Thirty-six passages from Israel’s scriptures set beside the New Testament scenes that read them as fulfilled in Jesus, from Bethlehem to the right hand of God.
About this study
The first Christians were Jews who read their own scriptures as pointing to Jesus. This page sets thirty-six of the best-known connections side by side: on the left the Old Testament passage, on the right the New Testament text that applies it to him. Each note gives the passage’s original setting in brief and how the New Testament reads it, so the reader can weigh both.
Each pair carries one of three labels. Explicit means the New Testament itself quotes the passage and applies it to Jesus, often with the words “that it might be fulfilled”. Allusion means the New Testament echoes the passage’s words or images without a formal citation. Typology means an earlier person, event or ritual is read as a pattern that foreshadows him.
His birth and line
6
I
Born of a virgin
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Now all this has happened that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a son. They shall call his name Immanuel,” which is, being interpreted, “God with us.”
Isaiah gave this sign to Ahaz, king of Judah, during a war crisis in the eighth century BC, and the child’s growth set a near horizon for it. The Hebrew word almah means a young woman of marriageable age, while the Greek translation Matthew follows has parthenos, “virgin”. Matthew reads the sign as reaching its fullness in Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit and named “God with us”.
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me who is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times.
Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them where the Christ would be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is written through the prophet, ‘You Bethlehem, land of Judah, are in no way least among the princes of Judah; for out of you shall come a governor who shall shepherd my people, Israel.’”
Micah, an eighth-century BC prophet, looked for a ruler from Bethlehem, the home town of King David, whose roots reach back to ancient times. In Matthew it is the chief priests and scribes who give this answer to Herod the Great, the Roman-backed king of Judea, joining Micah’s words to the shepherd language of 2 Samuel 5:2.
When your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will set up your offspring after you, who will proceed out of your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
Behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and shall name him ‘Jesus.’ He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. There will be no end to his Kingdom.”
Through the prophet Nathan, God promised David a son who would build the temple and a dynasty that would last forever; its first fulfilment was Solomon and the kings after him. Luke’s angel speaks to Mary in the same terms, and Acts 2:30 and Romans 1:3 make the Davidic claim explicit.
IV
A star out of Jacob
Echoed
The prophecy
I see him, but not now. I see him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel …
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who is born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him.”
Balaam, a foreign seer hired to curse Israel, instead foresaw a ruler rising from Jacob like a star. Matthew does not quote the oracle, but the star that leads eastern wise men to a newborn king draws on the same royal image, and Revelation 22:16 calls Jesus “the bright and morning star”.
V
Called out of Egypt
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
He arose and took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Hosea looks back to the exodus, when God called Israel, his son, out of slavery. Matthew uses his fulfilment formula for a pattern rather than a forecast: Jesus, the Son, relives Israel’s story, going down into Egypt and coming out again.
Yahweh says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”
Then Herod … sent out and killed all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding countryside, from two years old and under … Then that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; she wouldn’t be comforted, because they are no more.”
Rachel, wife of the patriarch Jacob and mother of Israel’s tribes, was buried on the road to Bethlehem; Jeremiah pictures her mourning the exiles of his own day, and the following verses promise their return. Matthew hears her lament again in Herod’s killing of the Bethlehem children.
His ministry
5
VII
A voice in the wilderness
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
The voice of one who calls out, “Prepare the way of Yahweh in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God.
In those days, John the Baptizer came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make the way of the Lord ready! Make his paths straight!”
Isaiah announces a highway through the desert for God to lead the exiles home from Babylon. All four Gospels apply the voice to John the Baptist, the desert preacher who baptised Jesus, so that the way prepared for Israel’s God becomes the way prepared for Jesus.
VIII
A great light in Galilee
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time he has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The light has shined on those who lived in the land of the shadow of death.
Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light; to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”
Zebulun and Naphtali, the northern tribal lands around the Sea of Galilee, had been humbled in war; Isaiah promises that they will be the first to see the light of deliverance. Matthew finds that promise in Jesus making Capernaum, a fishing town on the lake, the base of his ministry.
IX
Good news to the poor
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor …
The book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. … He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Isaiah’s anointed herald proclaims release and comfort to the afflicted of Zion. In the synagogue of Nazareth, his home town, Jesus reads the passage, blending in a line from Isaiah 58:6 and stopping before “the day of vengeance of our God”, and declares it fulfilled that day.
When evening came, they brought to him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
This line comes from Isaiah’s poem of the suffering servant (Isaiah 52:13–53:12). Matthew applies it first not to the cross but to an evening of healing in Capernaum, where Jesus takes the people’s sicknesses on himself.
XI
The serpent lifted up
Foreshadowed
The prophecy
Yahweh said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” Moses made a serpent of bronze, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of bronze, he lived.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
In the wilderness, Israelites bitten by snakes lived when they looked at the bronze serpent Moses set on a pole. Speaking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Jerusalem council, Jesus takes the scene as a figure of his own lifting up on the cross, and of the life that comes from looking to him.
Entry to Jerusalem and betrayal
5
XII
The king on a donkey
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you! He is righteous, and having salvation; lowly, and riding on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your King comes to you, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah, a prophet of the return from exile, pictures Jerusalem’s king arriving humbly, bringing peace to the nations. Jesus deliberately acts the sign out, sending for the animal and riding into the city at Passover; Matthew names both a donkey and a colt where Mark has one colt, following the doubled line of the Hebrew poem.
Haven’t you even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord. It is marvelous in our eyes’?”
Psalm 118, sung by pilgrims at the festivals, celebrates a reversal: what was thrown aside becomes the stone that holds the building together. Jesus quotes it in the temple at the close of his parable of the wicked tenants, and Peter returns to it in Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:7.
XIV
Betrayed by a friend at table
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who ate bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me.
I don’t speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.’
The psalmist, sick and surrounded by enemies, grieves most over a trusted friend who shared his bread and turned against him. At the Last Supper Jesus applies the line to Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, who would hand him over that night.
XV
Thirty pieces of silver
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
I said to them, “If you think it best, give me my wages; and if not, keep them.” So they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver. Yahweh said to me, “Throw it to the potter—the handsome price that I was valued at by them!” I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in Yahweh’s house.
Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, “They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him upon whom a price had been set, whom some of the children of Israel priced, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.”
Zechariah, acting the part of a shepherd rejected by the flock, is paid an insulting wage of thirty pieces of silver and throws it to the potter in the temple. Matthew sees the same price in Judas’s payment, flung back into the temple and spent on a potter’s field. Matthew names Jeremiah, though the clearest wording is Zechariah’s; the usual explanation is that he blends Jeremiah’s passages about a potter and a field.
“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered …
Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’
Zechariah’s oracle speaks of God’s own shepherd struck down and the flock scattered before a people is refined. On the way to Gethsemane, the olive grove where he was arrested, Jesus applies it to himself and his disciples, who that night all fled.
His suffering and death
11
XVII
Silent as a lamb
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.
Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. As a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he doesn’t open his mouth. … The eunuch answered Philip, “Who is the prophet talking about? About himself, or about someone else?” Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him about Jesus.
Isaiah’s servant goes to his death without protest. The Gospels record Jesus keeping silence before the high priest and before Pilate (Mark 14:61; 15:5), and in Acts Philip, one of the seven chosen to serve the Jerusalem church, explains the passage to an Ethiopian court official as a word about Jesus.
… because he poured out his soul to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
The servant poem ends with one who dies among the guilty while bearing their sins and praying for them. On the night of his arrest Jesus quotes the line of himself, and Luke goes on to tell of his crucifixion between two criminals (Luke 23:32–33).
For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all of my bones. They look and stare at me.
But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” … Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.”
Psalm 22 is the lament of a man surrounded by enemies who is finally rescued and praises God. The received Hebrew text reads “like a lion” at this point, while the ancient Greek translation has a verb meaning “dug” or “pierced”, and the reading is debated. The New Testament does not quote this line, but its accounts of the nail wounds shown to Thomas, the doubting disciple, led Justin Martyr, the second-century Christian writer, to make the connection explicit.
Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top throughout. Then they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to decide whose it will be,” that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which says, “They parted my garments among them. They cast lots for my clothing.”
In the psalm the sufferer’s enemies share out his clothes as though he were already dead. All four Gospels report the soldiers dividing Jesus’s garments, and John, who quotes the verse, sees its two parallel lines in two acts: the garments shared out, and lots cast for the seamless tunic.
After this, Jesus, seeing that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I am thirsty!” Now a vessel full of vinegar was set there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop, and held it at his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished!”
Psalm 69 is the cry of an innocent man insulted by those around him, given poison and vinegar in place of food and drink. John says Jesus spoke of his thirst so that Scripture would be fulfilled without naming the passage; this psalm, with Psalm 22:15, is the likely background, and the Gospels each tell of the sour wine offered at the cross.
XXII
“My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus cries the opening words of Psalm 22 from the cross in Aramaic, the language he spoke. The psalm moves from desolation to public praise and the nations turning to God (Psalm 22:22–31), and readers have long debated whether the cry voices only the anguish or also calls to mind the whole psalm’s ending.
… Do not break any of its bones. … He protects all of his bones. Not one of them is broken.
Exodus 12:46; Psalm 34:20 In context →The fulfilment
but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they didn’t break his legs. … For these things happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “A bone of him will not be broken.”
The Passover law forbade breaking any bone of the lamb, and Psalm 34 promises that God guards every bone of the righteous. When the soldiers break the legs of the men crucified with Jesus but find him already dead, John sees both texts fulfilled at once: Jesus is the righteous one and the true Passover lamb.
I will pour on David’s house and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication. They will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son …
However, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. … Again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they pierced.”
Zechariah foresees Jerusalem, given a new spirit, mourning over one it has pierced as a family mourns an only son. The Hebrew reads “look to me” where John has “look on him”, and the shift in pronouns is discussed. John applies the verse to the soldier’s spear thrust, and Revelation 1:7 to the day when every eye will see him.
When evening had come, a rich man from Arimathaea named Joseph, who himself was also Jesus’ disciple, came. This man went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. … Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock.
Isaiah’s servant, though innocent, is buried as one of the wicked and “with a rich man”; the Hebrew of this line is difficult and translations vary. Matthew alone calls Joseph of Arimathea rich, and tells how he laid Jesus in his own new rock-cut tomb after asking Pilate, the Roman governor, for the body.
But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds. For you were going astray like sheep; but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
At the heart of Isaiah’s servant poem, onlookers realise that the one they despised was suffering in their place. Whether the servant is the prophet, Israel or a single figure to come is an old question of interpretation. 1 Peter weaves the poem’s words into its account of the cross without a formal citation, and this reading of the servant became central to the Christian understanding of Jesus’s death.
Your lamb shall be without defect, a male a year old. … They shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two door posts and on the lintel, on the houses in which they shall eat it.
On the night of the exodus, the blood of a spotless lamb marked the houses God passed over and spared. Paul calls Christ “our Passover”, John the Baptist hails him as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), and John’s Gospel places his death on the day the Passover lambs were prepared.
Resurrection and exaltation
5
XXVIII
The sign of Jonah
Foreshadowed
The prophecy
Yahweh prepared a huge fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, but no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Jonah, the prophet who fled God’s call, was swallowed by a great fish and brought out alive on the third day. Asked for a sign, Jesus offers only this one: his own time in the grave and return. The span from Friday to Sunday follows the ancient habit of counting part days as whole ones.
XXIX
Not abandoned to the grave
Cited as fulfilled
The prophecy
For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption.
“Brothers, I may tell you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. … he foreseeing this, spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul wasn’t left in Hades, and his flesh didn’t see decay. This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses.
The psalmist trusts that God will not hand him over to Sheol, the realm of the dead; whether he first meant rescue from death or life beyond it is debated. Peter at Pentecost, and Paul in Acts 13:35–37, argue that David died and his tomb is still there, so the words find their full sense in Jesus raised from the dead.
We bring you good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this to us, their children, in that he raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your father.’
Psalm 2 is a royal psalm, probably sung when a king of Judah was enthroned and God declared him his son. Preaching in a synagogue in Asia Minor, Paul reads the decree as spoken over Jesus at his resurrection, and Hebrews 1:5 uses it to set the Son above the angels.
For David didn’t ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit by my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ “Let all the house of Israel therefore know certainly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
A royal psalm in which God seats the king beside him in the place of honour. Jesus himself asks how David can call his own descendant “Lord” (Mark 12:35–37), and from Peter’s first sermon onward it is one of the passages the New Testament returns to most often to describe his exaltation.
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. …
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”
In Daniel’s vision the empires of the world appear as beasts, and then one like a son of man receives an everlasting kingdom from God, the Ancient of Days. Whether the figure was first an individual or stood for “the holy ones” of Israel is debated. On trial before the high priest Caiaphas, Jesus joins Daniel’s words to Psalm 110, and it is this answer that brings the charge of blasphemy.
The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Good News beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you all the nations will be blessed.”
When God called Abraham, he promised that through him and his descendants all the families of the earth would be blessed. Paul reads that promise as the gospel announced in advance, fulfilled as non-Jews come to share Abraham’s blessing through faith in Christ.
Indeed, he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the nations, that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth.”
“Now you are releasing your servant, Master, according to your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”
God tells his servant that restoring Israel is too small a task: he is to be a light to the nations and salvation to the end of the earth. Simeon, an old man waiting in the temple for Israel’s comfort, takes the infant Jesus in his arms and greets him in Isaiah’s words; in Acts 13:47 Paul and Barnabas take the same commission for their mission.
“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, … I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jeremiah, the prophet of Jerusalem’s fall to Babylon, promised a covenant written on the heart, with sins forgiven and remembered no more. At the Last Supper Jesus calls the cup “the new covenant in my blood”, and Hebrews 8:8–12 quotes Jeremiah’s promise in full as fulfilled in him.
“It will happen afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. And also on the servants and on the handmaids in those days, I will pour out my Spirit.
But this is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘It will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.
Joel promised that God’s Spirit, once given to a few prophets, would be poured out on young and old, slave and free. At Pentecost, the Jewish harvest festival fifty days after Passover, Peter tells the crowd in Jerusalem that this is what they are witnessing in the disciples, poured out, he says, by the exalted Jesus (Acts 2:33).
