One of my favorite things about the Christmas season is the songs. Many of the church’s historic Christmas hymns (and thankfully some modern ones too!) contain profound theological reflection. One standout is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” This first-millennium Latin hymn, translated by John Mason Neale in the nineteenth century, has always caught my attention on account of its rich biblical theology. Just read the first three verses: you’ll find references to the exile, the new exodus, the giving of the Law on Sinai, and a reference to the “Rod of Jesse” from Isaiah 11:1 (KJV).
But at the center of this hymn’s messianic expectation is the coming of “Emmanuel”—God with us. But what might that mean from the perspective of Old Testament saints? Does the Old Testament anticipate anything like the incarnation? Did the prophets understand that the messianic Son of David would be God himself?
Certainly the Old Testament doesn’t fully reveal God’s triune character or the mystery of the incarnation. For that we need God’s climactic revelation of himself in Christ (Heb. 1:1–3). At the same time, a close look at the Old Testament and its messianic expectations does suggest that even the prophets anticipated that the Messiah would be more than man, and perhaps even share in the very identity of Yahweh himself. In what follows I’ll give a brief sketch of this hope in the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
Echoes of Incarnation in the Law and the Prophets
The account of creation in Genesis 1–2 emphasizes that God is independent of and distinct from his creation. At the same time, the creation account also indicates that God intends to reveal who he is chiefly through his human creatures. All of creation reveals something of God’s eternal nature and divine power (Rom. 1:20), but Adam, the pinnacle of God’s creative activity, is the image of God. I’m not suggesting Genesis 1–2 hints at the incarnation, but at the very least it demonstrates that God intends to reveal himself not just to his human creatures, but in a human creature.
While several other passages in the Law hint at Trinitarianism and incarnation (see Gen. 18–19, especially 19:24), the Prophets provide the first explicit expectation that the coming Messiah will share God’s nature.
Isaiah 9:6–7, for instance, calls the coming Son of David the “Mighty God.”
For to us a child is born . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
This exalted language could refer only to Yahweh himself. In fact, Isaiah employs this same phrase, “Mighty God,” to refer to Yahweh in the very next chapter (Isa. 10:21).
The book of Isaiah also contains other comments that suggest the coming Messiah and Yahweh share the same identity. Throughout Isaiah, the arrival of the Davidic heir ushers in the end of the exile and the new creation. At the same time, Isaiah also indicates that the exile ends when Yahweh himself arrives to deliver to Israel. At that time Israel will “See the glory of the Lord,” the blind will be given sight, and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Isa. 35:1–7).
This same suggestive juxtaposition of Yahweh with the Son of David occurs in Ezekiel 34. Yahweh promises to save Israel from unfaithful shepherds by being their shepherd. “ ‘I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep . . .’ declares the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 34:15). Yet just a few verses later Yahweh says that David will be their one shepherd: “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezek 34:23).
So who is the shepherd? David or Yahweh?
Of course, it could simply be that the Lord will shepherd Israel by appointing a new David. But given Yahweh’s description of his own personal involvement in the shepherding process throughout the chapter and given the tight association Ezekiel draws between Yahweh and this New David it seems far more likely to suggest that the “one shepherd” is both Yahweh and David, or perhaps better Yahweh in the Messiah—God in Christ.
Echoes of Incarnation in the Writings
The Writings also hint at the fact that the coming Messiah is both God and man. In Psalm 110:1 David calls his eschatological heir his “Lord,” breaking the established logic of the time that fathers are always greater than their sons (cf. Matt. 22:45; Heb. 7:9). Clearly, David’s son is special. The context makes that point clear. David’s greater Son reigns from heaven at the right hand of God himself, executing eschatological judgment against God’s enemies, which the psalmist calls “his” (i.e. the Messiah’s) enemies (Ps. 110:5).
Other Psalms even more clearly testify to the divine-human identity of the Messiah. Psalm 45, speaking about the Son of David, says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions” (Ps. 45:6–7).
Once again, I’m not suggesting that the Psalmist had already worked out a Chalcedonian Christology, but from within the Bible’s unswerving context of monotheism, he refers to the messianic heir as God himself.
We find other hints of the coming incarnation in the rest of the Writings, particularly in Daniel 7:13–14:
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
In this passage the “Son of Man” takes the role of a new Adam. He fulfills the creation commission by exercising dominion over all the earth. At the same time, this Son of Man seems to be more than man. For starters his dominion is everlasting and indestructible. But more than that, this Son of Man rides “with the clouds of heaven.” In the rest of the Old Testament Yahweh alone rides the clouds of heaven (Deut. 33:26; Ps. 104:3; Isa. 19:1). The Son of Man, it seems, travels like Yahweh travels. Once again, the Scriptures blur the lines between the Messiah and Yahweh, suggesting that the Son of Man is in fact more than a man.
Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery
Again, the Old Testament doesn’t reveal the particulars of Nicene Trinitarianism or Chalcedonian Christology. But at the very least it occasionally blurs the line between the Messianic Son of David and Yahweh. The coming of Christ and the New Testament Scriptures make clear what the Old Testament only hinted at: God saves us not by sending someone else to work redemption, but by coming to do that work himself. And in the profound and mysterious act of incarnation, God begins a work he will complete at the cross. Redemption is achieved not by God giving us a gift from his hands but by taking to himself hands of flesh that can be pierced for our sins. In the incarnation God shows that his heart was never merely to provide a Savior, but to step into real flesh and blood history so as to be the Savior.
Indeed—O come, O come Emmanuel.
