Ask about Judaism

[Letmethink]

Agricola,

What is your take on the subject of the "fulfillment of prophecy" in Isaiah 7-9. Of course Christians point to this and say that Isaiah is prophesying Christ, but the more I've studied that, I don't find that to be the case at all.

Also Isaiah 53. Who is the prophet talking about?

I have much more extensive thoughts on this subject, but I'll save them for now. Just want to hear your take.

If this needs to be a new thread, I'd be glad to start a new one.

[agricola]

Let's see - isn't 53 the chapter with the figure being unfairly beaten, etc? Ah yes, the 'Suffering Servant' verses -

Pull back a bit and start reading from a chapter or two previous, and it begins to make more sense. Isaiah personifies 'the nations' and 'Israel'. The nation of Israel is 'the Suffering Servant' It is ISRAEL that is unfairly punished, because THE NATIONS have sinned by unfairly blaming everything on the nation Israel (the nations say, 'he (the nation of Israel) was punished for our transgressions'). The prophecy continues with the unfairly beaten Israel being vindicated, living a long full life and seeing children and grandchildren, so it is really pretty hard to make any of that refer to Jesus, unless you deliberately hide what comes immediately before and what comes right after.

Certainly it is possible (because they did it) to apply that prophecy to Jesus (it takes some doing, but it can be done). The trouble is - Isaiah is 'prophesying' - that is, he is speaking to the people for God, delivering to the people a message FROM God - about 500 years before Jesus. That isn't what Hebrew prophets do. Hebrew prophets don't 'predict the distant future'. They aren't Nostradamus.
Hebrew prophets give a message to the people which invariably applies TO THEM DURING THEIR LIVES and the lives of their immediate descendants. It does no good to a sixth century BCE audience to be told about something that might happen half a millenium in the future.

__________________________

Isaiah 7 - 9 - let me look that up, give me a minute.

[agricola]

Oh the infamous VIRGIN verses!!

Ok -
Again - what earthly use to Ahaz is a sign that doesn't come about for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS??
He wants a sign that the siege he is facing NOW will be undone, that his nation NOW (ca 500 BCE) is going to survive. Who cares about 500 years in the future? THAT isn't any kind of a 'sign'!! Not to Ahaz.

Next - Isaiah was perfectly well aware of the word in Hebrew for 'virgin' and he uses it elsewhere. He did not use that word here. He used a word meaning 'young woman'. Maybe she was a virgin. Maybe she wasn't. Since Isaiah points to her and says 'see that girl? She will give birth to a son', so most Jewish (and some Christian) commentators agree that he was pointing to a currently pregnant young lady, about to deliver in fact - this is an IMMINENT sign, something Ahaz will be able to see SOON.

And before the baby can tell right from wrong (which would be, before he's 12 at most, and maybe before he's up and about on his own), then the kings besieging Ahaz and causing him so much trouble will be gone and departed (and this actually happened, within ten years those kings were dead or overthrown).

Again - people can make this a prophecy about Jesus - they certainly HAVE - but if they do that by denying that it was a prophecy FOR AHAZ first, and that it was ALREADY fulfilled during the lifetime of Ahaz, then they are seriously doing some major malpractice to the entire prophecy.

But really: there's no virgin in that story.

[Letmethink]

Let's see - isn't 53 the chapter with the figure being unfairly beaten, etc? Ah yes, the 'Suffering Servant' verses -

Pull back a bit and start reading from a chapter or two previous, and it begins to make more sense. Isaiah personifies 'the nations' and 'Israel'. The nation of Israel is 'the Suffering Servant' It is ISRAEL that is unfairly punished, because THE NATIONS have sinned by unfairly blaming everything on the nation Israel (the nations say, 'he (the nation of Israel) was punished for our transgressions'). The prophecy continues with the unfairly beaten Israel being vindicated, living a long full life and seeing children and grandchildren, so it is really pretty hard to make any of that refer to Jesus, unless you deliberately hide what comes immediately before and what comes right after.

Certainly it is possible (because they did it) to apply that prophecy to Jesus (it takes some doing, but it can be done). The trouble is - Isaiah is 'prophesying' - that is, he is speaking to the people for God, delivering to the people a message FROM God - about 500 years before Jesus. That isn't what Hebrew prophets do. Hebrew prophets don't 'predict the distant future'. They aren't Nostradamus.
Hebrew prophets give a message to the people which invariably applies TO THEM DURING THEIR LIVES and the lives of their immediate descendants. It does no good to a sixth century BCE audience to be told about something that might happen half a millenium in the future.

I don't have the verses in front of me, and I am going from (a bit muddy) memory here, but one thing I find interesting about ch. 53 is that it is very clearly written in past tense, but most Christians read into it a future meaning. I may be oversimplifying what the author had in mind, but it seems to me that he wasn't talking about a future prophecy; instead, he was describing what already was.

As far as the subject of the chapter, I think I'm in agreement with you, more or less, that the prophet is referring to the nation Israel.

I recognize there's a whole host of NT writing combined with Christian apologetics to support this being a prophecy about Jesus... but my interest is not so much in knowing what modern religions want this chapter to say. I want to know what Isaiah had in mind when he wrote it (that statement may also be an oversimplification, as it's possible there may have been multiple authors and/or redactors).

Thanks for the quick response.

[Letmethink]

Oh the infamous VIRGIN verses!!

Ok -
Again - what earthly use to Ahaz is a sign that doesn't come about for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS??
He wants a sign that the siege he is facing NOW will be undone, that his nation NOW (ca 500 BCE) is going to survive. Who cares about 500 years in the future? THAT isn't any kind of a 'sign'!! Not to Ahaz.

Next - Isaiah was perfectly well aware of the word in Hebrew for 'virgin' and he uses it elsewhere. He did not use that word here. He used a word meaning 'young woman'. Maybe she was a virgin. Maybe she wasn't. Since Isaiah points to her and says 'see that girl? She will give birth to a son', so most Jewish (and some Christian) commentators agree that he was pointing to a currently pregnant young lady, about to deliver in fact - this is an IMMINENT sign, something Ahaz will be able to see SOON.

And before the baby can tell right from wrong (which would be, before he's 12 at most, and maybe before he's up and about on his own), then the kings besieging Ahaz and causing him so much trouble will be gone and departed (and this actually happened, within ten years those kings were dead or overthrown).

Again - people can make this a prophecy about Jesus - they certainly HAVE - but if they do that by denying that it was a prophecy FOR AHAZ first, and that it was ALREADY fulfilled during the lifetime of Ahaz, then they are seriously doing some major malpractice to the entire prophecy.

But really: there's no virgin in that story.

Wow! Your words reflect almost exactly some thoughts I wrote down almost a year ago after doing a mini study during Christmas season last year. In fact I remember the preacher talking about Jesus, and some of the NT stories, and in my typical ADD fashion I was soon on a tangent researching and comparing the Matthew with Luke stories of Jesus' birth, and trying to make sense of the "fulfilled OT prophecies." The more I dug, particularly into the so-called virgin birth prophecies in Isaiah, the more I began to conclude:

1. It likely was not even a virgin
2. The fulfillment was made in the lifetime of Ahaz, as that's who the sign was given to
3. These scriptures had absolutely nothing to do with a future Jesus

It blew my mind as I re-studied these verses that I recall virtually no time in all my years a coc preacher or teacher attempting to study these verses in their context and openly and honestly discussing the enormous disparity between what Isaiah seems to be saying versus what the gospel writers appear to read into Isaiah to make it fit the Jesus narrative.

Excellent thoughts.

[agricola]

There's a problem with translating Hebrew to English which few translators explain and some translators exploit to push a theological point. And that problem is, Hebrew absolutely DOES NOT treat tenses the way English does.

Basically Hebrew has a 'present tense' which means something like 'this happens and is still happening' (like, 'I go to the store' meaning I have gone in the past and I will go again in the future) and Hebrew has a 'past tense' which means 'this happened previously AND HAS STOPPED' (like 'I was going to Publix' (but don't anymore).

There really isn't an actual 'future tense' meaning something will happen IN THE FUTURE. Instead, such a statement would probably use the present tense - and a translator will use the English tense according to what the TRANSLATOR thinks it means.

Do you see the potential issues with that?

There are ways in Hebrew to actually specify 'future' but it isn't in the actual verbs. Tricky. Semitic languages are NOT like English (or Greek, Italian, Spanish or French).

So the English might say 'the young woman WILL HAVE a child' while the Hebrew would allow that BUT would also quite legitimately allow something like 'the young woman IS HAVING a child'.

So many English speakers are monolingual, and think translation is merely a matter of plugging in English Word A for Hebrew Word X. It doesn't work like that. Really.

BTW I checked and Isaiah is actually prophesying a good 700+ years before Jesus. My bad.

Here's a comment from myjewishlearning.com on Isaiah which used the JPS (Jewish Publication Society) translation of Isaiah 7 (and I encourage you to get a copy of the JPS (1985) translation - it is called 'Tanakh' and you can buy many versions using that translation from Amazon including a study bible, and one with the Hebrew also - whatever floats your boat).

the prophet refers to the fact that “the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son,” who should be named Immanuel (“With us is God”) (7:14). It is not clear whether this is to be the prophet’s own son or a royal scion; in any case, he predicts that (in a short period of time) before the lad can “reject the bad and choose the good” (7:16), the danger will pass.

[agricola]

Also BTW - most scholars say the Isaiah of chapters 1-39 is one writer, and there are two other writers represented in the rest of the book of Isaiah.

[agricola]

h**ps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/901111.Tanakh

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Tanakh

hardcover, softcover, compact and kindle versions

I have them all, I think, for one reason or another!
Plus some more translations by various individuals for certain books. I have Dr Friedman's personal translation of Torah for instance. The Everett Fox translation.

You might want to pick up the Oxford Jewish Study Bible, which has footnotes and some essays in it - this uses the '85 JPS translation too.

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Jewish-Study-Bible-Second/dp/0199978468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479359503&sr=8-1&keywords=JEwish+Study+Bible

If you are going for a study Bible, be sure you are getting something 'scholarly' and not one of those 'messianic' versions. That would be like choosing the JW NT for a study of the New Testament - false advertising!

An interesting NT translation with notes is Levine and Brettler's Jewish Annotated New Testament. They are both NT scholars who teach at the university level, and this version has copious notes to explain the cultural and doctrinal background of the NT.

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Jewish-Annotated-New-Testament/dp/0195297709/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479359625&sr=8-1&keywords=Jewish+annotated+New+Testament

[agricola]

Hooboy -

Ran across this stellar example of 'yeshivish' (English but so full of yeshiva-terms as to be non-comprehensible) today on facebook (closed group). Thought somebody else might find it as funny as I do (it is about checking for bugs in produce, in case you wondered):

I was reading Bedikat haMazon, and Rav Vaye says that if a person does not adopt a stringent standard on tolaim, even if they're a ne'eman, shomer shabbat, we still can't rely on them to ensure that their food is free of infestation. Are there sources addressing this in similar contexts? That a person may have ne'emanut by being shomer shabbat, but may not be considered "ne'eman" to be trusted in areas of kashrut they're not stringent on? (L'ma'aseh, do we trust someone to say something is cholov yisroel when they themselves use cholov hacompanies? Can a Sephardi makpid on bet yosef trust an Ashkenazi who doesn't keep bet yosef regarding meat? Can someone who is makpid on yashan or pas yisrael trust someone who isn't if they tell them the food they're giving them is ?)

I especially enjoyed 'cholov hacompanies' which is yeshivish par excellence, so to speak! (cholov is milk, by the way - but he's actually asking about the kashrut certification of milk products).

Basically - how far can you trust the information about the kashrut of food/drink/etc if that person is knowledgeable, but doesn't actually keep to the exact same standards and authorities as you yourself do?

It's a fair question, really. If someone is more lenient than you are (about anything) and you ask about something - a place, a person - and they say 'sure, they are what you want', can you rely on them to be correct? Suppose you are vegan and they tell you that restaurant X is safe, but they are vegetarians and eat more things than you do?

[agricola]

So we are now in the pre-Passover period, and coming up on Purim in the next few weeks (mid March). It is somewhat convenient to have a holiday which you need to bake cookies for, occurring a month before you need to totally clear all flour and similar products out of your house!

Purim is similar in behavior? I believe, to Mardi Gras. It is carnival. Costumes. Dancing and drinking (yes we have a holiday where it is actually a 'mitzvah' (commandment) to get drunk) and all manner of shenanigans. The synagogues are particularly raucous, with everyone in costumes, the kids running around shrieking with excitement, and the reader trying his best to be heard, as he reads through the scroll of Esther - and everytime the name of 'Haman' comes up, the entire congregation does their best to totally drown out the hated name.

Fun times! We will be having a smallish party here (NOT at my house, thank goodness) and I have no idea what I shall wear.