Christians sometimes read the Old Testament as if its only purpose were to predict Jesus. Prophecies get flattened into fortune-telling. Psalms get read only as foreshadowing. Everything is treated like a teaser trailer for the main event.
But the Hebrew scriptures are more than that. They were written by real communities, in real history, wrestling with exile, injustice, empire, and hope.
When Amos thunders about justice rolling down like waters, he is confronting the corruption of his own day. When the Psalms cry out for deliverance, they are the honest
prayers of people who felt abandoned and longed for God’s rescue.
That does not mean Christians cannot find Jesus in these texts. The New Testament writers certainly did. They heard echoes of his life in Israel’s story, and they believed that what God had promised was now fulfilled in him. But that fulfillment does not erase the original voice.
The Old Testament is scripture in its own right. To honor it, we must let it speak first as law, lament, poetry, and prophecy for the people who lived it. Only then can we hear how it also opens into the story of Christ.
