Jesus in the Old Testament: Verses that Predict the Messiah

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

Can readers of the Bible find Jesus in the Old Testament? The connection between the Old Testament and the figure of Jesus has been a subject of deep exploration and debate for millennia. Christian theologians have long highlighted various Old Testament verses as prophecies that predict the coming of the Messiah, identifying these Scriptures as pointing directly to Jesus.

However, the interpretation of these passages is not without controversy. Biblical scholars often challenge the application of these Old Testament verses to Jesus, emphasizing the need to understand the historical and literary context in which they were originally written.

In this article, I’ll look at some of the most commonly cited Old Testament verses that Christians believe predict the Messiah, examine the reasoning behind their interpretation, and consider how scholars view these verses from a historical perspective.

Are There Old Testament Verses About Jesus?

Most of our knowledge about how early Christians related Jesus to the Old Testament comes from the Gospels. The author of Matthew, for example, provides several Old Testament verses he thinks predicted Jesus, along with other verses he thinks were fulfilled by the circumstances of Jesus’ life.

One of the first prophecies Matthew cites is Isaiah 7:14 (cited in Matt 1:23), some translations of which say this:

While biblical scholars often use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation when teaching, I’m quoting this one from the English Standard Version (ESV), both to highlight the traditional formulation of the virgin birth and to prepare you for my later discussion on translation issues with this passage. In addition, Matthew is citing the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, so his version of these verses is often a bit different from the NRSV and other modern English translations which translated directly from the original Hebrew.

Be that as it may, Matthew clearly believes that the passage in Isaiah predicts the coming of the Messiah, who he believes will be born of a virgin. To this day, some Christians point to this verse as validation for Jesus’ status as the predicted Messiah. In addition, for both Matthew and many modern Christians, this cements Jesus’ divine status, since he was born through divine agency acting upon a human woman.

A second verse Matthew indicates as predicting and validating Jesus as Messiah is Micah 5:2 (cited in Matt 2:6):

Matthew sees this as a reference to Jesus in the Old Testament, and he says his birth occurred in Bethlehem. Unlike the Gospel of Luke, which has an elaborate story about how Joseph and Mary ended up in Bethlehem before Jesus’ birth, Matthew seems to imply that they were already living there, even before they were betrothed.

Matthew then cites a third verse (in Matt 2:15), one line of Hosea 11:1 to explain the sojourn in Egypt taken by Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

While this verse is short and sweet, Matthew sees Jesus as the son who fulfills it. You may remember that in Matthew 2, the Magi come to find Jesus, stopping first in Jerusalem to ask for Herod’s help. Herod, hearing that the Magi are looking for “a child who has been born king of the Jews,” becomes alarmed and orders that all baby boys under the age of two be slaughtered to prevent any royal competition with him.

For this reason, Mary and Joseph escape along with the infant Jesus to Egypt for a time, eventually returning not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth where they remain. This is why the author of Matthew believes that Jesus’ brief time in Egypt is a fulfillment of the prophecy from Hosea 11:1.

Speaking of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, Matthew’s author also believes that this was the fulfillment of a prophecy found in a fourth verse (cited in Matt 2:18) from Jeremiah 31:15:

Finally, outside of the book of Matthew, one of the most cited of all Old Testament quotations believed to refer to Jesus occurs in Isaiah 53. Parts of it are quoted throughout the New Testament (see Matthew 8:14-17; John 12:37-41; Luke 22:35-38; 1 Peter 2:19-25; Acts 8:26-35; Romans 10:11-21), but modern Christians often refer to it also to prove that Jesus’ crucifixion for the sins of the world was prophesied. I’ll quote some of it here at length:

Note that these verses (Isaiah 53:3-7) speak of someone suffering “for our transgressions,” a claim which Christian theologians have long used to explain why Jesus needed to die on the cross in order to save the world from sin. The passage goes on to say that “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” which could indicate not only that this individual suffered but that his suffering was part of a divine plan. We can see how Christians might interpret this as referring to Jesus’ salvific death.

There are many more Old Testament verses Christians, both ancient and modern, have pointed to as indicating the life and mission of Jesus, but I think we have enough context with these five. Speaking of context, I’ll next look at how scholars interpret these verses based on their historical and literary contexts.

Is Jesus in the Old Testament? A Scholarly View

Let’s begin with Isaiah 7:14, a verse Matthew believes points to Jesus’ virgin birth. It turns out that part of what we have here is a mistake in translation. As I said above, Matthew, like all the New Testament authors, read the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its Greek version, known as the Septuagint. As many wise people have noted, translation is extremely complicated. It turns out that Isaiah 7:14 in Greek does not exactly match what the original Hebrew verse said.

The Hebrew verse, as translated accurately into English in the NRSV says this:

How did Matthew get the word “virgin” from a verse that originally just said “young woman”? In the Septuagint, translators translated the Hebrew word “almah” — “young woman” — into the Greek word “parthenos” —“virgin.” It was likely an innocent mistranslation, but nevertheless, this Greek version was Matthew’s source. This is the first issue with citing Isaiah 7:14 as validation for Jesus as Messiah: even if it did refer to Jesus, scholars would say it did not originally indicate a virgin birth.

The second problem, as noted by Bart Ehrman, is that the author of Isaiah is not talking about a future Messiah at all (the word Messiah is never used in this passage). As Ehrman says

This is what the passage was intended to mean: a young woman was already pregnant with a child who would be Judea’s next king and lead Israel into prosperity.

Micah 5:2 is a bit more complicated. Although there is no translation issue with this quotation in Matthew, the original context of the verse is just as important for scholars. In the HarperCollins Study Bible, Carol Dempsey notes that Micah was prophesying during the reign of King Hezekiah, who had instituted many reforms, including changing Judah from a bartering to a monetary economy. This change, while beneficial in some ways, increased the gap between rich and poor.

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Much of Micah’s prophetic book was about the injustice of this new economic system and encouraged the wealthy to help the poor. Since Jerusalem was the capital of Judah and where the king lived, Micah conflated Jerusalem with the wealthy. He therefore said that God had told him the next ruler wouldn’t come from Jerusalem, the center of wealth and power, but instead from a humble small town, Bethlehem. In addition, of course, this tied the soon-to-be-born ruler to the great King David. Again, however, there is no mention of the word Messiah here.

What about Hosea 11:1? Is this line a reference to Jesus’ family fleeing to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod? According to biblical scholars, the context of the original verse does not refer to this at all.

Instead, it’s about God’s mercy despite the ungratefulness of Israel. We can see this if we look at the whole passage surrounding the line quoted by Matthew, Hosea 11:1-2:

As you can see from the first line, “my son” refers to Israel as a whole. It’s the personification or an individuation of the entire nation of Israel, not an actual individual. The reference is not to a distant future Messiah but to God liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt in the past tense, not a future condition.

Similarly, the passage from Jeremiah 31:15 is taken out of context by Matthew. Rather than referring to a future event, it refers to the sadness of Rachel, the wife of the biblical Jacob, who is used by Jeremiah as a symbol of the nation of Israel, when many Israelites were taken by their Babylonian conquerors away from their homeland and into captivity.

Now, let’s look at Isaiah 53. Certainly on its own, most of the chapter could be read as a description of later theological explanations about the significance of Jesus’ suffering. However, in context, it’s quite different.

The author of this passage was writing during the Babylonian exile to his fellow exiled Jews. But it’s not about one person. Like Hosea, the author of Jeremiah is using an individual symbol, whom he calls the “suffering servant,” to symbolize the beleaguered nation of Israel in captivity. “He” in this passage means “they.”

What the passage says, then, according to J.J.M. Roberts writing in the HarperCollins Study Bible, is that the nation of Israel was despised and rejected by other nations who conquered them. The notion that the servant seemed to be “rejected by God” means that their conquest and captivity by Babylon seemed like God’s judgment on them for their sins.

Bart Ehrman notes that this passage, taken out of context, is often misunderstood. He says that the notion of suffering for “our sins” probably means that those who were taken into captivity in Babylon (not everyone was taken, mostly just the elite) were suffering for the sins of those who remained in the land, a notion of divine retribution found frequently in the Hebrew Bible.

What’s more, Ehrman says the passage cannot be understood in its original context as a future prediction:

Conclusion

Is Jesus in the Old Testament? There are at least two broad ways to answer that question. The first is answered by the authors of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels. Matthew, for instance, finds multiple allusions to Jesus’ miraculous birth in Bethlehem, his fleeing to Egypt with his family, and the slaughter of the innocents by Herod. Other books refer to Isaiah 53 as a reference to Jesus, particularly to his vicarious suffering and death on a cross. Modern Christians have inherited these interpretations.

However, from a scholarly viewpoint, these same verses in their proper historical and literary contexts, did not refer to Jesus at all. They refer to the nation of Israel, often rendering it as an individual used as a symbolic representation of the entire nation. What’s more, they often refer not to future events but rather to interpretations of past events, like Israel’s conquest and captivity in Babylon.

Is Jesus in the Old Testament? There is no final, definitive answer to this question, merely different perspectives from which people have approached it.