Continued from Part 24
53:10: “he shall prolong days”
The concept of prolonging of days and that of gaining eternal life:
The differences:
The concept of a prolonged life cannot be treated as the equivalent of eternal life because in an eternal context, time of any duration is of no consequence. Consequently, one cannot speak of an eternal being as having his days prolonged: “Are Your days as the days of man, or Your years as a man’s days?” (Job 10:5). God must be referred to as eternal: “The number of his years is unsearchable” (Job 36:26). He is the first, He is the last, He cannot be anything else.
Prolonging the days of one who is already supposed to be eternal would make his life longer than eternity. That is an obvious impossibility. Prolonging of life implies earthly mortality, a cut-off date in the future, while the term eternal life refers to immortality. The phrase “prolonged life” can only relate to the limited bodily existence in this world, and not to the endlessness of eternal life. Can “he shall prolong days” be applied to Jesus in heaven or on earth? If, after his alleged resurrection Jesus returned to heaven to become an eternal heavenly being again, this stage of his existence cannot be appropriately referred to as prolongation of days. How can such a promise have any meaning for Jesus, if he is viewed as being a supernatural being of divine substance and whose existence is believed by Christians to be eternal? There would be no need for one part of God to assure a fellow member of an eternal triune deity an everlasting life. “He shall prolong days,” can also not be applied to the human Jesus, who died young and childless. If the promise of prolonged days is applied to the human Jesus, it is an empty promise.
Since the blessings of seeing children and prolonging life are only appropriate when applied to a mortal man and not to an immortal being, these blessings cannot be applied to the Jesus of Christian theology. Some Christians argue that “he shall see seed” refers to God seeing the birth of Jesus and “he shall prolong days” refers to God resurrecting Jesus. That would make these two promises into a parenthetical statement having no connection with the conditional nature of the verse. Their argument makes absolutely no sense!
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