Cleansing
sacrifices occupied the central place in the religious life of the Hebrew
people. Every orthodox Hebrew knew from childhood the law that sin can be
ironed out only through a redeeming bloody sacrifice. All the high holy days
and family events were accompanied by sacrifices. The prophets did not explain
wherein lay the cleansing power of the sacrifice. However, from their
predictions about the sufferings of the Messiah it is apparent that Old
Testament sacrifices pointed to the great expiatory Sacrifice of the Messiah,
which He was to bring for the remission of the sins of the world. From
this great Sacrifice the Old Testament sacrifices drew their meaning and
strength. The internal connection between sin and the subsequent sufferings and
death of a person, as well as between the voluntary sufferings and subsequent
salvation of people — to this day is not completely understood. Here we will
not attempt to explain this inner bond, but will dwell on the actual
predictions about the Messiah’s forthcoming sufferings for our salvation.
The most vivid and detailed prediction about the sufferings of the Messiah is
the prophecy of Isaiah, which occupies one and a half chapters of his book (the
end of the 52nd and all of the 53rd). This prophecy
contains such details of the sufferings of Christ, that the reader gets the
impression that the prophet Isaiah wrote it at the foot of Golgotha,
even though, as we know, the prophet Isaiah lived over seven centuries BC. We
present here this prophecy.
“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of
the LORD been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a
tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or
comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty
that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was
despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He
was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for
our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his
own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed
and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the
slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is
silent, So He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation? For He was cut
off from the land of the living; For the
transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the
wicked; But with the rich at His death, Because He had
done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to
bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His
soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And
the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of
His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My
righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the
spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was
numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made
intercession for the transgressors” (Is. 53:1-12).
The introductory phrase of this prophecy (who has
believed our report? And to whom
has the arm of the LORD been revealed)
witnesses the extraordinary nature of the described event, demanding
considerable willful effort on the part of the reader in order to believe it.
Truly, the previous prophecies of Isaiah spoke of the greatness and glory of
the Messiah. The present prophecy speaks of His voluntary humiliation,
suffering and death! The Messiah, being completely clean of personal sins and
holy, endures all these sufferings for the cleansing of human lawlessness.
King David also described the sufferings of the Savior on the Cross very
vividly in his 22nd psalm. Although the speech is in the first
person in this psalm, King David could not write about himself of course,
because he did not bear such sufferings. Here he, as the prototype of the
Messiah, prophetically attributed to himself that, which in fact referred to
his Descendant — Christ. It is remarkable that several of the words of this
psalm were repeated precisely by Christ during his crucifixion. We present here
several phrases from the 22nd psalm and the parallel Gospel text:
7th verse: “All that see Me
laugh Me to scorn,” compare to Mark 15:29.
16th verse: “They pierced My
hands and My feet,” compare to Luke 23:33.
18th verse: “They part My
garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture,” compare to Matthew
27:35.
8th verse: “He trusted on the Lord that He
would deliver him: let Him deliver Him.” This phrase was repeated word for
word by the High Priests and the scribes, Gospel of St. Matthew 27:43.
1st verse: “My God, My God, why hast thou
forsaken me?” — so exclaimed the Lord before His
death, see Matthew 27:46.
In
addition, the prophet Isaiah wrote the following details about the sufferings of
the Messiah, which were also fulfilled precisely. The speech is in the first
person: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should
know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary... I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked
off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will
help me; therefore shall I not be disgraced” (Is. 50:4-7), compare to
Matthew 26:67.
In the light of these prophecies about the sufferings of the Messiah, the
ancient enigmatic prophecy of the patriarch Jacob becomes comprehensible, as
told to his son Judah, which was already partially mentioned in the second
chapter. Here we give the prophecy of Judah fully: “Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone
up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse
him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
comes; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Binding his donkey
unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments
in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes” (Gen. 49:9-11). In this prophecy the Lion with his
greatness and power symbolizes the Messiah, Who was to be born of the tribe of Judah. The question of the patriarch about who will raise the
sleeping Lion, allegorically refers to the
death of the Messiah, named in the Holy Scriptures “the Lion of the tribe of
Juda” (Rev. 5:5). The following prophetic words of Jacob about the
cleansing of the raiments in the juice of the grapes also speak about the death
of the Messiah. Grapes are the symbol of blood. The words about the
female donkey and the ass’s colt were fulfilled, when the Lord Jesus Christ
before His sufferings on the cross, sitting on an ass’s colt, rode into Jerusalem. The prophet Daniel also prophesied about the time when
the Messiah was to suffer, as we shall see in the next chapter.
The prophecy, no less definite, of Zechariah, living two centuries after Isaiah
(500 years BC), should be added to these ancient affirmations about the
sufferings of the Messiah. In the third chapter of his book the prophet
Zechariah describes the vision of the great priest Joshua, dressed at first in
bloody, then later in light vestments. The clothing of the priest Joshua
symbolizes the moral condition (state) of the people: at first sinful, then
later — righteous. In the vision described there are many interesting details
relating to the sacrament of redemption, but we will here present only the
concluding words of God the Father: “For, behold, I will bring forth my
servant the BRANCH. For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon
one stone shall be seven eyes; behold, I will engrave the graving thereof,
saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one
day... and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn
for Him, as one mourneth for his only son... In that day
there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zech. 3:8-9; 12:10-13:1).
The name Branch we have already seen in the Prophet Isaiah. It refers to the
Messiah, as does the symbolic naming of Him as the (corner) stone. It is
noteworthy that, according to the prophecy, the forgiveness of the sins of the
people will occur in a single day. In other words, one particular Sacrifice
will perform the redemption of sins! The second part of the prophecy, found in
the 12th chapter, speaks of the sufferings of the Messiah on the
Cross, of His being pierced by a spear, and of the repentance of the people.
All these events did take place and are described in the Gospels.
No matter how difficult it was for the Old Testament person to rise to the belief in the necessity of these expiatory
sufferings of the Messiah, still, several Old Testament Judean writers
correctly understood the prophecy in the 53rd chapter of the book of
Isaiah. We present here valuable thoughts on this subject from ancient Hebrew
books. “What is the Name of the Messiah?” is asked in the Talmud, and
the reply is: “The compassionate one, as it is written “These
sins of ours He carries and feels compassion for us” (tractates (Massektoth),
Talmud Babli. In another part of the Talmud it says: “The Messiah takes
unto Himself all the suffering and torture for the sins of the Israelites. Had
He not taken unto Himself this suffering, then not one person in the world
could have stood the unavoidable execution as a consequence for breaking the
law” (Jalkut Chadach, fol. 154, col 4, 29, Tit). The Rabbi Moshe Goddarshan
writes in the Midrash (the book, interpreting the Holy Scripture):
“The Holy and Blessed God made the following agreement with
the Messiah, saying to Him: Messiah My Righteous One! The sins of the people
will be imposed upon you as a heavy yoke: Thine eyes shall see no light, Thine
ears shall hear terrible curses, Thy mouth shall taste bitterness, Thy tongue
shall cleave to Thy throat… and Thy soul shall succumb from anguish and
gasping. Are You reconciled to that? If You accept to take upon Yourself all these sufferings: very
well then. If not, then I shall this minute annihilate mankind — sinners. To
this the Messiah answered: Lord of the universe! I gladly accept all these
sufferings on one condition, that Thou shall resurrect from the dead during My
time, beginning with Adam and to this day, and shall not only save only them,
but also all those that You had planned to create and have not created as yet.
To that the Holy and Blessed God answered: yes, I agree. In that instant the
Messiah gladly took upon Himself all the suffering as it was written: “He
was tortured, but suffered willingly… as a sheep led to slaughter” (from
discussions on the book of Genesis).
These
testimonies of orthodox Hebrew experts of the Holy Scriptures are valuable,
because they show how great a significance the
prophecy of Isaiah had for strengthening faith in the power of the sufferings
of the Messiah on the Cross to bring salvation.
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