The Jewish Superman
Two outfits
The video above ends with the question “Who in all history could wear both these outfits of Messiah?”
Jerry Seigel’s Superman character helps us see starkly contrasting roles of the protagonist. Most followers of the Superman saga focus on his “hero” role as the cape-wearing, building-jumping, bullet-speeding, metal-bending, x-ray-visioning Man of Steel.
Yet, Clark Kent’s role is just as essential to the superhero’s character. In street-clothes, Clark, the “lowly Daily Planet reporter” appears as an Everyman – humble, unassuming, clumsy, self-effacing, and often the object of his co-worker’s disdain. Yet this innocuous facet of his identity serves his greater mission.
In Seigel’s comic book world you cannot have Superman without Clark Kent. It is not either/or, but both/and – because both roles are essential to the character’s mission.
The same is true of our Messiah: there is more to his role than bringing world peace – the primary identifying qualification most are expecting when Messiah arrives.
Traditional ideas and fanciful theories of Messiah abound. But the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) is the reliable source of details concerning Israel’s promised Mashiach (Messiah).
In the Tanakh
Our first glimpse of Messiah’s “Clark Kent identity” is in Genesis 3.[1] G-d informs the serpent that one of the descendants of our mother Eve will destroy Satan, the great enemy of our people, but will be bruised in the process.[2]
This bruised and suffering motif is developed throughout our Tanakh. This picture of a Clark-Kent-like Messiah is so clear our rabbis were compelled to posit two Messiahs and gave this suffering one the title Messiah ben Joseph.
This “Everyman” figure is clearly presented in the Tanakh, but he is not a second Messiah. Our Superman analogy helps here as well. To argue that Superman and Clark Kent are two different people because their roles are radically different ignores the obvious reality that both roles are essential to accomplishing the one mission. In Seigel’s world we cannot have Superman who saves without “Everyman” Clark Kent who first provides context for the saving.
Likewise, in G-d’s plan we cannot have the Messiah who brings peace without the Messiah who first suffers and dies. The Tanakh pictures both because each is essential to G-d’s provision of the peace for which we long.
We see in Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshua mi Natzeret in Hebrew) how both depictions are fulfilled. While we fully expect Him to return as Israel’s triumphant King Messiah who brings peace to the earth,[3] in His first coming to bring us peace He suffered and died before being raised to life everlasting.
This begs the question, “Why does G-d insist on a Messiah who suffers in order to bring peace?”
Why a suffering Messiah?
The answer to this question is not obvious to most of us simply because we have an inaccurate understanding of what it will take for peace to exist on earth. We assume if only we had a perfectly righteous and just leader we would experience righteousness and justice. Isn’t this the hope we take into every election? If we can just elect the right people our lives and our society will improve.
While this thinking is true to a limited extent, history proves it to be tragically flawed. Even when we have righteous leaders, their effectiveness is limited by us, their less-than-righteous subjects!
We know this to be the case from our people’s own experience as recorded in the Torah. In Exodus we read of our deliverance from bondage in Egypt and our being gathered as “am echad,” one people, under the perfect, righteous leadership of our true King, HaShem.
Yet, our story from Sinai on is not a pretty one. Time after time we rebelled, rejecting G-d’s rule over us. This is one of G-d’s summaries of who we are as people; “The L-RD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.”[4]
That is you and me! Need proof? Even Moshe Rabbeinu failed and as a result G-d barred him from entering haAretz. None of us follow well, even when our leader is perfect – and the results are catastrophic!
Our problem is deeper than just our behavior; it resides in our innermost being, the very essence of who we are. The Messiah’s ancestor King David put it this way, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”[5] This is not a commentary on his mother’s spiritual state, but his own – he was bent toward sin from birth, as are we all.
A few centuries later, speaking to King David’s royal descendants, Isaiah reminds us even the good things we do are defiled, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”[6]
Later, Jeremiah, lamenting Jerusalem’s imminent destruction and exile to Babylon, pinpointed the reason for it all, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”[7]
G-d knows even if Messiah would come to establish peace today, in our current state we would ruin it by rebelling. Baruch haShem, according to G-d’s perfect will, Messiah would first provide for the heart transformation essential to enjoying the peace he brings. To follow our analogy, G-d wrote the story knowing we need Clark Kent before enjoying Superman. Enter G-d’s suffering Messiah.
You may say, “Hey, wait! That’s not a part of Judaism” – and you would be right. But it should be, because the same One who promised the peace-bringing Messiah also promised the heart-transforming Messiah.
The solution to our problem
Moses understood our problem better than we do. Toward the end of his life he promised haShem Himself would solve our heart problem, “Moreover the L-RD your G-d will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the L-RD your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.”[8]
This is deep spiritual surgery. Not simply a repair, but a renewal. According to Jeremiah haShem Himself promises to transform our hearts through a new covenant:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the L-RD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the L-RD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the L-RD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their G-d, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the L-RD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the L-RD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”[9]
Note the basis of this new heart-transforming covenant: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” The peace Messiah provides requires heart transformation which requires the forgiveness of sin. This forgiveness is provided through Messiah’s suffering. This too sounds foreign to our understanding of Judaism. Yet, it is undeniably part of Messiah’s role in G-d’s plan as revealed in Scripture.
Isaiah’s prophecy
Read Isaiah’s prophecy for yourself, especially chapter 52 verse 13 all the way through chapter 53. In it you will read of a sorrowful suffering servant who, although guiltless himself, is rejected by his own people. He is the one on whom haShem lays the cost of Israel’s sin, for which He gives his life as an offering, providing forgiveness. He was buried, and yet lives to be highly esteemed. [If you know anything about the life of Jesus of Nazareth you will be tempted to think Isaiah wrote this as history because it so precisely describes Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.]
Why would G-d have Isaiah give our people such a detailed description 700 years before it happened? He did it so we would know without a doubt Jesus is our promised Messiah, our “peace-bringing Superman,” who also is the “humble Clark Kent,” the suffering servant who provides forgiveness, heart transformation and a new covenant. He is the one who upon his return will bring peace and rule as our Righteous King.
We encourage you to investigate the evidence on the In Search of Shalom website regarding how Jesus matches the Tanakh’s portrait of Messiah
and listen to the stories of individuals who enjoy Messiah’s peace for which we all long. We’re happy to dialogue with anyone searching to know the truth about G-d’s provision for true shalom.
See: Stories of Shalom
[1] “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15).
[2] See https://www.insearchofshalom.com/shalom/torah/parshat-bereishit for more on this passage.
[3] The Tanakh, from Genesis through Chronicles, points us to our Messiah. From Gan Eden through King David’s dynasty we find an increasingly detailed picture of a Messiah who will rule over Israel and the Gentile nations bringing the peace for which we all yearn. In passages such as Daniel 7, Isaiah 11:1-10, et al, we see Messiah ben David, the ultimate Jewish Superman! We are sure Messiah will bring peace because G-d tells us so.
[4] Exodus 32:9.
[5] Psalm 51:5.
[6] Isaiah 64:6.
[7] Jeremiah 17:9.
[8] Deuteronomy 30:6.
[9] Jeremiah 31:31-34.