The Messiah in the Minor Prophets

Micah 5:1-6

[1] Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

[2] But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

[3] Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. [4] And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

[5] And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. [6] And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

This is the source of the belief that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (where King David was born), motivating both Matthew and Luke to come up with (two different) stories about how Jesus of Nazareth was, despite appearances, actually from Bethlehem. But this Bethlehem-born Messiah's role is to "be ruler in Israel" and "deliver us from the Assyrian." The Assyrian Empire collapsed some 600 years before Christ, so this apparently has nothing to do with Jesus.

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Zechariah 3:8-10

[8] Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH. 

[9] For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. [10] In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree.

We have learned from the other prophets to see "Branch" as a Messianic title, referring to a righteous branch of the House of David. What follows -- the stone with seven eyes, the vine and fig tree, etc. -- is obscure and gives little information about what the Branch is supposed to do. Fortunately Zechariah returns to the subject later.

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Zechariah 7:12-13

[12] And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord: [13] Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.

The Branch (Messiah) will rebuild the Temple and will be both a king and a priest. Jesus did not rebuild the temple, which in his time had already been rebuilt and had yet to be destroyed again -- although he did say he could rebuild it in three days if it were destroyed. His disciples understood that "he spake of the temple of his body" -- but it would be quite a stretch to say that when Zechariah wrote "he shall build the temple of the Lord" what he actually meant was "he shall die and return to life."

Jesus was also neither a king nor a priest, although of course both titles could be interpreted figuratively.

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Zechariah 9:9-10

[9] Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. 

[10] And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

The Messiah will be a peaceful ruler, as symbolized by his riding on an ass and abolishing horses, chariots, and weapons of war. (Matthew in his ignorance misunderstood Zechariah's poetic parallelism as saying that the Messiah would ride on two asses simultaneously and claims in his Gospel that Jesus did just that!)

Jesus did ride an ass (or two!) into Jerusalem, apparently on purpose to fulfill this prophecy. As for the rest of it, I suppose Jesus was just rather than unjust, but it is hardly his most salient characteristic. "Having salvation" is of course very appropriate, but in fact the Hebrew may simply mean "victorious." The description of a king as "lowly" (i.e., humble, unassuming) is interesting, and may suggest that this person is not a literal monarch, as Jesus was not.

Jesus did not bring peace in any literal or worldly sense, but perhaps speaking peace to the heathen, and reigning from the river to the ends of the earth, can be interpreted in terms of creating a religion which embraced gentile as well as Jew and which spread over the whole world. Specifically, Christianity "conquered" Rome by renouncing violent resistance and "speaking peace unto the heathen."

Overall, I find this one of the most relevant-to-Jesus of the Messianic prophecies.