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Hesed: Does The Tanakh Foreshadow Jesus?

In Volume One, we will examine the Day of Atonement as well as some historical examples of sacrificial atonement from the Tanakh. Did these elements of ancient Judaism make up G-d’s solution to deal with the problem of our moral guilt, or were they just symbolic of a future sacrifice that actually could pay the price of justice for the sins of mankind?

We will also take a look at some key moments from the lives of Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, and Cyrus. Then we will compare each of their lives to Jesus’ life. The question is, are the parallels between these men’s lives and Jesus’ life just interesting coincidences, or are they more than that?

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The Mashiah: A Study Of The Messianic Prophecies

The Tanakh contains a trove of prophecies that are specific and purposeful. One of the key subjects of Biblical prophecy is the coming of the Messiah.

Did Jesus fulfill any of the messianic prophecies? How many did He fulfill, and how well did He fulfill them? In this book, we will seek to answer these questions by examining the prophecies in the Tanakh.

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The Esa: G-d's Rescue plan for Humanity

Adam and Eve rebelled and became unfit to be in G-d’s presence. Tragically, they went to live in a broken world, our world. Fortunately, G-d is kind, and He has a plan to rescue us.

In this book, we will examine G-d’s plan as it is laid out in the Bible. The centerpiece of His plan is the coming of a messiah. The question is: Does Jesus fit the description of the Messiah in the
Tanakh.

This post is sponsored by our partners Wigs

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The Tanakh: Its Unusual ending

The Tanakh is a literary masterpiece. Of course, that only makes sense as G-d is the ultimate author.

In this book we will examine the Tanakh as a piece of literature. We will take a look at its recurring themes and its conspicuously incomplete ending. Then we will consider how well the story of Jesus completes the Tanakh.

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(coming  at Christmas time, 2026)

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Joseph was his dad’s favorite, which caused his brothers to be jealous. In addition, he shared his dreams with them in which they were bowing down to him. As time went on, Joseph’s brothers reached a point where they could not stand the site of him. They almost killed him, but instead they sold him into slavery in a foreign land. There he suffered for thirteen years. Rather than wallowing in bitterness and self-pity, Joseph turned to G-d. G-d was with him all those dark days. One day, Joseph’s circumstances turned around. The narrative slows down at that point as G-d wants us to pay attention to this part of Joseph’s life. Genesis chapters 42 through 45 cover Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers and reconciliation with them.

Joseph was in a position of great power in Egypt when his brothers encountered him for the first time in many years. They did not recognize him, and he used his position to put them through a test. Joseph did not do this to exact a measure of justice, for he had already forgiven them in his heart. But rather, he did this because he wanted to be reconciled with his brothers. However, reconciliation requires the willingness of both parties. Therefore, Joseph made this effort to try to save his relationship with them.

Similarly, Jesus was loathed by the religious leaders of the Jews. They were jealous of His popularity with the people, and they could not stand Him for the claims He made of being the Messiah and even of being G-d! They plotted against Him, and they succeeded. He was crucified on Passover in the early 30s CE. Jesus did not try to defend Himself against this ghastly sentence. He came for this purpose – to die for the sins of mankind. Joseph foreshadowed Jesus in that Joseph was tremendously forgiving of those who sinned against him and robbed him of the prime of his life. Furthermore, Joseph did not just want to relinquish them from having to pay a price for their sins and be done with them. Rather, he wanted to be restored to a healthy relationship with them. So too, Jesus gave up His life in order to provide forgiveness to sinners, including His enemies. Ever since, He has been knocking on the doors of people’s hearts and offering them salvation in an attempt to be reconciled with them. In the words of Jesus:

“Behold, I stand at the door an knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev. 3:20)

Puzzle pieces fit together to form the picture on the box lid. Sometimes, the picture is a scenic view. Other times, it is a scene from a Walt Disney movie like Snow White or Peter Pan. Obviously, the more pieces there are, the more difficult it is to put  the puzzle together. What if you had a box of pieces from a large puzzle with no lid? That would really be challenging. This is the situation we have with Biblical prophecy.

But we can still get started. We can study the Hebrew Bible, and we can pull all the prophecies out and place them face up on the dining room table. Then we can try to form groups out of all the prophecies with the goal being to place each prophecy with other ones predicting the same future event or person. The final goal would be to see how the groups fit together to form a unified picture. For, in every painting, book, or movie there is a message that the artist is trying to express. So too, we can expect that G-d has placed a message in the overall picture of Biblical prophecy.

A clue to understanding what is being predicted by a prophecy is history. For, though technology has changed our world greatly, we humans have not changed all that much. We are motivated by the same basic desires we have always been. People behave largely the same today as they did in antiquity. Therefore, we can expect prophetic events that still lie in the future to mimic events from the past and to feature people acting the same way that they have always acted.

The wildcard in interpreting prophecy is G-d. For, we do not understand Him very well. He is righteous and infinite, and we have a weak grasp on those aspects of His nature. Furthermore, He has given us free will, and He has not intervened very often in history. Therefore, as we read prophecies foretelling acts of selfless love that He would perform, we are not sure what to make of them. Perhaps it is best to take them at face value.

We know that the Jews returning from the Babylonian exile had learned the message of Isiah and let go of worshipping pagan idols. That was very good.

But stopping a wrong behavior does not necessarily mean that you have replaced it with the right behavior.  Stopping worshipping false deities does not mean that you have started worshipping the one true G-d, and herein lies the message of Malachi.

Malachi was trying to warn them. Listen to this quote from G-d as He directly addresses the priests of that day:

“Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it.”  (Mal. 2:3)

These words are scandalous. G-d was trying to use shock appeal to wake them up. It turns out that the priests were at the forefront of the commission of a new strain of sin that was angering G-d. The priests were the spiritual leaders and they were leading the people in the wrong direction. Here G-d had saved His people and given them another fresh start, and they were heading down the wrong path again! Namely, they started down another path that ends in exile. These Jews, of all people, should have seen that. So G-d called out to them to try to get them to think, and turn back and take the right path.

. . . 

What the priests were doing was presenting blind and lame animals for sacrifice. The problem for G-d was not the animals per se. The problem was with the hearts of both the priests and the people.

In the beloved movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow fairly early on. After being struck by an airborne windowpane, waking up in the land of Oz, and encountering a hostile witch, she is directed to see the Wizard who may be able to help her get back to her home in Kansas. She is told that she can find him at the end of a yellow brick road that begins in the Munchkin city and ends in the Emerald city. Not long after starting down the road, she comes to a crossroads in the country where a farmer has put up a scarecrow to protect his corn field. It turns out the scarecrow is a magical scarecrow who is alive. He is friendly and a good dancer, but he has some issues. For one thing, crows are not scared of him. For another, He says that he does not have a brain, but he would very much like to gain one. At this point, he joins Dorothy and heads off to see the Wizard in hopes that the Wizard can help him too.

Now imagine that the movie ends right at that point. The movie would be incomplete. A number of plot-lines have been introduced in the story, but none of them have been resolved.

Typically, authors resolve all of the plot-lines or loose threads they have created by the end of the book. Occasionally, a daring author will leave one plot-line open in an attempt to leave the reader wondering and wanting more. But never has an author begun a story only to frustrate the reader by resolving none of the issues their characters are facing. That is, of course, unless the book is the first one in a series.

What about the Tanakh? How does it begin, what happens in the middle, and how does it end?