim,” quotes Hillel as an authority when he reproves Maimonides for laying down the belief in a Messiah as a fundamental doctrine of Judaism, and goes on to say, “And there is neither in the law or in the prophets any prediction that must necessarily indicate the appearance of a Messiah” (“Sepher Ikarim Oratio 4” c. 42). A rather bold assertion this! and as for Hillel, had Maimonides lived he might have replied that his (Hillel’s) view was an isolated one in the Talmud. Since Albo there have been such isolated cases as Slavador and others of the rationalistic school who have held the same views, but their numbers have increased at the present day to legion, and in many cases they have been driven to it out of a feeling of despair and of hope deferred. The latest attempt to eliminate the doctrine of a personal Messiah from the Old Testament Scriptures is made by Professor Marks in a volume to which my attention has been drawn since writing these pages, and which I have noticed in the Appendix. See Appendix, Note 5. That it is a novel mode of dealing with Messianic predictions is easily seen from Jewish sentiment on the subject as depicted in the New Testament, which, I suppose, our enemies even would agree, is at least valuable, inasmuch as it pictures to us the Jewish life and thought of the period; and from the Talmud, which declares that “all the prophets have only prophesied concerning the days of the Messiah” (Sanhedrin 34. col. 2).
We hear much in these days of the “Jewish interpretation;” and to so-called Christians, who are as unacquainted with Jewish literature as they are ignorant of the spirit of Scripture, it too often serves as the thirty pieces of silver for which they betray their Lord. But what do they mean by the “Jewish interpretation”? Do they mean Talmudic interpretation? Its resumé of the subject is given in one sentence which I have just quoted. Do they mean the Targums? As a matter of fact, they are intensely Messianic, and many a passage is, in their versions, applied to the Messiah in which even Christians fail to see the reference.4 Even Maimonides, the great antagonist of Christianity, composed that article of the Jewish creed which unto the present day is repeated daily by every true Jew: “I believe with a perfect faith that the Messiah will come, and although His coming be delayed, I will await His daily appearance.”
4 There are no less than seventy-two passages in the Old Testament in the translation of which the Targumim have distinctly mentioned the Messiah by name.
Aben Ezra,5 Rashi,6 Kirrichi,7 Abarbanel,8 and almost every other respectable and authoritative Jewish commentator, although not recognising Jesus as the Messiah, are yet unanimous that a personal Messiah is taught in the Old Testament Scriptures. And, as for the Judaism of this latter end of the nineteenth century, let those who would resort to it as an authority for Scripture interpretation be careful how they embark on a vessel which, having once broken from its ancient mooring, is now tossed about on a troubled sea, and driven by contrary winds, and from whose topmast we can already descry the gigantic rock of infidelity on which, except the breath of Jesus calm the storm, it is destined to wreck, to the destruction of many. But only an insignificant minority of the Jews even have ventured as yet on this storm-tossed boat, and with joy we behold the nation, as such, still clinging to the anchor which has been the mainstay of their national existence for so many ages—the hope of a personal Messiah, which is the essence of the Old Testament Scriptures.
5 Aben Ezra, Abraham B. Meier, also called by the Jews Rabe, from the initials of Rabbi Abraham ben Ezra, one of the greatest of Jewish commentators and grammarians, born in Toledo 1088-89 and died in 1176. For a characteristic description of this extraordinary and rather eccentric man, see article by Dr. Ginsburg in later editions of Kitto’s Cyclopædia.
6 Rashi, Rabbi Solomon Izaaki, born in Troyes, in Champagna, 1040, died July 13th, 1105. He is generally considered as the originator of the modern school of Jewish interpretation.
7 Kimchi, commonly called by the Jews Redak, from the initial letters of Rabbi David Kimchi, born in Narbonne in 1160 and died about 1235. So great was his fame that the Jews applied to him, by a play of words, a Talmudic saying (Aboth 3. 17), adapted to mean, “No Kimchi, no understanding of the Scriptures.”
8 Abarbanel (Abravanel), Rabbi Don Isaac Ben Jehudah, a celebrated Jewish statesman, philosopher, theologian, and commentator, born in Lisbon 1437, died 1508, after being minister of state in Portugal, Spain, Naples, and Venice respectively. In his treatise on Exodus 22:20, wherein he discusses the most important articles of faith, he says (I am translating from a small Warsaw edition, printed 1881, p. 8)—“It is incumbent to believe that the Messiah will come, . . . and if He delay, still to wait for Him (Hab. 2.). . . . And we ought to remember the redemption and love of God, and to pray to Him in accordance with what was announced by every prophet from Moses (peace be upon him!) to Malachi (peace be upon him!). Whoever doubts that (i.e., that Messiah will come) makes the law to lie. . . . and denies God and the words of His prophets.”
Now we will open the sacred volume itself, and compare the circumstances of the life of Christ as described in the Gospels and Epistles with the prophecies it contains, the very latest of which, according even to the admission of all intelligent opposers of Christianity, were delivered hundreds of years before His advent; and if they agree, it surely follows, that not only are these predictions the revelations of the Eternal, Who alone knows the end from the beginning, but that Jesus of Nazareth, Who fulfilled them, must be the Messiah.
Now, without laying special emphasis on the more vague and general prophecies, such, for instance, as that promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), and that in Abraham’s seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, which, however, become definite and particular enough when compared with more subsequent and clearer revelations on the subject, we are met at the outset, in the very first book of the Old Testament Scriptures, with a very clear and definite prophecy by dying Jacob concerning the “last days,” which term in the Old Testament Scriptures refers invariably to the Messiah’s time,9 embracing the whole period from His first advent to suffer and die to His second advent to sit on the throne of His father David (Isaiah 2:2; Micah 4:1; Hosea 3:5, Heb.). The prophecy is to this effect: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto Him shall be the gathering of the peoples,” or, more literally, “unto Him shall be the submission or homage of the peoples.” Now I cannot, for obvious reasons, enter here on critical disquisitions, which, however, will be found elsewhere;10 but I may be allowed to digress so far as to say, that, were it not from controversial reasons and from a consciousness that, if once this prophecy be admitted, the claims of Jesus are, to a large extent, established, no Jew would be found advancing a theory so grossly in defiance of the grammatical construction of the passage and of the obvious sense of the context, namely, that Shiloh does not denote a person, but a place, for the existence of which, in the days of Jacob, there is not even the slightest evidence—a theory, moreover, which is based on a rendering which, even if adopted, will be found contrary to fact, and contradict the argument which they intend to build upon it.
9 So even Kimchi admits, for in his comments on Isaiah 2:2, he says, “Wherever it is said הַיָּמִׄים בְּאַחֲרִ֣ית ‘in the last days,’ it means the days of the Messiah” (Kimchi in loc.).
10 See Appendix, Note 2.
We may well hesitate to follow a system which, for its justification, is obliged to depart from the plain and obvious sense of the passage and resort to imagination rather than to translation. The passage taken literally contains a prediction to the following effect; namely, that the tribal staff,11 signifying authority and tribal independence, should not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver,12 or magistrate, until One came Who is, as His name signifies, Peace, or the One to Whom everything belongs; and that to Him the peoples,13—the Gentiles,—should come with reverence, or in the act of paying homage. Nearly seventeen centuries have rolled by since the delivery of that prophecy, during which time the twelve families, the heads of which Jacob was addressing, developed into twelve tribes, which together formed first one, and subsequently two, independent nations. One of the nations, consisting of ten out of the twelve tribes, after a history of two hundred and fifty years, during the whole of which time, instead of attracting the nations around it, it was too often attracted by them and fell away to the worship of idols, was finally, and for ever, swept away as a nation, and even lost its identity as a people. Scarcely one hundred and forty years passed, when the other nation, consisting of two and a half tribes, amongst them Judah to whom the promise was given, after a history not much brighter than that of Israel, also passed into captivity, with the same prospect as far as human knowledge could go of passing into oblivion like the ten tribes. The sceptic of that day, who of course would not believe in the prophecies relating to the restoration from Babylon, which might have told him that Judah’s tribal independence was not abolished, but merely suspended for a given time, might well have grown more defiant of the authority of Scripture, and held the prophecies up to ridicule as mere human inventions, for “where,” he might have said, “is that Shiloh, or Peace-giver, of the tribe of Judah, to Whom the nations were to gather, and Who was to come before the sceptre departed from Judah or a lawgiver from his feet? Tell me not that Judah will yet return and have an independent history. Have the ten tribes returned?”
11 This is how שֵׁ֫בֶט may be more accurately rendered. See Appendix, Note 2,
12 Isaiah 33:22 is explanatory of this passage: “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King,” where Gesenius translates מְחֹקְקֵ֑נוּ, “our Law-giver,” by “our Commander.”
13 The word עַמִּֽים, “peoples,” is in the plural, and is generally applied to the Gentiles in contradistinction to עָֽם, “the people”—Israel. See Appendix, Note 2. But the Word of God standeth sure, though the infidel may not live to see its fulfilment. The foretold seventy years of exile passed, and Judah, with its tribal traditions and genealogies intact, returned, and after its restoration was privileged with three prophets, one of whom shortly after delivered a prediction concerning One in Whom we can without difficulty trace the identity with Jacob’s Shiloh, for he speaks of Him as the “Desire of all nations,” Whose glory should be even greater than the Shechinah which dwelt between the cherubim of the first temple, and through Whom should come peace (Haggai 2:7-9). For the coming of that One Whom he styled the “Desire of all nations,” or of Whom Jacob prophesied some thirteen centuries before that “to Him shall be the homage of the peoples,” he fixes a more definite period still. It was to be not only before the tribal independence of Judah passed away, but in the very temple they were then building, the identity of which, to prevent the mistake of referring it to another temple, he emphasises with the words “the house, this one” (Haggai 2:9, Heb.). This declaration of Haggai was endorsed by Malachi, after whom the voice of prophecy was to be silent for centuries, who announced that the Divine Lord (Heb.) for Whom they were seeking and the Messenger of the covenant for Whom they were longing (Heb.) was “suddenly to come to His Temple.
But, again, four hundred years rolled by even after this latest prophecy of Malachi, and in the interval Judah’s tribal independence and the safety of the Temple, for the preservation of which the truthfulness of Haggai’s prophecy was now at stake, were several times threatened, and only preserved by extraordinary providences, until finally Judea was turned into a Roman province, and Judah, instead of commanding the homage of the nations, had himself to pay homage to Cæsar. But just then a spirit of intense expectation came over Israel, and to some extent over the Gentile world, and suddenly, two years before the death of Herod—the last king that ever reigned over Palestine, and very shortly before the destruction of the second Temple, while yet genealogies were extant, and Judah as a tribe exercising tribal functions, and governed by magistrates of its own—One, Who is in the New Testament styled “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” appeared, and since then millions have testified that “this Man is their Shiloh, their Peace” (Micah 5:5), and to Him, although at first He had as His followers only twelve illiterate persons, who, like Himself, were Jews, the “peoples,” the Gentiles, by hundreds of millions, are rendering homage, so that there is scarcely a place under heaven where the mention of His Name does not produce a throb of affectionate and reverential adoration in at least the breasts of some. Now mark, since His advent, and unto the present day, there is no more such a thing as a tribe of Judah, for genealogies are all extinct now, and no Jew can say for certain to which tribe he belongs, so that there can be no talk of a yet future fulfilment of this prophecy; for suppose Messiah came to-day, how could His claims be tested by the touchstone of genealogies, or how could He come to the second Temple, of which there has not been one stone left upon another for nearly nineteen centuries?
But, as far as the time of Messiah’s first advent is concerned, we have one of the plainest prophecies on record, and the fact that it was fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth can be proved to demonstration. The prophet Daniel not only foretold that from the decree issued by Artaxerxes in the twentieth year of his reign for the rebuilding of the city and walls of Jerusalem “unto Messiah the Prince” should be seventy sevens (of years), within which time, as a matter of history, Jesus appeared, but he gave us even, if possible, a more unmistakable landmark than figures by indicating certain events which were to follow close upon Messiah’s advent. “After threescore and two weeks,” he says, “shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” Let Jerusalem, which lies on its heaps of ruins, and the sanctuary or Temple which is burned with fire and laid waste, proclaim aloud, if the voices of men be silent, that Jesus of Nazareth, Who came just before the destruction of the city and sanctuary, and was “cut off, but not for Himself”—“for He had done no violence, neither was deceit found in His mouth”—is the true Messiah, and that Daniel was a prophet inspired by the Spirit of God.
Thus far we have dealt only with certain definite and remarkable prophecies relating to the time of Messiah’s advent, concerning which there can be no shadow of doubt that they were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth; but we will now examine another class of predictions which proclaim even more loudly and clearly a personal Messiah, and are still more important as touchstones by which to test the Messiahship of Jesus, for they identify not merely the circumstances, but the Person. We have seen how the first rather vague and general promise that “the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head” was centralised in “the seed of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed.” Now, if this promise stood alone, there might have been some reason for the assertion of those so-called Christians, who of necessity cannot have much in common with New Testament Christianity, and their Jewish allies, who have as little in common with the Judaism of the Old Testament, or the belief of their nation—that the Old Testament Scriptures contain only “general hopes of a redemption” which is to be brought about by the active or passive instrumentality of the Jewish nation, and nothing more; although we may well ask, “Where is the realisation of those hopes? What are the blessings which the families of the earth have received through the Jewish nation which have not been handed to them by the pierced hand of the crucified Nazarene?” Yea, and if Jesus be not the promised Redeemer, but an impostor, and His followers build their eternal prospects not on the words of the Son of God, but on cunningly devised fables of men, then the Jewish nation has been, instead of a blessing, the greatest curse to all the families of the earth, for it is with them that the imposture originated; one of their nation it was who perpetrated it, and thousands of their people were in the first instance its active propagators.14
14 Neither judging from the present is Israel, apart from their Messiah, likely to prove a blessing to all the families of the earth at any future time, for at the present day the Jews do absolutely nothing to advance the cause of religion among the families of the earth, but a great deal, both directly and indirectly, to hinder it. Many, indeed, are the vaunts and boasts of certain apostles of nineteenth century Judaism that before long the tenets which they represent will eclipse Christianity and become universal, but we may be pardoned for asking what these tenets be that will thus command the acceptance of the whole civilised world. A mere negative creed will certainly not do, and Judaism has absolutely nothing of a positive nature to offer. The Christian could receive all these boasts with a good-humoured and confident smile if it was not for a feeling of sadness for the boasters who are as prone as ever to lend an ear to the voice of false prophets, who cry “Peace! peace!” when in reality there is no peace. But in truth Scripture warrants no such assertion that the Jewish nation, independently of the Messiah, is to be a blessing to the world. The promised Seed of the woman was indeed particularised into the Seed of Abraham in Whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed, but this still general promise was to run through a narrower channel yet, and become more specifically marked as it rolled on.
After Abraham the Seed of promise was successively defined as the Seed of Isaac and the Seed of Jacob. Then out of the twelve tribes descended from Jacob only one—Judah—was to be the tribe from whom peace for the nations was to proceed.15 But still the circle contracted, and out of the particular tribe only one particular family was chosen, and finally every promise and prediction revolved for centuries round one Individual of that favoured family, Whose identity we can, without difficulty, trace in the various announcements of all the different prophets, and Whose career and character is described with such minuteness of detail that willful blindness alone can deny that a personal Messiah is loudly and unequivocally proclaimed in the Old Testament Scriptures. Thus the prophets, who lived at different periods of time, foretold that the promised Deliverer should be a Son of David; and that the original promise to Abraham that in him and in his seed should all the families of the earth be blessed shall be fulfilled in Him. The first plain declarations to this effect were made by the son of Jesse, “the sweet singer of Israel,” who was himself one of the most beautiful types of his great Son and Lord. It was he who spoke in the first instance of a certain covenant which God made with him, “ordered in all things and sure,” that One of “his seed should endure for ever, and His name flourish as long as the sun continue, and that in Him should men be blessed, and all nations call Him blessed; in Whose days the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace till the moon be no more;” before Whom “all kings shall fall down and all nations serve” (2 Samuel 23:5; Psalms 89:36; Psalms 72:1-20).
15 “The prophecy (Genesis 49:10, in the sense in which all understood it until in the last century it was in the interest of unbelief not to see it) “fixed at the new era of the people the promise to Abraham. The promise ‘In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed’ was expanded in both its parts. Judah was to be the line in which the Seed should come; the blessing was that He should be ‘Peace;’ that blessing was to reach the Gentiles through obedience to Him. The name Shiloh was enlarged in later prophecies of the Prince of Peace.”—PUSEY, “Lectures on Daniel,” p. 250. See Appendix, Note 2. The promise of eternal duration, and the ascription to Him of Divine titles, such, for instance, as are found in the forty-fifth Psalm, where He, Who is called “fairer than the children of men, Whom God hath blessed for ever,” the One Whom God “anoints” to be “King,” is thus solemnly addressed: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a right sceptre,” and in Psalms 110:1-7, where He, concerning Whom God hath sworn, saying, “Thou art a Priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek,” is addressed as אֲדֹנׇ֥י (Adonai, which is a Divine title, compare Psalms 110:1 with Psalms 110:5), “Who sitteth at the right hand of Jehovah,” puts an end to any plea that may be made that the Psalmist described, not one individual, but a line of kings who should descend from David, for the description is not only definite, but incommunicable.
Three hundred years later, Isaiah, the son of Amoz, still proclaims that One of the family of David “shall stand as an ensign to the peoples,16 and to Him the Gentiles will seek” (Isaiah 11:10); and he goes on to describe Him in such a manner that, without any effort, we at once recognise the very Individual Whom the Psalmist proclaimed as the coming Deliverer. Thus, in the ninth chapter of his prophecy (Isaiah 9:6-7), where he announces His birth, showing that only one Individual is meant, he says: “And the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon His kingdom, to rule it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.” Here we can distinctly identify the family from which He was to spring; the throne on which He is to reign; the extent of His government and the peace thereof, which are to have “no end;” its duration, which is to be “for ever;” and, lastly, His twofold nature and Divine titles, which make the description so specific as to make it absolutely impossible of an application to anyone else. Micah, Isaiah’s contemporary, expresses a hope quite as definite, and gives an exactly similar description of the coming Redeemer: “And thou, Bethlehem Ephratah,” he says, “out of thee shall One come forth unto Me that is to be Ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity. . . . And He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the Name of Jehovah His God, . . . for now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:2-4). Here we again have One Who is to be born in a certain particular place, but Who, at the same time, was from all eternity, and Whose rule, which is to be in the majesty of Jehovah, was to extend, not only over Israel, but unto the ends of the earth, showing that the prophet had the same Individual in mind, for it would be nothing less than blasphemy for such a description to be applied to any mere man.
16 Here again the word is plural, and used in contradistinction to “the people” (Israel).
Nearly two hundred years later Jeremiah still proclaimed that the King who is to reign and prosper and execute judgment and justice in the earth shall be a Branch of David, and that His name, descriptive of His character, shall be “Jehovah our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:5-6; Jeremiah 30:9; Jeremiah 33:15-17). And the same was announced by the prophet Hosea (Hosea 3:5); Ezekiel (Ezekiel 34:23; Ezekiel 37:25); and, nearly three hundred years later still, by Zechariah (Zechariah 12:8). It is quite true, therefore, that “David, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, not now to mention others, all looked for salvation in one particular family, identify the Redeemer by incommunicable attributes, so as to prove beyond all controversy that their hope of redemption was not a mere vague and undefined imagination natural to all in distress, but an idea well defined and fully developed as to the family, character, and dignity of Him by Whom it was to be effected.”17 17 McCaul’s “Lectures on the Messiahship of Jesus.” But the identity becomes even more striking and unmistakable by a seeming contradiction which runs through all the prophecies which set forth the coming Messiah; for while, on the one hand, He is represented as most exalted and commanding the homage of all nations, they, on the other hand, speak of Him as a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, Whose face should be more marred than that of any other man, and from Whom men should “hide their faces” as with disgust and abhorrence, and that He should be cut off by a violent death.
Thus in the twenty-second Psalm it is He Who says of Himself, “I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people. . . . My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaveth to my jaws, and Thou hast brought me into the dust of death the assembly of the wicked have enclosed Me; they pierced My hands and My feet” (Psalms 22:6, Psalms 22:15-16)18—Whose righteousness should be declared unto a people that should be born, and Whom “a seed should serve!” And in Psalms 118:22. it is “the Stone which the builders rejected that is to become the headstone of the corner,” and even in Psalms 110:1, where He is called by a Divine title and represented as sitting at the right hand of Jehovah, He is spoken of as having enemies and as being reduced to such an humble state that He is obliged to “drink of the brook by the way” to refresh Himself. Isaiah announces that the Servant of Jehovah, Whom God formed from the womb “to restore the preserved of Israel, and raise up the tribes of Jacob,” and also to be “a light to the Gentiles and the salvation of God unto the end of the earth;” Whom kings shall see and arise, and princes also shall worship—shall be One Whom man “despiseth” and Whom the nations abhorreth (Isaiah 49:5-7). And in that prophecy of his (Isaiah 52:13-15, Isaiah 53:1-12), which, in the light of the Gospels, reads more like history than prophecy, but for which even enemies of Christianity dare not fix a later date than B.C. about 550,19 and for the application of which to the Messiah we have the authority, not only of the Talmud, but of the Jewish liturgy used at the present day,—he announces that the Servant of the Lord, Who is exalted, and extolled, and very high, on which the Rabbins say, “more exalted than Abraham, and extolled above Moses, and higher than the angels,”20 shall be “despised and rejected,” “wounded,” “bruised,” “led as a lamb to the slaughter,” and “cut off from the land of the living.” Daniel says that the Prince Messiah, the Anointed of God, “shall be cut off;” and Zechariah speaks of the King Who should bring salvation to Zion as poor and riding upon an ass (Zechariah 9:9); of the Shepherd of the flock as sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:13); of the One Who will pour out the spirit of grace and supplication upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem as “pierced”21 (Zechariah 12:10); and of Him Who is the Fellow of Jehovah as “smitten” with the sword of justice (Zechariah 13:7)—so that we can trace His identity in all the predictions of the various prophets with regard to His humiliation and death as well as in those which speak of His exaltation and glory, proving the definiteness and identity of the prophet’s expectations, and that they all speak of one and the same Individual.
18 See Appendix, Note 3.
19 That is, assuming for one moment the theory, which has been manufactured to the order of unbelief, of “The Great Unknown’s” authorship of the later prophecies of Isaiah (40. - 66.), which, however, as has been satisfactorily proved by Hengstenberg (“Christology”) and Havernich (“Einleitung ins Alte Testament”), is entirely without foundation. The real date of the delivery of this remarkable prediction is about B.C. 713.
20 Abarbanel quotes this from Midrash Tanchuma, and says, “The Rabbis do not, in saying this, intend to refer to Israel, but, as their manner is, to expound the verse in which the words in question occur of the King Messiah.”
21 See footnote
22 In “Sanhedrin,” folio 43, Jesus is spoken of as One “that is akin to the kingdom” (הוא למלכות דקרוב) That He was of the family of David was never questioned at the time of His appearing—a very important fact, for could His opponents, who were never slow to avail themselves of any weapon to use against Him, bring forward this objection to His Messiahship, that would have put an end to His claims once and for ever. That information on this point was within their reach there is no doubt, seeing genealogies were yet extant. On the other hand, He was at the time universally acknowledged and known by the multitudes as the Son of David, who in their distress continually addressed Him in the words, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” If any additional evidence is required, we can point to an historical fact, that the relations of Mary were the persons brought before Domitian when, afraid of a great king to arise from the family of David, he sought for all the members of it to destroy them. The modern plea, therefore, of some Jews that Jesus is not of the family of David is groundless.
Micah foretold that in Bethlehem Ephratah Messiah would be born, and there, according to the second chapter of Luke, which records the whole circumstances, Jesus was born.
Isaiah proclaimed that “a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His name shall be Immanuel.” The New Testament tells us how the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin named Mary, with the news, “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus.23 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David.”
23 An objection has been raised why Jesus, if Isaiah 7:14 was really a prophecy of Him, was not called Immanuel. But the truth is Immanuel was to be no more the actual name of Messiah than Wonderful, Prince of peace, Desire of all nations, Shiloh, or Jehovah Tsidkenu. All Messiah’s titles were intended only as descriptions of His character, but His real name was, in the providence of God, concealed till His advent to prevent imposture on the part of pretenders, who would easily have taken advantage of it. An instance of this we have in the case of Bar Cochab, who assumed that name in justification of his claims to be the Cochab (כּוֹכׇ֜ב, Star) Who should come forth out of Jacob (Numbers 24:17). But Jesus is really the best commentary on Immanuel, Immanuel—“God with us;” Jesus—“Saviour.” But how could God come near us except as Saviour? and how could Jesus be Saviour except as Immanuel, in Whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily? The prophets foretold that Messiah should be brought up in humiliation and poverty, and be persecuted and rejected by His own people. The Gospels describe Jesus as being so poor that He had not a place where to lay His head; and how, when He manifested Himself to His own, His own received Him not, but the priests, Pharisees, and scribes, the leaders of the Jewish nation, went about to kill Him.
Zechariah foretold that Messiah should be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, and that the money should be cast unto the potter, and, in Matthew 26:1-75, we read that one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, “What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver,” which afterwards, in despair and anguish, he cast down in the Temple, and with which the priests bought “the potter’s field to bury strangers in.”
Isaiah introduces Him as saying, “I gave My back to the smiters and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” And in the New Testament we read how Pilate caused Jesus to be scourged, and how the Jews did spit in His face and buffet Him and smote Him with the palms of their hands. Not only did the prophets announce that Messiah should be cut off from the land of the living, but David predicted the very manner of His death, which was to be non-Jewish. He was not to be stoned, which was the Jewish way of inflicting death, but to have His hands and feet pierced.24 In the providence of God, and in fulfilment of this prediction, which was delivered hundreds of years before Rome existed, at the time of Christ the power to administer death was taken out of the Jewish hands by the Roman governors, and Jesus was crucified.
24 See Appendix, Note 3.
Zechariah prophesied of a time when Israel will “look upon Him Whom they have pierced, and will mourn.25 An eye-witness of Christ’s agony on the cross tells us how “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.”
25 This passage is taken from Alshech, “ ‘I will do yet a third thing, and that is that’ they shall look unto Me, ‘for they shall lift up their eyes unto Me in perfect repentance when they see Him Whom they have pierced, that is Messiah the Son of Joseph;’ for our rabbis of blessed memory have said that He will take upon Himself all the guilt of Israel, and shall then be slain in the war to make an atonement, in such a manner, that it shall be accounted as if Israel had pierced Him, for on account of their sin He has died, and therefore, in order that it may be reckoned to them as a perfect atonement, they will repent, and look to the blessed One, saying that there is none beside Him to forgive those that mourn on account of Him Who died for their sin; this is the meaning of ‘They shall look upon Me.’ ” That this passage (Zechariah 12:10) refers to Messiah is admitted by Aben Ezra and Abarbanel, and also by Rashi in his commentary on the Talmud “Succah,” fol. 52, Col. I.), although, strange to say, he denies it in his commentary on the Bible. Of course they apply it to their invention Messiah ben Joseph, but on this see footnote 27.
Isaiah foretold that He should be numbered with transgressors. Jesus was crucified in the midst of two malefactors. In the Old Testament Messiah is represented as saying, “All they that see Me laugh Me to scorn; they shoot out the lip; they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him.” In the New Testament we read, “And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads and saying, Thou that destroyest the Temple and buildest it in three days, save Thyself. If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise the chief priests, mocking, with the scribes and elders, said, . . . He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him, for He said, I am the Son of God.” The Psalmist introduces Him as saying, “They gave Me gall for My meat, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.” In the Gospels we are told how the Jews filled a sponge with vinegar and put it to the mouth of Jesus when He hung on the cross.
Again, in Psalms 22:1-31 we read a prophecy that Messiah’s garments should be parted, and lots cast for His vesture. The apostles relate how the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and parted them among themselves, but of the vesture, “which was without seam wrought from the top throughout, they said, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be.”
Isaiah said that His grave should be appointed with the wicked, but that He should be with the rich after His death. Jesus, being crucified as a malefactor, was virtually appointed by the Jewish council to be buried in the usual place for felons, but after His death “there came a rich man of Arimathea named Joseph . . . and begged the body of Jesus of Pilate, who commanded it to be delivered to him, . . . and when he had taken it and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, he laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock.” The prophets announced without any uncertainty that Messiah would rise from the dead; thus the Psalmist represents Him as saying, “Thou wilt not leave My soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption,” and Isaiah says that after He will be made a trespass offering, which implies death, “He shall see His seed, and prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand” (Isaiah 53:10 26).
26 Even if we had no distinct prophecy of Messiah’s resurrection, which we have, as, for instance, those quoted above, we could yet easily infer that this was the belief of the prophets from the fact that they speak of two advents of the same Messiah at two utterly distinct periods. Once He was to be born in Bethlehem Ephratah (Micah 5:2), and be manifested during the time of the second temple (Haggai 2:6-9; Malachi 3:1), when He should be “cut off, but not for Himself,” after which dreadful judgments were to befall Israel as a nation, so that their city and temple should be destroyed (Daniel 9:26); but again He should appear in the clouds of heaven as the Son of man, not to die, but to reign for ever, after which not judgment, but blessing, should descend on Israel. Now if He is to die after His first advent, how could He come a second time in the clouds of heaven if He did not rise from the dead and ascend into heaven first? In the New Testament we are told by those who sealed their testimony with their lives that the Jesus Who died for our sins, and was buried, rose again on the third day, “according to the Scriptures,” and the fact of Christ’s resurrection from the dead is as certain—for it rests upon the same kind of evidence—as that Israel went out free from Egyptian bondage and crossed the Red Sea, or that a battle of Waterloo was ever fought.
According to the Old Testament, Messiah, after His resurrection, was to ascend on high, leading captivity captive, and taking with Him gifts for men, and should sit down at the right hand of God until His enemies be made His footstool (Psalms 68:18; Psalms 24:7-10; Psalms 110:1). In the New Testament we are told that on the Mount of Olivet, near Bethany, after Jesus had given His disciples the commission to be His witnesses in Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth, a cloud received Him out of their sight, which took Him up into heaven, where He is now exalted at the right hand of God, a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto Israel and the forgiveness of sin (Acts 1:9; Acts 2:32-33; Acts 5:31). The prophets teach two advents of the same Messiah—not two Messiahs, a theory in which the Rabbins have taken refuge from their perplexity in not being able to reconcile the prophecies which speak of Messiah’s suffering and humiliation with those which speak of His kingdom and glory, and under the cloke of which we detect a partial acknowledgment of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth,27 but one Messiah, the first time born in Bethlehem Ephratah, to be brought up in humiliation, and finally to be led as a lamb to the slaughter for the sin of the world, and then the second time to come in power and glory in the clouds of heaven to reign in Mount Zion and over all the earth. Jesus, before He ascended into heaven, Himself solemnly announced that hereafter He would return to this earth in the clouds of heaven; and after His ascension two heavenly messengers were sent to the sorrowful and longing disciples with the joyous tidings that “the same Jesus, Who was received up into heaven, shall so come and in the like manner as they had seen Him go up into heaven” (Matthew 26:64; Acts 1:11).
27 It is well known that the doctrine of two Messiahs, of whom Ben Joseph, or Ephraim, is to suffer and die, and the other, Ben David, is to reign in glory and power, is held by Rabbinical Jews. Of this we find no trace whatever in the Old Testament or in the New, nor, again, in the dialogue between Justin Martyr and the Jew Trypho, which brings us down to the latter part of the second century. “The utmost antiquity that can be ascribed to this notion of a duplicate Messiah is the third or fourth century. But whom did the Rabbis mean by the epithet Messiah, Son of Joseph, or Ephraim? We do not hesitate to answer, None other person than Jesus, Whom, after their great disappointment in the revolution of Bar-Cochba, they tacitly acknowledged as the suffering Messiah, and denominated Him by the name that He was commonly called in Galilee, in order perhaps to screen themselves against the hatred and persecution of their own followers, or of their Roman masters. This idea has been hinted at by the Rev. M. Wolkenberg in his translation of ‘The Pentateuch according to the Talmud,’ p. 156, and broadly asserted by Dr. Biesenthal in his Hebrew commentary on St. Luke (Luke 23:48). This accounts for the remarkable fact that on the Feast of Trumpets, before the blowing of the ram’s horn, God’s mercy is besought through ‘Jesus, the Prince of the presence of God, the Metatron,’ or the One Who shares the throne of God. At this same service, verses, mostly from Psalm 119., are repeated whose first letters form the name of ‘Christon,’ but so ingeniously chosen, that they should at the same time read שׂטן קּרע, ‘the Bruiser of Satan.’ This name also is written on amulets, and in Jewish houses when a child is born, as well as the name of the Angel, מצמציה, which is mentioned in the said service, with alteration only of one accountable letter, and which stands for the King our Righteousness, ‘the King our Righteousness, Jesus the Messiah.’ To this Metatron is again applied in the Talmud (‘Sanhed,’ p. 256), the passage Exodus 23:20, and it is added that His name is the name of His Master. And in the liturgy of the Feast of Tabernacles reference is made to the glorious and dread Metatron, who was transformed from flesh to fire.
“Who cannot see in these mysterious hints a purposely covered belief in the Messiahship of Jesus, and that in a most orthodox manner?”—Jewish Intelligence, June, 1885.
All the prophets announce that Messiah shall not only be the glory of His own people Israel, but the light of the Gentiles and the salvation of God unto the ends of the earth.
More than forty false Messiahs appeared in the history of the Jewish nation, all of whom were followed by multitudes, and a few of them were in turn proclaimed to be the true Messiah by some of the greatest Rabbis, the only recommendation of their claims being promises of revenge and flatteries which gratified the national vanity; but at the present day, except to a few students of history, the remembrance of their names has perished from off the earth, while Jesus of Nazareth, Who was despised by His own nation and crucified, is worshipped by hundreds of millions, some of whom have in the past, and would now, count it the greatest honour to endure the rack or the stake for His Name’s sake; and the religion He has founded is admittedly the only one suited for all climes and classes, and is destined ere long to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.28
28 It has been objected by Jews and infidels that the spread, prevalence, and permanence of Christianity have their parallel in the history of Mohammedanism, which notwithstanding all agree to be an imposture. To this we reply
(1) That we are here dealing with one aspect of Christianity to which Mohammedanism certainly presents no parallel, viz., as the subject and fulfilment of prophecy.
(2) To point to Mohammedanism as parallel to Christianity, and as an argument against it, is simply absurd, and shows on the part of those who bring it forward a deplorable ignorance of the origin, history, and future of both religions alike. As to the origin, beside the fact that Christianity is the fulfilment of predictions uttered hundreds and thousands of years before the advent of its Founder, let us look for a moment at the obstacles against which the two creeds had in the first instance to contend, which will bring out the distinctive characteristics of each.
Christianity had to contend, as has been already said, not only with men collectively, but with man individually, and had to fight not simply against the artificial institutions of every state, but also against the natural propensities of every human heart. “It was opposed,” as Neander has well expressed it, “to the rudeness no less than the civilisation of the world,” and proclaimed aloud to all men alike to “crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts.” But far different was it with Mohammedanism, which had no such obstacles in its path, promising as it did ample indulgences of the passions of the natural man.
Then we ought to take into consideration the intellectual character of the nations in which the two religions originated and at the present day prevail, and also the means taken in the first instance for the propagation of the two creeds. Mohammedanism spread and triumphs amid barbarism, and was forced upon its followers by the sword; Christianity always ruled in the centre of civilisation, and was received from conviction.
“With armies for its missionaries and parks of artillery for its apostles, an irrational and false creed may be imposed upon nations; but there is not so tangible a means of accounting for the success of a religion whose soldiers were humble unarmed preachers, and whose only weapons were arguments and persuasions.”
Then as to the permanence of the two creeds. Mussulmans themselves confess that their faith is in a rapid process of decay, having never recovered from the corruption it engendered within and scarcely from the shocks it sustained from without; but, on the other hand, there is scarcely anything more remarkable in the history of Christianity than its recuperative energies; there were times when it became corrupt, but it contained the principles of renovation within itself, and it came forth from the struggle with new vigour and untarnished lustre. But the complete answer to the infidel and Jew is that Mohammedanism is really an imitation of Christianity, and that its history will clearly prove that its success was due to the truths, and not to the falsehoods it contained, that its triumphs were obtained through the portion of the Christian system which it borrowed, and that, therefore, so far as the prevalence and permanence of Mohammedanism is concerned, it is, if anything, rather an argument in favour of the Gospel than against it. That Islamism was an imitation of Christianity was the boast of Mohammed, who declared that he only preached what had been originally revealed by God to the Old Testament prophets and what the Incarnate Word (Jesus Christ) had taught in Judea. In the Koran belief in Jesus as the Sent of God is taught as essential, and a curse is pronounced on those who will not believe on Him. See Sale’s translation of the Koran, the “Chandos Classics” edition, p. 39.
(I have in this note made free use of the introduction to the excellent history of Mohammedanism by W. C. Taylor.)
It is not necessary indefinitely to multiply points of agreement, as those given suffice for the purpose of our inquiry.
We have sketched, not from dark enigmas or mysterious symbols, but from clear and unmistakable declarations of Moses and the prophets, taken in their plain and grammatical sense, and acknowledged to be of Messianic import by Jews themselves when not engaged in controversy, the history, character, and mission of the Messiah of the Old Testament; including not only the tribe, but the family from which He should spring; the time of His advent; the place of His birth; the political situation of His people and land at the time of His appearing; the manner of His reception by His own people; not only the fact of His death, but the very manner of it; His resurrection; ascension; exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty on high and return in power and glory. If any therefore insist on the assertion that the Old Testament Scriptures do not contain the hope of a personal Messiah, he does so either from ignorance of the contents of that sacred volume or from wilful blindness.
We have next seen how the picture we have drawn corresponds in every particular to Jesus of Nazareth, proving not only that He is verily the Messiah promised to the fathers, but also that the prophets, who hundreds of years before delivered predictions concerning Him which have been minutely fulfilled, spake not by the will of men, but were moved by the Holy Spirit. This introductory chapter has already been extended much beyond the limits originally intended, but this much I must add, first, that the agreement between prophecy and the history of Jesus is not a forced one, but so obvious that it lies on the very surface, and is perceivable even by the simplest; an that, if the exercise of any ingenuity be required, it is altogether on the part of those who try to conceal it.
Secondly, it need scarcely be pointed out, that the chief prophecies with regard to the Messiah being those which deal with His miraculous birth, death, and resurrection, they are such as no enthusiast could, and which no impostor would, fulfil. Only the Almighty, Who brought the universe into existence, could cause Jesus to be born of a virgin or raise Him from the dead. There have been many enthusiasts and impostors, and there may be many more, but none of them pretended to rest their claims on the ground of vicarious suffering, death, and resurrection, which could alone satisfy the unequivocal declarations of the prophets. If any of them did suffer a violent death, it only proved the falsity of their pretensions, and that death was not voluntary, neither was there any release from its bonds.
Finally, the number and minuteness of the predictions, and their fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth, exclude the idea, which one or two leading infidels, who must have been possessed with extraordinarily large capacity of credulity, have suggested, that the agreement is only accidental. Never in the past or in the present, or until the end of the world, will accident either conjecture or minutely fulfil such a number of circumstances.
Oh! that men would heed the voice of fulfilled prophecy, which is the echo of the prescient God, Who knows the end from the beginning—more reliable than would be the voice of one risen from the dead. Oh! that they would learn, among others this lesson also, that since these prophecies which relate to Christ’s first advent to suffer and die for the sin of the world were literally and minutely fulfilled, those also concerning His second coming as the world’s King and Judge will be as literally fulfilled, for the Word of the living God cannot be broken, though heaven and earth may pass away.