Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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theterminator wrote: even the jews who debate messianic jews say asham is not an offering of human.
Terminator, what is your native language?

In the Old Testament, the asham that the Torah commands is not an offering of humans, because the Torah bans Israelites from committing human sacrifice. That is the argument that the debators would make.

But in fact such a command does not mean that under no circumstances could a human de facto act as an asham or guilt offering atoning on the nation's behalf.
Moses is a good example, where he wanted to act as an "atonement" for people's sins, but he had spiritual problems and God said No. In Isaiah 53 however, it does teach that the Servant would serve as a "guilt offering", even though the Torah bans Israelites from committing ritual human sacrifice. Just because people are banned from committing something doesn't mean that the event could not occur.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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MrMacSon wrote:
rakovsky wrote:
In the centuries after Christianity came around, the topic of the suffering Messiah became a kind of debating point. Many rabbis have preferred to avoid that kind of understanding of the [relevant OT] verses, IMO because they see it as a kind of "win" for Christianity.
How much the topic of the suffering messiah was debated in the first few centuries is an interesting point, as are (i) the circumstances in which such debates would have been held, and (ii) whether some of the debates might have not been influenced by the emergence of Christianity.

At what point did Christianity overwhelm Judaism or Judaic theology?
Mr.MacSon,

To answer your question, Christianity never overwhelmed Judaism, but Judaism did change in reaction against Christianity, especially after the Roman Empire, where much of the Jewish community lived, accepted Christianity in the 4th century.

I recommend looking into what Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin says about Isaiah 53. I posted one interview with him a few messages ago. According to Boyarin, Messianic ideas that we now consider "Christian", like the idea of the suffering Messiah, were once a common part of ancient Judaism. Nowadays even some of those who argue against the Christian understanding admit that the Messiah does suffer or get killed, but even they still prefer to downplay this idea.

Part of the post-Christian change in the Jewish community started with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The annual sacrifices at Passover and Yom Kippur at the Jerusalem Temple were a central theological focus. Since the Temple got destroyed, the sacrificial Temple aspect got less practical attention over the centuries. The practical emphasis on priesthood and the Temple decreased and much more focus developed toward the rabbinate and the synagogues.

In contrast, Christianity, which started as a Jewish sect in the Temple era before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, retained a central focus on the sacrificial aspect in their theology, since the Messiah was seen as undergoing atonement on the cross.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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John2 wrote:Rakovsky wrote:
One way that the Tanakh writers might address this weakness is by claiming that their good prophets were borne out by predictions fulfilled in the prophets' lifetimes. So if Jeremiah or Isaiah said that the Assyrians or Babylonians would conquer them and then rule them for 70 years, then after the predicted Assyrian or Babylonian victory, the audience will think that Jeremiah or Isaiah was a truly inspired prophet. And then they would start counting down the 70 years, waiting for the second prophecy to be filled.
So you are saying that if a prophet got one prediction right then he would get a pass regarding prophecies about the distant future? I've considered that angle too, but I would need to see a specific example of this.
John,
I gave you one- Daniel. - he said that Nebudchadnezzar's empire would get crushed, which happened in the Biblical era. So the Israelites presented Daniel as trustworthy in the Bible. But Daniel also made prophecies about what was for them the distant future, ie. the events of the 1st c. AD. So they were reading Daniel like he was a reliable prophet who already got predictions right and was now telling them predictions for the distant future. They of course would give Daniel a pass for that, because they treated his predictive words as holy scripture.

Regarding Jeremiah, my understanding is that no one knows when he died. Perhaps it's unlikely, but It's not impossible that he lived to see the return from captivity (from Egypt, in his case) depending on when the 70 years began (some argue as early as c. 610 BCE) or if the 70 years were literal or symbolic. If he was twenty years old when his ministry began c. 626 BCE he would have been around a hundred years old c. 540 BCE (one of the proposed end dates).

Regarding the exile and return of the Jews who fled to Egypt, Jer. 44:28 speaks of a surviving remnant returning to Judah:

"Those who escape the sword and return to the land of Judah from Egypt will be very few. Then the whole remnant of Judah who came to live in Egypt will know whose word will stand—mine or theirs."
Well, I just picked that one example about the 70 years. Jeremiah and other prophets made a bounty of "far distant" prophecies for the future. Take for example Jeremiah 30-33 where he predicts a "new covenant" that would replace the Moses covenant. Or think about Ezekiel's prophecies about the resurrection in Ezekiel 37. In case you don't think that was about the resurrection, an even clearer one is Isaiah 26 where the bodies come out of the graves. Ezekiel also talked about the building of a third temple, something that didn't happen in his lifetime. Christians have often seen that third temple as a reference to Christianity, either as Jesus' body or to the heavenly Temple in John's Revelation.


And Jesus' prophecy concerning the End Time in Mk. 13:30 is in keeping with Dt. 18:

"Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."

You wrote:
And I think that the Christian community did interpret these "signs" correctly, in seeing them as pointing to the concept of a Messianic redeemer who would get killed and resurrect. The "signs" exist throughout the Old Testament.
As Paul puts it, "This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed" (1 Cor. 4:1), and that his gospel was "in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith" (Rom. 16:25-26).

But the Dead Sea Scrolls interpret many of these same "signs" somewhat differently (offhand I would say there are at least a dozen or so). As 1QpHab col. 7 puts it:

"God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but He did not make known to him when time would come to an end. And as for that which He said, That he who reads may read it speedily, interpreted this concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the Prophets."

Two examples that illustrate this are Is. 40:3 and Hab. 2:4. Mk. 1:3-4 interprets Is. 40:3 as a reference to John the Baptist. But 1QS col. 8 interprets it to mean the study of the Torah:

"...they shall separate from the habitation of ungodly men and shall go into the wilderness to prepare the way of Him; as it is written, Prepare in the wilderness the way of... make straight in the desert a path, for our God (Isa. XL, 3). This (path) is the study of the Law which He commanded by the hand of Moses, that they may do according to all that has been revealed from age to age, and as the Prophets have revealed by His Holy Spirit."
I don't see a contradiction there. The path of the study of the Torah law that Qumran talked about could be a path making way for the coming of the Messiah or for the coming of God. The people of Judea in the 1st century AD had a strong expectation of the Messiah. Studying Torah can be a major part of that preparation. By knowing Torah and Bible verses they can be preparing the way for the Messiah's arrival.
And Paul and Hebrews interpret Hab. 2:4 as referring to Paul's Torah-free and pro-gentile gospel (Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, Heb. 10:38), and 1 QpHab col. 8 interprets it as applying only to Torah keeping Jews:

"Interpreted, this concerns all those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver from the House of judgement because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness."

So who had the "correct" interpretation of these kinds of "mysteries," Pauline Christians or the DSS sect? I think the DSS interpretations at least fit the context of these verses better.
Hab. 2:4 says: “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith."
That sounds like the kind of thing Paul was talking about when he proclaimed living by faith.
Anyway, I think you are missing my point and you are raising an additional issue - the additional issue of whether either the 2nd century Christian or rabbinical understanding of the status of the Torah's ritual observances in the Messianic era is correct.

The point I was making is that when it comes to the Tanakh's concept of the suffering Messiah who gets killed by his enemies in the first century AD and resurrects, I think that the interpretation not only of mainstreams Christians, but of Torah-observant Messianic Christian Jews, and of Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin on this question is correct.

And since I believe this interpretation about the nature of the Messiah to be correct, it leads to what is for me the most interesting question that comes out of this thread:
If the Tanakh did make such a prediction about the Messiah does that show that in fact such a prophesied event would occur - ie. the arrival, killing, and resurrection of a first century Davidic Messiah?

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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"What you said in the passage above sounds right. How does this show whether Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah?
Elizabeth and Zak were seen as righteous, but it never says that they "did not commit lawlessness", were "found with no lies", and were unblemished like a lamb.
There are enough things to distinguish the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 from other righteous Israelites, like the fact that they did not atone for their nation.
where does it say that they did commit lawlessness?
where does it say that they did lie?

nearly every jew i know of says people have SUFFERED for other people in the ot, but that does not mean there suffering was a magical atonement for sins, only that the guilt of seeing the suffering would bring a person to repent. it is no different than seeing suffering today and then feeling sad over the bloodshed which takes place today.




Like I said, taken by itself it might not have to do with Temple sacrifices, except that "like the lamb to slaughter" means killing the Lamb is used in the sacrifice, and in the chapters 52-53 there are other references to temple sacrifice like the sprinkling by the Servant of the nations, bringing to mind the sprinkling of the animal's blood on the covenant, and the reference to "guilt offering".
post those references here.


When he asks to be an "atonement" for his people's sins by being blotted out, and in return the people are forgiven, then this proposal by Moses reflects the OT concept of guilt offering or sacrifice, where one being sufferings on another's behalf, bearing the burden of their sin.
"But now, please forgive their sin--but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written."

if god does not forgive them , moses asks to be blotted out. what has this got to do with guilt offering?





3. When it explains "with his wound we were healed", it means that the wound occurs on their behalf, as the wound itself heals them. If a person receives or does something that helps another, it means he/she does so on their behalf. If someone does something on their behalf, he does it "for" them.
so you are forgiven because of bloody wounds or bloodless wounds?
is it wounds which atones for your sins or the slaying which atones for your sins?
where is their magical atonement going on in this verse "with his wound we were..."
?
where is there idea of forgiveness or pardoning of sins?

In Isaiah 53, the Servant did not commit lawlessness or lie, but instead he is wounded because of their sins and his suffering is healing for them.
De facto he is suffering on their behalf, for the sins of the nation, and he is healing the nation by that suffering. It reflects a classic Torah concept and understanding of how atonement and "guilt offering" work, which is why the chapter says he undergoes a guilt offering.

the servant did not commit lawlessness or lie in the situation of being persecuted. that does not mean he was free from sin.
the suffering , wounds etc is not forgiveness for sins.
Last edited by theterminator on Tue Dec 13, 2016 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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rakovsky wrote: Mr.MacSon,

To answer your question, Christianity never overwhelmed Judaism ...
I appreciate that: my phraseology was a clumsy. I was covertly referring to the changes in Judaism after the fall of the Temple and the dispersal of the Diaspora.

rakovsky wrote: ...but Judaism did change in reaction against Christianity, especially after the Roman Empire, where much of the Jewish community lived, accepted Christianity in the 4th century.
That is what I was getting at: both the reaction against/to Christianity (and vice versa); and the time frame, particularly as an indication of a likely time-frame of a couple of centuries of reactions among and interactions between various Jewish and Christian communities.

rakovsky wrote: I recommend looking into what Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin says about Isaiah 53. I posted one interview with him a few messages ago.
Cheers.

rakovsky wrote: According to Boyarin, Messianic ideas that we now consider "Christian", like the idea of the suffering Messiah, were once a common part of ancient Judaism.
I think that is a very significant point about the development of Christianity.

rakovsky wrote: Part of the post-Christian change in the Jewish community started with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The annual sacrifices at Passover and Yom Kippur at the Jerusalem Temple were a central theological focus. Since the Temple got destroyed, the sacrificial Temple aspect got less practical attention over the centuries. The practical emphasis on priesthood and the Temple decreased and much more focus developed toward the rabbinate and the synagogues.

In contrast, Christianity, which started as a Jewish sect in the Temple era before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, retained a central focus on the sacrificial aspect in their theology, since the Messiah was seen as undergoing atonement on the cross.
I appreciate there were changes to Judaism after the destruction of the Temple. I suspect there was hope the Temple would be rebuilt particularly during the temporary Jewish control of Jerusalem during the Bar Kohkba revolt. I think the eventual failure of that revolt is likely to have been as traumatic to the Jewish people as the destruction of the Temple.

I'm not sure Christianity did start before the fall of the Temple (sure, that's what we've been led to believe; but it may be a constructed narrative, not a reflection of what had really happened).
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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"Moses is a good example, where he wanted to act as an "atonement" for people's sins, but he had spiritual problems and God said No. In Isaiah 53 however, it does teach that the Servant would serve as a "guilt offering", even though the Torah bans Israelites from committing ritual human sacrifice. Just because people are banned from committing something doesn't mean that the event could not occur."

lol "had spiritual problems"
you people just make up any shit.


is there any guilt offering/asham here? is moses requesting to be an asham for the wrongdoing of the people ?


No, Moses isn't offering himself as a sacrifice. Moses is arguing with God to say that if he wipes out the Jewish people, Moses wants nothing to do with God so he had better forgive them.
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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MrMacSon wrote:
rakovsky wrote: Mr.MacSon,

To answer your question, Christianity never overwhelmed Judaism ...
I appreciate that: my phraseology was a clumsy. I was covertly referring to the changes in Judaism after the fall of the Temple and the dispersal of the Diaspora.

rakovsky wrote: ...but Judaism did change in reaction against Christianity, especially after the Roman Empire, where much of the Jewish community lived, accepted Christianity in the 4th century.
That is what I was getting at: both the reaction against/to Christianity (and vice versa); and the time frame, particularly as an indication of a likely time-frame of a couple of centuries of reactions among and interactions between various Jewish and Christian communities.
Yes, it's an interesting topic. There were many changes in Judaism after the fall of the Temple. One change was that what we call "Judaism" became more standardized. Before 70 AD, Christianity, the Essenes, the Sadducees, Jewish gnostics, the Zealots, and figures like John the Baptist preaching in the hills might all be considered part of Judaism. It was still very much debated which writings were scriptural and which ones weren't. For the Sadduccees, only the Torah was scripture. The Sadducees were very focused on the Temple sacrifices and the pharisees were focused on the synagogues. After the fall of the Temple, the Saduccees lost out, and the pharisees became what we today call "Judaism", with the exception of the Karaites, who don't accept the Talmud.

The next big event was the 1st century Council of Jamnia, which codified the Tanakh. About this time, it was decided that the Christians were heretics. Afterwards, the synagogues occasionally included a special anti-heretic prayer, the Birkat haMinim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkat_haMinim
Jewish Christians were not necessarily all cut off from the Jews at this point though. Some of them were still going to the synagogues as Jerome mentions in his time. And if you read the Talmud, Jesus' brother James was performing healings on Jews in Galilee after Jesus' death, something the Talmud looks down on. The final split really came in about the 4th century or later, when the Christian Byzantines made a formal agreement with the Jewish community that they weren't going to proselytize or outlaw each other. These kinds of decisions by the Byzantines set down a clearer boundary between the Jews and the Christians.

The Bar Kohba revolt was another big event for Judaism and Christianity, because the Christians definitely couldn't accept bar Kokhba, and after his failure, a lot of the Messianic hopes and focus of the rabbinical community had to be set aside. Hadrian then banned most if not all Jews from Jerusalem, which was another blow to a focus on the Temple's traditions. Up to then, Jerusalem had been a key focus of Judaism's stories and narrative. Meanwhile, the destruction of the Temple was something the Christians pointed to in the aftermath as confirmation of Christianity, which was already teaching that worship was supposed to be in the heart focused on Jesus the new "lamb" rather than at the Temple and the yearly sacrifices of physical lambs.

If you read through Terminator's messages to me above about Isaiah 53, you can see what I am talking about in terms of putting aside the focus on the Temple sacrifice. Terminator is getting his info from countermissionaries and their strategy is to downplay as much as possible the whole philosophy of guilt offerings, sacrifice, atonement, one being suffering on another's behalf, etc. etc. Somebody who goes through the motions of giving their lamb to a priest each year for slaughter for the benefit of his family would know exactly the kind of philosophy that Isaiah 52-53 is tapping into when it talks about "sprinkling", leading the lamb to slaughter, pouring out the soul to death, being a "guilt offering", a suffering "for"/"because of" sins that leads to the healing of someone else. The philosophy is called substitionary atonement or vicarious suffering. By now it's a pretty core part of Christian philosophy, due in part to St. Augustine, but also due to the Epistle to the Hebrews that explains Christ's suffering in these terms. But at one point this whole idea of one being suffering on another's behalf was a key idea in mainstream ancient Judaism.
rakovsky wrote: According to Boyarin, Messianic ideas that we now consider "Christian", like the idea of the suffering Messiah, were once a common part of ancient Judaism.
I think that is a very significant point about the development of Christianity.
This connection is even clearer in the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, which has a lot of carry overs from Temple worship rituals, than in Western Christianity.
Anglicans, Evangelicals, and Calvinists misunderstand the older Church's idea of the "sacrifice" of the mass as if older generations of Christians imagined they were killing Jesus each Sunday.
But the "sacrifice" of the mass and the communion ritual and the role of the altar in pre-Protestant churches is a continuation of the Temple sacrifice ritual. The nearest thing in the rabbinical community is the annual Passover Seder meal performed at homes.
rakovsky wrote: Part of the post-Christian change in the Jewish community started with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The annual sacrifices at Passover and Yom Kippur at the Jerusalem Temple were a central theological focus. Since the Temple got destroyed, the sacrificial Temple aspect got less practical attention over the centuries. The practical emphasis on priesthood and the Temple decreased and much more focus developed toward the rabbinate and the synagogues.

In contrast, Christianity, which started as a Jewish sect in the Temple era before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, retained a central focus on the sacrificial aspect in their theology, since the Messiah was seen as undergoing atonement on the cross.
I appreciate there were changes to Judaism after the destruction of the Temple. I suspect there was hope the Temple would be rebuilt particularly during the temporary Jewish control of Jerusalem during the Bar Kohkba revolt. I think the eventual failure of that revolt is likely to have been as traumatic to the Jewish people as the destruction of the Temple.

I'm not sure Christianity did start before the fall of the Temple (sure, that's what we've been led to believe; but it may be a constructed narrative, not a reflection of what had really happened).
One of the main pieces of evidence that Dominic Crossan uses to say that Jesus was real was that he is attested in 1st and 2nd century nonChristian sources. When Celsus went to debate Christianity in the 2nd century, Celsus gave lots of talking points, some of which are still used by skeptics today. But Celsus didn't make the argument that Jesus didn't exist, but rather treated Jesus like he was a real person.
This is true not only of Roman sources, but of Jewish ones hostile to Christianity. In the Talmud there are maybe five to ten stories about Jesus and first century Christians like James, and it treats them like real people even while attacking them.
When you add in all the gnostic 1st to 2nd century Christian writings that the 2nd century mainstream Christians like Origen were wary of, it draws a picture of Jesus being a real person in the 1st century that there were many conflicting opinions about, rather than someone only thought up in the 2nd century by one single institutionalized community.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

Post by rakovsky »

Terminator,

What is your native language? Вы по-русски понимаете?
theterminator wrote:
"What you said in the passage above sounds right. How does this show whether Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah?
Elizabeth and Zak were seen as righteous, but it never says that they "did not commit lawlessness", were "found with no lies", and were unblemished like a lamb.
There are enough things to distinguish the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 from other righteous Israelites, like the fact that they did not atone for their nation.
where does it say that they did commit lawlessness?
where does it say that they did lie?
Isaiah 59.
The author of Isaiah 53 saw each and every israelite as violent and dishonest. So he didn't have in mind some average righteous Israelite like Zak. He had in mind the exception, who who was the single sprout in dry ground. Is. 53 verse 1. Check back to isaiah 11 - that is the root of Jesse.
nearly every jew i know of says people have SUFFERED for other people in the ot, but that does not mean there suffering was a magical atonement for sins,
Yes, it does not mean there was a magical atonement for sins, one reason being that the sufferers themselves in those cases were not themselves unblemished. As isaiah 59 sees it, they have all been in sin, even the prophetic author Isaiah.
only that the guilt of seeing the suffering would bring a person to repent.
OK, so this can be one explanation of how the process works. The singers described in Isaiah 53 can see the Servant's suffering, and once they realize that he is honest and nonviolent, they can come to repentence. So being familiar with the whole philosophy of atonement and Temple sacrifice that back in Isaiah's time was key in Judaism, isaiah could have chosen to portray the Servant's suffering in that way.
Isaiah 53 verse 11 says:
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.

This idea of bearing the iniquities was still a big part of Judaism when the Temple was around up to 70 AD, because of the whole atonement ritual at Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), when an unblemished animal was sacrificed for the people's sins. It was part of the author's philosophy. But nowadays we don't have the Temple sacrifices carried out and this philosophy is not as ever-present in people's minds like it was for the author.

it is no different than seeing suffering today and then feeling sad over the bloodshed which takes place today.

Isaiah 52
"So shall He cause to be sprinkled many nations."
The verb used there repeatedly refers to sprinkling blood in the Torah.

Isaiah 53
"He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;"
This is buying into the Atonement philosophy of ancient Judaism and Torah.

"Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter"
This is talking about the lamb getting killed. It's what happens in the sacrifice each year.

"For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken."
Killing the Servant + More atonement philosophy

"When You make His soul an offering for sin,"
"Sin offerings" were the temple sacrifices

"He poured out His soul unto death,"
That's what the animals did. Torah says "the soul is in the blood". The sacrificed animals got their blood drained.
Getting poured out to death means the person died.
:tombstone:

"He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors."
Atonement philosophy is all over this chapter.


"But now, please forgive their sin--but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written."

if god does not forgive them , moses asks to be blotted out. what has this got to do with guilt offering?
It's the same philosophy and concept.

Moses had installed a practice by his Torah for all Israel to follow - they killed an animal each year for the people's sins and it cleansed their sins and God forgave them.
Moses is making a proposal to God on the same philosophy, out of his love for his people. He is asking to be an atonement for the people's sins so God will forgive them.





3. When it explains "with his wound we were healed", it means that the wound occurs on their behalf, as the wound itself heals them. If a person receives or does something that helps another, it means he/she does so on their behalf. If someone does something on their behalf, he does it "for" them.
so you are forgiven because of bloody wounds or bloodless wounds?
is it wounds which atones for your sins or the slaying which atones for your sins?
where is their magical atonement going on in this verse "with his wound we were..."
?
where is there idea of forgiveness or pardoning of sins?
In Isaiah 53, the Servant did not commit lawlessness or lie, but instead he is wounded because of their sins and his suffering is healing for them.
De facto he is suffering on their behalf, for the sins of the nation, and he is healing the nation by that suffering. It reflects a classic Torah concept and understanding of how atonement and "guilt offering" work, which is why the chapter says he undergoes a guilt offering.
the servant did not commit lawlessness or lie in the situation of being persecuted. that does not mean he was free from sin.
It does not add "in the situation of being persecuted".
It only says he had not done lawlessness and was found without sin in his mouth. Somebody who was not free from sin would have lawlessness or be found with sin in their mouth. In Isaiah's context, his normal strong idea is that every Israelite has sin and lawlessness, just a couple chapters later in Isaiah 59. So Isaiah is giving a very different strong image about the Servant than about the rest of the Israelites.

Also, the animals in the sin offering ritualss were unblemished. When it talks about sin offerings in the atonement mindset of Isaiah 53, it means whoever is goes to be the offering is unblemished too.
the suffering , wounds etc is not forgiveness for sins.
"The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,"
"And made intercession for the transgressors."

It means God didn't punish them because of his intercession. If God doesn't punish them, it means he forgives them. God is not holding their sins against them anymore.

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

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theterminator wrote:"Moses is a good example, where he wanted to act as an "atonement" for people's sins, but he had spiritual problems and God said No. In Isaiah 53 however, it does teach that the Servant would serve as a "guilt offering", even though the Torah bans Israelites from committing ritual human sacrifice. Just because people are banned from committing something doesn't mean that the event could not occur."

lol "had spiritual problems"
LOL. "Moses had Spiritual problems" is an understatement.
Remember all that stuff about the Promised Land? Did Moses ever get to see it? Why not?

In Numbers 20, God says:
"Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them."

If God doesn't let Moses go to the Promised Land because of disbelief, how do you expect God to let Moses serve as an atonement to take away his people's sins?
you people just make up any shit.
So... here what I told you turned out to be correct, that Moses did have spiritual problems. But you claimed that people like me are just making up "sh*t". And yet.... it turns out to be correct.

Here's one of many "Skeptics' " faults. They have concluded that Christianity's main claims are incorrect, and so sometimes they decide close mindedly that ALL of Christianity's claims must be wrong. It's like not only was there no virgin birth, BUT Jesus didn't even exist, and the Old Testament never had any idea about a suffering Messiah, and the Old Testament never even thought that anyone would resurrect, and there was no idea of reward after death, and actually Jesus never thought or pretended to be the Messiah, let alone God, and Jesus being God was just thought up by Constantine in the 4th century AD, and Christianity was always only really just Apollo sun worship, and the apostles and the "original" gospels only believed in a spiritual resurrection, not a bodily one, and the gnostic gospels were the real ones.

So some "Skeptics' " ideas come down to this:
"Christianity teaches something that other religions don't? Must be sh*t."

Let me tell you - I used to think that Isaiah 53 was probably not meant about the Messiah because I had a default opinion that what most rabbis teach today on this book must be right. Actually, I still have alot of respect for the rabbis' ideas, even though I don't agree with them sometimes. it was after a year of looking at these arguments as open minded and objectively as I could from both sides that I came to this conclusion. What happened was that Isaiah and the Christian writers were writing at a time when the atonement Temple sacrifices were still going on and this was a focus of their religious philosophy. Over the next 1900 years, the rabbinical community got away from this mentality because there was no more Temple and because of the polemics with the Christians who made Isaiah 53 and other OT passages a core piece of their religion.

Personally, I would prefer if you were open minded and tried to be objective on this question. But I realize that many people aren't, and so it can just be an interesting exchange.

Peace.

is there any guilt offering/asham here? is moses requesting to be an asham for the wrongdoing of the people ?

No, Moses isn't offering himself as a sacrifice. Moses is arguing with God to say that if he wipes out the Jewish people, Moses wants nothing to do with God so he had better forgive them.
Moses' request of being blotting out of God's book means something more than God just not having to do with Moses. The Hebrew word for blotted used here also means Destroyed. Amalek got blotted out from the book, and in the Torah, Amalek was supposed to get destroyed.

Exodus 17:14
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."

Deuteronomy 29:20
"The LORD shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.

Psalm 9:5
You have rebuked the nations, You have destroyed the wicked; You have blotted out their name forever and ever.

Psalm 69:28
May they be blotted out of the book of life And may they not be recorded with the righteous.

In case you prefer the rabbis' understanding of Exodus 32, Yes, Moses does ask to be an atonement. The rabbinical website AISH explains that Moses
was begging, "Punish me instead of them!" A willingness to cover for other people - deflecting the accusations against them and accepting the blame ourselves - is one of the greatest ways to demonstrate love.
http://www.aish.com/tp/i/btl/48943976.html

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
robert j
Posts: 1007
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:01 pm

Re: Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Who's Lion?

Post by robert j »

Psalm 22:17 --- "...a band of evildoers has encompassed me, like a lion, my hands and feet."

Perhaps the poetic language was intended to provoke a visual image such as this ---

http://www.ebsqart.com/Art-Shows/Award- ... use/48133/
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