God's Messiah in the Old Testament

As a student of both the Old Testament and Christology, I was pleased to receive a copy of God’s Messiah in the Old Testament from Baker Books. Goswell and Abernathy are experienced hands in the Old Testament, so their expertise promised to be illuminating. However, from the beginning, it became apparent that for all its potential, God’s Messiah suffers from a serious methodological flaw.

Summary
God’s Messiah is written for pastors, theological students, and potentially scholars. Goswell and Abernathy set out to trace the theme of God’s messiah across the Old Testament. They move book to book, roughly following the Hebrew canon; they only include books they think refer to the messiah, and they accept the Greek position of Ruth (after Judges). The reader will be shocked by the negative tone of the body of the book; time and time again, the authors dismiss the messianic implications of a traditional text. They are not arguing that these and other texts do not refer to Jesus; instead, they are focusing on a very narrow band of Christological expectation. They define messianic expectation as the anticipation of a human king from the line of David. They argue that many texts traditionally thought to anticipate a messiah anticipate the divine king. This is where their argument promises to deliver the most. If they are right to distinguish the divine king from the human messiah, then many New Testament texts are not identifying Jesus as the human messiah but as the divine king. Thus, two themes that were thought to be separate in the Old Testament are united in a single person: Jesus is both Yahweh on the throne and the human Davidic king. However, this is where the book has a severe methodological flaw.

Evaluation
I am currently working on publishing an academic review of God’s Messiah, where I will explore this critique further. For now, I will suggest that it is hard to maintain the distinction between the human Davidic king and the divine king in the Old Testament, especially when we read the Old Testament in light of its fulfilment. That is, the authors accept a canonical reading of the Old Testament but fail to follow through in a consistently whole-Bible reading of the Old Testament. If we accept the Bible as a completed whole, then the fulfilment of the divine and human expectation in the single person, Christ Jesus, should lead us to re-examine what we thought was two distinct eschatological expectations. When we do this, we discover that the Old Testament frequently unites these two expectations. Often this is done in the broader tapestry of Christological expectation, so the authors’ desire to bracket out one aspect of Christological expectation—namely, messianism—leads them to miss the big picture. For example, Goswell and Abernathy insist on keeping the three eschatological agents in Isaiah separate. Yet, there is no internal evidence for this distinction, and all three are all fulfilled in the single person Jesus Christ. This agent is repeatedly identified with Yahweh in Isaiah. In Isaiah 53:1, the suffering servant is identified as “the arm of YHWH,” that is, God’s very power in action. It is thus Yahweh himself who suffers at the hands of his people in Isaiah 53. Earlier in the book, in Isaiah 7-9, Yahweh is differentiated from himself: Yahweh waits for Yahweh in 8:16-18 and receives children or disciples from him (cf. Heb 2:13). When we get to Isaiah 9, Yahweh is speaking, but he identifies his future king as “Mighty God, Everlasting Father.” These epithets are not typical theophoric titles as the authors argue; these are titles Yahweh himself bears (e.g. Isa 10:21).
Looking beyond Isaiah, attention to the theme of a future Priest-King points to this same truth: Yahweh himself would come in the line of David to rule his people. I have argued that the purpose of the book of Samuel is to point to God’s purpose of bringing his kingdom to bear on earth through a Davidic priest-king. This expectation is picked up in Psalm 110, where this Davidic priest-king is attributed with an exalted status; he will be David’s “lord.” Turning Zechariah 6:9-15, the priest Joshua is prophetically crowned as king. This points forward to an eschatological priest-king who will build Yahweh’s temple and sit on Yahweh’s throne: there will be “a priest on his throne” (6:13). This human king and priest, a Davidic “branch,” will be exalted to God’s own throne.

These two examples of Christological expectation in Isaiah and through the priest-king theme should demonstrate that it is methodologically problematic to consider one messianic theme in exclusion from the rest, especially in exclusion from their fulfilment in the one man, Jesus the Christ. The exegesis in God’s Messiah is provocative, and I believe it supports their ultimate point: The New Testament has a high Christology because the NT authors’ continually use texts that are speaking about the divine king Yahweh to describe Jesus and his ministry. However, it is flawed to see this as a separate line of expectation in the Old Testament. Instead, the New Testament has a high Christology because the Old Testament has a high Christology; the human, Davidic king is already identified with Yahweh in the Old Testament.

Does the Old Testament look forward to a divine Messiah, a heavenly Davidic King, a Godman?

Andrew Abernethy, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, and Gregory Goswell, Academic Dean and a lecturer in Old Testament at Christ College, believe that “Davidic kingship must be seen in light of God’s kingship; the royal messiah in the Old Testament is God’s agent for fulfilling God’s kingdom purposes” (Preface). As they write in their Introduction, the terms “‘messiah’ and ‘messianism’…are understood to refer to the hope of the coming of a royal agent who will serve God’s kingdom purposes, an expectation that Christians believe finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ.”

Their definition of the messiah “is only one of several strands of the Old Testament expectation that leads to Jesus.” Other strands would include Jesus as ultimate prophet, the true priest, or even God himself. The authors’ focus, then, is on kingship, with there being a close relationship between Yahweh and his “anointed royal agent.” God is the King, and he anoints a human king to rule over Israel as his representative. This king acts (and shares power) alongside God’s prophets and priests. He is depicted as “the model Israelite.” One of the Psalter’s main themes revolves around kingship of both God and the human king. When Jesus bursts on to the scene in Mark’s Gospel, he proclaims that God’s kingdom is at hand.

The authors make the effort to allow each OT book have its own unique voice. They don’t want every messianic text to sound the same. The books create a symphony, and each is an instrument with its own specific voice. Yet they both agree that “the Bible as a whole provides a unified testimony to the coming of Jesus Christ, who is both the Divine King and the hoped-for Messiah.”

Many will probably be surprised at how seldom the authors see a text pointing to Jesus, or some kind of divine king. They believe that “the seed [zera’] of the woman” in Genesis 3:15 refers to humanity in general, “a battle for humans to obey God in spite of temptation.” Given that the other curses and consequences in Genesis 3:15-19 “are perpetual and long term,” the authors think it makes more sense if verse 15 refers to an ongoing issue rather than to an isolated occasion of the woman’s seed crushing the serpent’s seed. There will be a perpetual enemy between humans and evil. Victory comes when humans obey God, which results in “restored relationships with one another, God, and creation.” Rather than specifically pointing to a messiah, this text gives “hope that the sons and daughters of Eve will overcome evil.”

Some may be put off by this, but it doesn’t make sense. When Adam and Eve heard this, would they have thought of a future messiah? We see in Genesis 4 that “God has appointed for me [Eve] another offspring [zera’].” Those from Seth “began to call upon the name of the Lord.” The narrative hones in on Seth’s line and points to the hope of Eve’s offspring overcoming evil. (Noah, in Genesis 6:9, is described as being righteous and blameless.) The authors also take time in assessing other views (such as Desi Alexander’s view that Gen 3:15 refers to a “royal Messiah who would fulfill the promise to Abraham of a future king from the line of Judah.”

These two opposing views will be ones that teachers, pastors, and scholars with have to weigh to see what they believe makes the most sense of the text. The authors agree that Jesus does fulfill these texts. He is the true King who is both human and divine. The question is, in the Old Testament, who was expected to come and rule over Israel as God’s king? For Abernethy and Goswell, Genesis points to a collective people coming from Eve who will stand against evil. From Jacob comes Judah and his line of kings who play a role as God’s representatives to overcome Israel.

Jeremiah talks about future “shepherds” and a “sprout” who will come, the rebirth of the Davidic dynasty. These Davidic kings will serve God’s purposes to promote justice and righteousness. They contribute “to a set of messianic expectations rather than being messianic oracles in and of themselves.” Yet in their section Postlude: Canonical Reflections, the authors show that both ideas are fulfilled in Jesus. There is no Davidic king on the throne when Jesus comes on to the scene. Yet here is the king, Jesus, coming up like a “sprout” out of the ground, one who shepherds Israel as God would, caring for the poor, women, and children.

The final chapter looks forward to the New Testament. The authors believe that “all the Old Testament’s messianic expectations have found and/or will find their fulfillment in Jesus.” They show ways in which the authors portray Jesus as fulfilling the Old Testament’s expectations, only more so by also being divine. Due to that, we see more of Jesus than we expected because “everything said about God can be applied to Jesus.” Jesus not only fulfills the expectations of the coming human Israelite/messianic king, but he is also the Divine King. He is more than what anyone expected. He does what only God can do, while his humanity is essential to his office. The OT provides a messianic mosaic. Nobody expected the Messiah to be both human and divine, as well as to suffer, die, and rise from the dead!

The authors chose to follow the Hebrew order of the OT instead of following the LXX order (which our English Bibles follow). The exception is when they place Ruth between Judges and 1 Samuel (its position in the LXX; in the Hebrew ordering it sits between Song of Songs and Lamentations). The authors exclude Joshua, Haggai, and Ezra-Nehemiah because they don’t see anything strictly “messianic” in there (per their definition of messianism). Aside from the Psalms, the Wisdom books don’t receive their own chapter either.

Recommended?
This book wasn’t what I initially expected, but I found it to be well-argued, enlightening, and a great read! On the one hand, the Bible is one book. Yes, Jesus fulfills Genesis 3:15. And when God spoke that to Adam and Eve, he knew Jesus would crush the enemy! But that doesn’t mean that the text doesn’t also refer to a collective group fighting evil until the faithful Israelite, the faithful man came, obeyed God perfectly, served and loved those around him, suffered under evil, and conquered it through his death and resurrection. As I said above, teachers and pastors (and hopefully scholars) should get this and wrestle with the arguments.