When approaching the Gospels, especially the book of Matthew, one of the most difficult issues to deal with among the uninitiated is its use of Biblical verses as evidence of supposed “messianic prophecies” that have been fulfilled. When a person familiar with Jewish Torah literature reads those verses in the Bible, he notices that quite often the verse is not Messianic, or is not even a prophecy at all.
However, the author is not writing for an ignorant audience, but for those who are familiar with the use of Pesharim.
So what is a “pesher” in contrast with a “prophecy”?
A Biblical Prophecy is the literal text of the Torah revealing God’s intention about someone or something. Usually (although not necessarily) a Prophecy starts with words such as; “Thus says the Lord,” or similar. After this, the message is clearly a warning of what is going to happen in the future if things go as they go. There’s often a revelation of what is in someone’s heart, and a call for repentance or obedience. For instance, Chapter 14 of Isaiah begins mocking at the king of Babel and then tells him what his destiny will be. This is clearly a prophecy. Since prophecies are written down, they require interpretation. The sages explain that there are many prophecies with more than one interpretation and prophecies that are subject to Israel’s behavior.
Pesher may be defined as interpretation of a Biblical verse which has been applied to an actual subject (a person or event) even though the literal Biblical text is not really talking about that actual subject. A Pesher may not be directly deduced from the literal text, but through different methods of interpretation. The Pesher subordinates the literal text to its own revelation.
The word “pesher” comes from Ecclesiastes 8:1 and from Daniel’s interpretations [pesharim] of dreams, and is based on the idea that every verse in the Bible has a literal meaning but also conceals a deeper message for the present generation, which can be revealed by those with deeper knowledge or [according to the Essenes] by the righteous Master. Basically, the Pesher makes a verse relevant to its generation. The Qumran literature is filled with Pesharim of many kinds; there are manuscripts entirely dedicated to interpret a book of the Bible, there are thematic Pesharim (which use different sources) and there are smaller individual revelations of a verse (cf. George Brooke: Qumran Pesher: Toward the Redefinition of a Genre. In: Revue de Qumran 10, pp. 483-503; see also: 1QpHab VII:4-5, the Damascus Document… etc).
In Rabbinic literature a Pesher can be labelled as a form of Midrash (especially of Aggadic nature). The so-called “Melchizedek Midrash” from the Dead Sea Scrolls is a Pesher. As an example of a Midrash reflecting Pesharim, there’s a Midrash (Tanhuma Toldot) that says that Messiah will be greater than Moses. How was this deduced? By reading Numbers 11:12: “… that you say to me, carry them in your bosom.” As is evident, there’s absolutely nothing about Messiah being greater than Moses at the literal level of interpretation. In fact there’s nothing about Messiah at all and there seems to be no context for such a claim. However, the Midrash reveals this based on homiletic study. In more modern times, rabbis have used pesher to identify Adolf Hitler with Amalek, or Edom with Christianity (cf. Ephraim Oshry, “the Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry,” p. 172; Abarbanel on Ovadiah).
There are interpretations based on actual prophecies. For example: Rabbi Israel Ber Oddeser of Breslev said that Rebbe Nahman fulfilled the words of Isaiah: “The world will be filled with the knowledge of God” (Song of Redeption p. 31-32). While the literal text of the Torah contains a real prophecy, Rabbi Israel is implying that anyone spreading Torah and Kabbalah to the world, as Rabbi Nahman did, fulfils this prophecy, even though the prophecy has not been fulfilled yet in our days.
What are known as “Messianic prophecies” are based on analytical Jewish hermeneutics. There are prophecies that are obviously meant to be fulfilled at the “end of days,” prophecies of destruction and prophecies of global peace, and there are prophecies of a future king from the line of King David, but the entire ‘final Messiah’ concept – as we understand it today – began with the second Temple, after the exile. From that time many of the literal interpretations began to be seen with different eyes, and the figure of a final Redeemer called Messiah gained some prominence. This doesn’t mean that it was “not there” in the first place. It means the concept was “Revealed” by our sages’ interpretations, in a combination of P’shat (plain meaning) with allusion (Remez).