I have just finished reading Messianic Christology. I very much enjoyed the exposition from a Jewish perspective of prophecy as relating to the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. I find it odd that Luke should have left out “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.” One would assume that Jesus would have been able to read the scroll without missing any of the text.

Concerning the phrase “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted” missing from what Yeshua read in Luke 4, it should be kept in mind that we are dealing with two different documents. The Old Testaments we have today are translations of the Masoretic Text, which dates from approximately AD 900. Obviously, the quotations of the Old Testament that you find in the New Testament could not be from the Masoretic Text. Actually, for the most part, they are quotations of the Septuagint. The Septuagint was a Greek translation made of the Old Testament around 250 BC, and they were using a Hebrew text that we no longer have today. The Hebrew text they were using did not have the phrase “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.” When Jesus read the text of Scripture, He obviously used a Hebrew text, but we do not have the same Hebrew text He used. That text may or may not have had the phrase. However, the New Testament writers were quoting from a Greek translation of the Hebrew text, the Septuagint, and that did not have that specific phrase, which is why Luke would not have added it to his gospel.