The Messiah Israel Was Waiting For

It all began very early, back in Sunday school.

That was where I first heard, in simple terms, about Jesus, the prophecies, and the Messiah Israel was waiting for. As a child, the story seemed quite clear to me: God had promised a Messiah to the people of Israel; the prophets had announced His coming; Jesus came in fulfillment of those promises—and many did not recognize Him.

And there was nothing wrong with beginning that way. It was a simple way of introducing a story far greater than I was yet able to understand.

For many years, that sequence stayed with me:

Israel was waiting for the Messiah. Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus came.

Then the question seemed obvious: Why didn’t they recognize Him?

Only much later did I realize there was another question that came before it.

When a first-century Jew waited for the Messiah, what exactly was he waiting for?

The story I had known since Sunday school then began to take on a dimension I had never imagined.

Not because Jesus had ceased to be the Messiah for me.

But because I began to discover that “the Messiah Israel was waiting for” may never have been a single expectation.

Perhaps for years I had imagined a scene that never really existed that way: an entire people waiting for the same person, with the same image in mind, with a clear list of prophecies that everyone interpreted in the same way. If that were the case, the question would be almost inevitable: if Jesus fulfilled the promises, why did so many fail to recognize Him?

But the Jewish world of the first century was far more diverse. There was no single messianic expectation shared by everyone. There were different hopes and interpretations—some similar to one another, others quite distinct.

Before asking why Jesus was rejected, then, I needed to ask an earlier question: What did the word “Messiah” mean to the people who lived in that world?

The Hebrew word mashiach means “anointed.” In the Scriptures of Israel—what Christians today call the Old Testament—anointing could be associated with kings and priests. The term itself did not automatically carry all the meaning that centuries of Christianity would later place upon the word “Messiah.”

The hope for a ruler connected to the house of David, however, became especially important. The promise made to the Davidic dynasty, together with later prophetic texts, helped shape the expectation that God would restore Israel through a chosen ruler.

In the first century, that hope existed under a political reality that was impossible to ignore:

Rome.

In the time of Jesus, the region lived under Roman rule, although not every area was governed in the same way. Judea was under direct Roman administration, while Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas, a client ruler of Rome. In that environment, the hope that God would restore Israel could also take on a political dimension.

When I came across the Psalms of Solomon, that political dimension became more concrete for me. Psalm 17, written before the ministry of Jesus, presents the hope of a descendant of David who would purify Jerusalem and defeat unjust rulers. This was not necessarily the expectation of every Jew, but it shows that the image of a powerful Davidic Messiah who would restore Israel was part of the religious world of that period.

But that image did not settle the question.

When I came to the Dead Sea Scrolls, I found an even more diverse picture. Some texts associated with Qumran point to figures with different roles, including priestly, royal, and prophetic dimensions. Messianic expectation, therefore, was not always centered on a single figure.

The question “What did the Jews expect from the Messiah?” began to seem too broad.

Which Jews? In what region, group, and period?

The diversity did not end there. The expression “Son of Man,” so important in the Gospels, adds another layer. Daniel 7 presents “one like a son of man” receiving dominion, glory, and a kingdom. That text gave rise to different interpretations in ancient Judaism and continues to be interpreted in different ways in modern scholarship. So when the Gospels place this expression on the lips of Jesus, we are not dealing with a simple label, but with language rich with possibilities.

Then comes the question that, for a Christian, may be the hardest to avoid projecting backward: the suffering of the Messiah.

The writings of the New Testament show the first Christians reading texts from the Scriptures of Israel—including Isaiah 53—in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. For the Christian faith, that reading became fundamental.

Historically, however, we need to be careful before assuming that first-century Jews shared a clear and uniform expectation of a Messiah who would be rejected, killed, and then rise again.

There is scholarly debate about the extent to which Jewish traditions predating Christianity may have connected suffering with messianic or eschatological figures.

What we cannot do is take the Christian understanding formed after the cross and simply place it, in its entirety, into the minds of the people who encountered Jesus before it.

That profoundly changes the question.

Perhaps some people did not look at Jesus and think: “Here is the Messiah we were waiting for, but we have decided to reject Him.” Perhaps they looked at Him and asked: “What kind of Messiah is this?”

Jesus does not appear in a religious vacuum. He emerges within Israel, speaks from the Scriptures of Israel, and proclaims the Kingdom of God. At the same time, He confirms some expectations of His world, transforms others, and completely overturns others.

If someone expected an immediate political liberator, the path of Jesus could seem strange. If someone expected the restoration of Israel, the way Jesus spoke about the Kingdom required interpretation. If someone expected victory, the cross would look like the opposite of a coronation.

That is why understanding Jesus historically requires me, at least for a moment, to forget that I know how the story ends.

I know about the cross. I know about the resurrection. I know Paul. I know two thousand years of Christianity.

The men and women who encountered Jesus on the roads of Galilee had none of those advantages.

They had to decide who He was while the story was still unfolding.

That forces me to abandon a comfortable explanation: the idea that Israel was waiting for exactly the Jesus later presented by Christianity and, even so, decided to reject Him.

The reality seems far more human—and far more complex.

There was Roman rule, hope for restoration, different interpretations of Scripture, the Temple, priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, popular movements, and ordinary people trying to understand what God was doing.

So perhaps the first question of this book is not: “Why didn’t Israel recognize Jesus?”

Perhaps it is: If everyone was waiting for the Messiah, were they all waiting for the same thing?

That question does not diminish my faith in Jesus. For me, it does the opposite. It forces me to encounter Him again within the world in which He actually lived.

And when we do that, a second question begins to emerge.

If Jesus was born into this world, lived as a Jew, spoke to Jews, and used the Scriptures of Israel, then before we can understand His conflicts, we need to remember something that two thousand years of Christian history can sometimes cause us to forget:

Jesus was Jewish.