10 Old Testament Prophecies About Jesus, and the Paintings That Show Them

“Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

Luke 24:44 · BSB, excerpt

Here are ten of those old verses. They run in the order they happen in his life. Each one comes with the moment it points to and a painting of that moment.

Tap any line to jump to it. The Christmas prophecies, Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6 and the rest, have their own article: Christmas Before Christmas.

Were these really written before Jesus?

Yes, and for Isaiah there is a physical copy to prove it. The Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found by Bedouin shepherds at Qumran in 1947, holds the whole book. Scholars date it to about 125 BC, more than a century before Jesus was born. Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures, known as the Septuagint, were also under way from the third century BC.

Micah was a prophet from a country town, working more than seven hundred years before Jesus. He said a great ruler would come from somewhere small.

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come forth for Me One to be ruler over Israel—One whose origins are of old, from the days of eternity.”

Micah 5:2 · BSB

What happened: Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea (Matthew 2:1). When the Magi arrived looking for a newborn king, Herod asked his own scholars where the Messiah was supposed to be born. They answered with Micah (Matthew 2:4–6).

Fritz von Uhde put Joseph and a pregnant Mary on a muddy village road of his own time, walking toward Bethlehem. In 1890 that was too real for some people. The picture was exhibited under a less religious name, The Difficult Journey, and his biographer Fritz von Ostini said it was renamed “to spare sensitive souls.” It did the painting no harm: the Prince Regent of Bavaria bought it that same year.

This one surprises people, because it isn’t a prediction. Hosea is looking back. He remembers how God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt, the way a parent remembers a child.

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.”

Hosea 11:1 · BSB

What happened: Warned in a dream, Joseph took Mary and the baby to Egypt to escape Herod, and they stayed there until Herod died. Matthew quotes Hosea at exactly that point (Matthew 2:13–15).

Why does Matthew quote a verse about Israel?

Most readers think Matthew is pointing to a pattern, not a forecast. Israel went down into Egypt and came out as God’s “son.” Matthew watches Jesus travel the same road, as if Israel’s whole story were starting again in one child.

Henry Ossawa Tanner signed this painting where he made it: “Jerusalem 1899.” He later remembered a stormy Christmas night ride to Bethlehem, when every group hurrying along the road looked to him like a flight into Egypt. He never really let the subject go. A 1991 Philadelphia Museum of Art catalogue says he painted it more than fifteen times.

Isaiah 40 opens with the words “Comfort, comfort My people,” and then a voice shouts that the road must be cleared, because God is coming.

“A voice of one calling: ‘Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.’”

Isaiah 40:3 · BSB, excerpt

What happened: All four Gospels use this verse for John the Baptist (Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:3, Luke 3:4, John 1:23). In John’s Gospel he says it about himself: “I am a voice of one calling in the wilderness” (John 1:23).

El Greco gives the wilderness preacher a long, stretched body and a sky full of moving cloud. For about three hundred years, critics thought paintings like this were simply odd. Then painters around 1900 rediscovered him and saw him as ahead of his time. The lamb at his feet is the Baptist’s traditional sign, a reminder of what he called Jesus: “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29).

This is the prophecy Jesus claimed for himself, out loud, in his hometown.

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…”

Isaiah 61:1–2 · BSB, excerpt

What happened: In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah. He read this passage, rolled the scroll up and sat down. Every eye was on him. Then he said: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).

Did Jesus stop reading in the middle of a sentence?

Yes. The next words in Isaiah are “and the day of our God’s vengeance”. Jesus stops just before them (Luke 4:19). There is more on this moment in Luke 4 in Art.

James Tissot made his name painting fashionable Paris. Around 1885 he said he had a vision in the church of Saint-Sulpice, and he gave the rest of his life to the Bible. He travelled to the Holy Land to see the places for himself and came home to paint hundreds of scenes from the life of Christ. Here Jesus stands at the reading desk with the scroll in front of him, and nobody in the room knows yet what he is about to say.

Zechariah pictured a king arriving in Jerusalem. He comes as a winner, and he comes humble, riding a donkey.

“Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Zechariah 9:9 · BSB

What happened: A few days before he died, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey while crowds spread their cloaks on the road. Matthew and John both quote Zechariah (Matthew 21:4–5; John 12:14–15).

Why are there two donkeys?

Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions two animals: a donkey and her colt (Matthew 21:2, 7). Mark, Luke and John mention just one animal, a colt.

Jean-Léon Gérôme was best known for detailed scenes of the Middle East, painted after his trips to Egypt and the region. Here he follows Matthew. Jesus rides one white donkey, and a small white foal walks beside it. The painting belongs to the Musée Jean-Léon Gérôme (formerly Musée Georges-Garret) in Vesoul, the town where Gérôme was born. In the same year he made a sculpture of the same scene.

In one of the Bible’s strangest scenes, Zechariah acts out the part of a shepherd and asks for his wages. They weigh out thirty pieces of silver. Most readers hear sarcasm in what comes next.

“And the LORD said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—this magnificent price at which they valued me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”

Zechariah 11:13 · BSB

What happened: Judas agreed to hand Jesus over for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15). Afterwards, full of remorse, he threw the coins into the temple. The priests would not put the money back in the treasury, so they used it to buy a potter’s field (Matthew 27:3–7).

Why does Matthew say “Jeremiah”?

Matthew 27:9 credits the words to “Jeremiah the prophet,” although the thirty coins and the potter are in Zechariah. Many readers think Matthew is blending the two prophets, since Jeremiah also visits a potter and buys a field (Jeremiah 18:2; 32:9), and names the better-known one. It is an old puzzle, and people still discuss it.

Rembrandt painted this in Leiden at about twenty-three, while he was still almost unknown. It caught the eye of Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange. Huygens wrote that in showing emotion, this one figure of Judas, on his knees with his hands clasped, surpassed the ancient masters and the great Italians. The coins lie scattered across the floor in a pool of light.

Isaiah 53 describes a servant of God who suffers for other people’s wrongs. Read it slowly and it sounds like someone standing at the cross. It was written centuries before.

“But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

Isaiah 53:5 · BSB

What happened: The New Testament comes back to this chapter again and again. Peter quotes it directly: “By His stripes you are healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

Who is the prophet talking about?

That was the very question an Ethiopian official asked while reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot: “who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Philip started with that passage and told him about Jesus (Acts 8:32–35).

Carl Bloch painted this in 1880, right after fourteen years painting the life of Christ for the king’s prayer room at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark. A soldier pushes his face in close, mouth open. Jesus wears the crown of thorns and turns his eyes toward us, not toward the man mocking him. Bloch painted at least two versions of this scene that year.

Psalm 22 is a song by someone surrounded, mocked and close to death. It opens with a cry.

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?”

Psalm 22:1 · BSB

What happened: On the cross, Jesus cried out the first line of this psalm (Matthew 27:46). The same psalm describes something the soldiers did at the foot of the cross:

“They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”

Psalm 22:18 · BSB

John says the soldiers did exactly that, and that it fulfilled this verse (John 19:23–24).

Was Jesus feeling abandoned, or praying a psalm?

Readers hear both. The cry is real, and Matthew even keeps the original words: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” It is also the first line of a psalm that does not end in despair. It ends: “He has not hidden His face from him, but has attended to his cry for help” (Psalm 22:24).

Léon Bonnat painted this for a courtroom. The Petit Palais in Paris, where it hangs today, records that it was made for the Court of Assizes in the Palace of Justice, where serious crimes were tried. Bonnat paints nothing but the body against a dark sky, head thrown back.

At the very first Passover, God told Israel not to break any bone of the lamb (Exodus 12:46). A psalm says the same of a righteous person:

“He protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.”

Psalm 34:20 · BSB

What happened: So that the bodies could come down before the Sabbath, soldiers broke the legs of the two men crucified next to Jesus. When they came to Jesus, he was already dead. They did not break his legs. One soldier pierced his side with a spear instead (John 19:31–34).

John says both things happened so that Scripture would be fulfilled. He quotes “Not one of His bones will be broken,” and then, as he puts it, “another Scripture,” from the prophet Zechariah:

“…they will look on Me, the One they have pierced.”

Zechariah 12:10 · BSB, excerpt

William-Adolphe Bouguereau painted this the year after his eldest son, Georges, died at sixteen. He dedicated it to him in Latin: “In memory of my beloved son Georges, 19 July 1875.” So this is a father’s grief, painted into a mother’s grief. Mary does not look down at her son. She looks straight out at us.

Psalm 16 is a song of trust. Near its end comes a bold hope: God will not leave his faithful one in the grave.

“For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.”

Psalm 16:10 · BSB

What happened: On Easter morning, Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb and found it empty. Even then, John admits, “they still did not understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead” (John 20:9).

A few weeks later, at Pentecost, Peter stood up in Jerusalem and quoted this psalm. David died and was buried, he said, and his tomb is still here. So David must have been speaking about the Messiah, who “was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His body see decay” (Acts 2:29–31).

Tanner put almost nothing in this picture except two faces and the light falling on them. In 1906 the jury of the Art Institute of Chicago’s American exhibition chose it unanimously as the best picture, and the museum bought it from him. One writer summed it up as “two poor Jews gazing into the miraculous light.” The Art Institute identifies them as Peter and John, and Peter is the one who would soon be preaching this psalm.

Read the ten in a row and they tell a life: a birthplace, an escape, a herald, a sermon, a parade, a betrayal, a death, and an empty tomb. Jesus said the Scriptures were about him. Peter ran to that tomb without understanding, and within weeks he was explaining the Scriptures to a crowd in Jerusalem.

A short, honest note before you go.

Each of these verses meant something in its own time first. Hosea was remembering the Exodus. Psalm 22 is a prayer of someone in deep trouble. Reading them as pointing to Jesus is the way the New Testament writers read them, and it sits on top of that first meaning rather than erasing it.

Jewish readers have understood several of these passages differently for a very long time, often reading the servant of Isaiah 53 as Israel itself. Knowing that makes the Christian reading clearer, not weaker.

Visio Divina is Latin for “divine seeing”: praying with a picture as well as a passage.

1. Look (Visio): Pick one painting above and stay with whatever your eye goes to first.
2. Meditate (Meditatio): Read the verse beside it twice, slowly. Remember it was written centuries before the moment in the picture.
3. Pray (Oratio): Say one honest sentence about a promise you are still waiting on.
4. Contemplate (Contemplatio): Sit quietly for one minute. Nothing has to happen.

How many Old Testament prophecies did Jesus fulfill?

There is no agreed number. Lists range from a few dozen to more than three hundred, depending on how loosely you define a prophecy. A firmer test is to count only the places where the New Testament itself quotes an Old Testament passage and applies it to Jesus. Every entry in this article passes that test.

What does “Messiah” mean?

It means “anointed one,” someone chosen and set apart by God, as kings were anointed with oil. The Greek word for it is Christos, which is where “Christ” comes from.

Which prophecy did Jesus say he fulfilled?

The clearest example is Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Nazareth, where he said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). After the resurrection he said the same about the whole Old Testament: “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).

Is Isaiah 53 about Jesus?

The New Testament writers read it that way, and the Ethiopian official in Acts 8 asked exactly this question. Jewish interpreters have often read the suffering servant as the people of Israel. The Great Isaiah Scroll shows that the chapter itself was written down long before Jesus was born.