Christ in the Old Testament

5 comments to Christ in the Old Testament

• Timothy

  October 2, 2014 at 12:15 am · Reply

  Cool – another topic that I’ve been delving into a little more as time allows. Who are the “us” in this verse, and what (exactly) does it mean to be made in God’s image (this is tricky), and why did all of Genesis use a singular form of God (in the past tense) in describing his creative work…up until verse 26 that is…and then, in verse 27 it jumps right back to singular past tense, and in specific reference to verse 26!?!

  Well, I’ll start with the “us” aspect, and what, exactly, does the “us” mean? Was God speaking to the Angels? Don’t know. But, here is one person’s thoughts:

  I was recently reading some notes from a Sunday school class about said subject.

  “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honour.” Ps. 8:4-5 (KJV)

  or “What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!” Ps. 8:4-5 (NASB)

  The scripture was read by someone from the KJV and then in discussing it, someone else in the class criticized the KJV for translating the word angels incorrectly. In the Hebrew text the word used is elohim which, according to the gentleman who spoke, only refers to God. So he stressed that mankind was made a little lower than God and we are at least equal to or superior to the angels.

  Although it’s true that elohim refers to God the majority of the time in scripture, we must compare scripture with scripture to find out what the translation of the word should be. Our answer is found in Hebrews 2 where the writer describes this Psalm as being messianic– “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” (Heb. 2:7, 9)

  Bible versions, such as the NASB, that translate the word as God in Psalms turn around and translate the word as angels in Hebrews. Why? The word angels is how it really should be translated in the context of scripture since the Psalm is messianic and spoke of how Jesus would humble himself to take on the form of feeble humanity. The KJV translators got it correct because they knew the importance of comparing the whole word of God to make sure they translated properly. They knew that the New Testament revealed what was concealed in the Old Testament.

  But God always supplies us with two or three witnesses (additional verses) as verification, so let’s see if anywhere else in scripture we find the principle of man being lower than the angels–

  “And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” Luke 20:34-36 (emphasis added)

  In this passage, Jesus clearly states that once the saints are given their resurrected bodies, they become equal to the angels. We understand from the scriptures our resurrection is a promotion from our present corrupt state. Therefore, if we get a promotion to become equal to angels, then we are at this time lower than (inferior to) the angels.

  Still, there is one more witness attesting to the fact that angels are presently higher than us. Peter spoke about prideful humanity in 2 Peter 2. He talked about rebellious sinners who are so full of themselves that they have no regard for government authorities or spiritual authorities in heaven and how they go so far as to rail against spiritual beings.

  Then in his explanation of how angels in heaven do not rail against other angels like prideful humans rail against certain angels, Peter states in 2 Peter 2:11 that angels are “greater in power and might” than humans. This means they are higher than us in the ranks of God’s creation.

  So, saints of God, let’s not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

• Timothy

  October 2, 2014 at 12:20 am · Reply

  Adam and Eve made in God’s image…

  The bible says that God was pleased with the creation of man. Man (i.e. correctly translated from the Hebrew text “mankind”) was made in His image, and God said it was “good” (very good). This is curious because after examining the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, while apparently some of Adam and Eve’s attributes were reflective of God’s image (e.g. God made them like Him spiritually, in a manner that could communicate with God), many of their attributes were not reflective of God’s image nor were they good, or so it appears to me. Still, all of their attributes were intentionally and solely placed within them by God their creator. That brings into question of what, exactly, did God mean when he said that man was created in his image and that it was good?

  The bible is clear as to the special attributes that are unique to God. The bible says that God is only light and there is no darkness in Him. He is perfect, righteous and holy, intolerant and incapable if sin. Simply, He has no “moral free will” in regards to sin for He cannot sin or choose to sin. He is sovereign; the supreme and absolute authority who is all knowing, all perceiving, all powerful, and always present. God is immutable, eternal, and self-existent. Interestingly, none of those qualities were given to Adam and Eve (i.e. there’s no scriptural support in Genesis or elsewhere in the bible to indicate otherwise). The bible is clear that one of Satan’s lies was that if the forbidden fruit was eaten, Adam and Eve would “be as gods” providing further verification of what they were not (gods or “little gods” as some would like to proclaim) prior to their fall.
  On the flip side, God deliberately equipped Adam and Eve with attributes that were completely foreign and hostile to God’s innate being (elaborated on below), or so it appears to me. To complicate matters, God withheld other attributes that would have enabled Adam and Eve to prevail over Satan when confronted with the opportunity to sin (also elaborated on below).

  The Genesis passage provides strong insight regarding the characteristics of Adam and Eve, descriptions that clearly identify their questionable natures. Since Eve fell first let’s start with her. Eve possessed a coveting spirit for she could be tempted. She possessed a spirit of rebellion for she could willfully disobey God. She also possessed a spirit of resentment for she felt slighted that God withheld some of his attributes from her. She also harbored a spirit of pride because (like Satan) she desired to be like God instead of humbly accepting the role of earthly dominion given to her by God. Adam also harbored at least some of these characteristics (if not all since Eve was created from Adam) for he also willfully rebelled and disobeyed God’s instructions to not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

  Adam and Eve also shared other “not in God’s image” attributes. Both lacked wisdom and discernment; neither showed any inclination to challenge the authority of the tempter nor did they perceive him as being deceitful or dishonest. Neither possessed the astuteness to bring the tempter’s bogus claims before God prior to eating the forbidden fruit. The bible says Adam and Eve lacked knowledge of good and evil (the qualities enabled from the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and consequently possessed no innate conscience, no silent voice to influence them through times of trial. Some may question the “lack of conscience” finding, but there’s nothing in the passage to support a different conclusion. Frankly, if a person lacks all knowledge of good and evil, even if they had a “silent voice” to prick them, to what framework would they apply that advice? The vocabulary of the conscience would be foreign and unknown. I’ve heard some try and lobby that both had knowledge of “good” since God said what he created was “good”, but to reach that conclusion one has to add words to the text that don’t exist and make inferences about their behaviors that the text does not support.

  Using the facts of Genesis as the basis for determining Adam and Eve’s condition, and not meaning to sound sully toward them (they were God’s creation), but the passage describes the mental prowess and spiritual condition of both to be little more than naïve simpletons; helpless, foolish beings who were totally dependent on God’s intervening protection for keeping them out of harm’s way, which brings me to my next observation about their predicament. In spite of the “not in God’s image” attributes given to Adam and Eve by God (i.e. rebellious, coveting, prideful, and resentful attributes) as well as the positive attributes and instruction that were deliberately withheld by God (i.e. knowledge of good and evil, wisdom, astuteness, discernment, as well as knowledge of the tempter along with his tactics), and in spite of the stakes for failing being incredibly high (they were not permitted a learning curve, simply a ‘one and done’ warning was given and enforced), God did not intervene with His protection when the tempter came. And God did not place Adam and Eve in front of a run of the mill charlatan (obviously). No, this was the father of all lies, the master deceiver Satan himself, the most wicked, skilled deceiver and manipulator the world would ever know. And, it gets worse. God in his sovereignty knew this encounter would happen. As a result of Satan’s rebellion, and in a belittling act of humiliation and punishment for all the heavens to see, God struck him down (as a lightning bolt) from heaven to the planet earth, the same earth on which Adam and Eve were placed. The book of Revelation affirms this (the dragon, Satan, was thrown down to earth). I find this curious to say the least, but I digress. God obviously allowed Satan in the garden and knew the encounter with Adam and Eve would happen. Still, nowhere does the text indicate that God offered any instruction to Adam and Eve for dealing with the Tempter prior to their encounter nor did he offer to intervene as their protector once the Tempter was encountered.

  Based on the facts found in Genesis, is it possible to reach any other conclusion that God deliberately set both Adam and Eve up to fail? God did not make Adam and Eve sin. He did, though, intentionally place them in circumstances that predictably led to their sinning and rebelling against God. God deliberately gave Adam and Eve all of their attributes (both good and otherwise) while intentionally withholding the spiritual attributes, instruction, and protection that would have allowed them to defeat, or at least potentially defeat the tempter…or so it appears to me based on the facts presented in Genesis. Some may try and say that Adam and Eve could have just said “no” to the tempter, but that doesn’t hold water. A naïve, foolish creature that possesses a rebellious nature, with no knowledge of good and evil and void of discernment will always desire to sin when tempted for there is nothing within that person to keep them from choosing otherwise.

  The Bible is explicitly clear that God chose his own before the foundation of the world, so Adam and Eve’s fall was hardly an unforeseen calamity. Our need for a savior was not the result of the fall, but was already in place before the fall. Consequently, what played out in the garden appears to be little more than a sequence of events that happened exactly as God knew would happen, emphasizing the futility of man (i.e. mankind) and his total inability to resist sinning or save himself outside of God’s intervening mercy and Grace. All of this strikes me as curious, to say the least, unless it is framed within the doctrine of total depravity, with any “good” done by mankind the direct and exclusive result of evil being restrained by God with salvation being entirely the result of God’s mercy and grace.

  Some unanswered questions remain about this passage, at least for me:
  • In what ways was man created in God’s image? He gave them dominion over the earth, and He gave them the ability to communicate with Him spiritually, but was there anything else? The text indicates that man was void of God’s unique qualities (perfect, holy, sovereign, etc, etc) yet possessed the characteristics of fallen angels. Hmmm. Consequently, I’m not really sure what “created in God’s image” really means unless it’s limited to a very small subset of God’s attributes. The bible states in multiple passages (including the Genesis passage referenced above…”be as gods”) that man was made below the angels (Ps. 8: 4-5; Luke 20:34-36; 2 Peter 2:11). The bible also states that God incarnate (Jesus) was humbly required to inhabit the form of a man for His earthly mission, a form that was below the angels (Heb.2: 7, 9). Consequently, at best, it sounds like the man creation (a non-Deity) was barely, and I mean barely given any of the creator’s qualities in spite of the text stating “made in God’s image”.

  • Why did God say the “mankind” creation was good (very good) when evil aspects were an inherent part of their being? On one hand, God said that everything he created was “good” (I can’t find any biblical support that contradicts this, that at the time anything was created by Him it was qualified as other than “good”) including all creatures (e.g. catfish, orangutans, etc), plants, bugs, light, water and so forth, as well as all of the inanimate particles of the universe, so simply being characterized as “good” doesn’t carry with it a unique endorsement. All aspects of God’s creation were (and remain) awesome and mind boggling, but none of His creation was given a truly unique accolade beyond “good” by their creator according to the Genesis text. Obviously, we (as one of God’s creatures) were also categorized as “good” because God said so. So, were we characterized as “good” simply because we were one of His awesome creations? I’m thinking “yes”. Whatever God created or creates is “good” and serves to function accordingly within his grander sovereign plan. Therefore, the man creation was also “good” but not uniquely categorized from God’s other creations.

  Thoughts?

• Timothy

  December 23, 2016 at 6:00 pm · Reply

  Below is the interpretation of genesis 1:1 by a Jewish rabbi.

  ANALYSIS:

  When one reads the very first verse of the Bible, one may not see how it could possibly be used by Christianity to prove a Christian claim. However, Christians see in this verse an indication of the trinity, the belief that Gd is made up of three ‘persons,’ the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. To understand how Christians see this, one must read the verse in the original Hebrew. Transliterated, it reads,

  B’reysheet Bara Eloheem Et Hashamayim V’et Ha-aretz.

  Christians see that the word in the verse used for ‘Gd’ is the word ‘Eloheem.’ They point out that the ending of ‘eem’ indicates a plural in the Hebrew language, and they are right: usually the ‘eem’ at the end of the word indicates a plural. For example, ‘sefer’ is ‘book,’ while ‘sefareem’ is ‘books.’

  However, not all words with ‘eem’ on the end are plural. For example, the word ‘mayeem’ is ‘water,’ and not ‘waters.’ One would not say, ‘pass the waters,’ one would say ‘pass the water’ as in English. The same is true for the word, ‘paneem,’ which means ‘face’ and not ‘faces.’

  In the above examples, in order for the nouns to be understood as plural, whatever verbs and adjectives that apply to ‘paneem’ and ‘mayeem’ would have to match, and also be plural. However, the verb in Genesis 1:1 is Bara, and is not in the plural, which would be Bar-u. This means that the Hebrew does not recognize the word for Gd, Eloheem, to be in the plural.

  The most important response to this Christian claim is to understand that there is no reason to assume a plural reference to Gd must mean three. A plural is simply more than one, and can indicate 2, 3, 5, or even 235,000. There is nothing to indicate that any plural reference to Gd must specifically mean three. If one was required to see plurals, in relationship to Gd, to be references to a trinity, would that meant that someone with a ‘paneem,’ a ‘face’ in Hebrew, would have to be three-faced?

  The way in which someone interprets a biblical verse will be influenced by that reader’s experiences and beliefs. A Christian assumes that the plural references to Gd always mean three, because a Christian begins with the assumption that Gd is a trinity. However, what if a Hindu, with the belief in multiple gods, read the same verse? The Hindu certainly could claim that the verse referred to the multiplicity of Hindu gods, while the Christian would claim that the verse referred to their trinity, and the Jew will maintain that it refers to an absolute one Gd. Of course, the Jewish claim will be based on the verb being in the singular, and the existence of other words that, like Eloheem, appear to be plural but are not.

  Furthermore, the Jewish claim will be based on the Jewish idea of absolute Monotheism, that Gd is One and indivisible. However, Christians and Hindus are free to reject the Jewish claim, which is what makes them Christians or Hindus. Were they to accept the Jewish understanding of this verse, leading them to the Jewish understanding of Gd, that Gd is One and Indivisible, it would be a first step to abandoning their own religions, just as if Jews were to accept the Christian understanding of this verse it would be a first step in abandoning their Judaism.

  It also must be noted that the word ‘Eloheem’ is also used in the Bible to refer to pagan idols.
  In the Ten Commandments we read,

  Thou shalt have no other gods before me. [Exodus 20:3]

  And the word in that verse used for ‘gods’ is the same word, ‘Eloheem,’ that we have in Genesis.

  To be accurate, the word, ‘Eloheem’ comes from the root which means ‘power.’ The Bible uses the word ‘Eloheem’ to mean Gd, because Gd is the Ultimate Power, however when it does so, it uses a verb that is singular, not recognizing the subject ‘eloheem’ as plural.

• Timothy

  December 23, 2016 at 6:06 pm · Reply

  Below is the interpretation of Genesis 1:26 by the same rabbi:

  ANALYSIS:

  One sees the same problem (as we saw in Gen. 1:1) resulting in a plural reference to Gd, in another verse commonly used by Christians in an attempt to prove that their concept of the trinity is to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

  Because the above also refers to Gd in the plural, ‘Let US make man.’ Christians will claim that this plural reference to Gd indicates the trinity. However the same objection mentioned above regarding Genesis 1:1 can also be applied here. Just because the term ‘us,’ referring to Gd is in the plural, it does not necessarily have to referring to a trinity. Plurals are more than one, and this plural can also be interpreted to mean 2 or 3 or 3 million. It can be interpreted by Hindus to indicate the multiplicity of their gods, as well.

  To understand the Jewish interpretation of this verse, please note that preceding this verse, Gd had called upon the Earth to aid Him in the creation of plant life as well as animate life:

  And Gd said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and Gd saw that it was good. [Genesis 1:11-12]

  And Gd said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And Gd made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and Gd saw that it was good. [Genesis 1:24-25]

  Judaism believes that human beings are made up of both flesh and blood (the material) as well as the soul (the spiritual). The Earth provides the material while Gd provides the spiritual. Furthermore, when a person dies, Judaism believes that the flesh and blood of the deceased goes back to the earth, while the soul returns to Gd. This is seen in Ecclesiastes, where it explicitly states this:

  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto Gd who gave it. [Ecclesiastes 12:7]

  From the Jewish perspective, in saying, ‘Let us make man,’ Gd was speaking to the Earth, which is evidenced in the biblical account just a few verses before when he also used the Earth in the Creation of plants and animals.

• Timothy

  December 25, 2016 at 3:32 am · Reply

  What a Jewish rabbi said about Genesis 1:26

  ANALYSIS:

  One sees the same problem (as we saw in Gen. 1:1) resulting in a plural reference to Gd, in another verse commonly used by Christians in an attempt to prove that their concept of the trinity is to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

  Because the above also refers to Gd in the plural, ‘Let US make man.’ Christians will claim that this plural reference to Gd indicates the trinity. However the same objection mentioned above regarding Genesis 1:1 can also be applied here. Just because the term ‘us,’ referring to Gd is in the plural, it does not necessarily have to referring to a trinity. Plurals are more than one, and this plural can also be interpreted to mean 2 or 3 or 3 million. It can be interpreted by Hindus to indicate the multiplicity of their gods, as well.

  To understand the Jewish interpretation of this verse, please note that preceding this verse, Gd had called upon the Earth to aid Him in the creation of plant life as well as animate life:

  And Gd said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and Gd saw that it was good. [Genesis 1:11-12]

  And Gd said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And Gd made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and Gd saw that it was good. [Genesis 1:24-25]

  Judaism believes that human beings are made up of both flesh and blood (the material) as well as the soul (the spiritual). The Earth provides the material while Gd provides the spiritual. Furthermore, when a person dies, Judaism believes that the flesh and blood of the deceased goes back to the earth, while the soul returns to Gd. This is seen in Ecclesiastes, where it explicitly states this:

  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto Gd who gave it. [Ecclesiastes 12:7]

  From the Jewish perspective, in saying, ‘Let us make man,’ Gd was speaking to the Earth, which is evidenced in the biblical account just a few verses before when he also used the Earth in the Creation of plants and animals.

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