Until the Anointed
The Hebrew Bible, more commonly referred to by Christians as the Old Testament, is made up of 66 books (or, before some were separated, 22) of sundry genres. These books take place all over the ancient Near East over a period of 4,000 years. Many, even scholars, look at this group of sundry literature and state that it must not be coherent and that these scriptures are not unified in their themes in ideas. In fact, in recent centuries, scholars have proposed theories that within the books themselves there are many contradictions due to many different religious traditions and perspectives that do not go well together being unified anyways. However, some Jewish rabbi steps onto the scene in the early first century and stated that this whole story is about Himself. In fact, He reprimands His own disciples for not understanding this! He says, “‘Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (New Revised Standard Version updated edition, Lk. 24.25-27). So then, for the followers of this anointed messenger of God, the Hebrew Bible is supposed to all be leading up to Him. How?
The Hebrew Bible opens up with God creating the whole cosmos with His Word (Gen. 1). God then places two humans as ruling representatives in His cosmic temple. He blesses them and gives them the command to rule over all of creation (vv. 27-30). He even commands them to work and keep the sacred space (1.2). These humans are supposed to be kings over all creations and priests (and idols - The Hebrew word for image, ‘tselem’, often being translated as ‘idol’) that need to keep the temple. However, God grants them the choice to either rely on His knowledge of good and bad by choosing to obtain life on His terms, or they could choose to define good and bad for themselves by taking from the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad (vv. 15-17). The humans, however, allow the serpent (an animal that they were supposed to be ruling over!) to tell them what to do. While God had already planted trees in the garden that were simply there to look good (v. 9), the humans see that this tree is good (3.6). Then they see that it is “good for food” (v. 6) even though God had already planted trees for eating (2.9 - Especially the Tree of Life). In eating from the tree, God banishes them from the Garden (3.22-24). However, God first curses the serpent and the ground (on account of the humans) (v. 14-19). Even before God begins to curse the ground for the humans, He gives them hope in His cursing of the snake:
Enmity will I set between you and the woman,
between your seed and hers.
He will bite your head
and you will boot him with the heel. (Alter, Gen. 3.15)
So, even with the humans being sent out of the Garden to fend for themselves, it seems that they will one day be brought back by some real-er representative who will not just fight with the seed of the serpent but will actually destroy it at its roots.
With the readers of the Scriptures left wondering who this anointed one will be, they see that the firstborn of these humans that they assumed would be the serpent-striker was really a manslayer and is sent further away from God (Gen. 4). In fact, humanity only corrupts the earth (along with the help of the angelic beings) the more that it multiplies (6.1-4). God, knowing that He needs to bring ruin to those that are ruining His creation, finds one favorable one to save. He brings this one righteous Noah and his whole family (which is not necessarily righteous like he is) through the chaotic cosmic deluge that He brings on the earth (6.5-8.22). However, even this righteous Noah blows it like the first Adam: he finds himself taking too much fruit in the little garden that he planted for himself and becomes naked out in some tent (9.20-21). However, his own son seems to be the same as the son of Adam and somehow does some secret sin with his father while he is exposed in his tent (v. 22). When all of the progeny of Noah fills the earth, the same evil comes with it! In fact, even though “all the earth was one language” (11.1), they work together against God to set themselves up over Him (vv. 2-4)! God decides to come down and disperse these people all over the earth (vv. 5-9).
With these sundry people groups sent all over the earth, Yahweh chooses one righteous one (Abram) to be blessed and to take His blessing to all of the other peoples around Him (Gen. 12.1-3). He promises to give Him a land and progeny (vv. 2. 7). However, Abram quickly leaves the land that God had first called Him too (in less than a sentence, actually - v. 10). In the new land where he finds himself, he obtains some slave (after bring curses on all of Pharaoh because of his own sin - vv. 11-20). It is this very slave that Abram takes for himself to sleep with him and then sends off with her son when his wife becomes jealous of her (ch. 16). God remains faithful to Abram despite all this. He makes a covenant with Him (ch. 17) and promises to give him seed. When he is granted this seed, he is almost immediately (in the narrative) asked by God to sacrifice him (21.1-6; 22.1-2). It is in the very moment where Abraham (formerly Abram) shows his faithfulness to God - And is a representative of the coming anointed one - that God swears by Himself to bring blessing through this seed (vv. 4-19).
The rest of the scroll of Genesis shows how this dysfunctional family fails to have total faith in God. Isaac, the promised son of Abraham, ends up using the same lies that his father did to save his own life when in foreign kingdoms (26.6-11). Later, his second-born son - Even though he had been promised the blessing (25.23) - lies and tricks his own father to take the blessing on his own terms (ch. 27). His whole life, in fact, Jacob-Israel deceives and does everything that he can to supplant even his own father-in-law (chs. 30-31). Even in coming back to reconcile himself with his brother, he follows in all his fathers’ footsteps by sending his own wives before himself to save his own life (ch. 33). Even though Jacob ‘wins’ his struggle with the Angel of Yahweh and is blessed by even Him (32.23-32), he does things on his own terms and only barely pictures the anointed coming king.
With the scroll of Genesis finishing with all of the sons of Israel down in Egypt, the meditator of these Hebrew Scriptures is left wondering who will be the anointed one that will bring this family back into an Eden-like land and strike sin at its source (chs. 48-50). Then the book of Exodus opens up with the descendants of this family all being down in Egypt but under an oppressive power that forgot what that family had done to bring blessing to their land (Ex. 1.8-22). It is among this people that a new Noah is brought about through the waters in an ark (ch. 2.1-10). This Neo-Noah, Moses, ends up going up out of Egypt and is personally called by Yahweh Himself (Gen. 2.11-22; 31.-6). Yahweh reveals Himself in a way that He did not even show Himself to Abraham. He calls Him to go back to Egypt to free the people that He had called to blessed and to be a blessing to the nations (chs. 3-4, 6). Moses is given power by God over the Egyptians to enact many wonderful portents and signs (chs. 7-10). Even though the Egyptians do not listen to the LORD, He eventually sends His own Angel of Death among them to kill the firstborn of Egypt (just like they had killed the firstborn of the Hebrews) (chs. 11-13). Yahweh ends up bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and destroying all of Egypt (despite Israel complaining and crying against God all the while - chs. 14-15).
As the Israelites are brought out into the desert, they only mumble and grumble against God all the more (ch. 16f). God brings them to Mount Sinai to show Himself to Moses and to give Him the Torah and the Book of the Covenant (ch. 20f). Israel themself fails to come up the Mountain with Moses (19; 20.19-21). Moses is some type of Messiah in the story that intercedes on behalf of humanity. In fact, even when the Israelites are breaking the very covenant that they promised that they would stay faithful to at the bottom of the Mountain, Moses stands at the top asking that God take His life instead of the people (Ex. 32). Not only will Moses be the only mediator of the Covenant on the behalf of the Israelites but is willing to lay down his life for the unfaithful people. In fact, Moses will ask God to kill him in place of the Israelites a second time. All of Israel complaining comes to its climax when they actually send spies into the land and come back saying that the people in the land are giants too great for them to defeat and take over (Num. 13.1-14.4). It is even in this moment that Moses denies God telling him that he will restart with just Moses and asks that God take his own life for Israel to continue on into the land (v. 5f). However, due to Moses rebelling against God at Meribah and using the power God granted him angrily against the Israelites instead of in a way to make God holy, even He is not allowed into the land (Num. 20.1-13). At the end of these five books and the death of Moses, it said:
But no prophet again arose in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face-to-face, with all the signs and the portents which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and with all the strong hand and with all the great fear that Moses did before the eyes of all Israel. (Deut. 34.10-12)
This edition at the end of the Torah makes it clear that even the final redactor of the Hebrew Bible has not noticed any prophet or seed of Adam or Abraham that was like Moses. They looked forward to some Messiah that would be greater than Moses and totally rely on the wisdom of God all throughout his life; he would live in total faithfulness to God and, like Moses, give up his life not just to destroy the serpent, but also to intercede for all of sinful humanity.
The rest of the Hebrew Bible develops this idea with King David who desires to build a house for Yahweh but is instead promised by Yahweh that He will build his house (2 Sam. 7). However, even David messes it up when he takes the wife of another man to sleep with him and kills her husband to cover it up (ch. 11). This legacy is only carried on in even worse ways by the descendants of David. Even the prophets look forward to some Neo-David who will come and restore Israel. With the Israelites being taken out of the land and then sent back again to build a temple that has only half the holiness of the last one, the reader of the Hebrew Bible hopefully awaits the coming king that will bring back the former glory of Israel to the land. This is brought about, as Jesus says, in His own coming, suffering, dying, and rising again from the dead (Lk. 24.25-27).
Bibliography
Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible. WW Norton, 2018.
NRSVue. The Bible. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. National Council of the Churches of Christ, 2021.