The period of history that corresponds to Hebrew people's “the Messianic Hope”people spans the last few centuries preceding the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, right after the original Fall mankind already expected a Messiah-Redeemer victorious over evil. This is announced in the opening chapter of the Bible called the Book of Genesis, where the Lord God says to the serpent:
"I will place enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head while you strike at his heel" (Gen 3:15).
The promise of a Savior and a Redeemer of the world after the Fall is insinuated between the lines of all vetero-testamentary Scripture, especially from the mouths of the Prophets and most particularly from the Prophet Isaiah, who not only foretold the birth of the Messiah, but also the fecundity of a mysterious "virgin mother of the Immanuel":
“The virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Is 7: 14).
Furthermore, when one reads the Old Testament attentively in the light of the divine revelation of Christ (1) contained in the Gospel and neo-testamentary writings, certain people who were liberators of the Israel of the first Covenant, take on new amplitude.
Israel’s Heroes Prefigure the Messiah
Indeed, these great men and women of Israel, such as Moses for instance, appear to be both in the historic reality of their time and as prototypes of the only Liberator, who, by his triumph over death on the Cross, freed mankind from the clutches of evil by a definitive victory over death. And the name of this Liberator is Jesus Christ and Messiah: Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Mary.
(1) In the manner of Jesus himself who "opened" and interpreted the Scripture for the two pilgrims of Emmaus, showing to them everything that concerned his person (cf Lk 24: 25-32).
MdN Team
Print
