Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 28/11/2003 11:25, Dave Washburn wrote:

> On Friday 28 November 2003 07:55, Pastor Mark Eddy wrote:
>  
>
> > ...
> >
> > How can someone know that king David didn't think it was about Jesus?
> >    
>
> I assume that you more or less mean "about a coming Messiah"?  Part of the 
> Christian viewpoint is that at times, the Hebrew prophets wrote things that 
> foreshadowed events surrounding the future Messiah (whom we identify as 
> Jesus) without really understanding that they were writing such 
> foreshadowings.  I would suggest that this might be one of those times, 
> though to me it really doesn't matter whether David was aware of the 
> messianic implications of this psalm or not, assuming the implications are 
> there.  The question of such implications, foreshadowings etc. is beyond the 
> scope of this list, so that's all I'll say about it.
>
>  
Dave, I think there could be a bit more to this. It is at least 
conceivable, although I am not arguing that it is true, that Psalm 22 
was consciously and deliberately written as a prophecy of words to be 
spoken (or imagined or predicted as to be spoken) by a future Messiah - 
in the same way as Isaiah 9:1-7 and Jeremiah 23:5-6 seem to be conscious 
prophecies or predictions of a future Messianic figure.

If so, one might expect to find some kind of marker within the Hebrew 
text that this is a prophecy, rather like HINNEH YAMIM BA'IM in Jeremiah 
23:5. Identifying such markers would be within the scope of this list. 
If Mark can provide any evidence of this sort for his hypothesis, it 
would be relevant for this list.

On the other hand, such a prophecy might be unmarked, and so the literal 
answer to Mark's question must be that there is no way that we can know 
for certain that this was not a conscious prophecy. But then there is 
much that we can never know for certain about the Hebrew Bible. 
Sometimes we have to work on the best probabilities, or else believe 
things as part of our faith.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/