Orthodox Question 04: Why Read Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, or Daniel 9 as Referring to Jesus?
Abstract
Orthodox Jewish readers often object that Christian appeals to Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, and Daniel 9 remove passages from their Jewish contexts. Isaiah's servant can be Israel. Psalm 22 is a lament of David or a Davidic sufferer. Daniel 7 may speak of the faithful holy ones of Israel, not an individual Messiah. Daniel 9 is notoriously difficult and has been read in relation to events around the Second Temple, Antiochus, priestly leadership, or the destruction of Jerusalem. A respectful Christian answer should admit this complexity. These passages are not simple "gotcha" prooftexts that force every honest Jewish reader to become Christian.
The Christian claim is more cumulative and historical. Christians read these texts in relation to Jesus, or Yeshua, because they believe God raised him bodily from the dead and thereby vindicated his identity, mission, suffering, and exaltation. The resurrection eyewitness testimony in Luke 24 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 provides the warrant for rereading Israel's Scriptures around the crucified and risen Messiah. Once the resurrection is granted, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, and Daniel 9 appear not as random predictions detached from context, but as scriptural patterns that converge on a Messiah who suffers, is rejected, is vindicated, receives dominion, and brings atonement. Orthodox Jews may still reject that reading, but it should be evaluated as a serious Jewish-Christian claim about God's action in history, not as a careless misuse of the Hebrew Bible.
The Question Stated Fairly
The Orthodox Jewish question is not merely, "Can Christians quote some verses?" The deeper question is whether Christians have the right to say that these passages refer to Jesus when Jewish tradition has offered other readings. That is a serious objection. Jewish interpretation is not a blank space waiting for Christians to fill it. It has grammar, memory, liturgical life, rabbinic reflection, and a strong commitment to reading Scripture within the covenantal history of Israel.
Isaiah 53 is often read in Jewish settings as a description of Israel, the suffering servant among the nations. Psalm 22 is part of Israel's Psalter and speaks in the voice of a sufferer who moves from abandonment to praise. Daniel 7 includes a heavenly "one like a son of man," but the chapter itself also speaks of the holy ones of the Most High receiving the kingdom. Daniel 9 is one of the most debated passages in Scripture, and responsible readers should be cautious about confident chronological schemes.
Christians have sometimes answered Jewish objections badly. They have sometimes treated a phrase as though it floated free from its chapter. They have sometimes ignored Hebrew wording, rabbinic readings, or the fact that the servant in Isaiah is elsewhere called Israel. They have sometimes spoken as if a single English translation settles every question. That is not good apologetics. It is especially inadequate in conversation with Orthodox Jews, who rightly expect serious engagement with the text.
A better Christian answer begins with humility. These passages do have original contexts. They do have plausible Jewish readings that are not foolish. The Christian claim is not that no one could ever read them otherwise. The claim is that, in light of the resurrection of Jesus, these passages are seen as part of a larger pattern in which Israel's Messiah embodies Israel's vocation, suffers for others, is vindicated by God, and receives dominion. The Christian reading is therefore retrospective. It looks back from a claimed act of God in history.
That point matters. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, Christians should stop using these texts as though they prove him. Without the resurrection, a crucified messianic claimant remains a failed claimant. But if God raised Yeshua from the dead, then Christians have a strong reason to ask how the Torah, Prophets, and Writings bear witness to a suffering and exalted Messiah.
Why Resurrection Comes First
The New Testament itself presents the resurrection as the turning point in interpretation. In Luke 24, the risen Jesus rebukes his disciples for being slow to believe what the prophets had spoken. He then explains that the Messiah had to suffer and enter into glory. Later in the chapter, he speaks of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms as bearing witness to this pattern: suffering, resurrection, repentance, forgiveness, and mission to the nations.
This is not a minor detail. Luke does not depict the disciples as people who had already mastered a neat messianic prooftext list. They were confused by the crucifixion. The death of Jesus looked like the collapse of hope. The Christian rereading of Scripture emerges because they believe they encountered the risen Jesus and were taught to see Israel's Scriptures around him.
Paul gives an early summary in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8: Messiah died for sins, was buried, was raised, and appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred brothers and sisters, James, all the apostles, and finally Paul himself. This is important because it grounds Christian interpretation in public witness, not private speculation. Paul names people. He points to a community of witnesses. He passes on what he had received. The point is not merely that early Christians found meaning in grief. The point is that they claimed a real event: God raised the crucified Jesus.
For Christian apologetics, therefore, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, and Daniel 9 should not be isolated from the historical case for the resurrection. The Christian case is not, "Here is a verse; therefore Jesus must be Messiah." It is, "God raised Jesus from the dead; therefore we must reread the Scriptures to understand why the Messiah's path included suffering, rejection, atonement, vindication, and dominion."
That is also why Christians should avoid overclaiming. A prooftext that ignores context may win a quick debate but lose the more important question of truth. The better case is cumulative. It asks whether these texts, read with care, make deep sense when interpreted through the resurrection of Yeshua.
Isaiah 53: Israel, the Servant, and the Representative Messiah
Isaiah 53 is probably the most discussed passage in Jewish-Christian debate. Christians have long seen it as a profound description of Jesus' suffering, rejection, atoning death, and later vindication. The servant is despised, bears griefs, is wounded, is associated with the sins of others, is silent before oppression, is cut off from the land of the living, yet afterward sees life, is exalted, and justifies many.
An Orthodox Jewish reader will often object that the servant is Israel. That objection is not invented to avoid Christianity. Isaiah explicitly calls Israel God's servant in several places. The servant language is bound to Israel's calling, suffering, election, and witness among the nations. Israel has indeed been despised, afflicted, misjudged by nations, and yet preserved by God. A Christian who refuses even to acknowledge the Israel reading is not reading Isaiah honestly.
Still, the Christian question is whether the servant can be both Israel and an individual who embodies Israel's vocation. This is not an artificial move. In biblical thought, a representative figure can stand for the people. A king can embody the nation. A priest can act on behalf of Israel. A prophet can carry Israel's burden. The Davidic king represents the people before God, and the people can share in the destiny of their leader. Therefore, if the Messiah is the true representative of Israel, it is not incoherent to say that servant language can reach its fullness in him.
In Isaiah, the servant sometimes appears corporate, but at other points the servant seems to have a mission to Israel. That creates interpretive complexity. If the servant restores Jacob or brings Israel back, the servant is not simply identical with Israel in a flat sense. Some Jewish interpreters have read servant passages in more than one way across history, including corporate, prophetic, righteous remnant, and messianic possibilities. Christians should not pretend there was one uniform Jewish reading that Christianity simply copied, but neither should Jews be told that the Christian reading is impossible from the start.
The Christian reading of Isaiah 53 turns especially on vicarious suffering. The servant suffers not merely because he is sinful, but in relation to the sins and healing of others. Christians see this as fitting Jesus' death. He is rejected by many, condemned though innocent, silent before accusers, executed among the wicked, buried, and then vindicated by God. The resurrection is crucial because Isaiah's servant is not merely crushed; he is also exalted and somehow has a future beyond suffering. Christians see the resurrection as the divine vindication that completes the pattern.
This does not mean Isaiah 53 functions like a modern photograph of Jesus inserted centuries in advance. Prophecy often works typologically and covenantally, not mechanically. It reveals patterns of God's action. Israel suffers among the nations. The righteous suffer for the guilty. A faithful representative bears the burden of the people. Christians believe Yeshua gathers these lines into himself. He is Israel's Messiah, the faithful Israelite, the righteous servant, and the one through whom blessing reaches the nations.
An Orthodox Jew may still respond that Israel's suffering, not Jesus' death, is the primary referent. The Christian can grant that Israel's vocation and suffering are genuinely in view while still arguing that Jesus is the climactic personal embodiment of that vocation. The issue then returns to the resurrection: did God vindicate Jesus as that servant? If not, the Christian reading collapses. If so, Isaiah 53 becomes a text that Christians are not merely permitted but compelled to reread around him.
Psalm 22: Davidic Lament and Messianic Pattern
Psalm 22 begins with a cry of abandonment and moves toward praise. It is a psalm of intense suffering, public shame, mockery, bodily weakness, and eventual deliverance that results in worship extending beyond the sufferer. Christians connect it to the crucifixion because Jesus quotes its opening line from the cross, and because the passion narratives echo themes from the psalm: mockery, surrounding enemies, divided garments, and the movement from humiliation to vindication.
Jewish readers can reasonably say that Psalm 22 first belongs to David or to the Davidic tradition of lament. It is not labeled, "A direct prediction of Jesus of Nazareth." The psalm gives Israel language for suffering, prayer, trust, and praise. A person in distress can pray it without making a messianic claim. Its original worship setting matters.
The Christian reading does not need to deny that. Instead, Christians read Davidic psalms through the idea that David's life and words can become prophetic patterns for the Messiah. The king is not only a private individual. He is the anointed representative of Israel. His suffering and deliverance can foreshadow the suffering and deliverance of the greater Son of David.
Jesus' quotation of the opening line is especially important. He is not simply expressing despair. In Jewish practice, quoting the beginning of a psalm can evoke the whole psalm. Psalm 22 begins in anguish, but it does not end in unbelief. It moves toward divine deliverance, public praise, and the nations turning to the Lord. Christians hear Jesus' cry from the cross as both real suffering and faithful identification with the whole psalm.
There are translation debates in Psalm 22, especially around the phrase often rendered in Christian Bibles as "they pierced my hands and feet." Jewish translations frequently differ, and Christians should not build the whole case on that disputed wording. The broader correspondence is stronger than any single contested phrase: public humiliation, mockery, physical suffering, apparent abandonment, trust in God, deliverance, and worldwide praise. The psalm's shape is cruciform even before one reaches disputed details.
Again, the resurrection matters. If Jesus cried Psalm 22 and then remained dead, the psalm would be tragic but not messianically vindicated. The Christian claim is that God answered the lament. The crucified one was raised, and the praise of Israel's God went out to the nations through him. In that light, Psalm 22 becomes not merely a text quoted during suffering, but a scriptural pattern fulfilled in the suffering and vindication of the Davidic Messiah.
Orthodox Judaism can object that this is midrashic or typological rather than the plainest historical reading. Christians can answer: yes, it is typological, but typology is not arbitrary when grounded in God's action. The question is not whether Psalm 22 originally functioned as Christian doctrine. It did not. The question is whether the risen Messiah reveals a deeper Davidic pattern that was truly present in the Scriptures all along.
Daniel 7: The Son of Man, the Holy Ones, and Exalted Dominion
Daniel 7 is different from Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 because it is less about suffering in the immediate text and more about heavenly vindication and dominion. Daniel sees beastly kingdoms, then the court of heaven, then one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days. This figure receives dominion, glory, and kingship, and all peoples, nations, and languages serve him. The chapter later speaks of the holy ones of the Most High receiving the kingdom.
Jewish readings often emphasize the corporate dimension. The "one like a son of man" may represent the faithful people of Israel in contrast to beastly empires. That reading has textual support because the interpretation within the chapter speaks of the holy ones receiving the kingdom. Christians should not dismiss it.
But the corporate reading does not exclude a representative individual. Biblical symbolism often allows a figure to represent a people. The beasts are kingdoms, yet they can also be associated with kings. The "one like a son of man" can represent the holy ones and still be focused in a messianic king who embodies them. This is especially plausible in a biblical world where the Davidic king represents Israel, and where heavenly throne imagery can be concentrated in a royal figure.
Christians see Daniel 7 as central to Jesus' self-understanding. The title "Son of Man" in the Gospels is not merely a modest way of saying "I am human." It evokes suffering, authority, vindication, judgment, and heavenly dominion. Jesus speaks of the Son of Man being rejected and killed, but also coming in glory. Christians read the resurrection and ascension as God's vindication of the Son of Man: the one condemned by earthly powers is enthroned by the heavenly court.
This is where Daniel 7 connects with Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. The suffering one is not finally defeated. The rejected one is vindicated. The humiliated one receives glory. The pattern is not simply death, but suffering followed by exaltation. Luke 24 states this pattern explicitly: the Messiah suffers and then enters glory. Daniel 7 supplies language for that glory.
Orthodox Jewish concern remains understandable. Daniel 7 does not say, "Jesus of Nazareth." It does not present the full later Christian doctrine of the incarnation. It also includes corporate interpretation inside the chapter. Christians should not claim more than the text gives by itself. But read after the resurrection, Daniel 7 helps explain why early Jewish believers could speak of Jesus as exalted to God's right hand without imagining that they had abandoned the God of Israel. They saw in him the human-like heavenly figure who receives dominion from the Ancient of Days.
Daniel 9: Caution, Timing, and the Anointed One Cut Off
Daniel 9:24-27 is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible. It speaks of seventy weeks, Jerusalem, an anointed one, cutting off, covenant, sacrifice, desolation, and decreed judgment. Christian interpreters often connect the passage to the timing of Jesus' ministry and death, especially the phrase about an anointed one being cut off. Jewish interpreters have often read it in relation to the Second Temple period, priestly figures, the desecration associated with Antiochus, or later destruction.
This is exactly the kind of passage where Christians should avoid dogmatism about every chronological detail. The Hebrew is debated. The starting point of the weeks is debated. The identity of the anointed one is debated. The relation between the verses and later historical events is debated. Some Christian calculations are overly confident and vulnerable to challenge.
Nevertheless, Daniel 9 remains relevant to the Christian case because it brings together themes that fit the story of Jesus: an anointed figure, suffering or being cut off, Jerusalem, sin, atonement, covenantal crisis, and destruction connected with the sanctuary. Even if one does not accept a precise date calculation, the passage creates a scriptural horizon in which messianic hope, atonement, and catastrophe around Jerusalem can be held together.
Christians see Jesus' death shortly before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as deeply significant. Jesus announces judgment on Jerusalem, speaks of covenant, gives his life in relation to forgiveness, and is killed as Israel's Messiah under Roman authority. The destruction of the Temple after his rejection is not treated triumphalistically by Christians who understand the Gospel. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. The point is not anti-Jewish gloating; it is covenantal tragedy and prophetic warning.
Daniel 9 also resists a simplistic expectation that the Messiah's appearance must immediately produce visible political triumph. The passage's anointed figure is not obviously described as conquering in worldly terms. The text includes cutting off and desolation. That does not prove Jesus by itself, but it weakens the objection that suffering and messianic identity are inherently incompatible.
Again, the resurrection is the interpretive key. If Jesus was cut off and stayed dead, Daniel 9 does not rescue the Christian claim. If God raised him, then Daniel 9 can be read as part of a larger biblical pattern: redemption comes through crisis, atonement, and the vindication of the anointed one, not merely through immediate visible victory.
Avoiding Two Errors
In Jewish-Christian discussion, two errors should be avoided.
The first error is Christian overclaiming. Christians should not say that every verse is obvious, that Jewish readers are blind if they disagree, or that English prooftexts settle complex Hebrew passages. That approach is disrespectful and often exegetically weak. It can also feed the false idea that Christians value the Hebrew Bible only as a codebook of predictions rather than as Israel's covenant Scripture.
The second error is assuming that Jewish non-Christian readings automatically disprove Christian readings. Biblical texts can have layered meaning. A passage can speak of Israel and of Israel's representative. A Davidic psalm can speak of David and of the Messiah. A corporate image can be focused in an individual king. A historical crisis can become a prophetic pattern. The existence of a Jewish reading does not, by itself, eliminate a Christian one.
The real question is whether the Christian rereading is authorized by God. Christians say it is, because God raised Jesus from the dead. That does not make every Christian interpretation equally strong. It does not remove the need for careful exegesis. But it does explain why the earliest Jewish believers in Jesus reread Scripture so radically. They were not merely searching for verses after disappointment. They believed the crucified Messiah had appeared to them alive.
The Eyewitness Claim and the Reinterpretation of Scripture
The resurrection testimony is therefore not an optional appendix. It is the engine of the whole Christian reading. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul places the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances at the center of the message he received and delivered. This tradition includes named and group witnesses: Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred, James, all the apostles, and Paul. The reference to James is especially striking because the Gospels portray Jesus' family as not straightforwardly believing during his ministry, while early Christian history knows James as a leader in Jerusalem. The Christian explanation is that the risen Jesus appeared to him.
Luke 24 then shows how resurrection and interpretation belong together. The disciples do not merely receive a miracle. They receive a scriptural rereading: the Messiah had to suffer and rise, and repentance and forgiveness would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. This is exactly the pattern Christians claim to find across Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, and Daniel 9.
The logic is not circular in the simplistic sense. Christians are not saying, "The texts prove the resurrection because the resurrection proves the texts." Rather, the claim is cumulative. There is historical testimony to resurrection appearances. There is the sudden transformation of Jesus' followers from despair to public proclamation. There is the emergence of worship of Jesus among Jews committed to the Shema. There is the conversion of Paul, a persecutor, and James, a skeptical family member. There is the scriptural pattern of suffering and vindication. Together, these form a case that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God.
An Orthodox Jew may challenge parts of that case. That is fair. But the Christian apologist should make clear where the real disagreement lies. It is not finally about whether Isaiah 53 can be read corporately, or whether Psalm 22 is Davidic, or whether Daniel 7 has a corporate dimension. Christians can acknowledge all of that. The decisive question is whether God raised Yeshua from the dead. If he did, then the Scriptures must be reread around him. If he did not, then the Christian reading loses its foundation.
A Direct Christian Answer
Why should these passages be read as referring to Jesus rather than Israel, David, or another figure? The Christian answer is not that Israel, David, or other historical referents are irrelevant. Isaiah's servant is deeply connected to Israel. Psalm 22 belongs to Davidic lament. Daniel 7 includes the holy ones. Daniel 9 speaks into real Second Temple crises. Christians should receive those contexts, not erase them.
The answer is that Jesus is read as the climactic fulfillment of these patterns because Christians believe God vindicated him by raising him from the dead. He is the faithful Israelite who embodies Israel's servant mission. He is the Son of David whose suffering lament becomes worldwide praise. He is the Son of Man who receives dominion after humiliation. He is the anointed one whose death is bound to atonement, covenant, and Jerusalem's crisis. These passages do not function as detached predictions so much as converging witnesses to the shape of Messiah's mission.
This approach also explains why the name Yeshua matters. Jesus was not a foreign religious symbol dropped into Jewish Scripture from outside. He was a Jew of Israel, known in Hebrew and Aramaic contexts as Yeshua, whose followers proclaimed him as Israel's Messiah and the risen Son of God. The Christian reading is therefore an intra-Jewish claim that later became a message to the nations. Gentile Christians must remember that they are guests in Israel's scriptural world, not owners replacing Israel.
So the strongest Christian case is not triumphalistic. It is reverent, historical, and resurrection-centered. These texts can be read in relation to Israel, David, the holy ones, and Second Temple history. But if the resurrection eyewitnesses told the truth, then they also point beyond those immediate horizons to the crucified and risen Messiah. That is why Christians read Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 7, and Daniel 9 as referring ultimately to Jesus.