God gave Israel appointed times to remember His deliverance, worship at His sanctuary, and acknowledge that the land’s harvest came from Him. The people rested, brought sacrifices, humbled themselves, and rejoiced according to His instructions. I want to understand those commands before drawing a chart of what each feast predicts. The New Testament makes definite connections with Christ, while other proposed connections need to be identified as interpretation.
The Lord’s Appointed Calendar
These observances belonged to God’s covenant with Israel through Moses. They ordered the nation’s worship and taught successive generations what the Lord had done. Leviticus 23 begins with the weekly Sabbath before naming the annual feasts:
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'The feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts. 'Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings. 'These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it.'"
Leviticus 23:1-8
The Hebrew word moed means an appointed time in this setting. These were the Lord’s feasts because He determined when and how Israel would observe them. Holy convocations were sacred assemblies to which the people were summoned. A private day of reflection could not fulfill the command to gather, rest from the specified work, and present the required offerings.
The weekly Sabbath brought solemn rest to Israel’s dwellings after six days of work. It recalls God’s rest after creation and became a covenant sign for Israel after the Exodus. Servants and animals also received rest. By stopping their labor, the people acknowledged its limits and depended on the Lord rather than acting as though uninterrupted work could secure everything they needed. We should distinguish the rest required on festival days from the ordinary weekly Sabbath.
For the annual calendar, the month of the Exodus became Israel’s first month, called Abib in the Torah and later Nisan. Torah here means the five books of Moses. The first month falls in spring, while the seventh, later called Tishri, falls in autumn. Those seasons help us follow the feasts: barley harvest begins, wheat follows, and the final ingathering comes later in the year.
Passover falls at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. Unleavened Bread begins on the fifteenth and lasts seven days, with sacred assemblies and rest from customary work on its first and seventh days. Leviticus 23 counts Weeks from the wave offering instead of assigning it a fixed numerical date.
Jewish groups disagreed over how to reckon “the day after the Sabbath” when counting toward Weeks. Modern calculated calendars and proposals based on observation can also lead to different reconstructions. Those questions affect our calculations without giving us authority to predict Christ’s return. I would not turn a disputed calendar into a date He has not supplied.
Some familiar names and associations come from later tradition. Leviticus describes the seventh-month memorial of blowing without calling it Rosh Hashanah. Later Jewish observance associates Weeks with Sinai, while the Torah gives its harvest count and offerings. We can study those traditions respectfully while distinguishing them from the commands God gave through Moses.
The Spring Feasts Point Toward Christ
Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, "This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: 'On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man's need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire–its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover. 'For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 'So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.
Exodus 12:1-14
Before the final plague, each household selected an unblemished year-old male from the sheep or goats. Small households could share according to the number who would eat it. They killed the animal at twilight and applied its blood to the doorposts and lintel, the beam above the doorway. They ate it roasted, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, dressed and ready to leave.
The Lord passed through Egypt in judgment on the firstborn and the gods of Egypt, but passed over the houses marked by blood. He had appointed the blood as the sign, so Israel needed to trust His instruction and obey it rather than treat the blood as a charm. Pharaoh then let the people go, and Israel departed from bondage. Later generations were to keep the memorial and teach their children why.
John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Paul expressly identifies Him as our Passover. At the first Passover, a lamb died in another’s place, blood marked the household, and God rescued those within it from judgment. That deliverance helps us understand Christ’s saving death and shed blood. Admiring His example cannot accomplish what His sacrifice does. The study on the Passover follows Israel’s deliverance more fully.
Unleavened Bread commemorated Israel’s departure before the dough had time to rise. For seven days the people removed leaven from their homes and ate unleavened bread. This feast and Passover were closely joined, but their different dates and instructions distinguish them.
Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Paul applies leaven’s spreading action to the sexual immorality Corinth was tolerating. Because Christ our Passover was sacrificed, the congregation had to deal with the evil corrupting it and live in sincerity and truth. Keeping the feast here is figurative language for the holiness that should follow God’s grace. It does not put the church under Israel’s festival calendar.
Leaven does not represent sin wherever it appears. Jesus uses it in a comparison about God’s kingdom, and the Weeks offering included leavened loaves. Nor does Paul call Jesus “unleavened bread” in this passage. He connects Christ’s Passover sacrifice with the church’s responsibility to reject wickedness. Unleavened Bread examines those commands and their application. Leviticus then turns to the first harvest offering and the count toward Weeks:
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the LORD. Its grain offering shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the LORD, for a sweet aroma; and its drink offering shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. 'And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven. They are the firstfruits to the LORD. And you shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year, without blemish, one young bull, and two rams. They shall be as a burnt offering to the LORD, with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the LORD. Then you shall sacrifice one kid of the goats as a sin offering, and two male lambs of the first year as a sacrifice of a peace offering. The priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs. They shall be holy to the LORD for the priest. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. 'When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God.'"
Leviticus 23:9-22
After entering the land and harvesting it, the people had to present a sheaf of firstfruits before eating from the crop. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest waved it before the Lord, and the people presented a year-old lamb with the prescribed grain and drink offerings. Presenting the first portion acknowledged that the land and its produce belonged to God. The people gave thanks and entrusted their expectation of the rest of the harvest to Him.
But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For "He has put all things under His feet." But when He says "all things are put under Him," it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
1 Corinthians 15:20-28
Paul explicitly calls the risen Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. His bodily resurrection begins the harvest and guarantees that the rest will follow: Christ first, then those who belong to Him at His coming. Our hope rests on what He has already accomplished, as God’s purpose moves toward the defeat of death.
“Fallen asleep” describes believers’ physical death while pointing ahead to the resurrection of their bodies. It does not teach that their souls become unconscious. Paul elsewhere connects absence from the body with presence with the Lord. The harvest concerns bodily resurrection and the reunion still ahead.
Many teachers place Resurrection Sunday precisely on the wave-sheaf day. Paul’s firstfruits connection is explicit, but an exact calendar alignment also involves the disputed Sabbath reckoning and Gospel chronology. We can affirm His bodily resurrection and its meaning without claiming those additional calculations are settled.
Israel counted seven complete Sabbaths from the wave offering to the fiftieth day. Pentecost is the Greek name associated with that count of fifty. At Weeks, the people brought two loaves of fine flour baked with leaven to be waved before the Lord. Burnt offerings were accompanied by grain and drink offerings, and there were also sin and peace offerings. Israel gathered in a holy convocation and ceased customary work.
Leviticus calls the loaves firstfruits without identifying them as Jews and Gentiles, two testaments, or two houses. Those comparisons may serve as devotional illustrations, but they should not be presented as the text’s explanation. The Torah describes harvest worship rather than commanding an anniversary of Sinai. The clearest New Testament connection is the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost itself, recorded in Acts 2.
The Autumn Feasts and Israel’s Hope
Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.'" And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: "Also the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire to the LORD. And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the LORD your God. For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be to you a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath." Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it. For seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD. It is a sacred assembly, and you shall do no customary work on it. 'These are the feasts of the LORD which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire to the LORD, a burnt offering and a grain offering, a sacrifice and drink offerings, everything on its day– besides the Sabbaths of the LORD, besides your gifts, besides all your vows, and besides all your freewill offerings which you give to the LORD. 'Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest. And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.'" So Moses declared to the children of Israel the feasts of the LORD.
Leviticus 23:23-44
The seventh month began with a day of rest, an offering by fire, and a sacred assembly marked by trumpet blasts. The expression zikhron teruah joins remembrance with a loud blast or shout. Numbers 29 supplies the details of the sacrifices that accompanied this memorial.
In Scripture, trumpets summon an assembly or signal travel and war. They also accompany worship, acclaim a king, or sound at a divine appearance. Leviticus does not name a historical event this memorial recalled or identify it as the date of the rapture. Later associations with repentance and judgment need to be distinguished from what the passage commands. The study on the Feast of Trumpets considers the observance in more detail.
In 1 Thessalonians 4, a trumpet of God accompanies the church’s gathering to Christ. I understand that gathering to precede the Tribulation and to be distinct from the later trumpets of judgment. The imagery invites comparison with the feast, but no verse requires the gathering to occur on its annual date. We should be ready for Christ without announcing a year or a seventh-month appointment for Him.
On the tenth day, the nation was to humble itself and cease all work for the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 16 explains the high priest’s ministry that day:
Now the LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered profane fire before the LORD, and died; and the LORD said to Moses: "Tell Aaron your brother not to come at just any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, lest he die; for I will appear in the cloud above the mercy seat. "Thus Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with the blood of a young bull as a sin offering, and of a ram as a burnt offering. He shall put the holy linen tunic and the linen trousers on his body; he shall be girded with a linen sash, and with the linen turban he shall be attired. These are holy garments. Therefore he shall wash his body in water, and put them on. And he shall take from the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats as a sin offering, and one ram as a burnt offering. "Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for the LORD and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat on which the LORD's lot fell, and offer it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make atonement upon it, and to let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness. "And Aaron shall bring the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house, and shall kill the bull as the sin offering which is for himself. Then he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from the altar before the LORD, with his hands full of sweet incense beaten fine, and bring it inside the veil. And he shall put the incense on the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the Testimony, lest he die. He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. "Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. So he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, for all their sins; and so he shall do for the tabernacle of meeting which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness. There shall be no man in the tabernacle of meeting when he goes in to make atonement in the Holy Place, until he comes out, that he may make atonement for himself, for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel. And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. "And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. "Then Aaron shall come into the tabernacle of meeting, shall take off the linen garments which he put on when he went into the Holy Place, and shall leave them there. And he shall wash his body with water in a holy place, put on his garments, come out and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people. The fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar. And he who released the goat as the scapegoat shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. The bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp. And they shall burn in the fire their skins, their flesh, and their offal. Then he who burns them shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. "This shall be a statute forever for you: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether a native of your own country or a stranger who dwells among you. For on that day the priest shall make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the LORD. It is a sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever. And the priest, who is anointed and consecrated to minister as priest in his father's place, shall make atonement, and put on the linen clothes, the holy garments; then he shall make atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tabernacle of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year." And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.
Leviticus 16:1-34
The high priest washed and put on holy linen garments before offering a bull for himself and his household, since he too needed cleansing. He then took incense behind the veil so that its cloud covered the mercy seat before he sprinkled the blood. Access to God’s holy presence could not be treated casually.
One of the two goats for the people was killed as a sin offering, and its blood was brought into the sanctuary. Aaron then confessed Israel’s iniquities over the living goat, which carried them into an uninhabited land. I understand the goats as complementary parts of one atonement ritual. One supplied blood for cleansing, while the other visibly carried confessed sins away. Together they portray God’s provision for removing guilt, rather than competing saviors.
The sanctuary, altar, priesthood, and people required cleansing because the holy God dwelt among an unclean nation. Israel was commanded to “afflict” its souls, deliberately humbling itself in self-denial. Jewish practice expresses this through fasting, but hunger did not earn forgiveness. The people ceased work and humbled themselves while the high priest performed the ministry God commanded.
Israel received covenant cleansing through the priest’s yearly ministry under the Mosaic law. It was more than an illustration of final judgment. Yet the priest needed cleansing himself, animal blood could not complete redemption, and the observance returned the next year. Hebrews uses those limitations to explain the sufficiency of Christ’s once-for-all work.
Tabernacles began on the fifteenth day and lasted seven days, followed by an eighth-day sacred assembly. After gathering the land’s fruit, Israel took branches and rejoiced before the Lord. Native Israelites lived in booths for seven days so that later generations would remember their wilderness shelters after the Exodus.
Living in temporary shelters while enjoying a completed harvest joined gratitude with humility. Israel’s abundance in the land gave the people no reason to forget the Lord who had delivered and sustained them. Tabernacles also supplies the setting for Jesus’ public promise in John 7:
On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
John 7:37-39
The Mishnah, a later Jewish record, describes the water ceremony and the golden lampstands used in the temple celebration. Those accounts include water poured at the altar and large lamps in the courtyard. They provide historical background, rather than commands in Leviticus. John himself tells us that Jesus offered living water on the feast’s last great day. He explains the promise as the Spirit whom believers would receive after Jesus was glorified.
Worship Required Pilgrimage and Sacrifice
Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 16 required Israelite males to appear at the place God chose for Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles. They were not to come empty-handed, and their gifts were to reflect His blessing. Gathering at the place He chose helped preserve unity among households and tribes while opposing worship at rival shrines of their own choosing. The psalms of ascent give voice to worshipers going up to Jerusalem.
These pilgrimages help explain why devout Jews from many nations were in Jerusalem at Pentecost. The feast already belonged to Israel’s calendar when the Spirit was poured out; the church did not invent it. As people heard God’s wonderful works in their own languages, the event recorded in Acts carried Messiah’s message outward to the nations.
Numbers 28 and 29 add the offering details to Leviticus’s calendar. Daily sacrifices continued, with additional offerings each week, at the new month, and at the festivals. During Tabernacles the number of bulls decreased on successive days. Worship drew livestock, grain, oil, and wine from Israel’s flocks and fields, with authorized priests ministering at the sanctuary.
A modern family meal or reenactment cannot reproduce that covenant order. The sacrifices, Aaronic priesthood, sanctuary service, and national life in Israel’s land belonged together. We may study the feasts and voluntarily retain selected customs, but we should not omit those requirements and then claim exact Torah observance. I need to describe what I am doing honestly.
The Substance Belongs to Christ
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
Colossians 2:13-17
God makes believers alive with Christ and forgives their trespasses. Through the cross He cancels the debt against them and triumphs over spiritual rulers. Paul therefore forbids judging them by festival days, new moons, Sabbaths, or food and drink. Those observances are a shadow whose substance is Christ.
A shadow God provided is not evil. Israel’s calendar taught deliverance, dependence, cleansing, and access to His presence, but its observances could not provide the reality to which they pointed. Our forgiveness and standing before God come through Messiah. Requiring festival law for justification or spiritual completeness denies His sufficiency. Fulfillment in Him does not, however, turn the church into ethnic Israel or cancel the nation’s promises.
Acts gives us an explicit connection between an appointed feast and Christ’s provision for His people:
When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, "Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs–we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God." So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "Whatever could this mean?" Others mocking said, "They are full of new wine." But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD. And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.'
Acts 2:1-21
The disciples were together when Pentecost came. A sound like a rushing wind filled the house, and divided tongues like fire rested on them. The Spirit enabled them to speak in languages that listeners from many nations recognized as their own. Peter answered the charge of drunkenness by explaining the event through Joel’s promise that God would pour out His Spirit.
Messiah had risen and been exalted, and the promised outpouring had begun. People could understand the languages they heard; Acts describes witness, rather than uncontrolled noise. It does not say that every cosmic sign in Joel occurred that day. God publicly formed a community belonging to Christ and equipped it to bear witness through His Spirit.
Acts does not call Pentecost a replacement Sinai. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person who indwells believers and continues to give gifts, without requiring every believer to speak in tongues. Scripture must govern each claim about His work. We should receive what He does while refusing manufactured experiences presented as His activity.
Hebrews takes us back to the Day of Atonement to explain what Christ has accomplished:
Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle, performing the services. But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people's sins committed in ignorance; the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience– concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
Hebrews 9:6-15
Paul describes the priests regularly entering the first room of the tabernacle, while only the high priest entered the second on the annual Day of Atonement. The high priest carried blood for his own sins and those of the people. Through that arrangement, the Holy Spirit showed that full access had not yet been made manifest. The gifts and sacrifices under that order could not perfect the worshiper’s conscience.
Christ came as High Priest and entered the greater, perfect tabernacle with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. His blood cleanses our conscience from dead works so that we may serve the living God. As Mediator of the new covenant, He brings us to God through His priesthood and completed sacrifice. An annual Christian reenactment cannot accomplish what He has fulfilled.
Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His atonement rests on His perfection and voluntary sacrifice. Wicked men tortured His innocent body and killed Him. His saving work through His shed blood and death was complete before He was buried, and He then rose bodily. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father and Son acted in perfect unity.
Christ died for the whole world, and God’s offer of salvation is genuine to every person, though people can resist His grace and reject Him. Everyone who repents and believes in Jesus receives forgiveness and everlasting life. God gives that person new birth, and the Holy Spirit indwells and seals him. The believer remains eternally secure in Christ. An empty profession does not establish that the new birth has occurred, and security gives no permission for lawlessness. Keeping a feast neither earns salvation nor keeps us saved.
Nothing future can add saving merit to Christ’s blood, but Israel’s promised turning to Messiah remains ahead. Zechariah describes Jerusalem mourning for the pierced One, and Romans 11 describes a partial hardening until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. Christ’s completed sacrifice and the nation’s later recognition of its Savior are different events.
Some interpreters see a sequence in the seventh-month feasts: a trumpet summons, repentance pictured in Atonement, and kingdom joy in Tabernacles. That order can illustrate biblical themes. Scripture does not identify it as a complete chart of the end times, so it cannot determine every event or date for us.
I understand the prophetic passages to teach that the church will be gathered to Christ before the seven-year Tribulation. After the Tribulation, He will return bodily, deliver the believing remnant, and establish His literal thousand-year reign. This understanding rests on the wider prophecies, including Daniel 9, 1 Thessalonians 4, and Revelation 19-20. The feast calendar alone does not establish the sequence. Zechariah directly names a future observance:
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they shall receive the plague with which the LORD strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
Zechariah 14:16-19
The nations surviving the attack on Jerusalem will go up annually to worship the King and keep Tabernacles. Refusal will bring withheld rain and plague. Zechariah describes the Lord’s public rule over real nations on earth, including their worship and their harvests. I cannot reduce that promise to an inward experience already complete in the church.
I understand that future observance as obedience within Messiah’s kingdom and remembrance of accomplished redemption. Remembering His saving work does not repeat the atonement or add merit to His blood. Zechariah gives a future command under the King’s rule, without describing a return to salvation through law.
The Church Must Follow Christ, Not the Calendar
The Jerusalem council refused to require Gentile believers to become Jews or keep Moses’ law to be saved. Paul warned the Galatians against accepting circumcision as a covenant obligation and told the Colossians to reject judgment over festival days. We are justified by grace through faith in Christ. A Passover meal, Sabbath observance, dietary rule, pilgrimage, or Hebrew pronunciation cannot give us that standing before God.
Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and rejected traditions that used the day against mercy. The New Testament does not require Gentile believers to keep the Mosaic Sabbath as a condition of salvation or holiness. We can still learn from its testimony to God’s ownership of time and our dependence on Him. Our ultimate rest is in Christ.
Modern ritual objects cannot add to Christ’s blood. Water, bread, candles, branches, or a shofar may be used to teach without making anyone spiritually complete. A shofar is a horn used as a trumpet, and its sound cannot make one believer more acceptable to God than another.
Teaching often called Hebrew Roots becomes legalistic when it requires Israel’s calendar, dietary laws, Sabbath keeping, or Hebrew customs for true obedience or spiritual completeness. Studying biblical background can deepen our understanding, and Jewish believers may voluntarily retain cultural practices. The apostles refused to make those observances a condition of salvation or a measure for ranking Christians.
Freedom from those obligations gives us no reason to despise Jewish people or Israel’s Scriptures. Gentiles receive blessing through Israel’s Messiah and the apostolic witness that came from Israel. We should read the Torah gratefully, oppose antisemitism, and honor God’s continuing purposes for the nation. Sharing salvation does not give the church Israel’s ethnic identity or exhaust the nation’s promises.
Romans 14 allows one believer to esteem a day and another to esteem every day alike. Each must be persuaded before the Lord, without despising or judging the other. That leaves room for a Jewish believer’s cultural observance or a Gentile family’s teaching occasion. Such a choice must not be preached as necessary for justification or belonging to God’s true people.
The familiar chart connecting spring feasts with Christ’s first coming and autumn feasts with His second can help people notice real connections. Passover, resurrection firstfruits, and Pentecost have explicit New Testament support. Future trumpet imagery, Israel’s repentance, and kingdom Tabernacles also deserve attention.
The chart misleads when it postpones all atonement until the future or treats a feast date as a deadline for Christ. Atonement was completed at the cross, although Israel’s recognition remains ahead. Tabernacles provided the setting for Jesus’ promise of the Spirit and also appears in future prophecy. Present and future fulfillments do not require the saving sacrifice to be repeated.
The church’s gathering is imminent and pre-Tribulational. Scripture does not require it to occur on the first day of the seventh month. Failed predictions harm our witness and divert attention from the readiness Jesus commands. We have reason to expect Him and obey Him today, without claiming a date He has not supplied.
When teaching a feast, I should first explain what Israel was commanded to remember, bring, eat, and do. Then I can trace the connections Scripture establishes or responsibly supports. My teaching should direct worship to Messiah, encourage love for Jewish neighbors, and deepen gratitude for God’s acts. Hebrew customs must not become a test of spirituality.
Christ’s blood is our refuge, and His resurrection guarantees our bodily resurrection. His Spirit now dwells in His people, and our High Priest has opened access to God through a sacrifice that needs no repetition. We can reject legalism while praying for Jewish people to recognize Him and honoring the promises still awaiting fulfillment.
My Final Thoughts
The feasts teach me to remember what God has done and receive His commands on His terms. They belonged to Israel’s covenant life and direct us to Christ’s sacrifice, resurrection, priesthood, and gift of the Spirit. His finished work needs no addition, and fulfillment in Him does not erase Israel’s future. I want to study the calendar with gratitude, distinguish Scripture from inference, and await the King faithfully without announcing a feast date for His return.
I would not call the Septuagint “the Bible of the apostles” without explaining what I meant by that description. The apostles’ use of Greek Scripture does not show that they all possessed one fixed volume or approved every translation choice in it. Dismissing the whole collection as a corrupt rival to the Hebrew Scriptures would also ignore what the evidence can show. I keep the Masoretic Hebrew text as my Old Testament base while examining the Greek carefully, beginning with what this collection actually is.
What the Septuagint Actually Is
The Septuagint brings together ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament made at different times by different people. Their approaches to the Hebrew sources vary: some follow the wording closely, while others explain an expression or translate its sense more freely. We need to recognize those differences before deciding what a particular Greek reading can tell us about its Hebrew source.
LXX is the Roman numeral for seventy, and the name recalls an ancient account of seventy-two Jewish elders translating the Law of Moses for an Egyptian king. In its earliest form, the account concerns the Torah, also called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Later retellings extended the claim to other books and sometimes described miraculous agreement among the translators. These are human accounts to be examined, not inspired biblical history. The NETS general introduction explains the name and the collection’s varied origins.
The translation of the Greek Pentateuch is commonly placed in Alexandria in Egypt during the third century BC. Greek-speaking Jews needed Scripture in the language they used, and translations of other books followed in subsequent centuries. As these writings circulated, their vocabulary became familiar in Jewish communities and later among Greek-speaking Christians. New Testament writers could therefore use expressions many of their readers already recognized.
Translators have to make judgments because Hebrew and Greek differ in sentence structure, idioms, and the range of meanings a word can carry. When a translation follows its source closely, we may be able to infer the Hebrew wording behind it. A freer rendering may instead show how the translator understood that wording. Those are both useful kinds of evidence, but an ancient interpretation does not automatically establish that the translator had a different Hebrew text.
The Hebrew manuscript a translator worked from is sometimes called his parent text. It may have differed from the wording later preserved in the Masoretic tradition, which would help explain a different Greek reading. Other differences could arise from the way a passage was translated or from later copying and revision of the Greek. To choose among those explanations, we have to examine the actual wording and the translation method used in that book.
The major surviving Greek Christian codices were copied centuries after the Pentateuch was first translated. A codex is a bound book rather than a scroll. Across those centuries, scribes copied and corrected the Greek, sometimes revising it toward Hebrew texts. Modern editors compare those manuscripts and decide which readings to print. A printed Septuagint brings together the results of those decisions; it is not a photograph of one first-century apostolic Bible.
The age of a surviving copy also needs to be distinguished from the age of its wording. A medieval Hebrew manuscript can preserve a much older consonantal text. An earlier Greek manuscript can contain a translator’s interpretation or a revision made after the original translation. Being the older physical object does not settle which reading is earlier.
I can consult that Greek evidence without allowing it to replace the Masoretic base. It may clarify an expression, preserve an ancient interpretation, or draw attention to a genuine textual question. Describing those possibilities accurately is part of responsible Bible study.
Why the Hebrew Text Remains the Base
Paul describes Israel’s privilege in receiving God’s revealed words.
What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.
Romans 3:1-2
By oracles, Paul means the words God had revealed and entrusted to the Jewish people. They received and transmitted the Old Testament through their worship, teaching, and scribal work. Those writings are chiefly Hebrew, with some Aramaic portions, so that history gives us reason to take the received Hebrew tradition seriously. Paul is describing a real privilege, without naming a later manuscript or declaring every copyist incapable of error.
The Masoretes were Jewish scribes and scholars who carefully transmitted the text during the early medieval period. Hebrew had been copied mainly with consonants, and they supplied vowel points and accents to guide its reading while preserving the older wording. Marginal notes and copying checks also helped guard the text. Adding those reading marks did not turn the Old Testament into a medieval composition. Earlier manuscripts show substantial continuity with its Hebrew wording, alongside differences that still need to be examined.
The Masoretic Text controls my Old Testament quotation, explanation, language work, and chronology. I consult Greek evidence in that setting, rather than silently substituting a preferred Greek line for the Hebrew reading. Jesus’ description of the Scriptures also directs us to the received body of writings that testified about Him.
Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Luke 24:44-45
The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms fit the Hebrew arrangement of Scripture, with Psalms standing prominently within the Writings. Jesus said that what was written concerning Him had to be fulfilled, then opened the disciples’ understanding. He was identifying the Scriptures’ witness to Himself, not endorsing every rendering found in a later Greek codex.
Because the New Testament was written in Greek, its writers could use a translation familiar to Greek readers. They could also translate the Hebrew, adapt a citation to its new sentence, or combine related passages. Under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, an apostle could explain a passage rather than simply reproduce an existing translation. We therefore find citations that closely match surviving Greek forms, others nearer the Hebrew, and some that differ from both.
I receive the New Testament wording as inspired in the passage where it appears. Paul’s words in Hebrews have authority because the Holy Spirit inspired Hebrews. Agreement with a Greek Old Testament rendering does not transfer that authority to every other line of the translation collection. We need to examine what the inspired writer actually says and what his citation establishes.
What the Major Passages Show
Isaiah’s promise concerning Immanuel shows how a Greek rendering can agree closely with an inspired New Testament interpretation.
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
The Hebrew word almah describes a young woman of marriageable age and is entirely suited to a virgin. Greek Isaiah uses parthenos, the word Matthew uses when identifying the fulfillment in Mary’s conception.
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
Matthew 1:22-23
Matthew identifies the virgin conception as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy and explains that the Son’s name means “God with us.” His inspired account establishes the virgin birth. The earlier Jewish Greek translation agrees with that fulfillment, but its choice of a word cannot tell us everything the translators understood about the event still to come.
I do not need to claim that either word could never be used more broadly in another setting. Context determines how a word is being used, and Matthew gives direct testimony about Mary’s conception. We can defend the virgin birth from that inspired testimony without stretching a dictionary definition beyond what it supports.
Psalm 22 raises a question about the wording of the Hebrew text itself. The line concerning the sufferer’s hands and feet needs to be compared with the ancient Greek and surviving Hebrew evidence.
For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.
Psalm 22:16-18
The NKJV quotation above preserves the traditional Christian rendering “They pierced My hands and My feet.” The Masoretic consonants and vowel points ordinarily read “like a lion” before “My hands and My feet,” which leaves an abrupt expression. Some understand the image as a lion attacking or pinning the sufferer’s hands and feet. The NET note discusses that reading and the grammatical difficulty it presents.
The ancient Greek verb is rendered “they dug,” which Christian translations associate with piercing. A Hebrew fragment from Nahal Hever appears to end the disputed word with waw rather than the Masoretic yod. These are two Hebrew letters whose shapes can be similar in ancient handwriting. This study of the fragment argues for that final letter and gives us reason to consider a verbal reading. The spelling, grammatical force, and weight of the different witnesses still need to be evaluated; identifying the letter does not settle every question about the line.
That evidence does not prove that medieval Jewish scribes deliberately erased a prophecy about Christ. To make an accusation of sabotage, we would need evidence of intent, not just two different readings. I should not admit that an allegation cannot be proved and then repeat it as though it explained the manuscripts. Defending Scripture requires care about what we say happened to its text.
The question about that Hebrew word must also be kept distinct from what the Gospels tell us directly. John records Jesus showing His wounds after rising bodily and Thomas responding to Him as Lord and God.
Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
John 20:24-29
Jesus showed Thomas His hands and side, and Thomas confessed Him as Lord and God. His wounds and bodily resurrection do not depend on our resolving every question about the Hebrew line. Psalm 22 also describes the sufferer’s mockery and the dividing of His garments before turning toward vindication and worldwide worship. We can recognize that Messianic witness without inventing a plot to suppress it.
Jeremiah presents differences that extend beyond a single word to the length and arrangement of the book. Before considering what is absent from the shorter Greek form, notice the seventy-year promise in this Masoretic passage. That promise is also present in the Greek.
For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
Jeremiah 29:10-14
Greek Jeremiah is roughly one-eighth shorter than the Masoretic book and places the oracles against the nations elsewhere. Its shorter length does not mean that the seventy-year promise was deleted. That promise appears at Greek Jeremiah 36:10, corresponding to Hebrew 29:10, as the NETS translation of Jeremiah shows. The different chapter number should not be mistaken for a missing promise.
Hebrew fragments from Qumran agree at important points with the shorter form, showing that a shorter Hebrew text of Jeremiah circulated in antiquity. Emanuel Tov’s study of Jeremiah discusses those agreements. This gives us evidence for a different Hebrew parent text, rather than a basis for assuming that the Greek translator arbitrarily removed thousands of words from the Masoretic book.
Other material really is absent from the shorter Greek form, however, including Jeremiah 33:14-26. Here is part of that passage as quoted in the NKJV:
‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: ‘In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David A Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, And Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ “For thus says the LORD: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.'”
Jeremiah 33:14-18
I receive this promise as inspired Scripture, including what God says about David and His covenant faithfulness. Its absence from the shorter Greek form is a real textual difference, but it cannot cancel the Davidic covenant taught elsewhere or God’s fulfillment of His promises in Jesus. The evidence of a shorter Hebrew source also gives us no basis to assume that a Greek translator was trying to remove a prophecy about the Messiah.
Differences in Genesis require us to ask what each number measures. A father’s age at his son’s birth and the years he lived afterward contribute to his total lifespan, but a change in the first figure need not change that total.
This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
Genesis 5:1-5
The Masoretic record gives Adam 130 years before Seth’s birth and eight hundred afterward, totaling 930. A common Greek reading gives 230 before Seth and seven hundred afterward, again totaling 930. The birth falls a hundred years later in that Greek sequence, but Adam does not live longer.
We cannot apply Adam’s pattern to every generation, and Greek manuscripts also differ from one another at some points. The resulting longer chronologies still measure time in thousands of years, rather than the millions or billions required by evolution. I retain the Masoretic numbers without claiming that someone who prefers a longer Greek figure has thereby become an evolutionist. The related study on lifespans in the MT and LXX follows the calculations more fully.
Luke’s genealogy brings a further question into this comparison. Between Shelah and Arphaxad, he names a Cainan who does not appear in the Masoretic Genesis 11. His name needs to be considered with the received New Testament text in view.
the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Luke 3:34-38
Luke includes that Cainan in Jesus’ ancestry. His name appears in the Textus Receptus, the traditional printed Greek New Testament underlying the NKJV, and in the received Byzantine manuscript tradition. I retain that reading rather than remove the name to protect a simpler chronology. The study on the Textus Receptus explains the received text more fully.
Masoretic Genesis 11 goes directly from Arphaxad to Shelah, while many Greek Genesis manuscripts include Cainan. I keep the wording of both Genesis and Luke, even though it leaves textual and genealogical questions to consider. Ancestral lists can be selective, and we cannot fully reconstruct every stage of transmission. Those limits do not obscure Luke’s identification of Christ’s actual human ancestry, nor do they justify deleting a name to make a chart easier to draw.
Stephen’s account of Jacob’s household also uses a number familiar from Greek forms of the Old Testament.
Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him, seventy-five people.
Acts 7:14
Acts gives seventy-five people, while Masoretic Genesis 46 gives seventy. Greek Genesis includes additional descendants of Joseph’s sons and gives a total of seventy-five. Before calling the two totals contradictory, we need to examine whom each list counts. The Hebrew total includes Joseph and his two sons already in Egypt, so it is not simply the number of people who physically traveled down together on one occasion.
I receive both inspired counts and compare the membership of the lists. In the Hebrew reckoning, sixty-six becomes seventy when Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph’s two sons are included. The Greek list extends Joseph’s family further. The UBS translators’ discussion of Acts 7:14 proposes adding sixty-six from Canaan to the nine descendants counted in Greek Genesis 46:27, leaving Jacob and Joseph outside that reckoning. That is an explanation of how the totals may be compared, not a claim that both lists count exactly the same people. A reconciliation needs to state how it handles descendants, wives, the family’s head, and those already in Egypt. I should explain those decisions instead of merely announcing that the numbers agree.
We should acknowledge the correspondence between Acts and Greek Scripture without making it prove more than this example shows. Seventy-five belongs in the inspired text of Acts, and seventy remains the inspired count in Genesis. Agreement with a Greek number here does not require replacing every different Hebrew number elsewhere.
Paul’s use of Psalm 40 in Hebrews 10 brings the discussion to Christ’s coming and His obedient offering of Himself. Here the difference concerns the body prepared for the Son, rather than a family name or a numerical total.
Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come– In the volume of the book it is written of Me– To do Your will, O God.'” Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews 10:5-10
In Hebrews, Paul writes “a body You have prepared for Me,” using wording found in the Greek Psalter tradition. Masoretic Psalm 40 speaks of ears God has opened or dug, an expression concerning a servant fitted to hear and obey. Hebrews gives the inspired explanation of the Son coming in a real body to do God’s will. I would not rewrite the inspired New Testament wording to make it match the Hebrew expression.
The passage contrasts ritual offerings that could not remove sin with Christ’s obedient offering of His body once for all. I receive Paul’s explanation because Hebrews is inspired, even though I cannot reconstruct every step linking the Hebrew wording, Greek translation, and apostolic citation. Greek editions and manuscripts have their own history, so comparing one modern printed Greek text with one Hebrew edition cannot establish everything about the wording Paul used.
Paul’s inspired citation gives us reason to acknowledge its connection with Greek wording, but it does not give every line in the Septuagint the authority of Hebrews.
What the Manuscripts and Canon Show
Which books a manuscript contains is a different question from which words appear in one verse. Some large Greek Christian codices bind Jewish religious books commonly called the Apocrypha alongside Old Testament books, but their contents and order vary. They cannot establish that the apostles accepted one fixed pre-Christian Greek volume with a single table of contents.
Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, and Maccabees can help us understand ancient religion, history, and language, but I do not receive them as inspired Scripture. Their usefulness and their place beside biblical books do not establish inspiration. We recognize the same principle when maps and study notes share the covers of a modern Bible without becoming Scripture themselves.
The New Testament may echo expressions found in these writings, and those similarities deserve to be acknowledged. No clear quotation formula, however, identifies one of these books as Scripture. Resemblance does not by itself establish recognition within the canon, the collection of books received as God’s Word. I receive the Hebrew Old Testament canon, its Law and Prophets with the Writings completing the collection, as the standard by which later works are tested.
A book’s place in the canon does not settle every question about how its wording was copied. The Dead Sea Scrolls provide much earlier Hebrew evidence for that work of transmission. Discoveries near Qumran, northwest of the Dead Sea, began in 1947. Many readings resemble the older Hebrew form known as proto-Masoretic. The Great Isaiah Scroll is recognizably the same book, including its Servant passages, while also preserving differences in spelling, grammar, and actual wording.
Other scrolls sometimes agree with readings associated with the Samaritan Pentateuch or a Hebrew source behind the Greek. Jeremiah is a prominent example. Scholars call this textual plurality: more than one form of a book circulated in that period. Neither “the scrolls prove the MT” nor “the scrolls disprove the MT” adequately describes all the evidence.
The scrolls show both careful transmission and genuine variation. We should examine the actual agreements and differences instead of inventing a percentage and applying it to every word or every biblical book. The related study on the Dead Sea Scrolls considers what the manuscripts preserve and what damaged fragments cannot establish.
God inspired Scripture and has preserved His Word. The surviving copies give us evidence by which to identify and examine differences; finding a variant does not mean that Scripture disappeared. I keep the received Masoretic base and consult ancient versions as secondary evidence. A proposed reconstruction needs more than novelty or ingenuity before it can claim to improve the wording.
Psalm 12 gives us confidence in God’s truthfulness and faithfulness amid a corrupt generation. The LORD’s pure words stand against the flattering lips and proud speech of men, and He promises to arise for the oppressed. Some use that psalm as though it predicts a later manuscript edition without visible copying differences, but it names neither the Masoretes nor the Greek translators. It does not identify a future printed edition or make that technical comparison its subject.
I can trust the purity of God’s words without making that psalm answer a technical question it never addresses. Claims about particular manuscripts still need manuscript evidence. God’s preservation gives us reason to examine that evidence honestly instead of treating every difficult line as a threat that must be hidden.
How Christians Should Use the Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament can help us understand ancient Jewish interpretation and the religious vocabulary familiar to New Testament readers. Where a translation closely follows its source, it may also give evidence of the Hebrew wording behind it. A freer rendering needs to be examined according to the translator’s method. We should not treat an interpretation as though it were a word-for-word record of a different Hebrew manuscript.
Before teaching from a variant, I need to identify the edition I am citing, the manuscripts that support it, and the way that book was translated. If more than one explanation fits the evidence, I should acknowledge that limit. Saying “the Septuagint says” without those details leaves the reader unable to tell why the wording differs, how early it is, or whether it appears in every Greek manuscript.
When an apostolic citation agrees with Greek wording, explaining the connection plainly helps the reader follow what the text actually shows. Concealing that agreement would weaken our defense of Scripture. We must also preserve the authority of the inspired citation without giving every translated line the same authority. No essential Christian doctrine depends on selecting an uncertain Greek variant against the Masoretic text.
Clear passages teach the Trinity, Christ’s full deity and humanity, His virgin birth, bodily resurrection, and future bodily return. They also teach salvation through His blood by grace through faith. Jeremiah’s shorter Greek form cannot cancel God’s covenant with David, and a disputed word in Psalm 22 cannot cancel the Gospel testimony to Jesus’ wounds. We read a difficult passage alongside the rest of Scripture.
I want this study to serve more than the defense of a textual position. The Law anticipated Christ’s coming, the Prophets described His suffering and saving work, and the Psalms spoke of His resurrection and reign. Greek translation helped carry that witness into the ancient world. Understanding its place should direct us to the Savior those writings proclaim.
Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. His atonement rests on His perfection and His voluntarily giving Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, and He willingly shed His innocent blood and died. His saving sacrifice through His blood and death was complete before His burial and bodily resurrection. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct divine Persons who acted in perfect unity in our salvation.
Christ died for the whole world, and God genuinely offers salvation to every person, though His grace can be resisted. Everyone who repents and believes in Jesus receives forgiveness and justification, God’s declaration that the believer is righteous before Him. God gives that person new birth, and the Holy Spirit permanently indwells and seals the believer, whose salvation is eternally secure. That assurance gives no permission for lawlessness, and an empty Christian profession does not establish that someone has been born again. Obedience follows as the fruit of that life, never as payment that earns salvation or keeps us saved.
I also need to submit to the passages I understand. Resolving a disputed reading must not become an excuse for postponing repentance or disregarding a plain command. Accuracy in teaching and obedience in conduct both belong to receiving God’s Word.
My Final Thoughts
I keep the Masoretic Text as my Old Testament base and receive the New Testament citations as inspired in their own settings. The Septuagint is valuable secondary evidence, and its books and manuscripts need to be examined individually. I can acknowledge an agreement or a difficult reading without surrendering that position or inventing an explanation I cannot defend. Careful study should make my teaching more accurate and direct me to trust and obey the Christ whom Scripture reveals.
Jesus’ cry from the cross about being forsaken quotes the opening of Psalm 22. To understand those words, I need to follow David’s prayer through its suffering to its answer. The psalm describes terrible anguish, but it also tells us that God heard the afflicted One and did not hide His face from Him. By its conclusion, the sufferer is praising God, the nations are turning to the LORD, and generations not yet born will hear what He has done.
David’s Lament and the Greater Son of David
The heading identifies this as a psalm of David. He wrote from real anguish, although Scripture does not identify the crisis behind his prayer. We should not invent an episode in his life to account for every detail.
The heading also includes “The Deer of the Dawn,” probably a tune name or another musical direction, although its precise function is uncertain. It gives us no basis for identifying an otherwise unknown ceremony or calculating the hour of the crucifixion or resurrection. David addressed the psalm to the Chief Musician, so his personal anguish became part of Israel’s public worship. God’s people could pray these words while suffering and waiting for His answer.
This is a lament, a prayer that brings grief and distress before God. David expressed his own dependence on the Lord, while the Holy Spirit inspired his words to speak beyond his circumstances to the greater Son of David. Some details go beyond anything Scripture records David experiencing. The Gospel writers apply the psalm to Jesus, recording Him quoting its opening line while other details unfolded around Him, and Hebrews applies its praise among the brethren to Christ. Those biblical connections give us our reason for reading the psalm as messianic.
The movement from prayer to praise belongs to the prophecy too. Jesus fulfilled particular details of the crucifixion, but the psalm does more than predict separate injuries. It follows a righteous sufferer who trusts God while surrounded by enemies, receives an answer, and declares God’s name in the assembly. His deliverance becomes known far beyond those who first hear it. Christ’s bodily resurrection brings the psalm’s promised deliverance to fulfillment. The study on The Messiah in the Bible follows the promised Savior through His suffering, resurrection, and coming reign.
The Cry of the Sufferer and the Faithfulness of God
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning?
Psalm 22:1
Matthew and Mark record Jesus speaking these words from the cross. He had been betrayed, mocked, beaten, and crucified. His agony was real, and I would misrepresent it by treating the cry as a theatrical signal with no suffering behind it. The sinless Son truly entered the anguish expressed in this lament.
By speaking its opening words, Jesus also brought Psalm 22 before those who witnessed His death and those who would later read the account. We do not need to appeal to a supposed Jewish rule that quoting the first line formally quoted the entire psalm. The Gospels themselves connect its words with the events of the crucifixion. His repeated “My God” remains an address of faith: He prays in terrible pain while help appears far away, without renouncing the Father or declaring that God has become divided.
Within the lament, the unanswered cry is followed by a confession about the God to whom the sufferer is praying:
O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. But You are holy, Enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in You; They trusted, and You delivered them. They cried to You, and were delivered; They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.
Psalm 22:2-5
The sufferer has cried through the day and night without yet receiving the help he seeks. He does not pretend that the delay is pleasant, but he continues to acknowledge God’s holiness and remembers His faithfulness to Israel’s fathers. They too had needed to cry out, and God had delivered them. Their experience gives him a reason to keep trusting when his own circumstances offer no relief.
Remembering God’s earlier answers gives the sufferer reason to trust Him, but it does not promise immediate escape to everyone who believes. I need to keep that in mind when reading about the cross. Jesus obeyed perfectly while His enemies appeared to prevail, yet their apparent success did not mean that the Father had failed His Son or broken His promises. God’s answer would become publicly evident in the resurrection.
For the moment, the sufferer describes the contempt of those around him:
But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him; Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
Psalm 22:6-8
“A worm, and no man” describes humiliation at the hands of people who treated the sufferer as though he had no human worth. The reproach, ridicule, and contemptuous gestures in the surrounding lines explain the image. We do not need an elaborate account of dye-making to understand what David is saying about their contempt.
Matthew 27 records people wagging their heads and religious leaders saying, “He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him.” The men charged with teaching Scripture spoke words that fulfilled the prophecy they refused to recognize in Jesus. Their taunt assumed that God’s delight in Him should bring immediate rescue. The Father did delight in His Son, but Jesus’ vindication would come through resurrection rather than escape from the cross.
Verses 9-11 answer that contempt by recalling God’s care from the womb. David’s dependence on Him had begun long before the present crisis. In the greater fulfillment, the eternal, uncreated Son truly became man without ceasing to be God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. His human life and dependence on the Father were real, and He always pleased Him.
The appeal for God to be near does not prove that He had abandoned the sufferer. Before the crucifixion, Jesus told the disciples they would scatter and leave Him alone, then explained that the Father was with Him. His prayer for help must be understood alongside that assurance and the answer recorded later in this psalm.
Enemies Surround Him and His Body Fails
David pictures the enemies surrounding the sufferer as threatening animals. The strong bulls of Bashan suggest intimidating power, drawing on a region known for well-fed cattle. A roaring lion opens its mouth, dogs encircle him, and wild oxen threaten him. Together these images portray powerful enemies ready to inflict violence on someone exposed to them.
At the crucifixion, religious rulers worked through Roman authority, soldiers carried out the sentence, and a crowd mocked Jesus. These enemies fit the psalm’s description without our assigning every animal to a particular official or rank of demons. Jesus could have called for heavenly armies to deliver Him, yet chose to remain. His enemies were responsible for their violence, and His willingness to endure it expressed obedience rather than an inability to stop them.
I am poured out like water, And all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death.
Psalm 22:14-15
The sufferer’s strength is failing as death approaches. A potsherd is a piece of broken pottery, and the comparison with its dryness expresses his exhaustion. His tongue clings to his jaws. At the cross, Jesus endured extreme pain and public exposure as exhaustion and blood loss weakened His body. John records Him saying, “I thirst.” He then received sour wine.
I take that bodily suffering seriously without treating the poetry as a modern medical report. The line about bones out of joint describes bodily distress; it does not require us to diagnose every bone as dislocated. A heart melting like wax conveys failing strength without identifying a particular medical condition.
The words “You have brought Me to the dust of death” address God, so we need to understand His purpose alongside the human violence. Jesus submitted to the saving path the Father willed. Acts affirms God’s foreknowledge while identifying wicked men as those who tortured and killed Him. God’s use of their actions did not make Him the violent executioner or turn their choices into innocent obedience. Their cruelty remained their own, and their hands shed the blood Christ willingly gave for our salvation.
For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me.
Psalm 22:16-17
The NKJV reads, “They pierced My hands and My feet.” That fits crucifixion and the risen Jesus’ invitation for His disciples to examine His hands and feet. David did not die by crucifixion, and Scripture does not record an experience in his life that accounts for these details. We are being directed beyond David to the Messiah.
There is a textual question here. The NKJV’s note on verse 16 gives “like a lion” as the reading of the Masoretic Hebrew text, the traditional text preserved by Jewish scribes. It also notes support for the reading translated as piercing in some Hebrew manuscripts and ancient versions. The difference concerns the wording preserved in manuscripts and early translations, rather than two English meanings of one undisputed Hebrew word.
I retain the NKJV’s wording about piercing. It supplies an action that fits the description of enemies enclosing and staring at the sufferer, and it agrees with the Gospel accounts of Christ’s wounds. “Like a lion my hands and my feet” leaves the action unstated and requires an explanation from the context. The larger biblical witness supports my reading, but its correspondence with crucifixion does not make the textual question disappear.
“I can count all My bones” continues the description of a stretched and exposed body under hostile scrutiny. It does not require us to imagine bones showing through broken skin, nor does it say they were broken. John specifically records that none of Jesus’ bones were broken. The psalm’s imagery and the Gospel’s account can be read together without inventing further injuries.
Divided Garments and the Answer That Changes Everything
They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.
Psalm 22:18
All four Gospels record the division of Jesus’ garments. John explains that His tunic was seamless, so the soldiers cast lots for it rather than tear it apart. While Jesus hung exposed, His executioners treated His clothing as spoil. Their actions added to His humiliation and fulfilled a detail written centuries before.
John does not present the soldiers’ actions as an effort to honor prophecy. Rulers had authorized an execution, and Roman soldiers carried it out publicly. God’s foreknowledge of those acts did not remove anyone’s responsibility for his part in condemning and killing an innocent Man.
In verses 19-21, the sufferer again asks the LORD to come near and rescue him from the sword and from enemies pictured as a dog, lion, and wild oxen. Then the NKJV records the announcement, “You have answered Me.” The One who cried for help will now declare God’s name in praise.
In David’s lament, those words may express confidence in an answer still to come or testimony to deliverance already experienced. The occasion remains unidentified. In Christ, we see the greater fulfillment: the Father heard the Son and raised Him bodily from the dead. Jesus was not spared dying, but He passed through death and rose beyond its power.
Wicked men tortured and crucified Jesus, but He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. The saving value of His offering rests on His sinless perfection, and His shed blood and death completed that sacrifice before His burial and bodily resurrection. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct, coequal, coeternal Persons, one God acting in unity to redeem us. The study on The Blood of Christ for Salvation explains His sacrifice, atonement, and reconciliation more fully.
His cry about being forsaken does not establish that Jesus underwent the final punishment of unbelievers. Their judgment in the Lake of Fire is the second death, the irreversible destruction of body and soul. Scripture does not teach that an eternity of punishment was compressed into His hours on the cross or that He continued suffering in hell afterward. He promised the repentant thief that they would be together in Paradise, declared His sacrifice finished, and entrusted His spirit into the Father’s hands. Those events give us no reason to add hatred or separation within the Trinity to the account of His death.
Christ’s sacrifice was complete at His death, but the psalm’s promise of deliverance also directs us to His bodily resurrection. The One who suffered and died is alive, declaring God’s name among His brethren. We cannot leave Him in the grave and still account for the praise that follows His deliverance.
The Risen Messiah Leads Praise to the Nations
For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard.
Psalm 22:24
Verse 24 explains why the afflicted One can praise God. He was heard, and God had neither despised His affliction nor hidden His face from Him. I have to allow that explicit statement to govern how I understand the opening question. Verse 1 gives voice to agony while help appears delayed; verse 24 declares what God actually did. I cannot use the question to teach that the Father secretly did the opposite of what the psalm says.
Earlier, in verse 22, the delivered One promises to declare God’s name to His brethren and praise Him in the assembly. Paul, the author of Hebrews, applies those words to Christ in Hebrews 2:12. That chapter describes Jesus tasting death for everyone and being crowned with glory and honor. He is not ashamed to call those He sanctifies His brethren. The risen Messiah identifies with His people and leads their praise.
The assembly’s praise then reaches beyond those gathered. The poor eat and are satisfied, while the ends of the earth remember and turn to the LORD. Families from every nation worship Him because the kingdom belongs to Him and He rules over the nations. In Christ’s fulfillment of the psalm, His deliverance draws people from every nation into the worship of God.
That worldwide worship also looks beyond the present spread of the gospel. The LORD rules now, and Jesus will return bodily to exercise His royal authority openly. I understand the wider prophetic passages to teach that Christ will gather the church before the seven-year Tribulation, then return after that Tribulation to begin His literal thousand-year reign. Psalm 22 does not supply that full timeline. It agrees with the wider pattern in which the Messiah suffers before His glory is revealed and the rejected One is acknowledged as King. A Complete Bible Study on Isaiah considers the suffering Servant and the coming kingdom alongside the divine Child and the Holy One.
The final verses look ahead to generations who will serve God and declare His righteousness to people not yet born. They will proclaim that He has done this. I recognize completed divine work in those words, but they are not linguistically identical to “It is finished” in John 19:30. The connection is in the accomplishment being proclaimed, not a claim that the Hebrew and Greek phrases are the same expression.
We participate in that proclamation when we explain what God has done in Christ. Someone who has never heard the gospel needs to understand why Jesus suffered and shed His blood, how His death answers our need for salvation, and that the One who was buried rose bodily. We then call that person to repent and believe in the living Savior. Generations who were not present at Calvary can hear this testimony and trust the Messiah whose work we proclaim.
The invitation we proclaim is genuine for every person because Christ died for the sins of the whole world. People can resist His grace and reject the Savior, but everyone who repents and believes is forgiven and born again, and God justifies him, declaring him righteous in Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals every true believer, who is eternally secure in Christ. A superficial profession does not establish new birth, and genuine faith does not make a believer sinless. Obedience is evidence of the life God has given; it neither earns nor keeps salvation. We therefore have no permission to use security as an excuse for lawlessness.
David’s prayer also teaches me how to speak to God when help seems far away. He named his anguish, remembered God’s faithfulness, and continued asking for help. I can bring fear and pain before the Lord without pretending they are pleasant or treating them as proof that He has changed. His revealed character gives me reason to keep praying when I cannot yet explain what I am experiencing.
My Final Thoughts
I do not believe we can read Psalm 22 carefully and conclude that the Father abandoned His Son. Jesus’ suffering was real, and wicked men put Him to death as He willingly gave His life for our sins. Yet the psalm says God heard Him, and His bodily resurrection brought the lament to its victorious fulfillment. His people still proclaim that answer to the nations. When I am waiting for help, I can speak honestly to the God who hears, trusting the crucified and risen Messiah who will return as King.
When the Old Testament says that “the word of the LORD” came to a prophet, it identifies God as the source of the message. Some passages also describe a vision or a personal encounter with Him. John later identifies the eternal Word as the Son who became flesh. I read those earlier encounters in light of that fuller revelation, while letting each account explain how the LORD made Himself known.
The LORD Revealed Himself at Shiloh
In 1 Samuel 3, Samuel was still a boy serving under Eli at Shiloh. Eli’s sons were priests, but they had corrupted the worship they were supposed to lead, and Eli had failed to restrain them. The priests still offered sacrifices at the tabernacle, yet the chapter says that the word of the LORD was rare and there was no widespread revelation. Carrying on with the services had done nothing to remedy the wickedness Eli was allowing in his own household.
When the LORD called Samuel at night, the boy thought Eli wanted him. He went to the priest three times before Eli recognized who was speaking and told him how to answer. The message Samuel then received announced judgment against Eli’s household because Eli knew about his sons’ wickedness and had failed to restrain them.
Samuel had to deliver that judgment to the man under whose care he had been serving. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, but when Eli insisted on hearing it, Samuel told him everything and hid nothing (1 Samuel 3:15-18). God went on to establish Samuel as a trustworthy prophet in Israel. The chapter closes by describing how the LORD continued to make Himself known.
Then the LORD appeared again in Shiloh. For the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.
1 Samuel 3:21, NKJV
The LORD appeared and revealed Himself by His Word. I understand this as more than entrusting Samuel with information to repeat. He was making Himself known to the boy He had called, and His speaking belonged to that encounter. Samuel had not arranged a meeting or discovered a way to reach God. The LORD took the initiative and taught him to listen.
The Hebrew wording translated “revealed Himself” describes something being uncovered or made known. The word dabar, translated “word,” can refer to speech, a matter, an event, or a thing, depending on the context. Here, “by the word of the LORD” explains how the LORD revealed Himself. Those meanings clarify the sentence, but they cannot by themselves establish a visible appearance of Christ. The New Testament also helps us identify the One who makes God known.
The Word Comes with Personal Authority
The LORD also spoke personally to Abram, long before Samuel’s birth. Genesis 15 describes a vision after Abram had rescued Lot from a coalition of kings. Abram had obeyed God’s call and left his homeland, but he still had no son through whom the promise would continue. The LORD addressed him in those circumstances.
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
Genesis 15:1, NKJV
The LORD assured Abram, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” Abram could bring his concern about remaining childless to the One who had called him. God answered with a promise about Abram’s own offspring and later made covenant with him. The promise rested on God’s faithfulness, not on Abram finding a way to produce an heir.
In 1 Samuel 15, the phrase “the word of the LORD” introduces a judgment against King Saul, who had disobeyed God’s command concerning Amalek. The LORD sent Samuel to confront him, and the king’s position did not entitle him to a more favorable verdict.
Now the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.”
1 Samuel 15:10-11, NKJV
Saul had defeated the Amalekites, but he had spared their king and the best of their livestock, contrary to God’s command. He pointed to his victory and defended keeping animals for sacrifice, yet neither success nor a religious explanation could make his disobedience acceptable. Samuel had no right to soften God’s message because the man receiving it was king. A prophet’s responsibility was to deliver what the LORD said, not make it more palatable to an influential audience.
Jeremiah’s commission came centuries later, during Josiah’s reign and before Judah’s exile to Babylon. He would have to address rulers and priests who resisted God’s warnings about judgment. The LORD had appointed Jeremiah to this work before the prophet was born.
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:4-5, NKJV
Jeremiah objected that he was young and did not know how to speak. The LORD commanded him to go where He sent him and say what He commanded, promising to deliver him. The account also says, “the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth” (Jeremiah 1:9). God personally commissioned Jeremiah and gave him the words he was responsible to speak. His youth did not excuse waiting until he felt ready to obey.
Abram, Samuel, and Jeremiah did not have identical experiences, but each heard from the same LORD. The authority of their messages rested with Him. A prophet’s eloquence could not make a false message true, and an unpopular message did not lose its authority because people resented hearing it. We can depend on God’s promises because He is truthful, and we need to heed His warnings because He is holy.
God’s Word Acts
The LORD’s speaking also accomplishes what He intends, whether He is fulfilling a promise or carrying out a judgment. Psalm 33 takes us back before the prophets and kings to the creation of the heavens.
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
Psalm 33:6, NKJV
God’s command brought the heavens into existence because He had the power to accomplish what He said. The words did not function as a spell with power independent of Him.
In Isaiah 55, the LORD invites the thirsty to come freely and calls the wicked to forsake their ways because He is ready to pardon. He explains that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours, then compares His Word with rain that waters the earth and causes it to produce food. What He sends accomplishes its purpose.
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11, NKJV
I can trust God’s promise of mercy because He has promised to pardon those who return to Him. His Word will accomplish what He pleases, so I cannot use it to demand whatever outcome I want. Isaiah’s assurance should lead me to turn back to the LORD and receive His mercy on His terms.
His Word also exposes the lies of people who claim to speak for Him. In Jeremiah 23:29, the LORD asks, “Is not My word like a fire?” The false prophets spoke confidently, but that confidence could not make their claims true or protect them from His judgment. I find comfort in that when false teaching is persuasive and popular. God’s truth does not become weaker because someone has found an appealing way to contradict it.
The Son Makes the Father Known
The Old Testament also describes the LORD appearing to people, including Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Manoah. How should we understand those encounters when the New Testament says that no one has seen God?
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
John 1:18, NKJV
John identifies the Son as the One who makes the Father known. Jesus said of the Father in John 5:37, “You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.” I read the Old Testament appearances in light of those statements. The people involved truly encountered the LORD through the Son, who reveals the unseen Father.
That is why I recognize the Son in the visible appearances of the LORD. The divine Angel of the LORD speaks as God, bears His name and exercises divine authority to forgive or judge, while remaining personally distinct from the One who sends Him. I also believe Melchizedek was the preincarnate Son exercising His eternal priesthood. Such an appearance before Christ became man is called a Christophany. The studies on the Angel of the Lord and Christophanies in the Old Testament examine the reasons for those identifications.
This does not mean every angel is Christ or that every prophetic message involved a visible appearance. Samuel’s account expressly connects the LORD’s appearing with His revealing Himself by His Word, and Genesis 15 describes a vision in which He addressed Abram. We should acknowledge those details where they are given and avoid adding them to passages that do not describe them.
The Word Was God and Became Flesh
John opens with “In the beginning,” recalling Genesis. He describes the Word as already existing when creation began.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
John 1:1-3, NKJV
The Word was with God and was God. He is eternal and fully divine, yet personally distinct from the Father. We cannot account for John’s words by calling Him “a god” among other gods or an exalted creature. Nor is John describing an impersonal attribute that eventually developed into a person. He is writing about Someone who already existed with God in the beginning.
Verse 3 makes the claim even more explicit. Everything that was made came into existence through Him. If the Son were a created being, we would have to place Him among the things He Himself made, which makes no sense. John identifies Him as the Creator, not a distinguished servant within creation.
Being with God also rules out the idea that the Father and Son are the same Person changing roles. That view is called modalism. The Son speaks to the Father, obeys Him, reveals Him and returns to Him. Those relationships are real. Scripture teaches one God in three personally distinct, coequal and coeternal Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son’s relationship with the Father does not make Him less than God.
The Greek word John uses for Word is Logos. Some readers look to Greek philosophy to explain the term, but John gives us his own explanation of who the Word is. He writes about creation and the light and life found in Him, then identifies the One whose glory the disciples saw, full of grace and truth. I would rather let John’s testimony explain Jesus than begin with Plato and try to fit Christ into that framework.
John’s explanation agrees with the earlier passages. Psalm 33 connects creation with God’s Word, Samuel’s account describes the LORD revealing Himself by His Word, and Isaiah declares that His Word accomplishes what He sends it to do. John identifies the eternal Person through whom all things were made and who makes the Father known. We should not assume that every Old Testament reader understood everything John would later explain. We can receive that fuller revelation while reading the earlier accounts in their own setting.
Then John tells us that the eternal Word became flesh. This was the incarnation: the Son truly became man without ceasing to be God. He did not appear briefly in a human disguise and then leave it behind.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14, NKJV
The word translated “dwelt” carries the idea of pitching a tent or tabernacling. Israel’s tabernacle had stood among the people’s tents as the place God appointed for His presence and worship. John describes the Word living among His people in real human flesh. Jesus experienced hunger and weariness, and He wept. His obedience as man was real, as was the physical blood He would shed for sinners.
Paul brings the Son’s revelation of God together with His saving work at the beginning of Hebrews. God had spoken through the prophets in many ways. He has now spoken by His Son, the One through whom He made the worlds. This same Son provided cleansing from our sins.
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Hebrews 1:1-3, NKJV
Paul speaks of redemption through Christ’s blood in Colossians 1, the same chapter in which he describes Christ’s authority over everything created. The Savior who shed His blood for us is also the One who made us.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
Colossians 1:16-17, NKJV
The Son continues to sustain the creation He entered to save sinners. Wicked men tortured His innocent body and put Him to death. His sinlessness qualified Him as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and He willingly gave Himself to be slain. He completed His saving work through His shed blood and death before His burial and bodily resurrection. His death was for the sins of the whole world. The Father did not punish or abandon Him; Father and Son were united in providing our redemption.
Having purged sins and risen bodily, He is seated at the Father’s right hand. I need to receive Him as my Savior and respond to what these passages reveal about Him. We receive salvation by grace through repentance and faith in Christ. Moral improvement and religious insight cannot earn it. His invitation is genuine and open to everyone, even though people can resist and reject it.
Someone who is truly born again becomes a new creation, indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. That believer is eternally secure in Christ. I am speaking of God making a person new, not merely someone calling himself a Christian. The new life should become evident in our conduct. Obedience does not earn salvation or keep us saved, but assurance gives us no excuse to carry on in sin as though the Lord who saved us has no authority over how we live.
Revelation 19:13 calls the returning Christ “The Word of God.” The One who existed before creation and became flesh to save sinners will return as King.
Reading and Answering the Word Faithfully
The LORD who spoke to His prophets has given us Scripture as our final authority. It is inspired, inerrant and sufficient for the faith and obedience He requires. The Holy Spirit indwells believers and guides His people, but every spiritual claim must be tested by the written Word. I have no grounds to disregard a command in Scripture while asking God for fresh direction about whether I should obey it.
A strong feeling does not become God’s Word because I announce it confidently. The Holy Spirit will not contradict the Scripture He inspired, and no claim of private revelation can overrule it. If a leader demands obedience to his impressions while refusing to let anyone examine them by Scripture, the church needs to challenge that demand. The written Word gives us a standard the whole church can read and test, including the people being told to submit.
Samuel answered, “Speak, for Your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:10). I want that willingness to listen when I open the Bible. If Scripture exposes a sin I have been excusing, I need to confess it and turn back to God. Looking for someone who will give me a more comfortable interpretation will not make disobedience acceptable. When Scripture offers comfort through Christ, I can receive that too, trusting His promise rather than trying to earn what He offers through His blood.
At Shiloh, worship continued while Eli left serious sin unrestrained. That makes me cautious about measuring a church’s health by an energetic schedule or polished programs. We need to ask whether Scripture is being taught and received with faith, and whether its correction is being acted on. Entertainment cannot supply the conviction and comfort that come from hearing God’s Word and responding to Him.
My Final Thoughts
I do not believe every “word of the LORD” passage describes a visible appearance of Christ. Each account needs to be heard on its own terms, whether it records a vision, an appearance or a prophetic message. What they share is the authority of the LORD who speaks. John reveals the eternal Word who was with God and was God, and who became flesh to save us. Samuel had to tell Eli what God said even when he was afraid to do so. I want to receive the Scripture that reveals this Savior with the same willingness to obey, including when I would rather avoid what He says.
Genesis 18 describes Abraham receiving the LORD as a visitor and speaking with Him about the judgment of Sodom. Although Jesus had not yet been born in Bethlehem, the Son already existed. I understand this as one of His appearances before He became man. The accounts give us reasons to recognize Him, and the New Testament helps us understand how the Son was making the Father known long before His human birth.
The Eternal Son Makes God Known
An appearance of Christ before the incarnation is called a Christophany. The broader word theophany means an appearance of God. Since Christ is fully God, both words can describe the same encounter, although calling something a theophany does not identify the divine Person who appeared. The passage must give us grounds for that identification.
We need to distinguish those appearances from the incarnation, when the Son took a true human nature. His encounters with Abraham and Moses were not earlier births or previous incarnations. When He became man, He did not cease to be God, and He remains fully God and fully man. The permanence of His humanity distinguishes the incarnation from those earlier appearances.
John opens his Gospel by telling us that the Word was already with God, that the Word was God, and that all things were made through Him. The One who later became flesh was the Creator of the world He entered. John then explains how the Son makes God known.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
John 1:18, NKJV
If no one has seen God, who did Abraham and Moses encounter? Jesus said of the Father in John 5:37, “You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.” I read these passages together: the unseen Father makes Himself known through the Son. Those Old Testament encounters do not mean that the people involved had seen the Father in contradiction to Jesus’ words.
Colossians 1:15 calls Christ the image of the invisible God, and Hebrews 1:3 describes Him as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. Paul also explains in Colossians that all things were created through Him. That includes the angels, so the Son cannot be one of the created servants He brought into existence. Hebrews 1 goes further and commands the angels to worship Him. Being sent to do the Father’s work does not make the Son a lesser being.
Jesus speaks of His existence before His human birth when He says, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). His words affirm that He existed before Abraham and agree with the eternal deity John describes. Genesis records events before the incarnation, but none took place before the Son existed.
The Son is fully God while remaining personally distinct from the Father who sends Him. The Holy Spirit is also a divine Person, not an impersonal force. This is what we mean by the Trinity: one God eternally existing as three coequal, coeternal Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are not saying that the Father became the Son or that there are three separate gods. The study on the Trinity explains those distinctions more fully.
Melchizedek, the Priest-King
Genesis 14 introduces Melchizedek after Abram had rescued Lot. He was king of Salem and priest of God Most High, and he came to meet Abram with bread and wine. He blessed Abram, who gave him a tenth. Genesis offers little background about this priest-king, but Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7 return to him to explain the Messiah’s priesthood.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High.
Genesis 14:18, NKJV
Psalm 110 declares that the Messiah will be a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. In Hebrews 7, Paul explains the significance of Melchizedek’s name and title: king of righteousness and king of peace. He presents him without father or mother, without genealogy, and without beginning of days or end of life. Melchizedek is described as “made like the Son of God” and as remaining a priest continually.
Some Christians understand Melchizedek to have been a human king whose appearance in Genesis foreshadowed Christ. That is called a type: a person or event that anticipates something God will reveal more fully later. On that reading, Genesis omits his ancestry so that the account can illustrate a priesthood which does not depend on descent from Levi.
I believe Melchizedek was the preincarnate God the Son. The description of this priest-king persuades me when I consider its details together, rather than the missing family record alone. Abraham received his blessing and gave him tithes, acknowledging his superior position. Paul explains that even Levi, whose descendants would serve as Israel’s priests, was subordinate to Melchizedek’s order through his ancestor Abraham. Hebrews describes his continuing priesthood, and Psalm 110 declares that the Messiah will hold that priesthood forever.
The phrase “made like the Son of God” is one reason readers disagree. Those who understand Melchizedek as a human type take it as a comparison with someone else. I read it within Paul’s explanation of an enduring priesthood that is not inherited through human ancestry. Those connections lead me to recognize Christ Himself, although Genesis does not explicitly introduce Melchizedek as the Son. The study on Melchizedek examines that argument in greater detail.
The permanence of Christ’s priesthood gives us reason to trust Him. He lives forever and will never need a successor. Because He lives to intercede for us, He can save completely those who come to God through Him. I do not have to fear losing my Priest to death or finding that He can no longer represent me before God.
The Angel of the LORD Speaks as God
In several other passages, the One introduced as a Messenger is also identified as the LORD. The word angel means messenger; it describes His work without settling whether He is a created being. A created angel can deliver God’s words. Here, however, we also need to account for Scripture naming the Messenger as God and attributing God’s own works to Him.
Consider Hagar in Genesis 16. She had fled after Sarai dealt harshly with her, and the Angel of the LORD found her beside a spring in the wilderness. He called her by name and promised, “I will multiply your descendants exceedingly” (Genesis 16:10). The account then calls the One who spoke to her the LORD, and Hagar names Him “You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees.”
The LORD sought out Hagar, a servant who had been mistreated, and spoke about her future. His compassion belongs in our understanding of His identity. If I defend Christ’s deity from this passage and dismiss a mistreated person as beneath my attention, I have failed to heed the example of the Lord who went to find her in the wilderness.
In Genesis 22, the Angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven and stopped him from killing Isaac. The command to offer Isaac was a unique test in God’s covenant dealings with Abraham, and God Himself prevented the sacrifice. The Angel then declared, “By Myself I have sworn, says the LORD” (Genesis 22:16). Hebrews 6 explains that God swore by Himself because there was no one greater by whom He could swear. Abraham was receiving God’s own oath confirming His promise. This encounter involved a voice from heaven rather than a visible visitor, but the words help identify the Messenger.
At the burning bush, Exodus 3 first names the Angel of the LORD as the One who appeared to Moses in the flame. It then says that the LORD saw Moses and that God called to him from the bush. Moses was approaching God’s presence when he heard this command:
Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
Exodus 3:5, NKJV
The Speaker then identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exodus uses Angel, LORD and God to identify the same Speaker throughout this encounter.
Later, Exodus 23 says that God’s name is in the Angel and commands Israel to obey Him. In Judges 2, the Angel speaks of bringing Israel out of Egypt and of His covenant with them. He claims the LORD’s deliverance and covenant as His own. Read alongside the burning bush, these statements give us reason to recognize more than a created servant passing along instructions.
Revelation 22:8-9 describes John falling before a created angel. The angel told him, “Do not do that” and “Worship God.” He refused worship because he was a servant. In the Old Testament passages we are examining, the Messenger is identified as the LORD while also being sent by Him. That personal distinction agrees with what the New Testament reveals about the Son, who is sent by the Father without ceasing to be God.
For those reasons, I recognize the divine Angel of the LORD as the Son before His incarnation. Being a Messenger describes His mission, just as being sent by the Father does in the New Testament. It does not make Him a created being. The study on The Angel of the Lord considers the individual passages more closely.
The LORD Appears to His Servants
Genesis 18 describes the LORD visiting Abraham without introducing the title Angel of the LORD. It says that “the LORD appeared” to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre. Abraham saw three men and welcomed them with a meal. The LORD spoke about Sarah and the promised son before the conversation turned to Sodom. The other visitors went toward the city, while Abraham remained before the LORD and pleaded concerning its judgment.
Abraham asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). He knew he was addressing the One whose judgment would determine Sodom’s fate. Genesis describes the LORD appearing visibly, receiving hospitality and speaking with Abraham about His promise and the city’s sin. John’s explanation that the Son reveals the Father leads me to understand this visitor as Christ.
In Genesis 32, Abraham’s grandson Jacob wrestled through the night with a Man who touched his hip, changed his name to Israel and blessed him. Jacob called the place Peniel because, as he explained, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30). Hosea 12:3-5 looks back on that struggle and speaks of the Angel and the LORD God of hosts, confirming that Jacob had encountered the LORD.
Jacob’s struggle did not mean that he had overpowered God. The LORD allowed him to wrestle, yet could disable his hip with a touch. I see God confronting Jacob’s self-reliance here. He received a blessing and a new name, but had to walk away limping, dependent on the One who had blessed him. He could hardly point to that injured hip as proof that his own strength had secured God’s favor.
Before the battle at Jericho, Joshua encountered a Man holding a drawn sword. In Joshua 5, the Man identifies Himself as Commander of the army of the LORD. Joshua fell on his face and worshiped, and the Commander told him to remove his sandal because the place was holy. His acceptance of worship and His command about holy ground lead me to recognize another Christophany, even though the passage does not use the title Angel of the LORD.
Moses had stood on holy ground before being sent to Egypt; now Joshua stood on holy ground before the battle at Jericho. The LORD was continuing His work for Israel, and the men He appointed to lead were accountable to Him. Joshua had to bow and receive instructions from the true Commander. I need the same willingness to submit when I ask Christ to direct me. If I intend to disregard whatever interferes with my plans, I am asking Him to approve a decision I have already made.
Later, in Judges 6, Gideon was threshing wheat out of sight of the Midianites when the Angel of the LORD came to him. During their conversation the passage calls the Speaker the LORD, who commissioned Gideon to deliver Israel. After fire consumed the offering and the Angel departed, Gideon feared he would die because he had seen Him face to face. The LORD reassured him, “Do not fear, you shall not die” (Judges 6:23).
In Judges 13, the Angel announced Samson’s birth to Manoah’s wife. Later He directed Manoah to offer a sacrifice to the LORD and then ascended in its flame. Manoah cried, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” (Judges 13:22). His wife answered by considering what God had actually done. Why would He accept their offering and reveal His purpose for their child if He intended to kill them? She took His holiness seriously without letting fear overturn the reassurance He had given them.
Centuries later, Zechariah saw a vision involving Joshua the high priest, a different man from the Joshua who led Israel into Canaan. In Zechariah 3, the high priest stood before the Angel of the LORD in filthy garments, with Satan there to accuse him. The LORD rebuked Satan, and the Angel directed those standing before Him to remove Joshua’s filthy garments. He told Joshua, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes” (Zechariah 3:4). His priestly office had not enabled him to remove his own guilt. The cleansing came from God, and the Angel announced it as His own work.
We see that mercy fully revealed in Jesus Christ, our righteousness and our Advocate, the One who speaks on our behalf before God. Gideon and Manoah feared death after encountering the LORD, while Joshua stood in garments that pictured his defilement. God dealt mercifully with each of them. Our peace with Him likewise depends on the Savior He has provided, rather than our ability to excuse guilt or make ourselves holy.
Daniel, Isaiah, and the Glory of Christ
In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar ordered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego thrown into a furnace because they refused to worship his golden image. He expected three bound men to die. Instead, he saw four men walking freely in the fire and described the fourth as “like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). He later spoke of their God sending a messenger to deliver them.
I believe the fourth Man was a Christophany, although the king’s words alone do not establish His identity. Nebuchadnezzar was describing what he saw without the understanding of the eternal Son that John later gives us. I recognize Christ in the Deliverer who stood with God’s servants in the fire because that encounter agrees with the wider pattern of the Son making God known and rescuing His people. The identification is an inference from the account read alongside other Scripture; Daniel does not explicitly name the fourth Man as Christ.
Isaiah’s vision has a more direct New Testament explanation. In Isaiah 6, he saw the Lord high and lifted up on His throne as the seraphim cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” Isaiah declared himself undone, a man of unclean lips who had seen the King, the LORD of hosts. John later referred to Isaiah while explaining the unbelief that followed Jesus’ signs.
These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.
John 12:41, NKJV
John identifies the glory Isaiah saw as Christ’s glory, giving us an explicit connection in the New Testament. The Lord Isaiah saw enthroned is the same Son who later lived among men and endured their rejection. He remained fully God when He became man.
Reading These Appearances Without Guessing
These passages do not all identify the Son in the same way. John explicitly connects Isaiah’s vision with Christ, while my identification of Melchizedek and the fourth Man in the furnace draws together evidence from several passages. I believe those conclusions are well founded, but I should not present every identification as equally certain or pretend that each account explicitly names Him.
Some readers object that Christophany is not a biblical word. Neither is Trinity, but both can explain biblical teaching if we define them accurately. The label cannot establish an identity the passage leaves unexplained. Scripture describes created angels as well as symbolic visions, and each account needs to be read on its own terms. Daniel 6, for example, does not identify the messenger who shut the lions’ mouths as the Angel of the LORD or give enough information to know that He was Christ.
Others understand the Angel of the LORD as a created messenger speaking on God’s behalf. A created angel could repeat God’s words, but that does not adequately explain the accounts calling this Messenger the LORD, placing God’s name in Him, or describing His own oath and covenant acts. Taken together, those details persuade me of His divine identity. The New Testament’s revelation of the Son who makes the unseen Father known also explains how He can be sent by the LORD without ceasing to be God.
The Son who blessed Abraham and commissioned Moses later became man to accomplish the redemption those encounters anticipated. Jesus willingly gave Himself into the hands of wicked men, who tortured Him and put Him to death. He endured that bodily suffering and gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His sinless life qualified Him to offer that sacrifice. Through His shed blood and death, He completed our atonement before His burial and bodily resurrection.
The Father and Son remained united in that redemption. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Christ willingly gave Himself for sinners and is our only Savior and Mediator between God and man. He died for the whole world, and His offer of salvation is genuine even though people can resist and reject it.
Everyone who repents and believes in Christ is born again, indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. A truly born-again believer is eternally secure, but that assurance gives us no permission to excuse sin. Receiving new life is different from adopting a Christian name while refusing His authority. Obedience is evidence of that new life; it does not earn salvation or keep us saved. The Lord who commanded Moses and Joshua still calls His people to obey Him.
My Final Thoughts
The Son who met these people is the Lord I worship today. He sought out Hagar in the wilderness and commissioned Moses to deliver Israel, caring for people and keeping His promises long before Bethlehem. Studying those encounters calls me to trust Him as well as recognize Him. I need to hear His instruction with a willingness to change my conduct, just as the people He addressed had to respond to Him.
