Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Friday 28 November 2003 12:43, Peter Kirk wrote:
> 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.

I couldn't agree more.  My point, which I perhaps understated to the point of 
total obfuscation, was that linguistically it really doesn't matter whether 
David was aware that he was writing a messianic prophecy or foreshadowing (if 
that's what it is; I think it is, others will likely disagree and that's okay 
with me).

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Insert clever quote here (or not)