It is a well known fact that Muslims are very keen to find prophesies concerning Muhammad in the pages of the Bible. These claims come up time and time again in discussions with Muslim, on newsgroups such as soc.religion.islam, and in other forums. We can see why Muslims are so keen to find such references when we turn to the Qur'an:

Those who follow the apostle, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in the Taurat and the Injil...
Sura 7:157

For Muslims it is vital that they find a prophecy concerning Muhammad, for otherwise the Qur'an must be wrong. There are a number of verses in the Bible that Muslims claim contain such prophecies, and I will examine one such claim here. I hope that this will serve to give an idea of just how tenuous these kinds of claims are, and to demonstrate the lengths to which Muslims are prepared to twist and manipulate Scripture to support their prophet.

This web page grew out of a discussion on the soc.religion.islam newsgroup with two Muslims (called Saqib and Arshad).

Please feel free to use and/or distribute any part of this paper. If you have any comments or suggestions, then do please email the author at andybannister@mac.com.

Muhammad prophesied in Deuteronomy 33:2?

This was the claim made by Saqib on the soc.religion.islam newsgroup which started it all:

And Moses said, "The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints:  from his right hand went a fiery law for them."
Deuteronomy 33:2

It is Muhammad (saaws) who led thousands, bearing a fiery law, from Paran. Paran is part of Arabia. Muhammad (saaws) led ten thousand of his followers from Medina to Mecca. Leading with the 'fiery law', the Quran. It is this Prophet that rose up from the brothers of the Israelites. It is this Prophet about whom both Moses (as) and Jesus (as), among others, prophecied. Believe it if you have the strength to bear the truth

Now the problem with this claim is that it totally fails to acknowledge the context of who is being talked about in the passage in question; is this verse claiming that a prophet came from Paran? No, of course not, it is perfectly obvious to even the most casual reader that it is the Lord God who is being talked about here.

A Muslim called Arshad continued with the argument and claimed:

The Prophets (upon them be peace) are doing what God has commanded of them.  They are God's messengers.  This should be easy for anyone to understand.

Before we examine why this is wrong, it is worth noting the Muslim methodology that is employed here; shifting the subject. This is a common game. Arshad's discussion about what prophets do is irrelevant, because Deuteronomy 33:2 is not talking about prophets. Yet he subtly tries to introduce an element to the text that is not there. This kind of exegesis lies at the heart of most attempts by Muslims to find prophecies about Muhammad.

Who is being talked about in Deuteronomy 33:2?

Let's look at Deuteronomy 33:2 in more detail:

And Moses said, "The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints:  from his right hand went a fiery law for them."
Deuteronomy 33:2

The key to understanding who this verse is talking about lies in the first few words of Moses' speech:

"The LORD came from ..."

Now the word highlighted in blue above is the Hebrew word YHWH:

This is the name of God himself. It is not referring to a prophet, or to any many, but to God. It is certainly not talking about Muhammad.

It is quite a mystery how any Muslim can justify saying "Muhammad = YHWH = God". How would they respond if a Mormon posted claimed that the name "Allah" in the Qur'an does not mean God, but actually means their prophet, Joseph Smith? I think that there would be an outcry. Deuteronomy 33:2 is talking about God himself, and to try to insert Muhammad's name here is offensive, blasphemous, and wrong. Rather it is talking about God in this passage, for it was Yahweh who led his people in the wilderness of Paran (on the southern borders of Canaan) by a flaming pillar of fire; it was Yahweh whose covenant with his people dawned like a sunrise in the desert; it was Yahweh who gave Moses his law at Mount Sinai. You can read about it all in the book of Exodus.

I have met Muslims in the past who have come close to deifying Muhammad, but Saqib and Arshad are the first who have actually come right out and said they now believe Muhammad = Yahweh = God. Is shirk no longer the crime in Islam that it used to be?

A prophet with 10,000 followers?

Saqib and Arshad on soc.religion.islam were not merely content with trying to claim that Muhammad rather than God deserved the credit for the mighty acts recorded in this verse. They went on to explain that the next part of Deuteronomy 33:2 made it very clear that this was Muhammad. They explained that:

Muhammad (saaws) led ten thousand of his followers from Medina to Mecca.

and

That's good that you used a Bible translation that mentions 10,000 holy ones, some of the translations coming out now like to omit this figure, perhaps they too realize of this prophecy of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in the Bible. 

This is yet another example of a case where, if they had bothered to check their Hebrew, Muslims would not have got into all this bother. Here is what Deuteronomy 32:2 says:

"... and he came with ten thousands of saints ..."

The phrase highlighted in blue is the Hebrew word "rebabah" (RBBH), translated in this case by the King James translation as "ten thousands". Here is what the word looks like:

This word does not simply mean 10,000; rather it means "multitude, myriad, ten thousand" according to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary. More modern translations, such as the NIV, translate it in Deuteronomy 33:2 as just that, "myriad". It does not signify a precise numeric amount, simply a great many. An interesting exercise is to look through the Old Testament at all the occurences of the word to understand how it is used in this context. Here are the 16 places where it occurs, just for reference:

In every case above, you will see that the word is used in this figurative, non-exact sense, it simply means a lot! Therefore modern translations which use the word "myriad" in Deuteronomy 33:2 are correct.

Is Deuteronomy 33:2 talking about what God has done in the past, or things that will happen in the future?

The next problem for Muslims who make the claim that Deuteronomy 33:2 is talking about Muhammad (other than the problem of turning Muhammad into God) is that this verse is in the past tense; it's not talking about someone who will do these things, but someone who has already done them. And Moses gave this speech over 1,400 years before Muhammad ever walked the earth. How do Muslims try to get over this hurdle?. Here is how Arshad on soc.religion.islam attempted it:

There were two possibilites I came up with, one, the author of this passage wasn't clear when he wrote down this passage many years later, its pretty easy to forget.

The other possibility is this. God is not constrained by the laws of this world. He knows what will happen in the future. So from his perspective everything is in the past.

I guess you never considered that?

The retort of "I guess you never considered that?" is a common one when discussing alleged prophecies of Muhammad in the Bible, probably because in each of the verses in question one would normally never consider that the verse could ever be twisted to point to a "prophet" born 1,400 years later. It is also tempting to turn this logic on its head and ask; has a Muslim ever considered that it wasn't the angel Gabriel who appeared to Muhammad, but an alien from the planet Zob? Their answer will be, of course, "no, I've never considered that". And we wouldn't dream of calling them small-minded, but it is simply that some suggestions are so far out as to be ridiculous.

The context of this passage is perfectly clear; it is the account of Moses blessing the tribes of the Israelites just before his death. He begins by reminding them of what God (Yahweh) has done for them. This is the context of verse 2; it is a reminder to the Israelites of the amazing things God has done for them; Moses is looking back, not forward. Anyone who had read all of chapter 33 would have no problems grasping this.

However, let us briefly look at the two claims made by Arshad:

1. The author of this passage wasn't clear when he wrote down this passage many years later, its pretty easy to forget.

Frankly, the suggestion that "the author wasn't clear ... it's pretty easy to forget" is laughable, ludicrous, and a little offensive. Doesn't the Qur'an tells Muslims to respect the Torah? Wasn't Muhammad told to ask the People of the Book when he have had a question?

... He revealed the Torah and the Gospel ... (Sura 3:3)

And argue not with the People of the Scripture ... say : 'We believe in that which hath been revealed unto us and revealed unto you.'
(Sura 29:46)

Or perhaps we have missed the Surah that says something like:

"Lo, misquote and abuse the Torah where you wish, and twist it (greatly) to suit your own ends"

Christians, Jews, and (we are led to believe) Muslims, believe the Torah to be revelation from God; and yet here we have Arshad claiming that the person who wrote it forgot. Perhaps we should look at all the events in the Qur'an for which a time gap exists! Given that the Qur'an was written down after the death of Muhammad in 632, and our earliest extant copies date from circa 790 AD, there are thousands of years between many of the events described in the Qur'an and the date they were recorded. Presumably, Arshad does not trust the Qur'an either, since the time gap is bigger than for Deuteronomy. Maybe Muhammad also forgot; or is there a double standard afoot here?

2. The other possibility is this. God is not constrained by the laws of this world. He knows what will happen in the future. So from his perspective everything is in the past.

From a philosophical point of view, we would disagree slightly here. As a Christian I believe that God is outside of time, as time is something that he created. So from God's perspective, he can see everything as now. However, we also know that God works in human history and within time; this is helpful for us as weak and limited human beings.

Thus, God sees and knows all events past, present, and future with equal vividness. This should never cause us to think that God does not see events in time and act in time ... thus God somehow stands above time and is able to see it all as present in his consciousness.

[Grudem, Wayne: "Systematic Theology", IVP 1994, p171]

Thus whilst we believe that God is not constrained and restricted by time (hence he can see what for us is the future and therefore there is prophecy), it is quite another to say that God acts arbitarily and leaves us guessing as to whether he is speaking about events past, events present, or events that are to come. God chooses to take into account the frailties of human perception and grammar, and thus makes himself clear when he speaks.

Hence in the Bible when we find prophecy, God generally describes it as such. If Muslims took the trouble to read the rest of Deuteronomy 33 and not merely their "proof text", they would see how this is the case; for example there are prophecies, and Moses prophesies over Zebulun (v. 18-19), Naphtali (v.23) and Israel as a whole (v.29) for example. The context is clear. However, in verse 2, Moses' is talking about the past.

Like many of these Muslim arguments, an interesting exercise is to turn their argument around and fling it straight back at them. For example, suppose we were to apply Arshad's principle to claim in the Qur'an that Muhammad is the last (or seal) of the prophets. By Arshad's reasoning, we could quite rightly say that Muslims have no right claiming Muhammad is the last of the prophets; after all, God might be speaking from the perspective of the future, and thus the last and greatest prophet is still to come! Would many Muslims go along with this line of reasoning? I think probably not.

Conclusion

The only possible way that Muslims can claim that Deuteronomy 33:2 is talking about Muhammad is to admit that they believe that Muhammad = God, which all Jews, Christians, and (I hope) Muslims would consider to be blatantly offensive. This is the only possible interpretation of this passage, and to try to argue otherwise like Saqib, Arshad, and others have done is not only erroneous, but is also blasphemous.

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