In Deuteronomy God promises Moses a successor: ‘I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.’1 Christians and Muslims both read the verse as a prophecy, and the comparison is instructive.
In this article
A prophet like Moses
Peter, in Acts, applies the promise to Jesus.2 Yet Deuteronomy itself closes by saying that there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.3 Moses was a prophet, a lawgiver and the leader of a nation; he married, had children, died a natural death, and brought a written law. Muslims point out that the Prophet Muhammad matches him in each of these points, while the Gospels present Jesus as unlike Moses in most of them.
From among their brethren
The prophet is to come ‘from among their brethren’. Genesis twice uses the same language of Ishmael, who would dwell ‘in the presence of all his brethren’.4 Muslims read the brethren of Israel as the children of Ishmael, from whom the Prophet descended. The Qur’an draws the parallel with Moses itself:
إِنَّآ أَرْسَلْنَآ إِلَيْكُمْ رَسُولًا شَـٰهِدًا عَلَيْكُمْ كَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَآ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ رَسُولًا ١٥
Indeed, We have sent to you a Messenger as a witness upon you just as We sent to Pharaoh a messenger.
Qur’an 73:155
It also speaks of a witness from the Children of Israel who testified to something similar and believed.6 The verse states in one sentence what Deuteronomy promised: a messenger sent to his people as Moses was sent to Pharaoh, speaking the words God put in his mouth. The Qur’an, in the Muslim reading, is those words.
Further reading: Muhammad in the Bible, Ishmael in the Abrahamic traditions.