I. In the Old Testament
In the Old Testament
the word "Messiah" is not used alone as an abso
lute title, but is usually met in the phrase " the
anointed of Yahweh," meaning Yahweh's conse
crated
king. It is a title of honor
of the reigning
king of Israel from the time of Saul and David
(I Sam. xxiv. 6, 10,
and often). Once Yahweh ap
plies the term to the Persian King Cyrus, because
he had appointed him to carry out his
1. The designs (cf. also
I Kings xix. 15,
where
Original a heathen is to be anointed king over
Signification.
Syria because Yahweh intends to use
him as an instrument of punishment).
The implication of
the term was that
something of the sublimity and sacredness of his
God had been communicated to the
king, and he
stood before the people as the representative of
Yahweh, governing in his place. The relationship
of Yahweh to the people of his covenant became in
the case of the king a personal relationship. The
religion of Yahweh, which had originated in indi
vidual revelations of God to a few, tended, after it
had assumed a national form, toward the concen
tration of this relationship to God in a person. The
king was the natural focus for this tendency. He
was placed by the word of the prophet in that filial
relation to God in which the whole people had
long.been conscious of standing
(II Sam. vii. 14;
Ex. iv. 22;
Deut. xxxii. 6;
Hos. xi. 1;
see
Kingship in Israel).
The relationship became in this way
a more lifelike and intimate one. This religious
idealization of royalty had already attained a high
development in the period of the united kingdom,
especially under David. As Yahweh had been from
of
old the king of Israel, so David, who had brought
the ark of the covenant to Zion, endeavored to
realize the ideal. Psalms ii.,
Ludi., ex.,
state the
consequences of such a rule: Yahweh rules from
Zion over the whole world, and his anointed is
unconquerable and virtually Lord of all the earth.
This induced the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah,
Micah, and others to take their stand upon the
synthesis of Yahweh's residence in Zion and his
establishment there of a kingdom of the house of
David which was never to be overthrown (cf.
Joel iii. 16;
Amos i. 2;
Isa. ii. 2 sqq., iv. 2
