The Messiah in the Old Testament – Noah
Christians believe Jesus is the
‘anointed of the Lord.’ That is what
‘Christ’ means. ‘Christ,’ ‘Messiah;’
these are titles, not names. We who
follow and worship Jesus believe he is the one who fulfilled the prophecies
about God sending an anointed one who would herald his restoration of Shalom
and Edenic ‘Good’ to the world, fallen in sin as it is. We Christians believe Jesus is the bringer of
salvation. In The Messiah in the Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser points to
texts from the Hebrew Bible that anticipate and point to the Messiah.
Last week I began my reflections on
Kaiser’s observations in chapter 2, “The Messiah in the Pentateuch.”[i] He cited Genesis 3:15, the passage in which
God judges between the deceptive serpent and the offspring of Adam and Eve, the
people who succumbed to the serpent’s wiles.
This week, we briefly touch on the next Messianic text Kaiser identifies
in the Pentateuch, the prediction of Noah (Genesis 9:25-27).
After Noah and his family are back
on dry ground and the flood waters receded, Noah’s first act on dry ground is
to worship.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean
bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelled the
pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth (Genesis
9:20-21).
God
notes that even Noah’s family had evil in it.
Shortly after this Noah reissues the Eden commission to be fruitful and
fill the earth (9:1). Echoes of this
commission fill Jesus’ great commission.
Here, a new humanity, one rescued from the flood is sent to reestablish
God’s vision for creation. In the Gospel
(Matthew 28), Jesus sends his disciples to make a new humanity, one in his
image. One of God’s purposes for
humanity is for us to go out, obeying his commands, acting as his agents to
make the earth what he intends.
Soon after Noah issues the commission,
trouble comes. He passed out naked in a
drunken stupor and his middle son Ham “saw the nakedness of his father,” a
shameful thing in that ancient culture (Genesis 9:21-22). Reverently, the oldest, Shem and youngest
Japheth, cover Noah without looking at him.
When Noah wakes up, he blessed them and curses Ham.
The controversial verse is 27. “May God dwell in the tents of Japheth, and
let him live in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.” In this sentence, who is referred to by the
word “him,” and “his” in the second and third stanzas? Do these pronouns refer to Japheth or do they
refer to God? Kaiser believes God is the
referent for the pronouns “him” and “his”.
Thus he writes, “The meanings of Genesis 9:27 is God’s announcement that
his advent will take place among the Shemites, later known through the Greek
form of their name as the Semites” (p. 45).
Furthermore, Kaiser poses a question
that prior to the coming of Jesus would have been so preposterous as to not
even be asked. “How could the immortal
God, so to speak, contaminate himself with the stuff of our humanity?” This question is not as difficult for Christians
because we believe Jesus was God in human flesh; a paradox, fully God and fully
human at the same time. It is a core
belief summed up well in John 1:14. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory.” Kaiser
believes the promise to Shem in Genesis 9:27 anticipates and is fulfilled by
John 1:14.
So
far, following Walter Kaiser’s comments, God will appear before humanity through
natural human birth (Genesis 3:15) and will be a Shemite (Semite) (Genesis
9:27). Has God’s plan for the Messiah
has been in God’s mind from the very beginning?
Next, we will take a look at the
Messiah in relation to Abraham.
[i]
Pentateuch refers to the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
These works are also called “Torah,” and “The Law of Moses.”
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