The biblical prophets had a tough job. They were charged to be the Lord’s mouthpieces to deliver messages of repentance and reminders of the impending curses of the covenant to generation after generation who had ears but would not hear. Some were literary prophets whose names we know well from the biblical books bearing their names, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos. Others are rather unfamiliar to us except for a few references to their ministry, like Ahijah, Berechiah, and Iddo. Intermixed with the prophets’ call for repentance are their messages, part simple proclamation and part eager longing, about the coming of the Messiah.
Perhaps no messianic prophecies are as familiar as those found in the “fifth Gospel,” the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah in the 700s B.C. when the northern kingdom of Israel was being wiped out and the southern kingdom of Judah was being reduced, both at the hands of the Assyrian Empire. Isaiah spoke to a culture in Judah that was dominated by a cultural Yahwism, a post-Yahwism if you will, that foreshadowed our current cultural Catholicism and post-Christian culture. Aside from the well known oracles of a child being born unto us (Isaiah 9:6) from the womb of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), Isaiah 40:1-5 proclaims a message of comfort and calls for a path to be made for the Lord through the desert, across the valleys, and straight through all the crooked roads. The glory of the Lord is coming, and no one will be able to miss it.
As the returned exiles struggled to rebuild their lives in the Promised Land after seventy years in Babylon, the Prophet Haggai encouraged them to persevere in rebuilding the Temple. By 520 B.C., the excitement of returning to Jerusalem had faded in the wake of local pushback and the physical difficulty of rebuilding a city that had been leveled by the Babylonian army. Those old enough to have seen the Solomonic Temple before it was destroyed wept at the pitiful Temple they had managed to build in its place. In Haggai 2:6-7, the Lord promises to shake the heavens, the earth, the sea, the dry land, and all nations. This great shaking serves to get the attention of all of creation for an event so incredible that not one blade of grass, not one droplet of water, and certainly not one nation on earth will want to miss it. The Desired of All Nations will fill the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem with a splendor beyond imagining.
In the earliest days of the completed Second Temple, the Persians did not allow the Jews, as they were called by this time, to reinstitute the Davidic Monarchy, and so for all practical purposes local leadership fell to the priests who ministered in the Temple. As the religious fervor of the rebuild faded, the priests began to abuse their authority. Into this mess, the Lord sent the prophet Malachi, who famously prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Malachi 5:2). This great prophet also warned that humble beginnings of the Messiah’s earthy life would give way to his fiery mission. In Malachi 3:1-3, he wonders when the Lord’s anointed one suddenly comes to his Temple, who will be able to bear it? On the surface, this seems to be an odd question given the longing for the Messiah’s arrival. But in Malachi’s day, the Temple is the seat of the corrupt religious leaders, descended from Levi, and the Lord promises that the Messiah will be a refining fire to purify the sons of Levi. The Messiah is going to perfect the priesthood.
The Prophet Zechariah was a contemporary of both Haggai and Malachi. Among his visions of restoration, judgment, and the coming kingdom, he also manages our expectations of the Messiah. In Zechariah 9:9-10, the Lord calls us to rejoice at the messianic king’s arrival, which will be humble and simple rather than grand and glorious, somewhat reminiscent of Malachi’s prophecy of a humble Bethlehem birth. While the Messiah was sure to come with his refining fire, shaking the very heavens as he strides across a well prepared highway through the desert, he would not be an unapproachable sovereign.
This small sampling of the prophets’ oracles concerning the Messiah helps to capture both their longing for this figure as well as the content of what they hoped for from him. He would be unmistakable for those with eyes to see, bringing splendor and a perfected priesthood to the Temple. And he would be approachable. As this Advent Season hurdles on toward another Christmas, the prophets invite us to share their longing for the Messiah who came once in history, comes daily in mystery, and will come again to renew all things in Christ.
