6. The Old Testament: Jesus, the Human Messiah

Before asking what individual New Testament verses may mean about Jesus, I think we should first ask a more basic question:

What picture of the Messiah did the Old Testament itself establish?

Was Israel told to expect Yahweh Himself to become the Messiah?

Or was the Messiah presented as a human being whom Yahweh would raise up, empower, establish, and exalt?

This matters because the New Testament did not appear in a vacuum. Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews whose understanding of God, the Messiah, kingship, prophecy, and salvation was shaped by the Old Testament. If we want to understand who Jesus is, we should begin with the Scriptures that came before him.

When the Old Testament is read cumulatively, I believe its positive picture is remarkably consistent.

The Messiah is a descendant of humanity.

He comes through Abraham, Judah, and David.

He is a prophet whom Yahweh raises up.

He is a king whose throne Yahweh establishes.

He calls another person “my God.”

He sits at Yahweh’s right hand.

He is an exalted human figure who comes before God and is given dominion, glory, and kingship.

He can rightly be called Lord, King, Savior, and Messiah because God gives him extraordinary authority and accomplishes His saving purposes through him.

That is already an extraordinarily high Christology.

But it is a human Messianic Christology.

Several Old Testament passages are nevertheless commonly used to argue that the Messiah must actually be Yahweh. Those passages deserve serious consideration, and I will examine them after first establishing the Old Testament’s general portrait of the coming Messiah.

1. The Old Testament’s Picture of the Messiah

The Messiah Would Be a Human Descendant

The earliest Messianic promise places the coming deliverer within humanity.

Genesis 3:15 says:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he will bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

The coming deliverer is the offspring of Eve.

He comes from humanity.

That pattern continues.

Genesis 22:18 says:

“…and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Numbers 24:17 says:

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel…”

Genesis 49:10 says:

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet… and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

The coming ruler is therefore placed within a human genealogy:

offspring of Eve

offspring of Abraham

from Jacob

from Judah

and, eventually,

from David.

None of these passages by itself proves that the Messiah could not somehow also be deity. But that is not what the texts themselves say.

Their straightforward presentation is that God will bring His promised deliverer from humanity.

That matters because Scripture elsewhere repeatedly distinguishes God from humanity. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man,” and Hosea 11:9 says, “I am God and not a man.”

The Old Testament’s Messianic story therefore begins not with Yahweh announcing that He will become a man, but with Yahweh promising a human descendant through whom His purposes will be fulfilled.

Yahweh Would Raise Up David’s Descendant and Establish His Kingdom

The Davidic covenant makes the distinction even clearer.

2 Samuel 7:12–13 says:

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

The speaker is Yahweh.

And Yahweh says:

I will raise up your offspring.

I will establish his kingdom.

I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Messiah is David’s descendant.

Yahweh is the One who establishes him.

The passage itself distinguishes Yahweh, not just "God the Father" from David’s coming heir.

Yahweh acts.

The descendant receives.

Yahweh establishes.

The descendant reigns.

Nothing in the passage tells David that his future offspring will actually be Yahweh Himself. If that is true, this passage is confusing as it portrays Yahweh and the Messiah as completely distinct.

The picture is that one of David’s descendants will possess an everlasting kingdom because Yahweh establishes him.

The Messiah Would Be a Prophet Raised Up by Yahweh

Deuteronomy 18:15 says:

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…”

The New Testament explicitly applies this prophecy to Jesus.

Notice the structure:

The LORD your God

will raise up

a prophet from among your brothers.

Again, God is the One acting.

Jesus is the one God raises up.

And the Messiah is explicitly placed “from among your brothers.”

The passage therefore presents the coming Messiah within humanity as the supreme prophet whom God Himself appoints and commands humanity to hear.

That is an extraordinarily important role.

But the text does not say:

“The LORD your God will Himself become the prophet.”

It says the Lord God will raise up that prophet.

The Messiah Has a God

Psalm 22 begins:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus speaks these words on the cross.

Whatever else Psalm 22 means prophetically, its Messianic speaker addresses another person as:

“my God.”

That distinction should not be minimized.

The Messiah has a God.

The God whom he addresses is someone other than himself.

And this does not disappear when Jesus is exalted. The New Testament continues to present the risen Jesus speaking of the Father as “my God.”

Psalm 22 therefore fits naturally within the Old Testament’s larger Messianic picture:

Jesus is God’s righteous servant, dependent upon God, crying out to God, and ultimately vindicated by God.

The Messiah Sits at Yahweh’s Right Hand

Psalm 110:1 says:

“The LORD says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’”

This is one of the most frequently quoted Old Testament passages in the New Testament.

The first LORD is Yahweh.

Yahweh speaks to another figure whom David calls:

“my lord.”

The Messiah is exalted almost unimaginably highly.

He sits at Yahweh’s right hand.

Yahweh subdues his enemies.

He shares in God-given rule over the world.

But sitting beside God is not the same thing as being the God beside whom one sits.

The Hebrew reinforces the distinction. The first term represents Yahweh, while the second is adoni, ordinarily used for a human or otherwise non-Yahweh lord (Brown, Driver, and Briggs 11).

So Psalm 110 gives us extremely high Messianic Christology:

Yahweh and His Messiah are distinct, and Yahweh gives the Messiah the supreme place of honor at His right hand.

That becomes exactly the pattern we later see repeatedly in Acts.

God raises Jesus.

God makes Jesus Lord and Christ.

God exalts Jesus.

And Jesus sits at God’s right hand.

The Son of Man Receives an Everlasting Kingdom from God

Daniel 7 gives perhaps the most exalted Old Testament portrait of the coming human ruler.

Daniel 7:13–14 says:

“As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that should not pass away, and his kingship shall never be destroyed.”

This figure is extraordinary.

He comes with the clouds of heaven.

He receives universal dominion.

All peoples and nations serve him.

His kingdom is everlasting.

Jesus’ identification with this Son of Man therefore gives him an almost unimaginably high place.

“Son of Man” is understood by many Christians primarily in light of Daniel 7, where this figure receives everlasting dominion, glory, and the service of the nations. Jesus’ use of this title—especially in passages where he claims authority to judge and reign—is therefore understood by many Trinitarians as supporting his divinity.

I think that argument deserves to be taken seriously.

Nevertheless, I do not think these features require the conclusion that the Son of Man is God.

First, the expression itself is fundamentally human language. Daniel describes the figure as “one like a human being.” Scripture repeatedly distinguishes the God of Israel from humanity. Numbers 23:19, Hosea 11:9, and 1 Samuel 15:29 distinguish God from human beings, while Jesus says that “God is spirit” (John 4:24).

I therefore understand Jesus’ use of “Son of Man” as identifying himself with the extraordinarily exalted human Messiah of Daniel 7—not as a title that by itself means “God.”

Second, some Christians point to the Aramaic verb pelach, translated “serve,” because in Daniel it is frequently used for religious service. That is significant and helps explain why many interpreters see divine status here (Brown, Driver, and Briggs, s.v. “פלח”; Collins, Daniel).

But the word itself does not settle the question.

Daniel 7:27 may use pelach for service rendered to the people of the holy ones, although the singular pronoun can also be understood as referring to the Most High. Because that interpretation is disputed, I would not base the argument on it.

The larger context is more important.

But look carefully at the relationship Daniel describes.

The Son of Man:

comes to the Ancient One.

He is:

presented before the Ancient One.

And then:

dominion, glory, and kingship are given to him.

The Son of Man does not appear as the Ancient One Himself.

He appears before Him.

And God gives him the kingdom.

This distinction is central.

The Son of Man possesses universal authority because God grants it to him.

Daniel then makes the point even more interesting because the holy ones also receive the kingdom.

Daniel 7:18 says:

“The holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”

Verse 27 likewise says:

“The kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High.”

The kingdom given to the Son of Man is also shared with God’s people.

That does not diminish Jesus’ unique supremacy.

But it does show that being given everlasting dominion does not automatically make the recipient God. Christ's followers are also given everlasting dominion.

The pattern remains:

God gives.

The Messiah receives.

And the Messiah becomes the supreme human ruler over God’s restored world.

God Is Savior, Yet God Can Save Through Human Saviors

The Old Testament also gives us an important framework for understanding Jesus as Savior.

Isaiah 43:11 says:

“I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.”

Yahweh is ultimately the Savior.

Yet the Old Testament itself can also call human agents saviors because God saves through them.

Nehemiah 9:27 says God gave Israel “saviors” who delivered them.

Similar language appears elsewhere.

There is therefore no contradiction between saying:

God is the ultimate Savior

and

God saves through a human savior whom He raises up.

That becomes extremely important in the New Testament.

Jesus can truly be Savior—indeed, the supreme Savior through whom humanity is reconciled to God—without therefore being the God who appointed and sent him to save.

The Cumulative Old Testament Pattern

Before examining the difficult proof texts, consider what we have already seen.

The Messiah is:

the offspring of Eve;

the descendant of Abraham;

a ruler from Judah;

David’s descendant;

the prophet whom Yahweh raises from among his brothers;

the Messiah who calls another “my God”;

David’s lord seated at Yahweh’s right hand;

the human Son of Man who approaches God and receives universal authority from Him;

and

the supreme Savior and King through whom God accomplishes His purposes.

And what does Yahweh repeatedly do?

Yahweh promises him.

Yahweh raises him up.

Yahweh establishes his throne.

Yahweh places him at His right hand.

Yahweh gives him dominion.

Yahweh gives him the kingdom.

The cumulative distinction is already strong:

God is the source.

God says He is not a man.

The Messiah is the extraordinarily exalted human ruler whom God establishes.

That is the Old Testament’s positive Messianic framework.

The question now becomes whether the handful of passages commonly used to prove the Messiah is God require us to overturn that larger picture.

I do not believe they do.

2. The Major Old Testament Proof Texts

What About “Immanuel”? — Isaiah 7:14

Isaiah 7:14 says that a child would be called:

“Immanuel,”

meaning:

“God with us.”

Does this mean the child is literally God?

This passage is quoted in Matthew, so I address it more fully in my discussion of Matthew.

Not necessarily.

Biblical names frequently say something about God—what God is doing, what God has promised, or how God relates to His people—without identifying the person bearing that name as God Himself.

The meaning of the name therefore does not settle the identity of the child.

Jesus can be “God with us” because God is present and acting through him.

Indeed, this fits the New Testament picture remarkably well: God dwells in Jesus, works through Jesus, speaks through Jesus, and reconciles humanity through Jesus.

The title is extraordinarily significant.

But “God with us” does not necessarily mean “this human being is Yahweh.”

The wider context must determine that.

Finally, Isaiah 7:14 has an immediate historical setting in Ahaz’s time, and many Christian interpreters understand Matthew’s application to Jesus typologically or as a fuller or double fulfillment (Skinner, Isa. 7:14–16). If the child in Isaiah’s own historical setting was human, then Jesus being given the name “God with us” does not by itself establish his deity, because the name can signify God’s presence and action without identifying the child as God Himself. I examine this more fully in my commentary of Matthew’s Gospel where Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14.

What About Isaiah 40:3?

Isaiah 40:3 says:

“A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

The Gospels apply this passage to John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.

For many Christians, the argument is straightforward:

Isaiah says someone prepares the way for Yahweh.

John prepares the way for Jesus.

Therefore:

Jesus is Yahweh.

That is understandable.

But I do not think the conclusion necessarily follows.

Jesus is God’s supreme agent and representative. God worked in and through him by the Holy Spirit. Preparing the way for God’s Messiah can therefore also be preparing the way for God’s own saving action through that Messiah.

Scripture frequently applies Old Testament language in new ways without requiring absolute identity between the original and later referents.

For example, Hosea 11:1 originally speaks of Israel coming out of Egypt, but Matthew 2:15 applies the passage to Christ. Jeremiah 31:15 speaks poetically of Rachel weeping, while Matthew 2:18 applies it to the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem. Psalm 69 concerns David, yet Acts 1 applies part of the Psalm to Judas.

Quotation and fulfillment can involve typology, representation, and multiple levels of fulfillment.

The application of Isaiah 40:3 to Jesus therefore tells us something enormous about Jesus:

God comes to His people through him.

But that is not necessarily identical to saying:

Jesus is Yahweh Himself.

What About Joel 2:32?

Joel 2:32 says:

“And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved…”

This passage is quoted in Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13.

Because Joel refers to calling upon Yahweh, and the New Testament applies this language in contexts concerning Jesus, many Christians conclude that Jesus must be Yahweh.

Again, this deserves serious consideration.

But Acts 2 itself immediately distinguishes Jesus from God.

Peter says in Acts 2:22–24:

“Jesus of Nazareth, ***a man attested to you by God*** with mighty works and wonders and signs ***that God did through him*** in your midst… this Jesus… you crucified and killed… ***God raised him up****…”*

Peter does not collapse Jesus into God. He distinguishes between God and Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God.

Then Acts 2:36 says:

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that ***God has made him both Lord and Christ****, this Jesus whom you crucified.”*

Jesus is Lord, but God made him Lord.

That distinction matters enormously.

Jesus was not always “Lord” in the same sense in which Yahweh is eternally Lord. God exalted Jesus and made him Lord and Christ.

God acts through Jesus.

God raises Jesus.

God makes Jesus Lord and Christ.

Jesus therefore truly bears the title Lord, but Acts explicitly tells us that his Messianic lordship is something God has given him.

Therefore, applying Joel’s language to Jesus can be understood through Jesus’ God-given lordship and representative authority without requiring the conclusion that Jesus is the Yahweh who exalted him.

What About “Mighty God”? — Isaiah 9:6

Isaiah 9:6 says:

“For to us a child is born; to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, ***Mighty God****, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”*

This is one of the strongest Old Testament passages commonly used to support Jesus’ deity.

If the Messianic child is called “Mighty God,” does that prove he is Yahweh?

I do not think the passage requires that conclusion.

First, the Hebrew titles can be understood and translated in more than one way.

The Hebrew word el, often translated “God,” does not always function as a proper identification of someone as Yahweh. Depending on context, it can carry the sense of mighty one, ruler, powerful one, or hero. Related uses occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 32:21, for example, uses elim in a context translated in various English versions with expressions such as “mighty chiefs,” “mighty leaders,” or “mighty warriors.”

For that reason, interpreters have understood the title in Isaiah 9:6 in ways such as “mighty hero” or “divine hero,” rather than necessarily as a declaration that the child is Yahweh Himself (Skinner 76). Martin Luther also favored a rendering along the lines of “hero” (Luther, Isa. 9:6).

The phrase translated “Everlasting Father” can likewise be understood as something like “father of the coming age,” describing the ruler’s relationship to the age or kingdom associated with him rather than identifying him as God the Father.

But the context is even more important than the title alone.

The very next verse says:

“The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

Who establishes this child’s kingdom?

Yahweh does.

The child is born.

The child receives the government.

The child sits on David’s throne.

And the zeal of Yahweh of hosts accomplishes this.

The text therefore continues to distinguish Yahweh from the promised Davidic ruler whose kingdom Yahweh establishes.

The titles therefore deserve great weight.

But even if the titles are extremely exalted—and they certainly are—I do not think Isaiah 9:6 requires us to identify the child as Yahweh Himself.

If Yahweh Is the Only Savior, How Can Jesus Be Savior?

Isaiah 43:11 says:

“I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.”

If Yahweh is the only Savior, and Jesus is Savior, does that prove Jesus is Yahweh?

Not necessarily.

The Old Testament itself uses the language of “savior” or “saviors” for human beings whom God raises up to rescue His people. Examples include Nehemiah 9:27, 2 Kings 13:5, and Obadiah 21.

This shows that there is no contradiction between saying God is ultimately the Savior and saying that God saves through a human agent whom He appoints.

God is the source of salvation.

Jesus is the supreme human Savior through whom God accomplishes salvation.

The New Testament itself can speak this way.

God sends him.

God empowers him.

God raises him.

God exalts him.

And God accomplishes salvation through him.

Calling Jesus Savior therefore does not require that Jesus be the God who sent him to save.

It reveals the extraordinary saving authority God has entrusted to him.

What About “The First and the Last”?

Isaiah 44:6 says:

“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.’”

Revelation 22:13 says:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

If Jesus bears the title “the first and the last,” does that prove he is Yahweh?

Not necessarily.

Sharing a title does not automatically establish shared identity.

Scripture can apply the same exalted title to different people in different senses. Ezra 7:12, for example, calls Artaxerxes “king of kings,” while 1 Timothy 6:15 uses “King of kings” for God, and Revelation uses similar language for Christ.

Clearly, the shared title does not make Artaxerxes God.

Context determines what a title means and why it is being used.

There is also an important difference between Yahweh’s declaration in Isaiah and Jesus’ title in Revelation.

Yahweh says:

“I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.”

When Jesus says he is the first and the last in Revelation, Jesus does not continue with "besides me there is no god." That phrase is absent. Jesus can be “the first and the last” in the unique role God has given him without being the God who says:

“besides me there is no god.”

I address this more fully in my Revelation commentary.

Shared titles are important evidence, but they are not sufficient by themselves to establish that two distinguishable persons are the same being.

What About Zechariah 12:10?

Zechariah 12:10 says:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child…”

If Yahweh says:

“they look on me whom they have pierced,”

does that prove that Jesus, who was pierced, is Yahweh?

This passage contains genuine textual and translation difficulty (Menken 494–511).

English translations render the wording differently. Some essentially read:

“they will look on me, whom they pierced,”

while others distinguish the one being looked upon from the pierced figure.

Most importantly for Christian interpretation, John 19:37 quotes the passage as:

“They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

John applies the passage to Jesus while using wording that refers to the pierced one as:

“him.”

That alone should make us cautious about treating Zechariah 12:10 as a simple, uncontested declaration that Jesus is Yahweh.

There is also another possible biblical category: representative identification.

Another possible way of understanding the language is relationally. God so identifies with His Son and His people that what is done to them can be spoken of as being done to Him. Scripture uses this kind of identification elsewhere.

Luke 2:35, for example, tells Mary that a sword will pierce her own soul because of what will happen to Jesus. Mary is not literally crucified, but her Son’s suffering pierces her through love and relationship.

That does not mean the two persons are literally identical.

Zechariah 12:10 is an important passage and should not be dismissed.

But it does not require the conclusion that the one physically pierced on the cross is Yahweh Himself.

3. Conclusion: Read the Old Testament Cumulatively

The Old Testament contains several passages that Christians have reasonably understood as pointing toward an extraordinarily exalted Messiah.

Some of those texts are difficult.

Some use language associated elsewhere with Yahweh.

Some give the Messiah titles or functions that sound astonishingly high.

Those passages deserve to be taken seriously.

But they should not be read in isolation from the much larger Old Testament portrait of who the Messiah actually is.

When I read the Old Testament cumulatively, I find:

a human descendant of Eve, Abraham, Judah, and David;

a prophet whom Yahweh raises up from among his brothers;

a king whose throne Yahweh establishes;

a Messiah who calls another “my God”;

a lord whom Yahweh places at His right hand;

a Son of Man who approaches the Ancient One and is given dominion, glory, and kingship;

and

a Savior, King, and Lord through whom God accomplishes His purposes.

And across these passages the same relationship appears repeatedly:

Yahweh acts.

The Messiah receives.

Yahweh raises him.

Yahweh establishes him.

Yahweh gives him the kingdom.

Yahweh gives him authority.

Yahweh places him at His right hand.

The Messiah can therefore possess extraordinary authority without being the God who gives him that authority.

That distinction is essential.

The question is not whether Jesus is exalted.

He unquestionably is.

The Old Testament anticipates a Messiah who will rule the nations, possess an everlasting kingdom, sit at God’s right hand, bring salvation, and exercise extraordinary authority over humanity.

That is an astonishing picture of Jesus.

But extraordinary exaltation is not the same thing as identity with God.

The major deity proof texts therefore have to be interpreted within this larger framework.

“Immanuel” must fit the human descendant.

Isaiah 40 must fit the Messiah through whom God comes to save.

Joel’s “Lord” language must fit the man whom God makes Lord and Christ.

“Mighty God” must fit the Davidic king whose throne Yahweh establishes.

“The first and the last” must fit the distinction between Yahweh and His exalted Messiah.

Zechariah’s pierced figure must fit the wider biblical distinction between God and the Son He sends.

No single disputed phrase should be allowed to overturn the cumulative Old Testament portrait unless the text actually requires us to do so.

I do not believe it does.

The Old Testament never plainly tells Israel that Yahweh Himself will become the Messiah.

Instead, it repeatedly prepares Israel for a human Messiah whom Yahweh will raise up, establish, empower, exalt, and ultimately place over the world.

That provides the essential foundation for reading the New Testament.

Before asking whether a handful of New Testament passages identify Jesus as God, we should remember who Israel had already been taught to expect:

not Yahweh becoming His own Messiah, but the human Messiah whom Yahweh would exalt.

The Jewish Context Matters

There is one final historical context that I believe is essential.

The idea that the Messiah would literally be Yahweh becoming a human being was not the Jewish Messianic expectation into which Jesus was born. That is not a minor point. It concerns the basic Jewish understanding of who God is and what a Messiah is.

Throughout the Old Testament, God and humanity are sharply distinguished. God says, “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19) and “I am God and not a man” (Hosea 11:9). The Messiah, meanwhile, comes from humanity: from Eve, Abraham, Judah, and David; from among Israel’s brothers; and as the human Son of Man who approaches God and receives authority from Him.

More explicitly: Israel is repeatedly warned not to reduce Yahweh to a visible bodily representation. Deuteronomy 4:15–19 makes the point especially forcefully:

“Be very careful, for you saw no kind of form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you in Horeb out of the middle of the fire, lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth; and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.” (Deuteronomy 4:15–19)

The logic is striking. Israel “saw no kind of form” when Yahweh revealed Himself, and therefore they are specifically warned not to represent Him in the likeness of male or female, animal, bird, fish, or anything else within creation. The distinction is not merely between Yahweh and one particular kind of idol. Yahweh is fundamentally distinguished from the created forms by which human beings might attempt to understand as Him: including human forms. That makes the later Christian claim that God literally became a human being all the more significant. It is not an idea we should casually assume was already contained within Israel’s ordinary understanding of God. If the New Testament truly reveals such a dramatic development—that the God whom Israel was taught not to conceive in human form actually became a human Messiah—then that development needs to be established clearly from the New Testament itself, with a coherent and defensible explanation for why such a major departure from Jewish theology and expectation occurred, rather than simply read backward into the Old Testament.

Second Temple Judaism was certainly diverse. Jewish writings could speak of exalted angels, heavenly agents, preexistent realities, and extraordinarily elevated human or Messianic figures. Some Jewish texts could place such figures astonishingly close to God or give them participation in divine authority. But this is precisely where the Jewish category of agency matters: an agent could represent God, bear God’s authority, accomplish God’s work, and even receive extraordinary honor without thereby becoming identical with the God who sent and authorized him (Collins, The Scepter and the Star).

In other words, Jewish thought could produce very high views of God’s agents without turning those agents into Yahweh Himself.

That distinction is visible immediately before Jesus.

The Psalms of Solomon, probably composed in the first century BCE, prays (Pss. Sol. 17:21–32; Wright 639–70):

“Behold, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David.”

This Messiah rules the nations, cleanses Jerusalem, gathers God’s people, and possesses extraordinary righteousness and authority. Yet he remains a Davidic king whom God raises up, strengthens, and teaches. The text calls him a king “taught by God.” This is an extremely exalted Messiah, but the categories remain clear: God is God; the Messiah is the king whom God establishes.

That distinction did not disappear in later Judaism.

Maimonides, one of the most influential Jewish theologians in history, argued from the Torah and Prophets that God is not “a body or physical form.” He understood biblical descriptions of God’s hands, eyes, feet, and other bodily imagery metaphorically precisely because the Creator cannot be reduced to bodily existence. At the same time, Maimonides strongly affirmed the coming of a Davidic Messiah. Those two beliefs were not contradictory within Judaism because the Messiah was not God becoming embodied; he was God’s human anointed king (Maimonides, Foundations of the Torah 1.8–12).

Modern traditional Judaism continues to make the same distinction with remarkable explicitness. Chabad, representing an intensely Messianic form of Orthodox Judaism, describes the Messiah simply as “a human being”, a descendant of David. Another Chabad explanation says he will be “of flesh and blood” and explicitly states that the Messiah will not be a divine personality (Lamm). This is particularly significant because Chabad has an extremely exalted expectation of Messiah. The issue is not whether the Messiah can be extraordinary. He can. The issue is whether extraordinary Messianic status collapses the distinction between God and His Messiah. Judaism says no.

This is why I think Christians need to recognize how significant the doctrine of the incarnation actually is historically.

“God became man” is not simply the Jewish definition of Messiah carried naturally into Christianity.

The fully developed Christian claim that Jesus is the eternal divine Son, God Himself who literally became human, is a later Christian theological formulation, not a Jewish Messianic expectation. It represents a significant departure not only from Jewish expectations about the Messiah, but from the Jewish ontological understanding of God Himself as the one incomparable, incorporeal Creator who is fundamentally distinct from embodied human beings and from every created agent through whom He acts.

Christians may believe that the New Testament gives sufficient reason to make that extraordinary move. That is the question I will consider in the following posts. But historically and conceptually, it is still a significant departure from the ordinary Jewish categories within which Messiah was understood.

The distinction is important.

A Jewish reader could believe in:

an exalted Messiah,

a preeminent Messiah,

a heavenly Messiah,

a Messiah given universal authority,

a Messiah sitting beside God,

a Messiah through whom God saves,

or even a Messiah participating in extraordinary heavenly realities,

without therefore concluding:

“Yahweh Himself has become this man.”

Second Temple Jewish expectations included Davidic kings, priests, prophets, heavenly redeemers, exalted human figures, and other complex Messianic possibilities. Scholarship rightly warns us not to flatten that diversity. But the existence of exalted intermediary figures actually strengthens the distinction I am making: Judaism possessed conceptual categories for extraordinary agents of God without requiring those agents to be the one God Himself.

And that raises what I think is a very serious interpretive question.

If the Old Testament spends centuries teaching Israel that God is not a man, that He is the incomparable God of Israel, and that the coming Messiah is a human descendant whom God raises up, establishes, empowers, and gives authority, where does Scripture tell the reader that this framework has suddenly changed?

If the answer is:

“The New Testament,”

then the New Testament must actually establish that change.

It cannot simply be assumed.

We should not begin with the later Christian doctrine that God became man, insert that doctrine backward into the Old Testament, and then use the Old Testament passages—now read through that doctrine—to prove that Jesus must be God.

That risks circular reasoning.

The historical question should instead be:

Would a Jew reading these Scriptures before Christianity have understood them to mean that Yahweh Himself would someday become the human Messiah?

The evidence strongly suggests that this was not the established Jewish expectation.

And the early history of Christianity makes this even more important.

Early Christian belief about Jesus was not completely uniform. The formal doctrinal definitions of Jesus’ deity and the Trinity developed over centuries and were defined with increasing precision in the fourth and fifth centuries (Ayres; Council of Nicaea; Council of Chalcedon). See my posts on Christian history surrounding this development here: [10. The Witness of the Early Church: Who Is Jesus? Part 1](/post/is-jesus-god-part-3-history-s-witness-is-the-trinity-doctrine-true) and [11. The Witness of the Early Church: Who Is Jesus? Part 2](/post/did-christians-always-believe-jesus-is-god-part-2). These articles show that alongside Christians who developed increasingly explicit claims about Christ’s preexistence and divinity were Jewish-Christian communities and other early Christian movements that continued to understand Jesus fundamentally as a human being uniquely chosen and empowered by God.

The Ebionites are especially important because they were Jewish Christians. Our sources about them are late, polemical, and sometimes inconsistent, so they should be handled carefully. They were apparently not one perfectly uniform group. Nevertheless, ancient reports repeatedly associate at least significant strands of Ebionite Christianity with the belief that Jesus was genuinely human rather than the incarnate God. Some reportedly believed Jesus was born naturally; others apparently accepted his virgin birth while still refusing to identify him as God, Word, and Wisdom. That latter point is particularly important: belief in a miraculous birth did not entail belief that Jesus was God (Peeler).

Other pre-Nicene Christians held forms of what later came to be called dynamic monarchianism. Figures associated with this stream include Theodotus, Artemon, and later Paul of Samosata. Their theology varied, but the basic concern was to preserve the monarchy—the unique sovereignty and identity—of the one God. Jesus was understood as a human being uniquely inhabited, empowered, chosen, or exalted by God rather than as God Himself becoming human (Peeler).

I do not mention these groups to claim that they represented all early Christians. They did not. Nor does their existence prove that their Christology was correct.

The point is historical:

The fully developed 4th century Nicene identification of Jesus with the eternal divine Son should not simply be projected backward as though it were the only way Christians had ever understood Jesus from the beginning.

There were Christians before Nicaea—including Christians closely connected with Jewish forms of Christianity—who read Jesus through recognizably Jewish categories:

a man chosen by God,

a prophet,

the Messiah,

the Son of God,

the one upon whom God’s Spirit rested,

and the Lord whom God exalted.

Scholars continue to debate the precise relationships among these groups and how directly any later Jewish-Christian movement can be traced to the Jerusalem church, so I would not claim a simple uninterrupted line from the apostles to the Ebionites. But their existence, and other groups like the Dynamic monarchians existence, establishes something much more modest and historically secure: a fully human understanding of Jesus did exist within early Christianity, including within explicitly Jewish-Christian communities, long before Nicaea defined the boundaries of later Christian orthodoxy.

That should matter when Christians read the New Testament.

The theological world that eventually produced “God the Son became incarnate” is not simply identical to the Jewish theological world in which Jesus and his first followers lived.

Christianity may argue that the resurrection, the apostles’ experience of Jesus, and the New Testament writings demanded a dramatic development beyond previous Jewish expectations.

That is a possible Christian argument.

But it is still a development that has to be demonstrated from the texts.

It should not be treated as the obvious starting assumption.

For centuries before Jesus, Israel had been taught to distinguish Yahweh from humanity and Yahweh from His Messiah. Jewish Messianic expectation could exalt the Messiah tremendously without turning him into Yahweh. Rabbinic Judaism continued to maintain that distinction afterward, and Jewish theology maintains it to this day.

So as we move into the New Testament, I believe the burden of proof matters.

The question should not be:

“Can Christians find New Testament language that sounds divine when applied to Jesus?”

There unquestionably is extraordinarily high language about him.

The more fundamental question is:

Does the New Testament actually overturn the Jewish distinction between God and His human Messiah and teach that Yahweh Himself became Jesus?

If it does, we should be able to demonstrate that clearly.

Because that would be an extraordinary theological development.

And extraordinary developments should require extraordinarily clear evidence.

The Old Testament has already given us the framework:

God is not a man.

The Messiah is a man whom God raises up.

God gives.

The Messiah receives.

God sends.

The Messiah is sent.

God establishes the kingdom.

The Messiah reigns over it.

I believe that when the New Testament is read cumulatively—rather than beginning with a handful of commonly cited deity proof texts—we will find that this fundamental Jewish distinction is not overturned.

It continues.

And that continuity matters because God Himself tells Israel:

“For I, Yahweh, don’t change.” (Malachi 3:6)

If Christianity is going to claim that the New Testament radically alters Israel’s understanding of who God is—that the God who is not a man, who transcends created form, and who repeatedly distinguishes Himself from His human Messiah actually became that Messiah—then Scripture itself must establish that change clearly and coherently. It cannot simply be assumed or read backward into the Old Testament.I believe the opposite occurs. The New Testament continues the pattern already established in Israel’s Scriptures:

God remains God.

The Messiah remains the human being whom God sends, empowers, raises, exalts, and establishes over His creation.

The God of Israel does not change.