Son of Man - Judaism

Judaism

The Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם i.e. ben-'adam) appears one hundred and seven times in the Hebrew Bible. This is the most common Hebrew construction for the singular and appears 93 times in Ezekiel alone and 14 times elsewhere. In thirty two cases the phrase appears in intermediate plural form "sons of men", i.e. human beings.

Within the Hebrew Bible, the first place one comes across the phrase son of man is in Book of Numbers 23:19:

In the Book of Job, we see son of man used a total of three times (all of which, interestingly enough, fall within poetry):

Within the Book of Psalms we find the same classical forms employed within Numbers and Job wherewith son of man is used in parallel with man to describe humanity as a whole.

The Book of Ezekiel is unique within the tradition of the Tanakh, in that as the story unfolds, the phrase son of man is used approximately 94 times by a divine being to refer to the author. Son of man here appears to be a title referring to the humanity of the author, much how the word "human" may suffice in English. It is not a respectful appellation, but a humbling one (in some cases, an arguably abject one), and this use is a consistent pattern throughout Ezekiel.

In the Book of Daniel, parts of the text were riginally written in Aramaic, this portion of the volume (7:13-14) deals with a vision attributed to the author about "the times of the end". Within the context of Daniel passages, the use of son of man is more consistent with the concept of self-reflection. It has been argued that "there came with the clouds of the sky 'one like a son of man'" describes one "like a human being" or "one like ." In the interpretation of the vision given later, this figure represents "the saints of the Most High"(Dan 7:16-18, 21-22, 25-27). By extension, this may have later led to the idea of "'the son of man'," an eschatological Messianic figure, within Judaism. Such interpretation appears in the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra.

The son of man figure within the book of Daniel seems based on the Divine figure presented in the Merkabah of the book of Ezekiel.

As generally interpreted by Jews, denotes mankind generally, with special reference to their weakness and frailty (Job 25:6; Psalms 8:4; 144:3; 146:3; Book of Isaiah 51:12, etc.). It is also a title frequently given to the prophet Ezekiel, probably to remind him of his human weakness.

In post-biblical Jewish literature the most common use is similar to that of the English word "human." For example in 1QapGen. XXI.13: MT שיא (Gen. 13.16)

In the Hebrew of Genesis 13:16, the word translated as בר אנוש (son of man) was איש (man).

The Book of the Laws of the Countries is the oldest general discussion of mankind in the Aramaic language, dating from the late second to early third century AD; and we can see that ברנשא bar nasha is used in a general form for humanity.