Moses
Deuteronomy is the final book in the Torah. It is the last set of instructions given to the Israelites before their military conquest of the holy land. God commanded the Israelites to invade the land and displace the inhabitants and set it up as their home and to follow His customs and laws. This happens in the book of Joshua.
One of the better known verses in Deuteronomy is the promise of a Prophet. This happens in Deuteronomy 18:15. The verse reads:
A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kindred; that is the one to whom you shall listen.
Islamic apologists like Shabir Ally and Zakir Hussain say that this is Muhammad. Christians say it’s Jesus Christ. Who is correct? Usually the debate revolves around the word kindred. Is it kindred in an immediate context such as among the Israelites, like the king in Chapter 17, or is it kindred in a wider context as to include fellow non-Israelite Semites such as the Arabs. For most people, the debate starts and ends with this word. However, there is another way of looking at this.
Let’s look at five chapters of Deuteronomy. We will look at Chapter 18, the two chapters before it and the two chapters after it. Remember that Deuteronomy is instructions for the Israelites in the land that God has given them, where they are to displace the nations living there. Here are some quotes from those five chapters.
You may not sacrifice the Passover in any of the communities which the Lord, your God, gives you; only at the place which the Lord, your God, will choose as the dwelling place of his name, and in the evening at sunset, at the very time when you left Egypt, shall you sacrifice the Passover.
– Deuteronomy 16: 5 – 6
You shall rejoice in the presence of the Lord, your God, together with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, and the Levite within your gates, as well as the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow among you, in the place which the Lord, your God, will choose as the dwelling place of his name.
– Deuteronomy 16: 11
In all the communities which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes to administer true justice for the people.
– Deuteronomy 16: 18
Justice, justice alone shall you pursue, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you.
– Deuteronomy 16: 20
If there is found in your midst, in any one of the communities which the Lord, your God, gives you, a man or a woman who does evil in the sight of the Lord, your God, and transgresses his covenant, by going to serve other gods, by bowing down to them, to the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, contrary to my command; and if you are told or hear of it, you must investigate it thoroughly. If the truth of the matter is established that this abomination has been committed in Israel, you shall bring the man or the woman who has done this evil deed out to your gates and stone the man or the woman to death.
– Deuteronomy 17: 2 – 5
When you have come into the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, should you then decide, “I will set a king over me, like all the surrounding nations,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord, your God, will choose. Someone from among your own kindred you may set over you as king; you may not set over you a foreigner, who is no kin of yours.
– Deuteronomy 17: 14 – 15
When you come into the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of the nations there.
– Deuteronomy 18: 9
Although these nations whom you are about to dispossess listen to their soothsayers and diviners, the Lord, your God, will not permit you to do so.
– Deuteronomy 18: 14
When the Lord, your God, cuts down the nations whose land the Lord, your God, is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their cities and houses, you shall set apart three cities in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you to possess.
– Deuteronomy 19: 1 – 2
Thus, in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage, innocent blood will not be shed and you will not become guilty of bloodshed.
– Deuteronomy 19: 10
You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary markers erected by your forebears in the heritage that will be allotted to you in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you to possess.
– Deuteronomy 19: 14
I think the context is pretty clear where things in Deuteronomy 18 will happen. In the land that God is giving them. In the land where they’re going to drive out their enemies. It is obvious that the kindred refers to their fellow Israelites, and not other neighboring Semitic nations such as the Arabs. If the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18 was from the deserts of Arabia, wouldn’t the Scripture specifically point this out to the readers since everything seems to be happening in the land that God is giving them? Would God point it out? Yes.
We know that God would point it out because that is what God does in Chapter 20. Deuteronomy 20 is about military tactics for the Israelites. The first nine verses are rules of war. Verses 10 through 14 are instructions on how to attack enemy cities not situated in the land that God is giving them. This is about the cities of neighboring nations that they may have to fight in a future war. Verse 15 reads:
That is how you shall deal with any city at a considerable distance from you, which does not belong to these nations here.
In verse 16 we have a context shift. In verses 16 through 18 we read:
But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage, you shall not leave a single soul alive. You must put them all under the ban—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord, your God, has commanded you, so that they do not teach you to do all the abominations that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord, your God.
We can see that God would specify if anything happens outside of the land that He is giving the Israelites as he does in Chapter 20. He doesn’t do this for Chapter 18 or in most places in the book. It is obvious that the Prophet has to come from inside the land that God is giving them. Mecca is not part of that land. The Arabs living in Mecca are not the kindred spoken of in the chapter.
On the other hand, Bethlehem is in the land that the Israelites were given. Jesus Christ appeared to the Children on Israel while they lived in their land. Jesus Christ is the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18. The earliest followers of Jesus recognized this and recorded it in Acts 3: 19 – 23. In those verses, Peter says:
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Messiah already appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. For Moses said:
‘A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you
from among your own kinsmen;
to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you.
Everyone who does not listen to that prophet
will be cut off from the people.’
If we simply take Deut 18:15-18 as it is, the text does not mention a location. So I don’t see this as part of the criteria.
In any case, if you move beyond the MT and the LXX, there are other versions of the Biblical text such as the the Samaritan and Dead Sea Scrolls variants. In them the prophecy of the Moses like prophet is given in the Book of Exodus at Sinai. Which according to Paul is in Arabia. This would also mean that believing in this Prophet is a clause of the Siniatic contract i.e. it is part of the covenant itself.
As for the quotation from Peter in Acts 3, it shows that the fulfilment of the prophecy was a future event they were anticipating.
See the timeline presented in the section:
1) Jesus must first go to heaven
2) Then a period of restoration when Moses like prophet comes.
This is similar to the Paraclete in John:
1) Jesus must first leave
2) Only then Paraclete comes who like the Moses like prophet “will not speak of his own authority” and will “speak what he hears” (John 16:13)
On a side note: If Paraclete=Holy Spirit=God he should be able to speak of his own authority.
Assuming that the authors of John and Acts were collecting/translating/paraphrasing from earlier sources we can see the striking parallels between the two. Both require Jesus to leave earth for the future event (Paraclete/Moses like-prophet) to come about.
Hello Fawaz,
Thanks for the comments.
“If we simply take Deut 18:15-18 as it is, the text does not mention a location. So I don’t see this as part of the criteria.”
Well, it sounds like you’re saying that if we ignore the context, and just take a few verses, it’s alright. Verse 9 specifies that the location is to the Israelites in the promised land, not scattered pagan communities along with a few Jews in Arabia. I don’t know how this can be separated. Obviously as a Muslim, you believe other Prophets came between Moses and Muhammad. Which one is it talking about? If you only take those verses it could apply to any of them. There is nothing to distinguish Muhammad. We need to look at the wider context like verse 9.
Well, Deuteronomy is in the covenant at Sinai and everything in it. Everyone under that covenant was an Israelite. Jesus ushered in a new covenant which believers in Him are now under. The promise of Deuteronomy 18 was the last prophecy for the Mosaic covenant.
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say about Acts 3. You mentioned a timeline. Can you quote specific verses because Peter would heard Jesus talk about the Paraclete, would have known what he said when he spoke in Acts 3.
When it says the Paraclete won’t speak on His own authority, it means that he’s not a separate deity, that’s all.
I think your goal is trying to find a connection between the Paraclete and the Prophet like Moses. I don’t think this works. At least not with the verses you’ve laid out. Do you have other verses?
God Bless.
Thanks for the response.
Upon reading Deut 18, I see no reason why the Moses like prophet should come from the land of the Israelites. This is not laid out as a criteria.
You mentioned that there are verses in the 5 chapters that mention rulings connected to what happens in the land specifically. In all these citations the land is explicitly mentioned. But in Deut 18:15-18, there is no explicit mention of the land as part of the ruling. So this is left open-ended as to where this Prophet must come from.
Furthermore, if you think that because the adjacent verses mention rulings that are to do with the land, this must mean the Prophet will come in this land, then we can also look at other aspects of the adjacent verses. For instance, the adjacent verses are about a context of Israelite dominance when other nations are subdued, does that mean this prophecy could not have been fulfilled when the Israelites were subjugated by a foreign empire like the Romans?
My point is that I simply don’t see either of these issues as relavant.
I mentioned SP and DSS versions of Exodus to show that the prophecy was given in Arabia. So if location is important then it would be fulfilled in Arabia.
Furthermore, there is the question of what exactly constitutes the promised land. Genesis we are told the land between the Wadi of Egypt and the Euphrates would be given to Abraham’s descendants with no conditions. When the land promises are mentioned by Moses and Joshua there are conditions placed. These conditions were partially met so the promise to Abraham was only partially fulfilled with the Israelites. The full extent of the land was to be ruled by descendants of Abraham in such a way to have a lasting impact on monotheism. This happened only under the Prophet and his companions when members of the many branches of Abraham’s family tree came to possess all of the land. There is much more to this discussion that cannot be mentioned in a single comment.
If you want proof that the ancient Israelites considered the land promise to Abraham to include Arabia read Genesis Apocryphon in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It tells us that after God promised Abraham the land he travelled throughout the territory including Arabia.
As for Peter’s speech in Acts 3, do you understand it to mean that Peter believed that Deut 18:15-18 had already been fulfilled? He places this prophecy as a future event of a period of restoration still to come. This is understood by Christians to mean the second coming. But if Peter meant to say that Jesus is this prophet, then Deut 18:15-18 would already have been fulfilled in the first coming. I would say that what he actually meant is that the future fulfilment of Deut 18:15-18 is the pre-requisite of the Second Coming. In other words Jesus must remain in heaven until this prophecy is fulfilled.
And God knows best.
Hello Fawaz,
“Upon reading Deut 18, I see no reason why the Moses like prophet should come from the land of the Israelites. This is not laid out as a criteria.”
Well, verse 9 indicates that it’s the promised land being talked about. There is no change in context of location. If there was it would have been pointed out like it was in Chapter 20. Especially for something as important as the coming of a Prophet.
“For instance, the adjacent verses are about a context of Israelite dominance when other nations are subdued, does that mean this prophecy could not have been fulfilled when the Israelites were subjugated by a foreign empire like the Romans?”
Just because a foreign power comes and occupies the promised land and prevents the Israelites from doing certain things, it’s not the fault of the Israelites. Also, Deut 18:15-18 is something that God would do for Israel, not that Israel would do for God.
To be honest, I’ve never read the SP or the DSS version of Exodus. Perhaps I will. Remember though that the Samaritans and the Qumran community were fringe communities. They were what Mormons are to a Christians these days or what Ahmadiyas are to Muslims. Would you read the Mormon version of Genesis where Joseph Smith inserts a Prophecy of himself? No, Christianity is the Catholic faith. I’m using the five books that are canon in the Church, which is based of the Masoretic text, reflected in the Greek Suptuagint and the Latin Vulgate. There is also no evidence that Muhammad knew of any other Torah that his Jewish opponents possessed other than the Torah we have today.
Regarding the land that Abraham is promised, I don’t want to get into this because it involves covenants. The Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant are not the same thing. All in the Mosaic covenant are in the Abrahamic covenant but not all in the Abrahamic covenant are in the Mosaic covenant. There are actually two covenants with Abraham but that’s a complete other topic. As a Muslim, you may not understand the importance of covenants since the Quran and Hadith seem to have no knowledge of them. They’re extremely important in the Old and New Testament though.
“If you want proof that the ancient Israelites considered the land promise to Abraham to include Arabia read Genesis Apocryphon in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It tells us that after God promised Abraham the land he travelled throughout the territory including Arabia.”
If you want to know what the promised land is, just read the book of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. It’s very clear what the Israelites are promised. This is all fulfilled in Joshua, the next book. There are no military conquests of the Israelites into Arabia to make it part of the promised land. Where does Genesis say this stuff about Arabia? This is midrash that the modern Jews don’t even accept as canon.
I do regard Acts 3 as a past fulfillment. Verses 22 and 23 deal with the Deuteronomy passage about the Prophet. The whole context of this is that he’s trying to convert the Jews. The sermon is all about Jews and how they should believe in Christ. He’s not giving a Prophecy for Muhammad or saying it applies to the second coming.
Blessings,