Jesus and Isaiah on the Emmaus Road
ON THE EVENING of Easter Sunday we often read the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus. He joined two disciples as they were walking, but they did not recognise him. The disciples were amazed that the stranger did not, apparently, know what had happened in Jerusalem in the last few days. The stranger then began to expound the Scriptures, showing how the prophets had foreseen the events: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24.26). Our problem is: Which prophecies was Jesus expounding? Where in the Hebrew Scriptures is there a prophecy about the suffering of the Messiah? The obvious place to look is Isaiah 52-13-53.12, but in our present text, there is no such prophecy.
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Margaret Barker
is an independent scholar, a former President of the Society for Old Testament Study and a Methodist local preacher.