The first thing to do here is to attempt the impossible. There seems to be some assumptions about who the Bible is referring to as the Son of David or to the Throne of David. There are more than a few places in the Bible that make this a bit confusing specifically in regard to Luke 1:32.
”He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.”
Let’s begin with the first problem in regard to the transitions, or the lack there of. The explanations of the scenes of Jesus being born, to what is said right after that event, are either happening too quickly or not at all. It feels like it is being rushed or “pushed,” although Matthew does not appear to do this as much as Luke does.
Matthew 1:21-23, ”And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”
As “JESUS” is in all caps to emphasize the first name given, let’s remember that this name was actually a title that means “The Lord our Savior.” This is stated very quickly but efficiently of the who and why. Comparing this with Luke 1:31,
”And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS.”
We get similar information that there will be a Son and His name will be Jesus, but we’re missing the reason why He was born. We don’t get this information until the next verse, and it is referring to something completely different than what is mentioned in Matthew 1:21-23.
Luke states in 1:32, ”He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.”
Luke is moving right past the reasons that Matthew gave for Jesus’s birth, to stating what His position of authority will be. I have read that some of the Apostles were trying to interject this position of authority intentionally into the Scripture to “prove” to the Jewish Priests that Jesus was the promissed Messiah. To attempt to “legitimize” Jesus’s coming by stating that he was the expected Messiah, even though that had no impact on the Priests attitude at all and that Jesus was already ascended by the time these Epistles were written.
Also, in regard to both Luke and Matthew using passages from Isaiah to “prove” that Jesus was the expected Messiah or the son of David, the King, we can also reference another set of verses to show that this was not meant to be a direct relation to Jesus as that person. At least if it were meant that way, they miscalculated the Holy Spirit leading them to state this in Matthew 25:31-40,
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”
By Luke stating that this was the expected Messiah that they were waiting for, Luke was still using Scripture that was relevant to the truth, thereby saving the Scripture from being inaccurate, but still interestingly confusing. Matthew and Luke were speaking of the Messiah indirectly which was probably not their intention, but they were trying to prove the significance of Jesus’s birth from prophecy to the Hebrew Priests, to what the priests wanted to hear. Matthew attempts to give us the information that we need by stating, 1:22,
”So all of this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel’, which is translated, ‘God with us’.” Look at the wording very carefully here.
Matthew states that “it was done” (Jesus’s birth) so that it “might be fulfilled” (yet to be fulfilled). In other words what was to be fulfilled didn’t happen yet with Jesus’s birth. Jesus can’t be, the trigger for the event, and be the event. He didn’t fulfill the prophecy by just being born, that was the necessary component for what was to happen next for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Matthew then states what is being fulfilled by quoting Isaiah 7:14 from Matthew 1:23,
”’Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated ‘God with us’.”
So, Matthew didn’t really mess up, he stated the purpose and pointed to one of verses where it was referring to the Promised Messiah, because remember that Jesus had to be born in the flesh before what was prophesized in Isaiah could happen. Where it begins to get messy is in regard to the verse in Luke 1:32-33,
”He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Isaiah 9:6-7, ”For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”
In the loosest of terms of paraphrasing of Isaiah 9:6-7, and in an extremely technical way, Luke is giving the reason for Jesus’s birth, but the implication is that Jesus is the expected Messiah. Hence to forego all other reasons for Jesus’s birth and go straight to Jesus’s authority. The common factors are that a Child is born, He will be Great, He will be on the throne of David, and to His governance there shall be no end. What is missing in Lukes verses is what Jesus’s purposes are besides His given authority. His authority isn’t really a purpose, it’s a necessity or a result of Him being the Son of God. Matthew stated that Jesus’s primary purpose was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, but clearly Luke doesn’t mention this.
By him not mentioning that, he fails in regard to the necessary transition piece, that would be stating the primary reasons that Jesus was conceived. Let’s pretend for a second that we don’t know anything, and we were reading these passages for the first time. Would we not want to know the reason that Jesus was born, first? Then the very first piece of information that was given to us for a reason was that so that Jesus would be sitting on the throne of David. Would we not scratch our heads on that? If the reason was to fulfill a prophecy that was not yet fulfilled, then what prophecy was not yet fulfilled? Prophecies don’t fulfill themselves for the sake of fulfilling the prophecy and not for its own sake of fulfilling it.
Also, look at John 17:12, “While I was with them, I protected them by the authority that you gave me. I guarded them, and not one of them became lost except the one who was destined for destruction, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
Within the Book of John we get a reason for Jesus to come into this world. Why didn’t either Matthew or Luke mention this? All we have to do to find the answer is look at the prophecies that have not been fulfilled
Matthew 5:17-18, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”
The answer is right in front of us, we just have to be willing to look at it. Did the Apostles know of the mystery when they wrote these Epistles, apparently not. If they thought that Armageddon was going to happen in their time, how could they know that civilization would go on for over 2000 more years. Better yet, if they thought that Jesus was the Expected Messiah, then why would the world continue for 2000 years in their eyes, or better yet, if Jesus was the Expected Messiah, why did it continue for another 2000+ years.
Isaiah was written for the end times, not the period of time that they were in. Thus, when Luke was pointing to the verses in Isaiah, he was not pointing to the fulfillment, he was pointing to a component of that fulfillment. Yet they were not completely wrong for pointing to that component, because Jesus was and is necessary to carrying out what will eventually transpire or be fulfilled by the prophets. The problem isn’t in what they said, it’s in what they implied.
Nevertheless, Isaiah was quoted twice as one of the reasons for Jesus’s conception, but one of those reasons was in regard to another birth that was yet to come. Hence, the Holy Spirit allowing this to be spoken. What is also interesting is that the Spiritual birth possibly happened at the same time that Jesus was born, because of what it is stated in Luke 1:80,
”So the child grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel.”
This is the New Testament prophesizing of a future event to come! Look at what else is very interesting there. The child was in the deserts. How many things have happened in the deserts?
We might be able to more easily understand why the transition in Luke 1:31-33 was non-existent or hasty, because it didn’t match the complete reality of what was happening. This could also be “chalked” up into another situation of where the Bible is illustrating its use of duality when speaking of both Messiahs and how they may at times appear to be inseparable, or that there is this 2000-year tag-team relationship between them. The duality of the two Messiahs can also be seen in Isaiah as it is actually prophesizing that there will be two Sons given to Isaiah. Hence, we can use this as further evidence to collaborate with the facts. That it was prophesized that there would be two Great ones born.
This makes sense that they were not physically born at the same time, because the other had to appear at a future point in time, tag-team. This also explains why both Matthew and Luke would be using Isaiah as the illustration to show the prophecy of the Messiah’s births. There have been so many attempts and self-proof in regard to Mary being in the line of David to prove that there is only one Messiah. Then this “evidence” is used to further prove these two passages that Jesus has to be the one who will sit on the throne of David, but the reality is that the only evidence that there is of Mary’s lineage is with her cousin Elizabeth who is actually a Levite which gives much more evidence that Mary is actually from the tribe of Levi which would explain Jesus being of the tribe of Aaron.
The other evidence is that Mary’s Father and Mother, Joachim and Anne, were both Levites as noted in Luke 3:23 where Joachim is also known as Heli or Eli and his father Matthat, whose is a son of Levi (hint). The King Messiah will also be from the tribe of Judah as explained in Hebrews 7:14. The Jesuit Christians assume that this can only be Jesus, but did anyone, anyone, notice that this verse is surrounded by the word Melchizedek? This part of the Bible is clearly speaking of the Sun of Righteousness.
The Tribe of Manasseh holds the area of Galilee and the town of Nazareth. Manasseh inherited a tribe for this region and remains the firstborn despite not receiving the firstborn blessings from Jacob. When the Bible states that someone is say Nazarene, it’s stating that they are born there. Jesus was not born in Nazareth, He was born in Bethlehem, hence he can’t be Nazarene except that He grew up there (although that might seem culturally logical, that is by these times not by biblical standards). Also, Manasseh was the son of Joseph who received the blessings of Jacob to be like Jacob’s sons. Manasseh then is the son of Joseph who is Nazarene. Therefore, in John 1:45 where it says,
“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
What is most notable here is that Philip and Nathanael could be mistaken that this is the person who they think Jesus is. It fits in line with others attempting to recognizing Jesus as the Davidic Messiah, but then Jesus is kind of giving a non-response of “if you say so,” but this Scripture is pulled from Isaiah 9:1-2,
“But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”
This can only be tied to the Messiah because of what Nazareth means, which is “to watch” or “branch” as in the Branch of Jesse. Look at how this goes, Jesus whose parents were from Nazareth brings Jesus to Bethlehem to be born, but the other Son of God who is Spiritually born, spiritually inherits the lands of Manasseh (Galilee), but is spiritually born in Bethlehem. Even though the Davidic Messiah is from Judah, he isn’t physically born there. If he could be either a Jew or a Gentile, then why would he need be.
Judah, the son of Jacob is actually the only one who inherits the land of Judah, but the Messiah is to be a King for all lands. It only says that he was born in Bethlehem. David is the son of Jesse; so Jesse’s branch would be equitable to the son of David who would bring the northern and southern tribes back together again. What we have is a Nazarene who was born in Bethlehem who brings back the twelve tribes together and who reigns as a King. Jesse is from Bethlehem, so a branch from Jesse would be the connection between the northern tribes to the southern tribes.
To summarize this; Jesus isn’t the prophecy, He is staging it to happen. Jacob receives two Kingdoms, the northern and the southern, but his sons, adopted by Isaac, only receive lands to the north. After some quarreling and fighting between the two sons of Ephraim and Manasseh, King David brings the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah together as one nation. Messiah ben Manasseh or ben David is reunited with the Kingdom of Judah through the Spiritual birth of the Branch of Jesse. Hence, we have a second reunification happening between the periods of the past and present who are being represented as the priests of Ephraim, the power of Manasseh, and the Branch of Jesse to include Judah who are also including the Gentiles.
It’s extremely difficult to say that the Apostles were biased, but there are other things that don’t make sense either. What was the point in Jesus being birthed by a virgin if Jesus’s father wasn’t God, or how can Jesus have two fathers? How can Jesus have a lineage tied to David if Joseph didn’t help to conceive? Why are there two different lineages to prove Jesus’s lineage and neither one proves that He is the son of David? Is Jesus talking about himself as the Son of Man in the third person? Can Jesus have two virgin births, Mary and the Prophetess? We could go on, and we will in other articles.
