Why does the New Testament repeatedly describe Jesus as “the prophet like Moses”?
By Jill Szoo Wilson
As Israel stands on the edge of the Promised Land in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses delivers his final instructions to a generation born largely in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. Forty years earlier, God had brought Israel out of slavery through signs, plagues, the Passover, and the crossing of the Red Sea. At Mount Sinai, Moses ascended into the presence of God, received Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and mediated the covenant between God and Israel. The covenant promises first given to Abraham generations earlier now begin taking visible shape in the life of an entire nation ordered around Torah, worship, priesthood, sacrifice, and covenant law.
Now Moses is about to die. Israel must prepare to enter the land without the prophet who has stood at the center of their covenant life all these years. It is within that atmosphere of covenant transition that Moses speaks one of the most consequential promises in the Torah.
Moses first addresses Israel directly:
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen.”
(Deuteronomy 18:15)
A few verses later, Moses recounts God’s own response to Israel’s fear at Sinai:
“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”
(Deuteronomy 18:18)
Immediately before describing this future prophet, Moses warns Israel against adopting the spiritual practices of the surrounding nations, including divination, sorcery, mediums, necromancy, and attempts to inquire of the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10–12). In the ancient Near East, rulers and priests often sought hidden knowledge through ritual specialists who claimed access to supernatural power, omens, dreams, astrology, spiritual intermediaries, and the realm of the dead itself. Israel is about to enter that world without Moses, the prophet who has spoken directly with God on their behalf since Sinai.
Therefore, Deuteronomy 18 addresses a moment of profound uncertainty for Israel. Moses is about to die, and the people are preparing to enter a land filled with rival gods, pagan temples, and spiritual practices the Torah repeatedly describes as dangerous and defiling. Israel must not seek revelation the way the surrounding nations do because Israel’s covenant relationship with the God of Abraham depends upon something fundamentally different: the God of Israel speaks for himself, appoints prophets by his own authority, and establishes the covenant through revelation rather than divination or ritual manipulation. The promise of a future prophet “like Moses” therefore emerges within a larger question already pressing upon Israel: after Moses dies, how will the covenant people continue hearing the voice of God faithfully?
The promise of a future prophet like Moses becomes clearer when Moses recalls Israel’s experience at Sinai, also called Horeb in Deuteronomy’s language, where the people first encountered the terrifying immediacy of divine presence. Exodus describes thunder, fire, smoke, earthquakes, trumpet blasts, and the visible descent of God upon the mountain. The people feared death under the weight of unmediated holiness and pleaded for an intermediary.
Moses reminds Israel that they themselves pleaded with him at Sinai: “Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire anymore, lest I die” (Deuteronomy 18:16). Moses responds to that fear by standing between divine holiness and the people. He becomes the covenant mediator, receiving the words of God and mediating them to Israel.
The promise of a future prophet like Moses, therefore, carries meaning far beyond the ordinary role of prophecy in Israel.
Israel already possesses prophets who call the nation to repentance, warn of judgment, confront kings, and speak the word of God into particular historical moments. Yet Moses occupies a unique place within the covenant story itself. He does not simply deliver prophetic messages. He mediates the covenant at Sinai, receives Torah directly from God, intercedes for Israel after rebellion, and stands between divine holiness and the people. Deuteronomy, therefore, describes more than the continuation of prophecy. Moses describes a future figure whose relationship to covenant revelation and mediation will parallel his own.
The uniqueness of Moses becomes even clearer at the conclusion of Deuteronomy itself. After narrating Moses’s death, the text offers a remarkable reflection: “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). The statement creates theological tension that remains unresolved across the remainder of the Tanakh (the Old Testament). Prophets arise throughout Israel’s history. Samuel anoints kings. Elijah confronts Baal worship. Isaiah speaks of exile and restoration. Jeremiah announces covenant judgment. Ezekiel sees the glory departing and returning. Yet Deuteronomy’s final assessment continues standing over the remainder of the Tanakh: no prophet had yet arisen in Israel like Moses. The Torah itself, therefore, leaves Israel waiting.
That expectation remained alive during the Second Temple period, the era stretching from the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple after the Babylonian exile through the first-century world of Jesus and the apostles. During those centuries, Jewish communities lived under a succession of foreign empires, including Persian, Greek, and Roman rule. Israel remained deeply shaped by covenant memory, yet many Jews continued longing for national restoration, divine deliverance, and the full fulfillment of God’s promises.
Within that atmosphere of exile, foreign occupation, and covenant longing, Jewish communities began developing different expectations concerning how God would restore Israel. The Babylonian exile had shattered the kingdom, destroyed the temple, and raised profound questions about covenant, land, kingship, worship, and national identity. Even after some Jews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple, Israel continued living under foreign rule rather than experiencing the full restoration envisioned by the prophets. Many Jewish communities, therefore, continued longing for a future moment when God would restore Israel fully by ending foreign oppression, establishing righteous rule, renewing covenant faithfulness among his people, and fulfilling the promises spoken through the prophets concerning restoration and peace.
Different Jewish groups emphasized different aspects of that hoped-for restoration. Some anticipated a coming king descended from David who would restore righteous rule to Israel. Others focused upon priestly renewal, prophetic restoration, or divine intervention against oppressive empires. Deuteronomy 18 remained part of that larger atmosphere of expectation because Moses had promised that God would one day raise up a prophet “like me.”
This expectation appears repeatedly in the New Testament itself. In the Gospel of John, religious leaders ask John the Baptist directly, “Are you the Prophet?” (John 1:21). The question does not refer to prophecy in a general sense. It reflects the specific expectation established in Deuteronomy 18 that God would one day raise up a prophet like Moses. Later, after Jesus feeds the five thousand in the wilderness, the crowds declare, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). That response becomes especially significant within a Gospel already saturated with Exodus imagery, wilderness themes, and covenant language. The New Testament writers are not inventing a new theological category for Jesus. They are identifying him within an expectation already rooted in the Torah itself centuries earlier.
The Gospels then begin presenting Jesus through patterns deeply associated with Moses and the Exodus tradition. Matthew’s Gospel proves especially deliberate in this regard. Jesus ascends a mountain and teaches with covenantal authority in the Sermon on the Mount. He feeds multitudes in wilderness settings. He passes through water at the Jordan before entering a period of testing in the wilderness. His infancy narrative includes a murderous ruler killing Hebrew children, echoing Pharaoh’s slaughter in Exodus. The Gospel writers repeatedly frame Jesus through Exodus and Sinai imagery because they understand his ministry through categories already established in the Torah itself. These patterns are not accidental literary decoration. The question surrounding Jesus is therefore never whether he introduces an entirely disconnected religious system. The question concerns whether Israel’s long-awaited covenant mediator has finally appeared.
The book of Acts makes the connection fully explicit. In Acts 3, Peter addresses crowds in Jerusalem shortly after the healing of a lame man at the temple. Speaking within the heart of Jewish covenant life, Peter identifies Jesus directly with Deuteronomy 18: “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you’” (Acts 3:22). Peter does not present Jesus as standing outside the story of Israel. He presents him as the continuation and fulfillment of covenant expectation already spoken through Moses. Peter’s argument depends upon continuity between Moses, Israel’s covenant history, and Jesus himself. Moses spoke of a coming prophet. Israel awaited him. Jesus now stands within that prophetic and covenantal framework.
Stephen does the same in Acts 7 while recounting Israel’s history before the Sanhedrin. His speech traces Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Sinai, the tabernacle, and Israel’s repeated resistance to God’s messengers before arriving again at Deuteronomy 18: “This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers’” (Acts 7:37). Stephen argues that Israel’s leaders are repeating a pattern already visible throughout Israel’s history: resisting the very messengers God sends to them. His defense depends upon Israel’s covenant story remaining one continuous narrative extending from Abraham through Moses and now into the apostolic age itself.
The Epistle to the Hebrews carries the theme even further by comparing Jesus and Moses directly. Moses remains honored as faithful within God’s house, yet Hebrews presents Jesus as possessing greater authority over the house itself. Hebrews can make that comparison precisely because covenant mediation, sacrifice, holiness, priesthood, and access to divine presence all remain central concerns within Israel’s covenant story. The New Testament does not abandon Mosaic categories. It intensifies and fulfills them through Israel’s Messiah.
Deuteronomy 18, therefore, stands at the center of a profound covenantal trajectory extending from Sinai into the apostolic age. Moses promises that God will one day raise up a prophet like himself who will faithfully mediate the words of God to Israel. Deuteronomy closes by acknowledging that no such prophet had yet arisen within Israel’s story. That unresolved expectation continues through the Second Temple period and appears repeatedly throughout the New Testament world. The Gospels frame Jesus through Exodus and Mosaic imagery. Crowds identify him as “the Prophet.” Peter invokes Deuteronomy 18 directly in Jerusalem. Stephen places the promise within the larger pattern of Israel’s covenant history. Hebrews presents Jesus as the greater covenant mediator whose authority surpasses even Moses himself. The New Testament repeatedly describes Jesus as “the prophet like Moses” because its Jewish authors understood Jesus within the covenantal world already established in the Torah. Scripture, therefore, reveals one unfolding story moving from Sinai toward the Messiah, from Moses toward Christ, through the continuing faithfulness of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
You can read the previous essay in this series here:
One Story. One Covenant. One Messiah.
Shavuot and Pentecost: One Feast, One Story
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: Why the Abrahamic Covenant Still Stands
One Root. Many Branches. Paul’s Answer in Romans 11
Jill Szoo Wilson 