Prophecies of a Suffering Messianic Figure – Fulfilled in Jesus

Although Jesus was crucified by the Romans and did not liberate God’s people from gentile oppression, his followers in Palestine proclaimed that he was the Messiah promised in their Scripture. But why would these disciples have expected their fellow Jews to believe them when Jesus’s mission seemed to have failed so dismally? According to the New Testament, their astounding claim was supported by Old Testament depictions of a pierced, forsaken figure associated with vicarious suffering and atonement (e.g., Acts3:18 and John 19:37).

This series will explore how the Old Testament contained hints of what Jesus’s death would achieve. This will be done in three parts:

1. A pierced figure

2. God’s Suffering Servant in Isaiah

3. The Jewish concept of corporate identity as applied to the Messiah

A Pierced Figure

The Old Testament contains references to a suffering figure that seems to foreshadow Jesus’s atoning death. In Psalm 22, on the cross, Jesus cried out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46). This is a direct quote from Psalm 22, in which a person calls out in acute suffering and despair: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? . . . I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue clings to my jaws . . . They pierced my hands and my feet” (Ps 22:1–16).

This description of piercing,[1] terrible thirst, and bones pulled out of joint, is strongly reminiscent of Jesus’s suffering during crucifixion. However, Psalm 22 ends with the victorious promise that all nations will come to worship God: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You . . . It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, they will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this” (Ps 22:27–31).

It is highly significant that Jesus’s last words on the cross were recorded in Greek as tetelestai — “It is done/finished” (John 19:30b), echoing the closing line of Psalm 22.

Did Jesus’s enthusiastic followers simply invent these references to associate him with the suffering figure in Psalm 22? This seems unlikely because the gospels do not explicitly identify Jesus with this psalm, and the opening and closing lines of the psalm are recorded as Jesus’s words in different gospel traditions. It is therefore more probable that Jesus did indeed speak these words on the cross, linking his crucifixion with this ancient depiction of suffering that would bring all nations to God.

In Zechariah 12, Zechariah prophesied about a time when God would cleanse His people from sin in a single day (Zech 3:8–9; 13:1), all nations would desire to hear about Him (Zech 8:23), and Jerusalem’s true king would arrive on a donkey (Zech 9:9). This prophet also passed on God’s teaching that a pierced figure would be mourned “on that day”:

“I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zech 12:10).

According to the writer of John’s Gospel, this prophecy was fulfilled through Jesus’s crucifixion (John 19:36–37). And it is not only Christians who have applied this verse to the Messiah. After the rise of Christianity, rabbinic Judaism developed the concept of a dying Messiah ben Joseph and a reigning Messiah ben David,[2] and it is significant that various Jewish commentators have provided a messianic interpretation of the pierced figure in Zechariah 12:10:

· “According to the one who said that the lament is for Messiah ben Yosef who was killed, this would be the meaning of that which is written in that context: ‘And they shall look unto Me because they have thrust him through; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a).[3]

· “As a man mourns over his only son. Our sages expounded this in tractate Sukkah 52a as referring to the Messiah, son of Joseph, who was slain” (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac)[4]

· “And I poured out a spirit of grace and pleading with the inhabitants of Jerusalem . . . so all the people shall look to me to see what I shall do to those who pierced Messiah Ben Yosef” (Ibn Ezra’s interpretation).[5]

· The Jewish Tosefta regarded Zechariah 12:10 as a prophecy about the Messiah.[6]

· Rabbi David Kimchi recorded that “our rabbis, of blessed memory, have

interpreted this of Messiah, the son of Joseph, who shall be killed in the war,”[7] although he disagreed with this interpretation.

The book of Daniel also contains a prediction about the anointed one (the Messiah) who will be “cut off, but not for himself” (Dan 9:26b KJV) or “cut off, and will have nothing” (Dan 9:26b WEB). As Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner points out, “almost all of Daniel is Messianic in spirit; but Chapters 2, 6–9, and 12 are Messianic in essence” (Messianic Idea, 228).

It would seem that these ancient descriptions of a suffering figure foreshadowed Jesus’s crucifixion and atoning death, which would bring people to God.

[1]. The Hebrew words for “pierced” and “lion” are very similar, and some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text use the phrase “like a lion my hands and my feet.” However, the pre-Christian Greek translation (the Septuagint) used the term “dug/pierced,” and the oldest Dead Sea Scroll manuscript of Psalm 22 seems to use the word “pierced” (see Abegg et al., Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, 519). [2]. According to Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner, the rabbinic expectation of a slain messiah developed partly in response to the death of the messianic Bar Kokhba in AD 135 (Messianic Idea, 496). For the late date of the dual-messiah concept see also Mitchell, “Messiah bar Ephraim,” 222 n. 2, and Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, 54. [3]. https://www.sefaria.org/Sukkah.52a.3?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en [4]. https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16216/showrashi/true [5]. https://www.sefaria.org/Ibn_Ezra_on_Zechariah; translated from the Hebrew through Google translate. [6]. See Mitchell, “Messiah bar Ephraim,” 223. [7]. From Rabbi David Kimchi’s Commentary Upon the Prophecies of Zechariah by Rev. A. McCaul.