A Prophet Like Moses

The Old Testament unfolds God’s redemptive plan through progressive revelation. This revelation is largely brought about through the covenants, in which He establishes certain promises and certain boundaries within which He will act, and within which we are to remain. While each major covenant is a distinct agreement with its own terms, they build upon one another to provide an increasingly clear prophetic image of the coming Messiah. They work together not by expanding the specific terms of a previous covenant, but by adding new layers to the identity and work of the promised Redeemer. For example, the Abrahamic Covenant established the Messiah’s physical lineage and the international scope of his blessing (Gen 22:18). The Mosaic Covenant would later reveal his role as the ultimate Prophet and Mediator. Finally, the Davidic Covenant specified that this Messiah would also be an eternal King reigning from David’s throne (2 Sam 7:12-13). Each covenant adds a piece, revealing that the Messiah would be a Prophet, Priest, and King.

The men through or with whom each Old Testament Covenant would be made reflected or foreshadowed the person of Christ in some way. The man would foreshadow Christ, and the covenant would be fulfilled by Christ. The Mosaic Covenant and Moses himself, through whom the covenant was ratified, help us understand the nature of Christ’s earthly ministry. While other figures were significant, Moses is distinct as a foreshadow of the prophetic Messianic promise. His life and ministry were typological of Christ, and the covenant ratified through him would exist as the shadow to the final substance that would be the Messianic covenant. We must approach these images with caution. The men through whom the covenants were ratified are simply that, a shadow, not the substance (Heb 10:1). They are a lens through which we can view the ministry and function of the Messiah, but at best, they are a tainted lens, marred by sin. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes that even in view of the realised redemptive work of Christ, we “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12). How much more is this true of the Old Testament shadows when viewed as precursors. We can look back from a New Testament perspective with increased clarity about these ideas, but we must remember that we can only draw the imagery so far, and must go no further than the scope of Scripture allows. In saying that, the New Testament provides a clear scope for the imagery, confirming that these Old Testament patterns were divinely intended to point to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

A type in Scripture is more than a simple historical parallel. It is a person, event, or institution in the Old Testament that God designed to prefigure a corresponding, greater reality, known as the antitype, in the New Testament. The antitype is the fulfilment of the original type. The book of Hebrews describes these Old Testament patterns as “a shadow of the good things to come, rather than the very form of those realities” (Hebrews 10:1). The events surrounding Moses, from his rescue as an infant to his role as a lawgiver and mediator, were shadows intended to prepare Israel to recognise the substance when He arrived. This divine method of teaching educated God’s people in the language of redemption. The Passover lamb taught them about substitutionary atonement (Exod 12), the priesthood taught them about mediation (Lev 16), and the Law taught them about God’s holiness and their need for a saviour (Rom 7:7-12). While Abraham was the father of the nation (Gen 12:2) and David its king, establishing the royal lineage from which the King of Israel would come (2 Sam 7:12-13), Moses’s unique combination of roles as a deliverer, lawgiver, and intercessor for Israel provided a detailed preview of the Messiah’s work.

The Prophetic Promise

Centuries before Christ’s birth, Moses delivered a specific prophecy concerning a future prophet who would follow him. This promise was made in direct response to the people’s terror at Mount Horeb. The scene was one of divine power: the mountain was ablaze with fire, shrouded in thick smoke and cloud, and the sound of a trumpet grew louder while the earth shook (Deut 5:22-23). Terrified that they would die if they heard God’s voice directly, the people pleaded for a mediator to stand between them and the consuming holiness of God (Deut 5:24-27). Moses filled that role, but the prophecy pointed to a final and perfect Mediator to come.

It is significant that this promise of a new mediator arises within the context of the Mosaic Covenant. Moses was not just any mediator, but the mediator of the covenant concerned with reconciling sinful man to a holy God. The covenants with Noah (Gen 9:8-17), Abraham (Gen 15, 17), and David (2 Sam 7) were primarily unilateral, concerning God’s outworking of specific promises. The Mosaic Covenant was unique. Like the New Covenant in Christ, it was concerned with righteousness and reconciliation. It is this covenant that is referred to as the Old Covenant (2 Cor 3:14), the one that Christ came to fulfil (Matt 5:17). The New Covenant would not abolish this older one, but would supersede it, accomplishing perfectly what the Old Covenant could only foreshadow (Heb 8:6-7, 13).

The Lord declared through Moses:

“I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.” (Deut 18:18-19)

The prophecy specifies not only the Prophet’s character but also His origin. The Lord states He would “raise up” this person from “among their countrymen.” Looking back, this points directly to the incarnation. God did not send a temporary divine appearance, or theophany. Instead, the Prophet was “raised up” within human history. He participated fully in it as a real person, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary (Luke 1:35), born in Bethlehem as a Jew, and raised from a boy to a man as the son of a carpenter (Matt 13:55). He was not a foreigner or an outsider but a fellow countryman, a descendant of Abraham and an Israelite according to the flesh. This shared humanity was essential for His role as the perfect Mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5).

To be “like” Moses meant having a unique, direct relationship with God. This was a level of intimacy and authority that set him apart from other prophets. God Himself made this distinction clear when Aaron and Miriam challenged Moses’s authority: “With him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings, and he beholds the form of the LORD” (Num 12:8). While other prophets received revelation through dreams and visions, Moses received it through direct conversation. This “face to face” relationship (Exod 33:11) signifies the coming prophet would not only share this distinction but embody it. Jesus’s relationship with the Father was one not merely of intimacy but of unity. As John wrote, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18). Christ did not just behold the form of the Lord; He is the very image of the invisible God (Col 1:15).

This unique relationship was the source of their authority. The promise that God would “put My words in his mouth” meant the prophet would speak with divine backing. For Moses, this meant he was a faithful messenger whose authority was delegated. For Jesus, it signified something deeper: an inherent authority rooted in His unity of will and essence with the Father. Jesus did not just speak for God; He spoke as God. He could say, “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49), and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). His words were the Father’s words because He is the eternal Word made flesh (John 1:14). As the divine Word, He is not merely a channel of revelation but the source.

This warning that God Himself will “require it” of anyone who disobeys reflects the necessity for justice under the Law. This statement comes from God, through Moses, the mediator through whom the Law was given, in the book of Deuteronomy, which is the second giving of that Law. The Law itself required charges and justice against any who broke its commands (Deut 27:26). Christ would come as the provision for the Law’s demands (Rom 10:4). Therefore, for one to reject God’s final Prophet is to reject God’s provision for sin. For that person, the decrees of the Law will be required of them directly by God, meaning the judgment is not mediated by human courts but is a direct and eternal matter. It signifies that this prophet represents the final, ultimate, and complete revelation of God’s will, a fact confirmed by the writer of Hebrews who states that God, after speaking through prophets in the past, “in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb 1:1-2).

New Testament Confirmation

The expectation of “the Prophet” foretold by Moses was strong in first-century Judaism. This figure was a distinct messianic hope, separate from, but often associated with, the Davidic King. When John the Baptist began his ministry, the religious authorities from Jerusalem sent priests to ask him directly, “Are you the Prophet?” (John 1:21), showing they were anticipating this specific individual. The people also carried this hope. After Jesus fed the five thousand, a sign reminiscent of Moses providing manna, the crowd declared, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). They recognised in His divine power and insight the one Moses had promised. This hope was not confined to ethnic or religious Jews. The Samaritan woman at the well, despite the religious separation between Jews and Samaritans, also understood this expectation. She told Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us” (John 4:25). After her encounter with Him, she was able to discern that Jesus was this promised one, rushing back to her town to say, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” (John 4:29). This shows how anticipated this figure was, reaching even those beyond Jewish society.

Against this backdrop of national expectation, the early church built its case for Jesus. His identification as the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18 was a cornerstone of early Christian preaching, known as the kerygma, or the core proclamation of the gospel. The apostles consistently presented Jesus as the direct fulfillment of this promise, particularly when addressing Jewish audiences. This method formed the basis of their reasoned apologetic for faith in Christ to first-century Israel. In making this case, the apostles were simply continuing the argument that Jesus Himself had already made. He had directly challenged the religious leaders who prided themselves on their knowledge of the Torah, stating, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39). Jesus went further, turning their reverence for Moses against them. He declared that their failure to see Him in the writings of Moses was not just a misunderstanding but a form of unbelief that would ultimately condemn them. “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47). The apostles, therefore, were not inventing a new interpretive method. They were echoing their Lord, making the same claim that the key to understanding the Scriptures, and Moses in particular, was to see them as a testimony pointing directly to Him.

The first public declaration of this fulfilment by the apostles occurred shortly after Pentecost, and its setting was significant. Following the healing of a lame man at the Temple gate, a miracle understood by many as a sign of the dawning messianic age (Isa 35:6), an astonished crowd gathered around Peter and John in Solomon’s Portico (Acts 3:11). Peter seized the moment to preach. He first connected the miracle to the God of their ancestors, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Acts 3:13), before accusing the people of having “killed the author of life” (Acts 3:15). He then attributed their actions to ignorance (Acts 3:17) and framed the crucifixion not as a failure, but as the fulfilment of God’s prophesied plan (Acts 3:18). It is at this critical juncture, having established both their guilt and the possibility of their redemption, that he presents Jesus as the fulfilment of their prophetic hopes. He explicitly identifies Jesus as the prophet Moses had promised, declaring, “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to him you shall give heed in everything that he says to you’” (Acts 3:22). Peter makes it clear that to reject Jesus was to disobey the direct command of Moses and, by extension, God.

Later, during his defence before the Sanhedrin, the martyr Stephen recounted Israel’s history and made the same connection:

“This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN.’” (Acts 7:37)

Stephen’s speech was both a lesson in their biblical history and a prophetic revelation. He used this prophecy to frame Israel’s entire history as a continuous pattern of rejecting the messengers God had sent them. He reminded the Sanhedrin how their ancestors had rejected Joseph (Acts 7:9) and even Moses himself, the very lawgiver they claimed to revere (Acts 7:35). He then brought this charge to its devastating conclusion, accusing them directly: “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did” (Acts 7:51). The rejection of Jesus was, in Stephen’s argument, the final act in this long history of rebellion. It was the culmination of their fathers’ sins. They had not just rejected another prophet; they had rejected the Prophet, the one Moses himself had commanded them to obey. This discourse was delivered in the same context and spirit as the condemnation from Jesus towards the religious leaders in Matthew 23. There, Jesus condemned their hypocrisy, noting that while they claimed to uphold Moses and the Law, their actions served to disobey it and cause others to do the same. Jesus accused them of building tombs for the prophets their fathers had murdered, testifying against themselves that they were sons of the same rebellious line (Matt 23:29-31). Stephen’s accusation that they were “doing just as your fathers did” is a direct echo of Christ’s charge, exposing the same deep-seated rebellion masked by superficial piety.

The testimonies of Peter and Stephen are foundational examples of early Christian apologetics, and central to their reasoning was the specific claim that Jesus was the Prophet foretold by Moses. This was not just one proof among many, but the key argument they used to show their Jewish audience that faith in Jesus was the authentic continuation of their ancestral faith. By focusing on this specific prophecy, they demonstrated that the first Christians were not starting a new religion, but proclaiming the long-awaited fulfilment of Israel’s story. They consistently reasoned from the Scriptures to show that Jesus of Nazareth was the climax to which their national history, and especially the writings of their great lawgiver, had been pointing all along. For them, faith in Jesus was the logical and necessary conclusion of believing the words of Moses.

Typological Parallels

The description “a prophet like me” extends beyond a shared office to a series of parallels in their lives and ministries that are too specific to be coincidental. These patterns demonstrate God’s intention to foreshadow the substance of Christ through the shadow of Moses’s life.

• Threatened at Birth: Both lives began under a death sentence issued by a tyrant motivated by fear of a rival king. At the time of Moses’s birth, Pharaoh ordered the execution of all male Hebrew infants to curb their growing numbers (Exod 1:22). Similarly, when Herod the Great heard of the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem, he commanded the slaughter of all male children in the region to eliminate any threat to his throne (Matt 2:16). Both were supernaturally protected from these decrees, and for both, Egypt became a place of refuge. Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s own household, and Jesus was taken to Egypt by his family (Matt 2:13-15).
• Rejected by Their Brethren: Both were initially rejected by a portion of the very people they were sent to save. When Moses first tried to intervene on behalf of his people, he was spurned with the question, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?” (Exod 2:14). This rejection forced him into exile. In the same way, Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11), a rejection that ultimately led to his crucifixion.
• Deliverance and Baptism: Moses led the Israelites out of physical bondage in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea, an event enabled by the blood of the Passover lamb. The Apostle Paul identifies this as a type of baptism (1 Cor 10:1-2). Jesus, the true Passover Lamb (1 Cor 5:7), delivers His people from the spiritual bondage of sin. He began His public ministry with His own baptism in the Jordan River (Matt 3:13-17), and through His sacrificial death, He opens a path to freedom.
• Wilderness Testing: After passing through the Red Sea, the nation of Israel was tested for forty years in the wilderness, where they repeatedly failed through grumbling and disbelief. Immediately following His baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested for forty days (Matt 4:1-2). Where Israel failed, Christ, as the new and true Israel, succeeded, faithfully resisting temptation by wielding the word of God.
• Provider of Heavenly Bread: In the wilderness, God sustained Israel through Moses with manna, a “bread from heaven” (Exod 16:4). Jesus drew on this memory when a crowd, having been miraculously fed, sought more signs. He declared Himself to be the true “bread of life,” offering eternal, spiritual sustenance rather than temporary, physical food (John 6:32-35).
• Giving the Law: From Mount Sinai, Moses delivered the Ten Commandments, the foundation of the Old Covenant, written on tablets of stone (Exod 20). From a mountain in Galilee, Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, in which He revealed the full meaning of the Law (Matt 5-7). He did not abolish it but fulfilled it, establishing the ethical foundation for the New Covenant by writing the law on the hearts of His followers (Jer 31:33).
• Intercession: Moses was an intercessor for Israel. After the grievous sin of the golden calf, he pleaded with God to forgive the people, even offering to have his own name blotted out of God’s book rather than see them destroyed (Exod 32:32). This foreshadowed Christ, our great High Priest (Heb 4:14), who provides the ultimate intercession for His people, not by offering to be condemned, but by taking our condemnation upon Himself through His death on the cross.
• Covenant Sealed with Blood: Moses ratified the covenant at Sinai by sprinkling the blood of sacrificed animals on the altar and the people, saying, “Behold the blood of the covenant” (Exod 24:8). This act bound them to God. Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant with His own blood, a perfect and final sacrifice. At the Last Supper, He took the cup and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).

The life of Moses was a living prophecy designed to find its ultimate meaning and fulfilment in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Fulfilment, Not Replacement

It is important to understand that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets, not their replacement. Christ’s statement regarding this is clear:

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matt 5:17-18)

Jesus’ fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets is all-encompassing, addressing every facet of what was written. First, Jesus fulfilled the moral law, summarised in the Ten Commandments, through a life of perfect active and passive obedience. His active obedience was His perfect, lifelong adherence to every command of God, not merely in external action but in internal motive and thought (Heb 4:15). He is the only human to have ever perfectly loved God with all His heart, soul, and mind, and His neighbour as Himself (Matt 22:37-40). His passive obedience was His willing submission to the penalty of the Law, bearing its curse on behalf of sinners through His suffering and death (Gal 3:13). He did more than just obey the letter of the Law. In the Sermon on the Mount, He revealed its true, internal standard, correcting the superficial interpretations of the religious leaders. He showed that the Law’s demands reached the heart, so that lust is a form of adultery (Matt 5:27-28) and anger a form of murder (Matt 5:21-22). By living this life of perfect conformity to God’s standard, He embodied the very righteousness the Law demanded, a righteousness that is credited to all who trust in Him (2 Cor 5:21; Rom 5:19). This life of perfect obedience was a necessary prerequisite for His role as the righteous sacrifice. The ceremonial law itself taught this principle. The Passover lamb, which foreshadowed His death, had to be “an unblemished male” (Exod 12:5). This physical perfection pointed to the need for moral and spiritual perfection in the ultimate sacrifice. Therefore, Christ’s perfect fulfilment of the moral law established Him as the spotless Lamb of God. The Old Testament prophets foresaw the death of this righteous one (Isa 53:9, 11), and the apostles taught this connection clearly. Peter wrote that believers are redeemed not with perishable things, but “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1:19). Paul likewise declares, “For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7), confirming that Jesus’ sinless life was the very quality that qualified Him to be the perfect, substitutionary atonement for sin.

Second, Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law. The entire sacrificial system, with its priests and rituals established through Moses, was a “shadow” pointing to the ultimate sacrifice. Every component was an object lesson preparing Israel for Christ. The Passover lamb, the Day of Atonement rituals, and the temple itself all prefigured His work. The constant repetition of sacrifices served as a reminder of their insufficiency, as they could only cover sin temporarily, not remove it (Heb 10:4). Christ’s one sacrifice, however, was sufficient for all time (Heb 10:10-12). The human priests were themselves sinners, needing to atone for their own sins before they could for the people (Heb 7:27). Christ is the perfect, sinless, and eternal High Priest (Heb 7:26-28). The temple, where God’s presence dwelt, was separated by a veil, signifying the barrier between a holy God and sinful humanity. At Christ’s death, this veil was torn from top to bottom (Matt 27:51), showing that He had opened a new and living way into God’s presence. His death on the cross was the one true sacrifice for sin, rendering the old system of animal sacrifices complete and therefore obsolete (Heb 9:11-14).

Third, Jesus is the fulfilment of the prophets. He is the ultimate subject of all prophecy, the one to whom the entire Old Testament narrative points. This was Jesus’s own understanding of His identity and mission. After His resurrection, while walking on the road to Emmaus with two disciples who were unaware of His identity, He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:25-26). Then, the text says, “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). This demonstrates that Christ saw the entire Old Testament, from the opening pages of genesis to the last prophet, as a unified testimony about Him and His completed, present, and future ministry. This prophecy from Moses exists among a number of key Old Testament prophecies that point to the coming Messiah. It stands as one of the chief promises, uniting the Old and New Testaments and preparing the mind of the reader for a new covenant and a new prophet. These prophecies include the first gospel promise of the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent (Gen 3:15), the descendant of Abraham who would bless all nations (Gen 22:18), the Son of David who would reign on an eternal throne (2 Sam 7:12-13), and the suffering Servant of Isaiah who would be pierced for our transgressions (Isa 53:5). Every promise finds its “Yes” in Him (2 Cor 1:20).

To understand Christ correctly is to see Him as the climax of God’s redemptive story. He is the one to whom the entire narrative was pointing. The covenant, ministry, and person of Moses all served as a foreshadow of this. The Old Testament establishes the prophetic expectation, and the New Testament identifies Jesus as its fulfilment. He is the Prophet to whom Israel was commanded to listen (Deut 18:15), a Prophet greater than Moses because He does not just speak God’s words but is the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14). He is the perfect Mediator who stands between God and man, not as a sinful intermediary, but as the sinless God-man (1 Tim 2:5). The typology of Moses points to Christ, and understanding his function and ministry to Israel helps us to understand Christ, His work, and His legitimacy as the fulfilment of Scripture.