There is more than one messiah (mashiach) in Scripture.
That statement can sound almost offensive to modern Christian ears because we have come to use the word Messiah exclusively for Yeshua. Say “the Messiah,” and everyone knows who we mean. Say that David was a messiah, or that Aharon was a messiah, and people may immediately assume we are taking something away from Yeshua.
But we are not.
In fact, understanding that there were many anointed ones is one of the things that helps us understand why Yeshua is THE Anointed One.
The Hebrew word translated Messiah is מָשִׁיחַ — mashiach (H4899). At its most basic level, it means anointed one. It comes from the Hebrew verb mashach, meaning to smear, spread, or anoint with oil.
Before Mashiach became a title associated with the promised Redeemer, it described something much simpler: someone who had been anointed.
And before Scripture starts applying that language extensively to people, YHVH teaches us what anointing means by pouring oil on things.
In Exodus 40, the Tabernacle is finally standing. The Ark is in place. The table has been arranged. The menorah is ready. The altars, basin, utensils, curtains, coverings, and furnishings are all exactly where YHVH instructed Moshe to put them.
Then YHVH gives an instruction that can seem strange to us: “Take the anointing oil, and anoint the tabernacle and everything in it — consecrate it with all its furnishings; then it will be holy.”
Everything gets covered in oil.
The Tabernacle gets anointed. The altar gets anointed. The utensils get anointed. The basin and its base get anointed. Then Aharon is brought forward, clothed, anointed, and consecrated. His sons are anointed as well.
Why?
It certainly cannot be because the furniture had sinned. The altar did not need to repent. The menorah had committed no transgression. The basin did not need forgiveness.
The oil was doing something else.
It was identifying ownership.
What had once been wood, bronze, gold, linen, stone, and other ordinary materials had now been set apart for one purpose. These things belonged to YHVH.
The substance of the objects did not change. Bronze remained bronze. Gold remained gold. Wood remained wood. But their status changed. They were no longer common. They were holy. They had been set apart.
That is the foundational idea behind anointing.
Think about what happens when oil is poured over something.
Water runs quickly. It splashes, runs downhill, dries, and eventually disappears. Oil behaves differently. It moves slowly. It clings. It creeps along an edge and into a joint. It finds cracks, seams, pores, and crevices. Long after water would have evaporated, oil leaves evidence that it was there.
That makes oil an incredible physical picture of consecration.
When something belongs to YHVH, He is not claiming only the visible surface. The oil finds the crevices. There is no corner of the altar that gets to say, “This part still belongs to me.” There is no portion of the Tabernacle reserved for common use. Once it has been consecrated, the whole thing belongs to Him.
Perhaps that should change how we think about being anointed.
We often talk about someone having an “anointing” as though it means they have a powerful preaching gift, musical ability, prophetic insight, or some unusual spiritual capacity. But anointing begins somewhere much more demanding.
Before it speaks of power, it speaks of ownership.
Before it means, “YHVH is going to use me,” it means, “I belong to YHVH.”
And if the oil reaches every crevice, then perhaps there should not be hidden portions of our lives that remain common while everything visible has been dedicated to Him.
Once we understand what the oil is doing, the word mashiach begins to make much more sense.
One of the earliest people Scripture explicitly identifies with this word is the priest. Leviticus 4:3 says, “If the anointed priest sins…” The Hebrew expression is ha-kohen ha-mashiach — the priest, the anointed one.
There it is: mashiach.
Long before David becomes king, long before Israel develops expectations concerning a coming son of David, Torah already uses mashiach language for the priest.
Aharon was an anointed one.
And notice something else in that passage. The Torah says, “If the anointed priest sins…” Apparently a mashiach can sin. That means the word itself cannot inherently mean sinless Savior, divine Son, or Redeemer of mankind. It simply means anointed one.
What makes Yeshua unique will have to come from much more than simply possessing the word Mashiach.
So what was Aharon anointed to do? He was set apart to minister before YHVH. He carried the people before YHVH. He dealt with sacrifice. He entered sacred space. He distinguished between what was holy and what was common. He taught Israel. He mediated.
In the priest we therefore begin to see one aspect of anointing: the anointed one stands between YHVH and His people in service and mediation.
Generations later, another great category of anointed people emerges: kings.
Samuel pours oil over Saul and Saul becomes “YHVH’s anointed.” Later David is anointed.
Again, the oil signifies more than honor. YHVH has selected someone, claimed him for a particular purpose, and authorized him to perform a particular function.
The priest was anointed to minister. The king was anointed to rule.
David becomes particularly important because YHVH attaches a covenantal promise to his house. His throne and descendants become part of a much larger expectation.
Now the concept of the mashiach begins accumulating another dimension. The anointed one does not merely mediate. The anointed one rules.
So by this point in Israel’s story we have at least two clear categories: the priest is anointed and the king is anointed. One approaches YHVH on behalf of the people. The other governs the people under YHVH.
And within the covenant structure that eventually develops in Israel, these offices are deliberately separated. Priests come through Levi and, particularly, the line of Aharon. Kingship ultimately belongs to Judah and the house of David.
A Davidic king cannot simply decide one morning that he would also like to function as an Aaronic priest. Scripture gives us painful examples of men crossing those boundaries. King Uzziah, for example, attempted to burn incense in the Temple, something assigned to the priests. His political authority did not give him authority over the priestly office.
King and priest were distinct.
Which creates a very interesting problem.
Because Abraham had already met a man who was both.
Hundreds of years before Aharon. Hundreds of years before David. Before Levi was born. Before Judah was born. Before Israel even existed as a nation.
Abraham returned from battle and encountered a man named Malki-Tzedek.
Genesis 14 introduces him with almost no explanation. He is simply there. And Scripture immediately tells us two things about him.
He is king of Salem.
And he is priest of El Elyon.
King and priest. Together.
Before Israel’s later covenant structure separates those offices between Judah and Levi, Abraham encounters a legitimate servant of El Elyon who already holds both.
That should immediately get our attention.
But Malki-Tzedek does something else that I find equally fascinating.
He speaks.
Abraham has just returned from an astonishing military victory. He took a relatively small group of men, pursued a coalition of kings, defeated them, rescued Lot, recovered the captives, and returned with the spoils. It would have been incredibly easy for Abraham to focus upon what he had accomplished.
But Malki-Tzedek meets him and declares: “Blessed be Avram by El Elyon, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be El Elyon, who delivered your enemies into your hand.”
In other words: Abraham, do not misunderstand what just happened. El Elyon gave you this victory.
Genesis does not tell us what Malki-Tzedek knew about Abraham’s relationship with YHVH. We are not told that the two men had met previously. We are not told that Malki-Tzedek first questioned Abraham to discover whether Abraham would agree with what he was about to say.
He simply speaks truth.
He interprets the event from Heaven’s perspective.
That sounds a lot like what prophets repeatedly do throughout Scripture. A prophet enters the middle of a human interpretation and announces, “You may think this is what happened, but here is what YHVH says happened.” Nathan does it to David. Elijah does it to Ahab. Isaiah does it to kings. Jeremiah does it to Judah. The prophet is often the person willing to speak YHVH’s truth whether the hearer has prepared himself to receive it or not.
Scripture never explicitly calls Malki-Tzedek a prophet, and we should acknowledge that. But his speech certainly carries a prophetic character.
Explicitly, he is king and priest. Functionally, we also see him boldly declaring the divine interpretation of Abraham’s victory.
So Genesis gives us this incredible encounter and then Malki-Tzedek disappears from the narrative. We hear almost nothing else about him.
Centuries pass. Aharon’s priesthood is established. David becomes king. The priesthood belongs to Levi. The throne belongs to Judah.
And then David writes something astonishing in the psalms:
Psalm 110:4 YHVH has sworn it, and he will never retract — ‘You are a cohen forever, to be compared with Malki-Tzedek.’
Suddenly Malki-Tzedek is back.
And he is attached to a royal figure.
That is the tension the writer of Hebrews grabs with both hands.
Hebrews has a problem to explain.
Yeshua is from Judah. Everyone knows that. The Aaronic priesthood did not come through Judah.
So how can Yeshua be presented as High Priest?
Hebrews does not solve that problem by pretending lineage no longer matters. Instead, Hebrews reaches backward. Past Aharon. Past Levi. All the way back to Abraham.
There was another priestly order.
Malki-Tzedek was priest before Levi even existed. And Psalm 110 had already declared that a future royal figure would hold an enduring priesthood according to that order.
Suddenly the pieces fit.
Yeshua can be the Davidic King from Judah without pretending to be an Aaronic priest. His priesthood is according to an older pattern: Malki-Tzedek.
That is why Hebrews spends so much time developing this argument. It is not an interesting theological side note. It solves one of the great tensions in understanding who Yeshua is.
The promised King must come through David. Yet the one who eternally mediates between YHVH and man must also be priest.
How can both offices inhabit one person?
Abraham had already met the pattern.
And then Yeshua arrives.
Now all three streams begin to converge.
He speaks like a prophet. Not merely because He predicts future events, but because He constantly speaks YHVH’s interpretation into human situations. He confronts hypocrisy. He calls people to repentance. He identifies the condition of the heart. He announces the Kingdom. He speaks truth to rulers, religious leaders, crowds, His own talmidim, and strangers.
When Yeshua begins His public ministry, He reads from Isaiah: “The Spirit of YHVH is upon me, because he has anointed me…”
There is the prophetic dimension of anointing. The Ruach rests upon Him, and He speaks.
But Yeshua is also priest. Hebrews develops this extensively. He mediates. He makes atonement. He enters the greater sanctuary. He intercedes. He is our High Priest according to the order of Malki-Tzedek.
And Yeshua is King. He is the Son of David. He proclaims the Kingdom. He enters Jerusalem as Israel’s king. He stands before Pilate while the question of kingship hangs over the entire scene. Scripture ultimately identifies Him as King of kings.
The streams that had been distributed among people throughout Israel’s history now converge.
The prophets spoke for YHVH. The priests mediated before YHVH. The kings ruled under YHVH.
Yeshua embodies all three.
He is Prophet. He is Priest. He is King.
He is THE Mashiach.
This helps explain some of the confusion surrounding Yeshua when He appeared.
We sometimes imagine that everyone in first-century Israel had one neat, standardized list titled “Qualifications for Messiah,” and Yeshua either checked the boxes or did not. Reality was far more complicated.
The people had inherited centuries of expectation. Some were waiting for the Son of David. Some longed for freedom from foreign oppression. Some expected Israel to be restored nationally. Some awaited “the Prophet” like Moshe. Some were looking for purification and restoration of worship. Some expected judgment upon Israel’s enemies. Some were watching for YHVH’s Kingdom.
These expectations overlapped, but not everyone emphasized the same things.
We actually see this collision in John 6. After Yeshua feeds the crowd, the people say, “This has to be ‘the prophet’ who is supposed to come into the world.” And what do they immediately want to do? Make Him king.
Think about that.
They see the prophet. Then they want the king. They are assembling categories.
But they are assembling them according to their expectations.
Yeshua refuses to let them define His anointing for Him. They want to seize Him and make Him king, so He withdraws. They want bread. He begins talking about the bread of life. They want another Moses feeding Israel in the wilderness. He tells them that the Father is giving them the true bread from Heaven.
And eventually many who had followed Him walk away.
They wanted the Anointed One. They simply had predetermined what the Anointed One was supposed to do for them.
That problem has not disappeared.
Some people looked at Yeshua and recognized the patterns. They heard the prophetic voice. They saw the works. They recognized the Son of David. They saw Scripture unfolding in front of them.
Others looked at exactly the same man and rejected Him.
Why?
Because He did not fulfill the expectation in the way they had decided it must be fulfilled.
They wanted a king who would defeat Rome. He told them to love their enemies.
They wanted the wicked judged. He told them to repent.
They wanted national exaltation. He ate with tax collectors and sinners.
They wanted power. He spoke of servanthood.
They wanted immediate conquest. He walked toward suffering.
They wanted Messiah on their terms.
Yeshua insisted upon being YHVH’s Anointed One on YHVH’s terms.
That is an uncomfortable warning for us. It is entirely possible to believe in the promises of God while rejecting the way God chooses to fulfill them.
This is why we should not be frightened by the fact that Scripture has other meshichim — other anointed ones.
Aharon being anointed does not diminish Yeshua. Aharon teaches us something about Yeshua.
David being anointed does not diminish Yeshua. David teaches us something about Yeshua.
The prophetic anointing does not compete with Yeshua. It teaches us another dimension of His calling.
Even Cyrus is called YHVH’s anointed in Isaiah 45 because YHVH had selected and commissioned him for a particular task.
The earlier anointed ones are not competitors.
They are vocabulary.
YHVH spent centuries teaching mankind what anointing looked like so that when THE Mashiach appeared, we would have categories with which to understand Him.
Aharon shows us an anointed mediator. David shows us an anointed king. The prophets show us Spirit-empowered proclamation. Malki-Tzedek shows us that priest and king can exist together in one man.
And then Yeshua comes.
The patterns converge.
He does not invent the category of Mashiach. He fulfills it.
But Yeshua is not the end of anointing. He is the source from whom it spreads.
The apostolic writings speak of YHVH’s people as being anointed. Paul writes that God “has anointed us” in 2 Corinthians 1:21. John tells believers that they have an anointing from the Holy One and that the anointing they received remains in them.
That should stop us for a moment.
If anointing means being selected, set apart, claimed, and commissioned for YHVH’s purposes, then those who belong to Yeshua have also been anointed.
We are not THE Mashiach. There is only one person in whom the great prophetic, priestly, royal, covenantal, and redemptive expectations converge completely. That is Yeshua.
But we are anointed ones in the basic Biblical sense.
We have been claimed. Set apart. Consecrated. Commissioned.
The difference is that our anointing is derivative. We do not possess authority independently. We serve beneath the King. We minister beneath the High Priest. We speak the message entrusted to us by the One who perfectly speaks the words of the Father.
Now something YHVH told Israel at Sinai becomes incredibly important. He said, “You will be a kingdom of cohanim for me, a nation set apart.”
A kingdom of priests.
Those two ideas appear together long before Revelation repeats them.
Kingdom. Priesthood.
What an interesting combination.
And who stands at the head of that Kingdom?
A King who is also High Priest.
Yeshua, after the order of Malki-Tzedek.
Malki-Tzedek becomes a pattern not only for understanding Yeshua, but also for understanding the people who serve under Him.
We are not all kings competing for thrones. We are not all high priests inventing our own access to YHVH. We are a people serving beneath the King and High Priest.
Our lives are supposed to bring the rule, holiness, reconciliation, truth, mercy, and presence of His Kingdom into the places where He has sent us.
That is anointing.
Not celebrity. Not spiritual superiority. Not a platform. Not a title.
Consecration.
And now we come back to Exodus 40.
The oil is poured. It runs across the surface. It works its way into the joints. It finds the cracks. It lingers. And everywhere it goes it says the same thing:
This belongs to YHVH.
If we say that we are anointed, then perhaps we need to ask whether we actually want what that word means.
Do I want YHVH’s oil on my public ministry but not my private thoughts?
Do I want Him to anoint my gifts but leave my money alone?
Do I want anointing on my teaching but not my marriage?
My worship but not my anger?
My prayer life but not my entertainment?
My congregation but not my home?
My Shabbat but not the other six days?
Oil does not behave that way. It searches for the crevices.
The Tabernacle was not anointed so that certain portions could remain common. It was all His. And perhaps that is one of the clearest pictures of what it means to belong to the Mashiach.
We belong to the One who belongs completely to the Father.
Yeshua said, “I have come down from Heaven to do not my own will but the will of the One who sent me.” That is the life of the Anointed One. And those who belong to Him are being called into the same posture. Not my will. Not my kingdom. Not my reputation. Not my resources. Not my life.
His.
Anointing has been given a status it was not really meant to maintain. Maybe we have made anointing far too glamorous.
We hear that someone is “anointed,” and we imagine crowds, miracles, influence, powerful sermons, music, prophecy, or supernatural experiences.
But go back to the Tabernacle.
A bronze basin was anointed. A utensil was anointed. An altar was anointed.
Those things were not important because everyone admired them. They were important because YHVH claimed them. That changes the entire emphasis.
To be anointed is not first to be important. It is to belong.
Aharon belonged to Him. David belonged to Him. The prophet’s mouth belonged to Him. The Tabernacle belonged to Him. The altar belonged to Him.
And Yeshua, the ultimate Mashiach, perfectly surrendered Himself to the will of the Father.
Now we are called to belong to Him. We are a kingdom of priests beneath the King. A consecrated people beneath the High Priest. A people carrying the testimony entrusted to us by the One who speaks the words of YHVH.
We are not THE Mashiach. But we have been anointed by the Holy One. We have been set apart.
And if the oil has truly been poured over our lives, then perhaps the greatest evidence will not be how loudly we declare ourselves anointed.
Perhaps the evidence will be that, little by little, there are fewer and fewer crevices remaining in which we can still say:
“This belongs to me.”
Until our lives say what every oil-covered object in the Tabernacle silently declared:
Set apart for YHVH.