How to Destroy Messianic Prophecies - three examples
How to Destroy Messianic Prophecies - three examples
How to Destroy Messianic Prophecies - Three examples
Number 1 - Haggai 2:7 The Desire of all nations
One of my favorite hymns, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, has the line "O come Desire of nations, come." Handel’s beautiful work, The Messiah, also has this line in one of the hymns taken from the King James Bible. "And the Desire of all nations shall come. But who may abide the day of His coming? For He is like a refiner's fire."
This line comes from Haggai 2:6,7: "For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land: And I will shake all nations, and THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts."
There are also references to this event in the New Testament. The book of Hebrews says in 12:26: "Whose voice then shook the earth; but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." Again, in Hebrews 10:37 we read: "For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry."
Matthew Henry comments on Haggai 2:6-7:
"He shall come as the desire of all nations — desirable to all nations, for in him shall all the families of the earth be blessed with the best of blessings — long expected and desired by the good people in all nations, that had any intelligence from the Old-Testament predictions concerning him."
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Haggai 2:7
“So Hebrews 12:26, which quotes this passage; the apostle compares the heavier punishment which awaits the disobedient under the New Testament with that which met such under the Old Testament. At the establishment of the Sinaitic covenant, only the earth was shaken to introduce it, but now heaven and earth and all things are to be shaken, all kingdoms that stand in the way of Messiah's kingdom, "which cannot be shaken," are to be upturned. Paul condenses together the two verses of Haggai 2:6-7 and 2:21-22, implying that it was one and the same shaking, of which the former verses of Haggai denote the beginning, the latter the end."
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown continue: "There is scarcely a prophecy of Messiah in the Old Testament which does not, to some extent at least, refer to His second coming."
"While the Jews as a nation desired Him not, the Gentiles, who are plainly pointed out by "all nations," accepted Him; and so to them He was peculiarly desirable. The "good tidings of great joy" were "to all people" (Luke 2:10). The Jews, and those in the adjoining nations instructed by them, looked for Shiloh to come unto whom the gathering of the people was to be, from Jacob's prophecy (Genesis 49:10). The early patriarchs, Job (Job 19:25-27) and Abraham (John 8:56), desired Him."
"fill this house with glory-- As the first temple was filled with the cloud of glory, the symbol of God, so this second temple was filled with the "glory" of God (John 1:14) veiled in the flesh at Christ's first coming, when He entered it and performed miracles there ; but that "glory" is to be revealed at His second coming, AS THIS PROPHECY IN ITS ULTERIOR REFERENCE FORETELLS." (Caps are mine)
John Gill comments on Haggai 2:6-7 (Caps are mine):"and the desire of all nations shall come; NOT THE DESIRABLE THINGS OF ALL NATIONS, or them with them, as their gold and silver; and which is the sense of Jarchi, Kimchi, and Aben Ezra; but this is contrary to the syntax of the words, to the context of Haggai 2:8, and to facts; ... but one far more glorious and excellent, is intended, EVEN THE MESSIAH, in whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed;... HIS PERSONAL COMING; his spiritual coming; his coming to take vengeance on the Jews; and HIS LAST COMING, of which some understand the words particularly."
John Calvin remarks on Haggai 2:6-7 "But we may understand what he says of Christ, Come shall the desire of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory. We indeed know that Christ was the expectation of the whole world, according to what is said by Isaiah. And it may be properly said, that when the desire of all nations shall come, that is, when Christ shall be manifested, in whom the wishes of all ought to center, the glory of the second Temple shall then be illustrious."
Other Bible versions that agree with the King James Holy Bible "and the desire of all nations shall come" are the Bishop's Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1587, Green's interlinear and Modern KJV 1998, Darby, Douay 1950, the 1936 Hebrew Publishing Company translation into English, the Spanish Sagradas Escrituras 1569, the Spanish Reina Valera 1960 (el Deseado de todas las naciones vendrá), the Italian Diodati 1602, Webster’s 1833 translation, the KJV 21st Century Version, God's Word Translation 1995, and Third Millenium Bible 1998.
J.P. Green's 2005 KJV3 reads: " And I will shake all the nations; and the Desire of all nations shall come. And I will fill this house with glory, says Jehovah of Hosts.hands; and you did not turn to Me, a state- ment of Jehovah."
The NIV is pretty good here with "and the desired of all nations will come."
Miles Coverdale 1535 gives the same idea with: " the comforte of all Heithen shall come"
God's Word to the Nations version 1995 - "and the one whom all the nations desire will come." This gives the same sense as that found in the King James Bible.
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible 1902 also reads similar to the King James Bible - "and the delight of all the nations, shall come in."
However things begin to go awry in the NKJV with its: "and THEY shall come to the Desire of All Nations." This is incorrect because it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is coming to us; not we who are not going to Him.
But with the NASB, RSV, NRSV, ESV, Holman Standard, and the Jehovah Witness New World Translation everything has changed, and this is no longer a prophecy about Christ at all. The NASB reads: "And I am going to shake all the nations and THEY WILL COME WITH THE WEALTH of all nations."
The Message - "And I'll shake down all the godless nations. They'll bring bushels of wealth and I will fill this Temple with splendor. GOD of the Angel-Armies says so."
The RSV, NRSV, ESV (2001 English Standard Version) and the 2004 Holman Standard all unite in reading: "and I will shake all nations so that THE TREASURES OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME IN, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts." Again, any prophesy about the return of Christ has been eliminated from this passage.
Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological seminary is writing his own bible version called the NET bible. He often rejects the Hebrew readings, changes many others, and frequently comes up with a translation that does not agree with any other version in print.
He renders this verse: "I will also shake up all the nations, and THEY(12) will offer their treasures;(13) then I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the sovereign Lord."
Then in his footnotes he admits to emending the Hebrew text. He tells us: (12) Heb “all the nations.” (13) Though the subject here is singular (“desire”), the preceding plural predicate mandates a collective subject, “desired (things)”. This has no direct reference to the coming of the Messiah."
In other words, Dr. Wallace first changed the text, and then said the Hebrew subject "the desire" does not agree with his changed text, and finally that the verse has no reference to the coming of the Messiah! Truly, modern scholarship is a marvel to behold.
The word used here for "desire" - #2532 khem-daw - does not mean "wealth", as the NASB says, nor "treasures" as the ESV, RSV, NET and Holman have it. The correct meaning refers not to THEY who will come, but to Christ, the Messiah, and the Desire of all nations. The NASB has only once translated this word as "wealth", and yet has the same word rendered as "desire" in Daniel 11:37 - "he will show no regard for... the desire of women".
This noun "desire" comes from the verb "to desire" # 2530 and is used in 1 Samuel 9:20 referring to the first king over Israel, when Samuel said to Saul "and on whom is all the DESIRE of Israel?." It is used again in Isaiah 53:2: "and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should DESIRE him." The Isaiah passage clearly refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, at His first coming in the flesh.
The same verb is used in Genesis 3:6 where the woman saw that the tree "was a tree to be desired to make one wise", and in Psalm 19:10 where the judgments of the LORD are described as "more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold."
The King James Bible is right, as always, and the statement by scholarly experts such as James White, who now works for the NASB committee, that we need to compare all versions to get an accurate sense of the meaning, is utter nonsense and results in total confusion.
Will Kinney