Moshiach: The Jewish Messiah Explained

"I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Moshiach, and though he may tarry, nevertheless I await his coming every day." Those words — Ani ma'amin b'emunah shleimah beviat haMashiach — are the twelfth of the Rambam's Thirteen Principles of Faith. Orthodox Jews say them, sing them, and have whispered them in places where saying them out loud could get you killed. The belief in Moshiach is one of the load-bearing beams of Jewish faith, and it is one of the most misunderstood ideas in Judaism from the outside.

What Moshiach Is

The word "Mashiach" means "the anointed one." In ancient Israel, kings were anointed with oil when they took the throne — that is the literal sense of the word. Moshiach is the future anointed king, a descendant of Dovid HaMelech (King David), who will reign at the end of days.

The Tanakh describes him in concrete terms. He will be:

• A descendant of Dovid through the line of Shlomo (Shmuel II 7:12–13, Yirmiyahu 23:5)
• Observant of the Torah and of all Jewish law (Yeshayahu 11:2–5)
• A righteous judge (Yirmiyahu 33:15)
• A great leader who will gather the Jewish people back to Eretz Yisrael from every corner of exile

He is a human king. He is not a god, not the son of a god, and not divine in any way. He will live, rule, and eventually die — and his son will rule after him, as the Rambam writes in Hilchos Melachim 11–12.

What Moshiach Is Not

This is where the most common confusion sits. Christianity took the Hebrew word "Mashiach" — translated to Greek as Christos — and built around it a theology of a divine savior who atones for sin through his death. None of that is Jewish.

In Judaism, Moshiach does not save anyone from sin. Atonement comes through teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (charity), as it always has. Moshiach does not die for anyone. He is not a divine being. He is not worshipped. The idea that the Messiah is in any sense G-d, or part of G-d, is considered avodah zarah — foreign worship — by every classical Jewish authority.

So when an Orthodox Jew says "I am waiting for Moshiach," he means something specific: a real human king, in the line of Dovid, who will appear in history, lead the Jewish people back to their land, and bring about the conditions described in the prophets.

What Will Happen When Moshiach Comes

The prophets and the Rambam are surprisingly concrete about this. When Moshiach comes:

• The Jewish exile ends. Every Jew, from every land, returns to Eretz Yisrael (Yeshayahu 11:11–12, Yirmiyahu 23:8, Hoshea 3:4–5).
• The Beis HaMikdash is rebuilt. The Third Temple, the final one, stands in Yerushalayim (Yechezkel 37:26–27).
• The Sanhedrin returns. The seventy-one-judge supreme court of Torah law is reconstituted (Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 11:1).
• Universal recognition of Hashem. The nations of the world come to acknowledge the G-d of Israel (Yeshayahu 2:3, Zechariah 14:9).
• An era of peace. The famous prophecy of Yeshayahu — "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" (Yeshayahu 11:6) — is read by the Rambam as a parable: the Jewish people will dwell in security alongside nations that once preyed upon them like wolves and leopards.

The Rambam was characteristically clear-eyed about all this. He wrote that the days of Moshiach will not involve any fundamental change in the natural order. There will still be rich and poor, still birth and death. What will change is that Jews will be free to learn Torah and serve Hashem without the distractions and cruelties of exile. The wisdom will be so widespread, he says, "that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea."

Why Jews Are Still Waiting

The honest answer is: because he has not come yet, and the conditions that the prophets described — universal peace, the rebuilt Beis HaMikdash, the ingathering of exiles, the end of evil — have plainly not happened. The State of Israel exists, and many religious Jews see it as atchalta d'geulah — the beginning of the redemption — but no Orthodox authority claims that the messianic era has arrived.

So Jews wait, and the waiting itself is a form of avodah. Every day. Three times a day in the Amidah, observant Jews ask Hashem to bring back the throne of Dovid, to rebuild Yerushalayim, and to send the descendant of Dovid speedily in our days. At weddings, the chosson breaks a glass to remember that even at his happiest moment, the Beis HaMikdash is still not standing. The yearning is built into the rhythm of Jewish life.

"May He Come Speedily in Our Days"

Orthodox Jews bless each other with the phrase zol zein gezunt biz Moshiach kumt — "may you be well until Moshiach comes." Speeches end with bimheirah b'yameinu, "speedily in our days." Children sing Ani Ma'amin in school. None of this is metaphor or wishful thinking. It is the lived expectation that history is going somewhere, that the long Jewish exile has a destination, and that one day a king from the line of Dovid will walk into Yerushalayim and the world will change.

That is what Orthodox Jews mean when they say they are waiting for Moshiach. Not a savior from sin. Not a god. A king. A real one. And though he may tarry, we await his coming every day.