Friday, February 19, 2016

Jesus Quoting Isaiah




Luke 4:14-21 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

Isa 61:1-2 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

Isa 35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Isa 42:7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.

From Alfred Edersheim, a converted Rabbinic scholar in the 19th century -

"When unrolling, and holding the scroll, much than the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah must have been within range of His eyes. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the verses quoted by the Evangelist could not have formed the Haphtarah. [Edersheim explains earlier that the Haphtarah is a normal range of verses employed according to Jewish custom]. According to traditional rule (Massech. Soph. 12.7), the Haphtarah ordinarily consisted of not less than twenty-one verses, though, if the passage was to be "targumed" [Edersheim explains this means "expounded" by the preacher, also a well-known Jewish custom], or a sermon to follow, that number might be shortened to seven, five, or even three verses. Now the passage quoted by St. Luke consists really of only one verse..." Life And Times Of Jesus The Messiah, 1.453.

Jesus either added a verse from another section of Isaiah (examples above) in order to make sure that the minimum range of scripture was covered according to Jewish custom, or He merely "targumed" the passage, which, as Edersheim shows, was a common practice.

Luke stated that Jesus FOUND the PLACE where it was written. He did NOT say that Jesus QUOTED directly from the scroll, or that Jesus READ VERBATIM the scroll explicitly.

John Gill, also a master of Rabbinic literature stated with regard to this very verse in his commentary "...it being allowable for a reader in the prophets, to skip from place to place, which our Lord here did, in order to explain this passage more fully."

And he stated just previous to this "...interpreting it thus, "to the prisoners," "be ye revealed to the light" now because persons in prison are in darkness, and see no light, therefore they are represented as blind; and both are the case of sinners, they are in the prison of sin and of the law, and are blind, ignorant, and insensible of their state; until Christ both opens the prison, and sets them free, and opens their eyes, and gives them spiritual sight; when he says to the prisoners go forth, to them that are in
darkness show yourselves."

This is another passage where the so-called LXX adapted itself to the NT, not the other way around.

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