One of the hallmarks of a Jewish view of the world is that peace will prevail during the Messianic age; it will be a time without war, poverty, antisemitism, and greed. The Messiah will burn every boot used for battle (Isa 9:5) because nations will no longer train for war (Isa 2:4). He will reverse the exile of Israel and bring her back to her own land (Isa 11:11–12; Neh 1:9; Zech 10:8–10). The Messiah from the line of Jesse (King David’s father: Isa 11:10) will even preside over great transformations throughout creation, where even a wolf and a lamb can rest together and snakes will no longer threaten human beings (Isa 11:6–9). These are some glimpses of the new world that is to come with the Messiah’s kingdom.
Another hallmark of the Jewish worldview is to assume the Messiah has not yet arrived because there is no obvious peace as described above. The very fact that the world still suffers from wars, hatred, and antisemitism is a case-in-point for many Jewish people that Jesus is not the Messiah. If he were the Messiah, none of these evils would be happening. “The Messiah brings shalom,” some may say, “but last I checked, the world is still falling apart.”
While we agree that the Scriptures teach that the Messiah will bring peace in the manner just described, we think there are other factors to discuss. Specifically, the pathway to world peace in the Messianic age requires a method to remove human sin, which was prophesied to take place during the time of the Second Temple. These factors lead us to conclude that the absence of world peace today should not be a reason to dismiss Jesus as the Messiah.
Internal Peace Leads to External Shalom
How can a world full of liars, scammers, addicts, adulterers, gluttons, idolaters, murderers, racists, and abusers ever live in peace? How can billions of people renounce war on a global or national scale when they fight in their communities and homes? What about the battles and temptations we fight within our own hearts? How can we have global peace when the human heart remains a battlefield?
Before world peace is possible, the individual’s human heart must enter into peace itself. Once a person has internal peace, he or she can think and act in line with peace. It is only then, when an entire world of Jews and Gentiles have this internal peace, that peace in homes, communities, and nations is even possible. If so, how do we get there?
God is the Source of Peace
In the Priestly Blessing, we find the words, “[May] the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Num 6:26).[1] In the Psalms, we pray, “May the Lord bless his people with peace!” (Ps 29:11). According to the Hebrew Scriptures, God is the giver of peace because he is the source of it. Gideon named an altar “The Lord is Peace” (Judg 6:24). No one may have peace in life if he or she has neglected the source of peace. Therefore, in order for there to be world peace, the entire world needs to be in a righteous relationship with God.
Humans Build Barriers to Peace With God
Human beings are meant to be in intimate relationship with God, but our rebellion against him strains that relationship. Our sin builds a separation between us and God. As the Prophet Isaiah wrote, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face away from you so that he does not hear” (Isa 59:2). When we ignore what God wants of us, treat other people badly, and do shameful things, we are building up that barrier between us and God, brick by brick. God’s peace bounces off that barrier and does not reach us. In fact,
“‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked’” (Isa 57:21).
Peace from God may only come to the human heart if it is free of wickedness, and wickedness means disobeying God’s commandments. Unfortunately, the Prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9) God is the creator of humankind and knows what is best, just as a good father and mother know what is best for their beloved child. To disobey God’s commandments is to sin and be deprived of the peace God desires for his children.
The Six Sin Sayings of Shlomo
God has a set of requirements for human beings in his Torah. The more we reflect on our own thoughts, motives, and actions, we should realize that we have habits causing us to resist God’s requirements. When we fail to obey God, we sin. When we fail to obey God’s mitzvot multiple times or habitually, we are sinners—characterized by disobeying the Holy One.
God does not refrain from describing Israel as a sinful nation prone to these failings. For example, God speaks of “all the sinners of my people” (כֹּל חַטָּאֵי עַמִּי) in Amos 9:10. David spoke of his desire to turn the sinners (חַטָּאִ֗ים) and transgressors (פֹשְׁעִים) of Israel back to God (Ps 51:13). Isaiah spoke of sinners (חַטָּאִים) who live in Zion (Isa 33:14).
Some might think that these descriptions of sinners in Israel are referring to only a few bad Israelites, not anything approaching the majority of Israel. However, King David’s son Solomon taught otherwise in the Tanakh. King Solomon (Shlomo ha-Melech) has traditionally been seen as the author of much of the book of Proverbs, the book of Ecclesiastes, and has many quotes in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Solomon asked the Lord for a supernatural gift of wisdom, and the Lord gave it to him (1 Kgs 3). As a supremely wise man, we should listen to what he had to say about the human condition. The following quotations could be titled, “The six sin sayings of Shlomo.” Solomon said:
The implications for King Solomon’s teachings are profound. Just take the first two sayings. The first one—perhaps the strongest statement of them all—denies that human beings can live without sinning at some point. All people have sinned, no matter who they are. “But,” we might respond, “while all people have sinned at some point in their life, there are some tzaddikim who have reached such a high level of Torah mastery that they do not sin any longer.” Solomon begged to differ in the second sin saying. He said there is not a single tzaddik (righteous person) on the planet who never sins. It does not matter how pure and holy he or she looks on the outside—no matter how saintly—according to the wisest man in the Tanakh, even the holiest of people commit sins.[2] In fact, the only way to stop sinning is to stop living, according to Solomon.
This is a bleak portrayal of humanity, something that has been noticed by the rabbinic sages as well. In response to the question, “Do the righteous need atonement?” Rabbi Aha bar Jacob responded, “Indeed they do” on the basis of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 7:20 (b. Sanhedrin 46b).[3] In an extended discussion of the evil inclination (yetzer hara), the sages reflected on their own susceptibility to sin and shared the tradition that “Whoever is greater than his fellow also possesses a greater inclination to do evil” (b. Sukkah 52a). Even great Torah learning and righteous living cannot remove sinful tendencies from the human heart. In the passage, Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish concluded that it is only through the assistance of the Holy One that people can withstand the constant temptations to sin.
If we read the news, or look at the state of our families, or look into the depths of the motivations of our own hearts, we should realize that Solomon’s words are an accurate portrayal of the human experience. All humanity is broken; there is something wrong with all of us. We often do not choose life, as requested by Moses of the ancient Israelites (Deut 30:19). We are sinners, and we need rescuing.
Unfortunately, the consequences of sin lead us to a very sorry ending. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “The soul who sins shall die.” That includes all of us. Moreover, God said death was the consequence of sin from the beginning of humankind (Gen 3:3), and we too are promised death because of our sins today.
Destroying the Barrier Between God and Humans Brings Peace
If God is the source of peace, and sin separates people from peace, and all human beings commit sin, then all human beings are separated from God and deserve death. This is a bleak state of affairs.
The barrier analogy from Isaiah 59:2 is pertinent here again.[4] The prophet wrote that God will not even listen to our prayers if we have sin in our hearts; he turns his face away and chooses not to listen. We can pray and seek him as much as we would like, but he will refuse us. Why? Because our sin creates a barrier between us and God, and that barrier keeps us from receiving God’s peace. Who will remove this barrier of sin and its consequence of death?
In light of these things, we believe it is misguided to look forward to a world of peace-loving harmony without investigating how the barrier to that peace must be removed. To put it simply, the barrier to peace in the world is sin in the human heart. In order for there to be peace in the world, that sin must be finally and forever taken away, and the Scriptures explain God’s plan for how he will accomplish the removal of sin: the coming of Messiah. If Messiah is involved in bringing peace to the world, then he must first remove sin from the human heart. In other words, there are things that the Messiah must bring about internally before the world can experience peace externally.
How Does God Intend to Bring Shalom?
We have now heard the bad news: We humans are in a tough spot because of our sinful actions against each other and against God. The good news is that God does not intend to leave us in this unfortunate state; he has announced his plans to save us from our sins through full forgiveness through his Messiah.
Isaiah 53 Is God’s Peace Plan for Israel
Isaiah 53 is the famous passage where the Messiah, Israel’s peace, and removal of sin are mentioned together and are related to each other. Isaiah wrote,
But he was wounded because of our sins,
Crushed because of our iniquities.
He bore the chastisement that made us whole,
And by his bruises we were healed. (Isa 53:5, NJPS)[5]
In the Hebrew, the word translated “made us whole” is shelomenu (שְׁלֹומֵנוּ), which literally means, “our peace.” According to Isaiah, someone would be wounded because of Israel’s sins and crushed because of her iniquities, and in return, the sinners in Israel would receive peace, or shalom.[6] The sinners are healed because someone else was bruised on their account. The previous verse (Isa 53:4) indicates that this bruising is not a kind of violence that results in a recovery; it is a bloody end to the servant’s life. The servant in the passage “poured out his soul to death” (Isa 53:12).
According to many rabbis and Jewish interpreters throughout the millennia, this passage is speaking about the Messiah.[7] If this is the case, then Israel’s sins are removed from her because the Messiah dies on her behalf. Through the Messiah’s death, Israel is granted peace.
Daniel 9 Connects the Removal of Sin to the Death of Messiah
While Isaiah 53 includes all three points of connection—the Messiah, the removal of sin, and peace—Daniel 9 includes two of them: the Messiah and the removal of sin. The points of connection in these two passages overlap and confirm each other. Daniel 9:24 says that God has determined a set time to make an end of the three plagues on humanity—transgression, sin, and iniquity—and to bring everlasting righteousness in their place. Destroying sin and replacing it with righteousness is the essence of worldwide peace.
Directly after declaring that God has set a certain time to make everything right, Daniel prophesies that an “anointed one”—in Hebrew, Mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ, Messiah)—will be cut off (Dan 9:26). How does this relate to the previously mentioned removal of sin? Although Daniel does not make an explicit connection between the removal of sin (Dan 9:24) and the death of the Anointed One (Dan 9:26), Isaiah 53 has already made it clear: Messiah will be cut off through his death, bringing peace to Israel by removing her sin; Daniel 9:24–26 confirms what Isaiah 53 has already told us.
Haggai 2 Predicts Peace During the Time of the Second Temple
Five hundred years before Jesus, the people of Israel were returning from their exile in Babylon. The Babylonians had destroyed the First Temple, and Jerusalem was a heap of rubble. Soon, the returned exiles repaired Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple, which we now call the Second Temple. Although the Second Temple was intended to again be the dwelling place of God, the exiles who had seen the First Temple were unimpressed. The Prophet Haggai records the people as saying, “‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?” (Hag 2:3)
However, the Prophet Haggai didn’t want the people to despair about their smaller Temple, since one day, he knew that God would make this Temple far more glorious than the original one. The Lord declared through Haggai, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts” (Hag 2:9).
In other words, God promised Israel that he would one day make the glory of the Second Temple far outweigh the glory of the first, and in the Second Temple (“in this place”) he would give the people peace. We need to ask ourselves, How did God make the Second Temple more glorious than the first, and how did God grant peace during that time period? That Temple no longer stands; the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE, so the endpoint of this prophecy has already passed. Has God been faithful to his promise here?
In b. Baba Batra 3a, Rav and Samuel argue about whether the increased glory of the Second Temple refers to its size or its length of survival. Unfortunately, the sages of the Talmud missed a crucial detail in this passage. Haggai 2:7 says that God “will fill this house with glory,” not that the building itself will be glorious, even though Herod eventually enlarged the Second Temple. Something glorious will fill it, like the Shekinah filled the Tabernacle with glory (Exod 40:34–35). This is a curious prophecy since the Second Temple lacked the presence of the Ark of the Covenant above which the Shekinah rested in the Tabernacle. The Second Temple would be filled with God’s glory in a different way.
Another detail omitted by the sages is the remark that God would grant peace while the Second Temple stood. Even if the Second Temple’s glory was greater than the First Temple’s because of its greater size, how was shalom granted during the time of the Second Temple? The sages leave us in the dark about how God granted peace before the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. Thankfully, we can find answers to these questions when we consider their relevancy to Jesus of Nazareth.
Yeshua Fulfills the Hebrew Scriptures’ Prophecies
The Jewish Scriptures say God would appoint a chosen Jewish man to die and bear the sins of Israel, thereby bringing her peace. In addition, this gift of peace to Israel would occur while the Second Temple was still standing. Only Yeshua matches the description. A central theme of Jesus’ teaching was that he had come “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28). He taught that it was necessary for him to suffer and be killed (Luke 9:22; 18:31–33) because his death would grant Israel peace through the removal of her sin. In fact, this was his purpose for coming to Israel (John 12:27).
Only Jesus claimed to remove Israel’s sins from her shoulders, and only Jesus claimed to do so while the Second Temple was still standing. He died and rose from the dead around 30 CE, while the Second Temple was still standing. He visited the Temple multiple times, filling it with the glory of the Lord as prophesied by Haggai 2:7 and Malachi 3:1. He was crucified at Jerusalem, delivering peace to Jerusalem first, and then to the scattered Jewish people around the earth, and then to the nations of the world. When we consider Jesus to be the one who brings peace to Israel, all the prophetic puzzle pieces align and confirm his identity.
Conclusion: Yeshua Brought Peace and Will Bring Final Peace
We believe, based on the passages given above and many others, that Yeshua is the prophesied Messiah who would be sent to Israel to first bring peace through the removal of sins. The only way to do this transaction—swapping sins for peace—was through Yeshua’s death and resurrection. This was the prerequisite for Israel before she could be a holy nation without sin, living with God for eternity.
We do believe that Yeshua will usher in a full and final peace including the cessation of war in the future, but the removal of Israel’s sin through the death of Messiah was the first step in that plan. The second step is yet to come. For this reason, followers of Yeshua do not see the lack of worldwide peace as a hinderance to their faith in Yeshua as the Messiah. Instead, they are thankful for the work of peace that God has already performed in their hearts through the forgiveness of their sins and the lessening of their sinful inclinations. The forgiveness they have experienced and the presence of the divine Holy Spirit in their lives serve as down payments pointing to a fuller peace that is yet to come (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 4:30). Because of the internal peace they have already experienced, and the assurance they find in Yeshua’s resurrection from the dead, they wait with eager assurance for the worldwide external peace that Yeshua will bring at his return. When he returns, Israel will dwell securely in her own land, never again to be afraid (Ezek 37:25–28).
We have already begun to see the reestablishment of the Jewish people in the Holy Land in our lifetimes, a sure sign of the trustworthiness of God’s promises to his people. In the meantime, as we wait for external shalom, the Holy One of Israel invites Jewish and Gentile people throughout the world to find internal shalom through his Messiah—even today.
Bibliography
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Electronic Study Edition. Stuttgart, Germany: German Bible Society, 2003.
Driver, S. R., and Adolf Neubauer, trans. The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters. 2 vols. Oxford, UK: James Parker and Co., 1877.
Neusner, Jacob, ed. The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary. Translated by Jacob Neusner, Tzvee Zahavy, Alan J. Avery-Peck, B. Barry Levy, Martin S. Jafee, and Peter Haas. 22 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2011.
Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985.
Footnotes
- All Bible quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016). ↑
- Other biblical passages with similar messages include: Gen 6:5; Gen. 8:21; Ps 14:2–3; 53:2–3; Isa 53:6; Isa 59; Job 15:14–16; 25:4–6. New Testament passages include: Rom 3:23; 9–10; 5:12, Jas 3:12; 1 John 1:8–10. ↑
- All quotations of the Babylonian Talmud, unless otherwise noted, are from Jacob Neusner, ed., The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary, trans. Jacob Neusner et al., 22 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2011). ↑
- “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face away from you so that he does not hear.” ↑
- Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), v. Isa 53:5. ↑
- This reading interprets the “we” in this passage as the Prophet Isaiah and the Israelite nation, where Isaiah is speaking on behalf of his people, confessing his participation in sin and his need for forgiveness. ↑
- S. R. Driver and Adolf Neubauer, trans., The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, 2 vols. (Oxford, UK: James Parker and Co., 1877). For example, the Talmud reads, “What is his [Messiah’s] name? … Rabbis said, “His name is ‘the leper of the school house,’ as it is written, ‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted’” (Is. 53:4, Sanhedrin 98b). ↑
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