Spirit of the Lord

Here is a passage that both Christians and Jews can agree upon that speaks of the Messiah. Interestingly enough there are a number of those that both groups agree upon that are Messianic, however once you actually slow down, and look carefully, you can see it isn't about Jesus at all or any other type of man/god. It's about a real live person.

Isaiah 11:1-5

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

Just a few observations: First is the word “Branch.” Most English translations capitalize this word to suggest that the individual being spoken of was or is of divine origin. The first problem with this is that Hebrew doesn't have capital letters. If you ever find an “interlinear” translation you will notice that all the Hebrew words translated into English are small and of course they are read right to left. The second thing is that the word isn't actually “branch” it's “twig”. So someone who translated this word into English for the Christian bible, not only capitalized it, but actually changed the word giving it a different meaning, perhaps a more powerful meaning to support their belief.

That's not the only difficulty of suggesting that this refers to Jesus. Jesus, according to the story, never had children and yet here it is saying that the “Messiah” will have children. The Hebrew translation says “he shall be fruitful” which would indicate children.( See Genesis 1:28, 9:1,7, 17:20) Jesus never had children or a wife to anyone's knowledge so this part couldn't have been about him either.

Next we have the “Spirit of the Lord resting upon him.” Now I don't take issue with the spirit resting on anyone. The spirit rested on most of the prophets and it is even told that it rested on Saul just before he became king. That's not my issue. What is my issue with this is that if Jesus was the messiah, G-d made flesh, according to Christian theology, why would the “Spirit of the Lord” rest upon him? Wouldn't G-d already have wisdom? Wouldn't he already understand counsel? Why would he need to have fear of himself and delight in it? This doesn't make any sense. This just shows that this is a human of whom G-d will place His Spirit upon.

And because he does,placing His Spirit upon him, justice will prevail in the world. “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.”

Imagine a system that is fair to all. I know our system is supposed to be fair, but I have seen way too many times where judges have looked the other way when it involved people of power and wealth, while the poor tend to be punished severely or ignored when their case is against the rich and powerful. But this will come to an end with the coming of the messiah and all will be treated fairly. This clearly has not happened as of yet.

So there you have it for today. There is no logical way that this passage could refer to Jesus, but it also promises us that a just system will be put in place when the messiah appears and the “Spirit of the Lord” rests upon him.

Shalom.