Is Jesus in the Old Testament?

Iain M. Duguid

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781596386358
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

The Old Testament, while sometimes confusing and difficult for New Testament believers, is for all Christians because Christ is actually present throughout it. Learn here to rightly explore Christ in the Old Testament.

Seeing Jesus in the
Old Testament

The Incompleteness of the Old Testament

Of course, to talk about the gospel as the central message of the Old Testament is to assume that the Old Testament was never intended to exist by itself. Instead, it was designed from the outset to belong with the New Testament as part of a single book, the Bible. That is exactly what the book of Hebrews claims. The writer begins by saying, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1). He then goes on to assert that this Son is superior even to Moses, the author of the Pentateuch and the supreme prophet of the Old Testament (Heb. 3:3–6). Christ’s ministry is better than that of Moses, just as the new covenant is more excellent than the old one since it is enacted on better promises (Heb. 8:6). Quoting Jeremiah 31:31–34, the writer to the Hebrews says, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13).

The writer to the Hebrews is saying that by itself the Old Testament is necessarily incomplete, even defective. God’s purpose from creation onward was to have a people for himself who would live under his blessing. As Jeremiah pointed out, the problem with the first covenant was sin: God’s people broke the covenant and were judged for their sin. This is true in the beginning, in the garden of Eden, and then throughout the history of the people of Israel, who repeatedly broke the covenant God had made with them at Mount Sinai. In the context of that history of sin, only a covenant based on God’s free gift of grace to us in Christ could actually achieve God’s purpose to make us his holy people.

Notice, however, that the writer to the Hebrews
grounds his message about the obsoleteness of the Old Testament in the Old Testament itself! He quotes the Old Testament repeatedly to help his readers to understand the glorious greatness of the new covenant in Christ. In other words, to understand the climactic message of the New Testament properly, you first need to understand the preparatory message of the Old Testament. Only then will you be ready to understand the mission of the Christ whom God has sent. This is why many missionaries who translate the Bible into other languages do not start with the New Testament, but rather with Old Testament texts such as Genesis and Psalms. Without those foundational passages and their teaching about who God is and how he related to Abraham and his descendants, it is hard for people to grasp the message that this God has now taken flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Shape of the Old Testament

This incompleteness of the Old Testament is evident in its overall structure and shape. The order of the biblical books is different in Hebrew from that in our English Bible, yet both arrangements are made up of three distinct parts that point us onward to Christ.

The Hebrew arrangement divides the Old Testament books into the Law (or “Torah”), the Prophets, and the Writings. The Law is what we call the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, covering Genesis through Deuteronomy. The second part in the Hebrew order is the Prophets, which includes the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (the “former prophets”), as well as the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and so on (the “latter prophets”). The last category, the Writings, includes poetic books such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, as well as later history (Chronicles, Ezra–Nehemiah) and books that we would include among the prophets, such as Daniel and Lamentations.

This arrangement of the Old Testament highlights the prophetic dimension of the written history of Israel. The Bible is never merely a recording of the facts of Israel’s story. Rather, it is the record of God’s Word and its fulfillment, which is a prominent theme in Joshua through Kings. It also means that their Bible ended with the books of Chronicles, which serve as a grand recapitulation of the entire story of the Old Testament, tracing Israel’s history from Adam to the return from the Babylonian exile and the struggle of the Israelites to reestablish themselves in their homeland. This recapitulation leaves open the questions, What happens now that we have returned from exile? Where do we go from here? As a result, the Hebrew order of the Old Testament has an “unfinished symphony” feel about it. If it is merely the story of a brave people surviving in a hostile environment, never quite being submerged by the stream of history but never quite fulfilling their potential either, then the reader is left thinking, So what? Is this the way their story ends, not with a bang but with a whimper? Are all God’s rich promises to Abraham fulfilled in a small group of returned Jews, beset by problems within and without, clinging to a perilous existence in a small corner of their former empire? Surely there must be more to sacred history than this.

The same incompleteness is evident in the order of Old Testament books in our English translations. This arrangement was delivered to the English-speaking world by way of the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament). The Greeks arranged the books in their logical and historical order. They started with the historical books (which now also encompass the Pentateuch), slipped books like Ruth and Chronicles into their proper historical locations, followed the history with the poetic/wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon), and finished up with the prophetic books (Isaiah–Malachi).

This arrangement is obviously historically tidier, but it demonstrates a difference of perspective over the nature of some of the biblical books. For example, is the Pentateuch law or history? Is the book of Kings history or prophecy? Thinking about these questions shows the richness of the biblical materials. For example, if “law” means merely rules and regulations, the Pentateuch is clearly much more than that. It tells the story of the world from Adam’s creation to Israel’s arrival on the brink of the Promised Land, and in that sense it is clearly intended to be history. Yet it is history that is told not just out of antiquarian interest, but for our instruction (which is, of course, included in the meaning of the Hebrew word for law, torah). Its central focus is the covenant that God made with his people at Mount Sinai, which is formative to Israel’s subsequent experience as a nation, not merely a timeless s...