Deuteronomy 18:18 - Will be a Prophet

The context of Deuteronomy 18:18 is this:

Moses is going to die, and so he is explaining to the Hebrews that, after him, there will be a prophet to take his place. In fact, there will be other prophets, such as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so forth. None of them were messiahs.

Most people will agree that those men that came after Moses were accepted as prophets within the Biblical narrative.

And that's all the Deuteronomy 18:18 is talking about.

The fact that Christians are pulling a verse out of the Torah and claiming that it is messianic should be a red flag because there is no messiah mentioned in the Torah. Remember, a messiah was unnecessary except to help the Jewish people get out of really big troubles, such as going into exile in Babylon for one thing. And they were doing just fine, even though at the end of Deuteronomy Moses recites his song, Ha'azeinu, that tells them all that they are going to mess up and need Him to get out of that mess.

If you read the various actual messianic verses, you will see that they are practically all about "he will get you out of that mess", "he will get you home", and "he will reunite a people torn apart".

And none of these other prophetic texts say "He will be a prophet".

That's not his job.

There are those, such as Maimonides who state that before there can be a messiah, there needs to be a prophet to anoint him, to declare him as the true messiah. Of course, not everyone has held that, which we can see because there have been more than 50 Jewish messiahs, all of them embraced without a prophet giving his okay. 

So that should be enough, right?

The thing is, Deuteronomy 18:20-22 gives specific details on who is a false prophet, and a false prophet is to be stoned to death.

These specifics are: 

• If he speaks in the name of YHVH it doesn't come true.
• If it doesn't come true, then it wasn't the words of YHVH.
• If he says things that contradict the known words of YHVH, he is false.
• If he speaks in the name of other Gods, then he is to be killed.

There are a couple of Christian narratives about Jesus that would have caused him problems in these areas.

The first, problem when Jesus promised his followers that they would live long enough to see his return. Of course, one could argue that Jesus didn't say it in the name of YHVH, but that he made it up. But if people believed that he was a prophet, then they would believe that he was speaking for YHVH.

But then, you cannot stone a dead man.

The other problem is when Jesus tells a group of Pharisees that even though the bill of divorce is in the Torah, God never wanted that from the beginning and that Moses just put it in there to make people happy. 

That would certainly qualify Jesus as a false prophet.

Then there is that vague verse "Before Abraham was, I am". If it meant what many Christians claim, that Jesus was announcing that he was another God, then he would surely be stoned. But many others don't find that claim convincing, so it's not a game changer.

Conclusion

Deuteronomy 18:18 isn't claiming that the messiah will be a prophet. And it doesn't really matter if Jesus was a prophet or not. What does matter is that he could not have fulfilled a non-messianic verse to prove that he was the messiah. So the claim that he fulfilled the messianic prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:18 is false.

Style: "Non-messianic, forced into new meaning, non-fulfilled"

Meme used: