The Son of Man and Messianic Prophecy in the Old Testament

In the previous episodes with Dr. Matt Halsted, we discussed how trying to articulate the Old Testament’s messiah merely by appeal to passages that contain that word (Hebrew, mashiach) was fundamentally misguided. To this point, we’ve explored reading the Bible as story, understanding prophecy as “act, then re-enactment,” and a series of motifs that provide us with elements of a messianic resume (Davidic dynasty language, sonship, the seed/offspring, “branch” language, and servanthood themes from Isaiah). In this episode we turn to Daniel 7 to introduce another resume element—the “son of man” language intimately associated with ruling the nations in the divine council scene of that chapter.