by Lee Strobel
IMMANUEL: GOD WITH US
“What about Isaiah’s use of the Hebrew word ‘almah?” I asked. “Does it mean ‘virgin’?”
“To be precise, ‘almah really deals with youthfulness,” Brown said. “Four other times when the word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament, the New International Version doesn’t translate it as ‘virgin.’ However, the foremost Jewish commentator Rashi said, ‘And some interpret that this is the sign, that she was a young girl’—an ‘almah—‘and incapable of giving birth.’ So he was acknowledging that some Jewish experts interpreted the text to mean that God’s sign to Ahaz had to do with the highly unusual nature of the birth.73 Here was a young girl, an ‘almah, for whom giving birth would not be normal. The birth itself was unusual or perhaps even supernatural.
“Also, it’s significant that the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, translated ‘almah as parthenos, which is the primary Greek word for ‘virgin’—and this was a couple of hundred years before Jesus was born. So it’s not misquoted or misused. We know sometimes Matthew used the Septuagint, so he’s just quoting from the Jewish translation of his day.”
“What about the word betulah, which critics say Isaiah would have used if he had truly meant virgin?”
“Betulah can refer to a virgin, but more often than not it simply means a young woman or maiden. In fact, more than three out of every five times the word occurs in the Old Testament, the most widely used Jewish translation renders it ‘maiden.’ Joel 1:8 speaks of a betulah mourning for the husband of her youth. An ancient Aramaic inscription speaks of a betulah who struggled in labor to give birth. So neither ‘almah nor betulah, in and of themselves, would clearly and unequivocally mean virgin. They’re consistent with virginity, but there is no single word in biblical Hebrew that always and only means virgin.”
“What about the argument that Jesus was never called Immanuel?” I asked.
“We know that Solomon was to be called Jedidiah, but he was never referred to by that name in the Old Testament,” Brown said.74 “And let’s face it, Jesus is acknowledged as Immanuel—or ‘God with us’—by millions of people around the earth to this day. He’s called Immanuel in hymns sung in churches around the world. Names were often symbolic. And in the deepest ultimate way, he is God with us.
“Again, I look at messianic prophecies and see some passages that are indisputable—they can be referring to no one but Jesus. Then you fill in the other details. This is an obscure prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. It’s amazing the amount of diversity in the rabbinic commentaries about it. Matthew comes up with a tremendous insight to rightly apply it to Jesus. The miraculous nature of the sign ultimately becomes clear in light of its fulfillment in Jesus—who was actually born of a virgin—whatever the original expectations and understanding might have been.”
“So it was not seen in its day as being a messianic prophecy?”
“I don’t believe many prophecies were seen in their day as messianic in the sense of a future, yet to come, Messianic King,” Brown said. “In other words, they were spoken with anticipation. In the ancient world, there was tremendous hope with each new king who came: the prophecies were going to be fulfilled. Then it failed to happen, but still the words were considered prophetic because the prophets were proven accurate in everything else. Now who’s going to fulfill the prophecies? So they looked with anticipation toward the future. You could look at any unfulfilled promise given to a descendant of David that has universal implications as messianic. Any Davidic promise that transcends the generation and that remains unfulfilled is messianic.”
I was looking for a way to wrap up this issue in my mind. “So is Isaiah 7:14 an explicit prophecy of the virgin birth seven hundred years in advance?” I asked.
“I don’t read it like that,” said Brown. “Is it a prophecy of a supernatural birth in the house of David of one called Immanuel, which was part of the larger complex of messianic prophecies that reach their fulfillment in the miraculous conception of Jesus? Absolutely.”
THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFERER
Psalm 22, the prayer of the righteous sufferer, has been cited by Christians for centuries as foreshadowing the crucifixion of Jesus. The description in the psalm, said one nineteenth-century Christian scholar, is even “more vivid” than the Gospels: it describes the piercing of the hands and feet, the stretching of the body until the “bones are out of joint,” the intensity of the thirst, and the dividing of the victim’s garments among his persecutors.75
The piercing of the hands and feet seems especially prescient, particularly since it was written hundreds of years before crucifixion was even implemented as a method of execution by the Romans.
Or was it?
Rabbi Tovia Singer has accused Christians of “deliberately mistranslating” this psalm to make it appear that it points toward Jesus on the cross. He said that while the King James Version renders the Hebrew as, “They pierced my hands and feet,” this is actually “a not-too-ingenious Christian interpolation.” The unadulterated Hebrew, he said, should be rendered, “Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet.”76
“This is a serious allegation,” I said to Brown. “Did Christians maliciously tamper with the text?”
Brown sat back. “It’s fascinating that this verse isn’t even quoted in the New Testament, even though other verses of Psalm 22 are,” he replied.
“But do you consider this psalm to be messianic?” I asked.
“When he was on the cross, Jesus quoted the opening line from Psalm 22: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” replied Brown. “By doing so, he was applying the psalm to himself. The psalm describes the righteous sufferer, publicly mocked and shamed, brought down to the jaws of death in the midst of terrible suffering and humiliation, and miraculously delivered by God, to the praise of his name. So it applies powerfully to Jesus, the ideal righteous sufferer.”
“The psalm,” I noted, “is written by David in the first person.”
“Many events in David’s life were repeated in the life of the Messiah, since David was in many ways the prototype of the Messiah,” said Brown. “In fact, a famous rabbinic midrash, or commentary, that was written some twelve hundred years ago, makes the point that David was speaking of the Messiah’s sufferings.”77
Brown picked up a copy of his book from the desk and thumbed to a quote from Old Testament scholar James E. Smith, which he read to me:
No Old Testament person could have imagined that his personal deliverance from death could be the occasion for the world’s conversion. Such a hope must be restricted to the future Redeemer. Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, David in Psalm 22 saw his descendant resembling, but far surpassing, himself in suffering. Furthermore, the deliverance of this descendant would have meaning for all mankind.78
“What other person’s terrible suffering and death was worthy of worldwide attention to the point that the nations actually turned to the God of Israel because of it?” Brown asked. “Applying this psalm to the Messiah is in keeping with the clear meaning of the text.”
I brought Brown back to my question about the alleged mistranslation. “Did Christians doctor the Hebrew to make it say ‘pierced my hands and feet’ instead of ‘like a lion, they are at my hands and feet’?”
“This is definitely not a Christian fabrication,” he said firmly. “The oldest Jewish translation—the Septuagint—translated it as, ‘they pierced.’ The oldest Hebrew copy of the Psalms we possess, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the century before Jesus, uses the Hebrew verb ka’aru, which comes from the root meaning ‘to bore through’—not ka’ari, which means ‘like a lion.’ The same with about a dozen medieval Masoretic manuscripts, which are the authoritative texts on traditional Jewish thought. But let me tell you why this really doesn’t matter.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because let’s make the assumption that the correct translation is, ‘like a lion at my hands and feet.’ What is this lion doing with th
e victim’s hands and feet—licking them?” His voice was thick with sarcasm.
“Rashi says it means ‘as though they are crushed in a lion’s mouth.’ Another prominent Jewish commentator, Metsudat David, said, ‘They crush my hands and my feet as the lion crushes the bones of the prey in its mouth.’ So the imagery is clear: the metaphorical lions are tearing and ripping at the sufferer’s hands and feet. This mauling and biting graphically portray great physical agony.
“Would this contradict the picture of a crucifixion? In no way. It’s entirely consistent with what occurs in a crucifixion. So either translation could be said to foreshadow the suffering of the Messiah. But the bottom line is there’s no Christian tampering with the text, just honest efforts to accurately translate the Hebrew, where only one character determines the difference between ka’aru, or ‘pierced,’ and ka’ari, or ‘like a lion.’”
“GOD’S VERY BEST”
The stunning picture of the righteous sufferer in Psalm 22, the haunting portrait of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, the prophecies that had to be fulfilled before the second temple’s demise, the bloody sacrificial system that presaged the lamb of God—all of it, down to the predicted details of the priestly king and his ancestry and his birthplace and his crucifixion and his ongoing worldwide influence, was too eerily accurate to be the product of happenstance or manipulation.
How else could I account for dozens of detailed predictions miraculously coming true in the life of only one individual in all of history? The facts forced me to conclude that the messianic prophecies are an incredible affirmation of the supernatural nature of the Bible and the identity of Jesus being the redeemer of Israel and the world. The most recent objections, propagated on the Internet and in “anti-missionary” literature, simply failed to overturn the powerful case for him having fulfilled the ancient predictions against all odds.
“I think it would be mathematically impossible for anyone else ever to fulfill all these parameters of prophecy in the Old Testament any better than Jesus did,” said noted ancient history professor Paul Maier.79
Walter Kaiser, the prominent Old Testament expert and author of thirty books, including The Messiah in the Old Testament, said that “a straightforward understanding and application” of the Hebrew text “leads one straight to the Messiah and to Jesus of Nazareth.”80 Declared Norman Geisler: “All the evidence points to Jesus as the divinely appointed fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies. He was God’s man, confirmed by God’s signs.”81
Since the facts inexorably lead to Jesus, one more topic begged to be addressed. I had to ask Brown: “Given the depth and breadth of the prophecies—given the compelling portrayal of Jesus in Isaiah 53 alone—why don’t more Jewish people come to faith in him?”
Brown had heard the question many times before. “There are several answers,” he began. “For the most part, many Jewish people simply don’t examine the issue. Religious Jews are engaged in the biblical text, but they don’t spend most of their time looking at the prophets; instead, they study the Talmud and rabbinic traditions. They’re not looking in the right place to find Yeshua. But many Jews today are not even following God in a devoted way. There’s a general lack of God-consciousness. Also, there’s a price to pay if a Jewish person decides to follow Jesus: they could be ostracized from their family and community. And another reason, unfortunately, is the barrier put up by anti-Semitism in the past.”
That remark stopped me cold. “Do you think Christians are generally oblivious to the history of anti-Semitism and Christianity?” I asked.
“Yes, often they are—for good reason: they haven’t seen it, and it isn’t in their hearts,” he replied. “With almost no exception, the Christians I’ve met around the world have a special attachment to Jewish people and Israel. So the history of anti-Semitism is very much unknown for that positive reason—but there’s also a bad reason.”
“Which is…?”
“Many Christians today, especially evangelicals, don’t have a sense of history. They’ll quote Martin Luther left and right, but they won’t talk about the horrific things he wrote that Adolph Hitler adopted, like his 1543 tractate Concerning the Jews and Their Lies, where he recommended, among other things, that synagogues be burned, Jewish homes destroyed, and rabbis forbidden to teach under the threat of death.82 They’ll quote the powerful preaching of John Chrysostom a thousand years before Luther, but they won’t mention his seven sermons against the Jews, where he said, ‘I hate the Jews,’ called them ‘possessed by the devil,’ and said the Jewish religion is ‘a disease.’83
“Someone once said that those pages of history that Jews have memorized, Christians have torn out of their history books. There’s no denying these things occurred, but they were a complete and horrible aberration that, unfortunately, have been used to keep many Jews away from Jesus.”
My heart sank at the prospect of anyone being repelled from seeking out the real Jesus because of atrocities perpetrated by those who claimed to follow him but who, by their repugnant behavior and attitudes, betrayed his most fundamental teachings.
“What can be done about it?” I asked.
“There was a Scottish Presbyterian conference 150 years ago where they were asking the question, ‘To reach out to the Jews, what’s the most pressing need?’”
“What was the answer?”
“More tears,” Brown said somberly. “And I still believe that remains a pressing issue—more tears. It’s essential that, as followers of Jesus, we repudiate these aberrations of history and tell Jewish people, ‘Allow us to show you who Yeshua really is and what he really teaches.’”
I recalled a comment made by a mutual acquaintance, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who once told me Christianity is “a beautiful religion for Christians,” but it’s just not for Jews. “Can Jesus be the Messiah for Christians but not for others?” I asked Brown.
“That would be a complete contradiction of all of Jesus’ claims,” he replied, shaking his head. “He’s either the Messiah of everyone or the Messiah of no one. To say the New Testament is beautiful but Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah—well, it’s filled with fabrications and fantasies then. Christians are deluded in believing he died for the sins of the world and rose from the dead. Either he did or he didn’t.
“Thankfully, over the last century there’s been a great recovery of Jews saying, ‘I worship the God of Israel, I worship the Messiah of Israel in light of the new covenant, and Torah is written on my heart.’ In fact, many Jews who were secular have become appreciative of their heritage and background because of faith in Jesus. That trite saying—‘Jesus made me kosher’—actually has a lot of truth to it.”
“And what about for you, personally?” I said. “Who’s the real Jesus to you?”
Brown glanced off to the side, collecting his thoughts, and then looked back at me. He was no longer methodically building a case; now, in a tone that blended gratitude with conviction, the words flowed almost poetically. I couldn’t think of a better way to cap our time together.
“Yeshua is the right continuation of my Jewish roots,” Brown said. “He’s the Messiah of Israel and the savior of the world. He’s the one to whom I owe my life, and through him I’ve come to know God. He is the one who provided me complete forgiveness of sins, who loved me when I was a miserable, ungrateful, rebellious, proud wretch. He put a new heart and a new spirit within me; he has turned my life around and given it meaning. He’s the fullness of God in bodily form. He’s the very expression and image of the Father—in seeing him, I see and know God.
“And he’s the only hope of the world. Outside of him, all we see is darkness. He’s the hope of Israel. Israel will run out of options and finally in the end recognize that the one that it thought was the source of all its pain and suffering through the years actually is its only hope.
“He’s the beginning and end, the all in all. I cannot imagine existence outside of him. I cannot imagine truth outside of him. I can’t imagine purpose in l
ife outside of him. So really he is the ultimate expression of God to the human race. That’s why I’m spending my life talking to Jewish people—as compassionately and accurately as I can—about the reality of Jesus the Messiah.
“I just can’t withhold God’s very best from those he dearly loves.”
FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION
More Resources on This Topic
Brown, Michael L. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 1; General and Historical Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000.
———. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 2; Theological Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000.
———. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 3; Messianic Prophecy Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003.
———. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, vol. 4; New Testament Objections. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2006.
Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. The Messiah in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995.
Smith, James E. What the Bible Teaches about the Promised Messiah. Nashville: Nelson, 1993.
Wright, Christopher J. H. Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1995.
CHALLENGE #6
“PEOPLE SHOULD BE FREE TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT TO BELIEVE ABOUT JESUS”
Designer God: In a Mix-and-Match World, Why Not Create Your Own Religion?
Headline of cover story in Utne Reader1
Americans write their own Bible. They fashion their own God, then talk incessantly about him.
Hanna Rosin, Washington Post2
Wendi was forced to go to Sunday school as a youngster, but she never believed what she heard. Years later, after a miscarriage, she wanted to know what happened to the unborn baby’s soul. “I explored Christianity, but I didn’t get any answers that satisfied me,” she said. So she took a class in metaphysics, where she learned about life after death, intuition, and other intriguing topics.