Concept

Old Testament Witness to the Deity of Christ

Intro

The Old Testament does not say the name "Jesus." But it does describe a second figure who shares God's own identity. He carries God's name, does what only God does, and receives worship that belongs only to God. Yet He is also distinct from "the Father," sent by Him, and stands beside Him. The New Testament identifies that figure as Jesus Christ.

This is the load-bearing claim of OT Christology. Jesus's deity is not a late add-on. The pattern is already in the Hebrew Bible.

Why this matters: it answers the charge that Christians invented the divine Jesus in the fourth century, or borrowed Him from Greek philosophy, or read Him backward into texts that never knew Him. None of that holds. The pattern shows up in Genesis, in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the prophets long before Christianity exists.

The basic shape: this page collects twelve distinct lines of evidence. Theophanies where the "Angel of YHWH" speaks AS God. Plural language ("Let us make man"). Two-YHWH passages where one YHWH sends another. The Word, Wisdom, and Memra acting as divine persons. Messianic prophecies that hand the coming King divine names. The Son of Man scene in Daniel 7. And more.

The leading objection: "These are Christian re-readings imposed on Jewish Scripture; ancient Jews never saw it this way." The reply: ancient Jews did see it this way. The Aramaic Targums talk about the "Memra of YHWH." Second Temple texts wrestle with a second divine figure. Early rabbis labeled the reading "Two Powers in Heaven," and only declared it heretical AFTER Christians used it. The pattern was already visible.

In full

The Hebrew Bible / Old Testament does not name "Jesus of Nazareth," but it identifies a divine figure within YHWH's own identity, distinct from the Father yet sharing the divine name, attributes, prerogatives, and worship. The New Testament identifies that figure as Jesus Christ. The OT case for Christ's deity is therefore not a New-Testament-imposition on a previously-monolithic Jewish monotheism, it is the recognition of a pattern already woven through Torah, Prophets, and Writings, a pattern pre-Christian Judaism itself wrestled with under the rubric of "Two Powers in Heaven" before declaring it heretical only after Christian use rendered the rabbinic mainstream uncomfortable.

This page surveys the twelve major lines of OT evidence that ground orthodox Christological exegesis. The structured cumulative argument in debate-prep shape lives at Cumulative Case for the Deity of Christ. Greek/Hebrew word studies live in the codex's lexicon entries (linked inline below).

Why the OT case matters apologetically

Three load-bearing apologetic functions:

Anti-Tahrif / anti-anachronism, refutes the Islamic and academic-revisionist claim that Christ's deity was a 4th-century imperial or 1st-century Pauline innovation. Pre-Christian Hebrew texts already encode the divine-identity Christology Christianity confesses (see Trinity Invented at Nicaea Objection Defeater).
Jewish-evangelism foundation, Christianity does not ask Jews to abandon Israel's Scripture for a different God; it claims that Israel's own Scripture identifies the God who came in Jesus. Counter-missionary objections (Gerald Sigal; Tovia Singer; Michael Skobac) deploy at the OT level; the response must engage at the OT level.
Internal Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity, Christ's pre-existence, the homoousios of Council of Nicaea, and the application of YHWH-texts to Christ throughout the NT are all warranted from the Hebrew Scriptures and not merely imposed on them. Without the OT case, the NT christology floats free of its native exegetical soil.

The twelve lines of evidence

1. Theophanies, the Angel of YHWH speaks AS YHWH

The "Angel of YHWH" (malakh YHWH) appears repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible and is identified BOTH as distinct from YHWH (sent by Him) AND as YHWH Himself (speaking in first-person YHWH-language; receiving worship; forgiving sin):

Genesis 16:7-13, the Angel of YHWH finds Hagar; she names Him El Roi ("the God who sees me"); the narrator says "she called the name of YHWH who spoke to her."
Genesis 22:11-18, the Angel of YHWH stops Abraham; speaks as YHWH ("by Myself I have sworn, declares YHWH, that because you have done this... I will surely bless you").
Exodus 3:2-6, the Angel of YHWH appears in the burning bush; introduces Himself as "the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob"; gives the divine name eheyeh asher eheyeh ("I AM WHO I AM").
Judges 6:11-23, the Angel of YHWH appears to Gideon; Gideon says "I have seen the Angel of YHWH face to face"; the Angel responds "Peace to you, do not fear, you shall not die", which presupposes a face-to-face encounter that should have been fatal (cf. Ex 33:20).
Judges 13:18-22, the Angel of YHWH refuses to give His name, calling it "wonderful" (pele'i); receives sacrifice; ascends in the flame; Manoah says "we shall surely die for we have seen God."
Hosea 12:3-5, Jacob "wrestled with God" (Elohim); the parallel line says "yes, he struggled with the Angel and prevailed... he found Him at Bethel and there He spoke with us, even YHWH, the God of hosts."

This is the theophany-Christology of the early Fathers (Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 56-60; Irenaeus of Lyons Against Heresies 3.6.1-2; Tertullian Against Praxeas 14-16): the OT theophanies are appearances of the Pre-Incarnate Son. The Angel is YHWH (speaks as Him, receives worship, is named God) AND is sent BY YHWH (distinct in person). This is the foundational OT pattern of distinction-within-identity.

See Angel of the LORD for the comprehensive concept hub.

2. Plural self-reference for God ("us" / "our")

Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image."
Genesis 3:22, "the man has become like one of us to know good and evil."
Genesis 11:7, "Come, let us go down and confuse their language."
Isaiah 6:8, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"

These plurals do not by themselves prove the Trinity (the rabbinic "plural of majesty" reading is logically possible), but they are striking in a context where Hebrew has clear grammatical resources for self-reference and where YHWH is otherwise emphatically singular (Deut 6:4). The plurals are coherent with, and the Christian tradition reads them as, the multiple-personal-identity-within-unity that the rest of the OT case develops.

3. Two-YHWH passages, distinct YHWHs in the same verse

Genesis 19:24, "Then YHWH rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from YHWH out of heaven." Two YHWHs are distinguished within a single sentence, one rains, one is the source from heaven.
Psalm 110:1, "YHWH said to my Lord (l'adoni): 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'" YHWH addresses David's "Lord", a figure David, the king of Israel, calls adon. Jesus Himself argues from this verse against a merely-human Davidic Messiah (Matt 22:41-46; Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44).
Zechariah 2:8-11, "For thus says YHWH of hosts... 'I AM about to wave my hand over them...' Then you will know that YHWH of hosts has sent me." A speaker who is YHWH of hosts claims to have been sent by YHWH of hosts.
Zechariah 12:10, "they will look on me whom they have pierced." The speaker is YHWH (preceding context); the pierced one is mourned. Identity-without-collapse.
Malachi 3:1, "Behold, I send My messenger... and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, says YHWH of hosts."

Psalms 110 / Psalms 110.1 is the most-cited OT verse in the NT (~25-28 NT citations), central to the apostolic preaching of Christ as enthroned at YHWH's right hand. See H0113 - adon for the Hebrew lexical case.

4. Logos / Word / Wisdom / Memra / Shekhinah, divine personifications acting as God

Genesis 1, God speaks creation into being. The Word of YHWH is the creative agency.
Psalm 33:6, "By the word of YHWH the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host." Trinitarian-shape: YHWH + Word + Breath/Spirit.
Proverbs 8:22-31, Wisdom personified as eternal companion of YHWH, present at creation, "rejoicing always before Him."
Wisdom of Solomon 7:25-26 (deuterocanonical, but pre-Christian Jewish), Wisdom as "the breath of the power of God... reflection of eternal light."
The Targumic Memra, the Aramaic-Jewish translations and paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible used for synagogue reading (Targum Onkelos, Targum Jonathan, Targum Neofiti, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan), composed in the late Second Temple period and the early rabbinic centuries, regularly substitute "the Memra (Word) of YHWH" for occurrences of "YHWH" in actions like creation, covenant, salvation, and judgment. The Memra acts as God, is God, and is mediator between God and creation. John's Logos Christology (John 1:1-18) is grounded in this Aramaic-Jewish exegetical substrate, not in Hellenistic philosophical importation.
The Shekhinah, the visible presence-glory of YHWH. The pillar of cloud and fire (Ex 13:21-22), the Sinai cloud (Ex 24:15-18), the tabernacle glory (Ex 40:34-38), the Solomonic Temple glory (1 Kgs 8:10-11), the departing glory of Ezekiel 10. The NT identifies Christ as the new Shekhinah: the Word "tabernacled among us" (John 1:14, eskēnōsen, verb formed on σκηνή, the LXX translation of mishkan); "we beheld His glory."

The Logos/Memra/Wisdom/Shekhinah cluster supplies the Jewish-monotheist conceptual resources that the NT picks up to confess Christ as YHWH-incarnate without breaching monotheism. See Logos Christology (concept) and G3056 - logos (lexicon).

5. Messianic prophecies with explicit divine names and attributes

The Messianic prophecies do not merely predict a Messiah; they predict a Messiah called by names that elsewhere belong to YHWH alone:

Isaiah 7:14, Immanu-El ("God with us"). See Isaiah 7.14 (rich passage hub) and the almah/parthenos lexical question.
Isaiah 9:6-7, the child to be born is called Pele' Yo'etz (Wonderful Counselor), El Gibbor (Mighty God, the same El Gibbor applied to YHWH directly in Isa 10:21; Jer 32:18; Deut 10:17), Avi-Ad (Everlasting Father / Father of Eternity), Sar-Shalom (Prince of Peace). See Isaiah 9.6 (rich hub).
Isaiah 40:3, "The voice of one calling: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of YHWH; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'" The four Gospels apply this verse to John the Baptist preparing the way of Jesus (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). The Messiah whose way John prepares IS the YHWH whose way is being prepared.
Jeremiah 23:5-6, the righteous Branch (tsemach tsaddiq) raised up to David is named YHWH-Tsidkenu ("YHWH our Righteousness"). The Messianic Branch bears the divine name as His own.
Jeremiah 33:15-16, the same name applied to Jerusalem in the Branch's day.
Micah 5:2, the ruler from Bethlehem whose "goings forth (motzaotav) are from of old, from days of eternity (mimei olam)." Pre-existent. See Micah 5.2 (rich hub).
Daniel 7:13-14, "One like a Son of Man" (kebar enash) comes with the clouds of heaven, is presented before the Ancient of Days, and is given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, and "all peoples, nations, and men of every language worshiped Him" (Aramaic yiplach, the same verb used elsewhere in Daniel for the worship reserved for God: Dan 3:12, 17, 18, 28; 6:16, 20). Jesus's most-frequent self-designation ("the Son of Man") cites this passage at His trial (Matt 26:64; Mark 14:62; Luke 22:69) and is what the Sanhedrin recognized as a blasphemy claim.
Zechariah 9:9, the king who comes "righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey", fulfilled in the triumphal entry (Matt 21:5; John 12:15).
Zechariah 12:10, "they will look on me (YHWH speaking) whom they have pierced." Applied to Jesus at the cross (John 19:37; Rev 1:7).
Psalm 22, the suffering one's anguish, mockery, hand-piercing, garment-dividing, all narrated centuries before Roman crucifixion existed.
Psalm 45:6-7, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever..." addressed to the Davidic king. Hebrews 1:8 applies this directly to Christ as God.
Psalm 102:25-27, YHWH the eternal Creator who laid the foundations of the earth. Hebrews 1:10-12 applies this verse-block directly to the Son.

See Argument from Prophecy Fulfillment (syllogism) and Messianic Prophecy Probability for the broader prophecy-fulfillment apologetic; this section anchors the divine-name prophecies specifically.

6. Two Powers in Heaven, pre-Christian rabbinic acknowledgment

Alan Segal's Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Brill 1977) documents that pre-Christian and early-rabbinic Judaism had a recognized exegetical tradition reading certain OT passages, including the theophanies, the plural-language texts, and the Daniel 7 vision, as pointing to two divine powers in heaven within YHWH's identity. This was not a fringe heresy; it was a mainstream reading among some Second Temple Jewish groups, including some rabbinic teachers in the early centuries.

The decisive move is the rabbinic post-Christian declaration that the Two-Powers reading is heretical (b. Sanhedrin 38b; b. Hagigah 14a; b. Berakhot 7a; the early-rabbinic pattern). The timing is critical: the Two-Powers tradition was acceptable until Christian use of it became evangelistically threatening, at which point rabbinic authorities branded it minim / heresy. This pattern is recognized in Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines: The Partition of Judaism and Christianity (Penn 2004) and The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New Press 2012), Boyarin (himself an Orthodox Jewish Talmudist) argues that high Christology including the divine-Messiah, divine-Son-of-Man, and binitarian readings are NATIVE to Second Temple Judaism, not Christian importations. Larry Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ (Eerdmans 2003) and Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans 2008) make the corresponding NT-historical case.

This is dialectically powerful: the rabbinic tradition confirms what Christians claim, that the OT contains a binitarian/proto-trinitarian reading-pattern, by the very act of declaring it heretical. The "we never read it that way" response is historically untenable.

7. Daniel 7:13-14, the Son of Man receives worship and an eternal kingdom

This passage warrants its own line because it is central to Jesus's self-identification:

"I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man (kebar enash) was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve/worship (yiplach) Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed." (Daniel 7:13-14)

Three load-bearing features:

Coming with the clouds of heaven, in the OT, only YHWH rides the clouds (Ps 18:9-10; 68:4; 104:3; Isa 19:1; Nah 1:3). The Son of Man does what only YHWH does.
Receives yiplach, the Aramaic verb used elsewhere in Daniel for the worship reserved for God (Dan 3:12, 17, 18, 28; 6:16, 20). The Son of Man receives the worship-language reserved for the divine.
Eternal dominion, the kingdom is not delegated for a time; it is unchallenged and everlasting. Eternal divine kingship.

Jesus cites this passage at His trial under oath before the Sanhedrin (Matt 26:64 / Mark 14:62 / Luke 22:69), combining Daniel 7:13 with Psalm 110:1. The high priest's response, tearing his robes and declaring blasphemy, confirms that the Sanhedrin recognized exactly what Jesus was claiming: the divine identity that Daniel 7's Son of Man receives. See Liar Lunatic or Lord (syllogism).

8. NT applies OT-YHWH texts directly to Jesus

The clearest demonstration that the apostles read the OT as testifying to Christ's deity is their direct application of OT YHWH-passages to Jesus:

Joel 2:32 ("everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved") → Romans 10:13 applied to Jesus as Lord (kyrios). See Romans 10.13 (rich hub).
Isaiah 45:23 ("to me every knee shall bow, every tongue swear allegiance", YHWH speaking) → Philippians 2:10-11 applied to Jesus ("at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord"). YHWH's strict-monotheism text is applied to Christ. See Philippians 2.6-11.
Psalm 102:25-27 (YHWH the eternal Creator) → Hebrews 1:10-12 applied to the Son.
Psalm 45:6-7 ("Your throne, O God") → Hebrews 1:8 applied to the Son.
Deuteronomy 32:43 (LXX) / Psalm 97:7 (angels worship YHWH) → Hebrews 1:6 applied to the Son.
Isaiah 8:13 ("sanctify YHWH of hosts; let Him be your fear") → 1 Peter 3:14-15 applied to Christ ("sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts").
Isaiah 6:1-10 (Isaiah's throne-vision of YHWH) → John 12:41 ("Isaiah said this because he saw His glory and spoke of Him", referring to Christ).
Psalm 110:1 → Matthew 22:41-46; Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44; Acts 2:34-36; Hebrews 1:13 etc., most-cited OT text in the NT, all applied to Jesus's Lordship.
Isaiah 40:3 ("prepare the way of YHWH") → all four Gospels apply to John the Baptist preparing the way of Jesus.
Zechariah 12:10 ("they will look on me whom they have pierced", YHWH speaking) → John 19:37; Revelation 1:7 applied to Christ pierced.
Genesis 19:24 (YHWH rained fire from YHWH) → Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 56-60 reads as the Father raining fire from the Pre-Incarnate Son.

This pattern is systematic, not opportunistic. The apostolic writers do not occasionally apply YHWH-texts to Jesus when they need to make a Christological point, they do so as a settled practice that runs throughout the NT. They are reading the OT through a hermeneutic that identifies Jesus within the divine identity of YHWH.

9. Divine titles, attributes, prerogatives, and roles shared

Old Testament titles, attributes, prerogatives, and roles reserved for YHWH alone are applied to Christ in the NT, not by extension or analogy, but by direct identification:

YHWH in OT	Christ in NT
First and Last ([[Isaiah 44.6	Isa 44:6]]; 48:12)
I AM ([[Exodus 3.14	Ex 3:14]])
The LORD of lords ([[Deuteronomy 10.17	Deut 10:17]])
The Shepherd of Israel ([[Psalms 23	Ps 23]]; 80:1; [[Ezekiel 34.11-16
The Bridegroom of Israel ([[Hosea 2.16-20	Hos 2:16-20]]; [[Isaiah 54.5
The Rock of Israel ([[Deuteronomy 32.4	Deut 32:4]], [[Deuteronomy 32.15
The Light ([[Psalms 27.1	Ps 27:1]]; [[Isaiah 60.19-20
The Savior ([[Isaiah 43.11	Isa 43:11]]; 45:21)
The Creator ([[Genesis 1	Gen 1]]; [[Isaiah 40.28
The Forgiver of sins ([[Psalms 130.4	Ps 130:4]]; [[Isaiah 43.25
The Judge of all the earth ([[Genesis 18.25	Gen 18:25]]; [[Psalms 96.13
The Receiver of prayer ([[Psalms 65.2	Ps 65:2]])
The Receiver of doxology ([[Psalms 41.13	Ps 41:13]]; 72:18-19; 89:52; 106:48)

Each of these is independently load-bearing; together they form an unbroken pattern. See Names of Jehovah for the comprehensive Hebrew-divine-name treatment.

10. Pre-existence in the OT, Christ before the incarnation

The OT and NT together present Christ as the pre-existent active agent in OT events:

Genesis creation, "by Him all things were created" (Col 1:16); "all things were made through Him" (John 1:3); Wisdom present at creation (Prov 8:22-31).
The Exodus rock, "they all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ" (1 Cor 10:4). Paul reads the Exodus narrative as Christ's pre-incarnate accompaniment.
The destroyer of Sodom, Justin Martyr's reading of Gen 19:24 (YHWH rained fire from YHWH) as the Father raining fire from the Son. Patristic-traditional, but anchored in the text.
The deliverer from Egypt, Jude 5 (in the strongest manuscript tradition: P72, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus): "Jesus, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe." The textual variant is significant; the major critical editions (NA28, UBS5) read Iēsous ("Jesus") in the text.
Isaiah's vision, John 12:41 explicitly says Isaiah saw His (Christ's) glory in Isaiah 6, the throne vision in which Isaiah sees YHWH.
The Wisdom of OT, en archē ēn ho logos (John 1:1) deliberately echoes bereshit (Gen 1:1) and identifies the Logos with the eternal bereshit presence.
John 17:5, Christ prays for "the glory which I had with You before the world was."
John 8:58, "before Abraham was, I am", Christ pre-exists Abraham, applying the divine ego eimi to Himself.

See John 8.58 (rich hub), John 17.5 (rich hub), John 1.1 (rich hub).

11. The Shema reformulation, 1 Corinthians 8:6 splits Israel's confession

Israel's central monotheistic confession is the Shema:

"Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one (echad)." (Deuteronomy 6:4, NASB95)

In a single sentence, Paul reformulates the Shema between Father and Son:

"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him." (1 Corinthians 8:6, NASB95)

The Hebrew Shema's YHWH is one (YHWH echad) becomes one God + one Lord with Father (theos) and Son (kyrios) sharing the predicate "one." Paul splits the LXX kyrios (which translates the Hebrew YHWH) and theos (which translates the Hebrew Elohim) between the Father and Christ, applying the divine name to Jesus while keeping monotheism intact. Bauckham (God Crucified 1998; Jesus and the God of Israel 2008) calls this "Christological monotheism", Jesus is identified within the divine identity of YHWH, not as a second god alongside.

The reformulation is dated to within ~25 years of the resurrection (1 Cor written c. AD 53-55), long before any Hellenistic-philosophical-deification process could have produced it through gradual development. See Pre-Pauline Creeds and G1520 - heis for the lexical case (the lexicon entry triggered this concept hub).

12. Christ's own self-citation of OT for His deity

Jesus does not merely allow Himself to be identified with God; He grounds His self-claims in OT passages He cites by chapter and verse:

John 8:58, "Before Abraham was, I AM", applying the divine self-naming of Exodus 3:14 to Himself. The crowd's response (picking up stones) shows they understood the claim.
John 10:30-39, "I and the Father are one", and when challenged with stoning for blasphemy, Jesus cites Psalm 82:6 in a defense that turns on the divine status of Sonship.
Matthew 22:41-46 / Mark 12:35-37 / Luke 20:41-44, Jesus poses the Davidic-paradox: how can David call the Messiah "Lord" if the Messiah is merely his son? Citing Psalm 110:1, Jesus argues from the OT that the Messiah is Adonai to David, the implication He leaves hanging.
Matthew 26:64 / Mark 14:62 / Luke 22:69, at His trial under oath, Jesus combines Daniel 7:13 (the Son of Man coming with clouds) and Psalm 110:1 (the right hand of Power) to identify Himself as the divine-Son-of-Man-enthroned-at-YHWH's-right-hand. The high priest tears his robes; this is the blasphemy the Sanhedrin convicts on.
Luke 4:16-21, Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2 in the Nazareth synagogue: "the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me... He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor..." and declares "today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing", claiming the messianic-anointed-divine-prophet identity.
Matthew 11:2-6 / Luke 7:18-23, Jesus's response to John the Baptist's "are you the one?" question is a citation-mosaic from Isaiah (29:18-19; 35:5-6; 61:1), the works the Messiah does are the works YHWH does in those passages.
John 5:39, 46-47, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me... If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me."
Luke 24:25-27, 44-47, the post-resurrection Jesus interpreting "all the Scriptures concerning Himself" beginning with Moses and the prophets.

Jesus's own hermeneutic of the Hebrew Bible is Christocentric, that He is the figure to whom the Law and the Prophets point. This is not an apostolic innovation imposed on a previously-empty text; it is Jesus's own claim about His own Bible.

How the lines fit together

These are not twelve independent arguments; they are twelve mutually-reinforcing strands of a single pattern:

The OT contains a distinguishable divine figure (Angel of YHWH, Word of YHWH, Wisdom, Memra, Son of Man, Messianic Branch named YHWH-Tsidkenu) who is BOTH identified WITH YHWH AND distinguished FROM YHWH.
This figure receives divine prerogatives (worship, eternal kingdom, the divine name, creation-mediation, judgment).
Pre-Christian Jewish tradition (Memra-language; Two Powers exegesis; Shekhinah) had developed the conceptual resources to express this, and the rabbinic tradition's post-Christian heretical-categorization of the Two-Powers reading confirms the pre-Christian pattern.
The NT applies OT-YHWH texts directly to Jesus as a settled apostolic practice, not opportunistically, but systematically.
Jesus Himself cites OT texts as testifying to His own divine identity, including at His trial under oath.
Jesus's resurrection validates His self-claims; once raised, the apostolic community deploys the OT cumulative case in evangelism (Acts 2; Acts 13; Hebrews; Romans 10).

The cumulative force is abductive: each line is consistent with multiple Christological positions in isolation, but the only hypothesis that simultaneously accounts for all twelve is that the Hebrew Bible bears witness to a Pre-Incarnate divine Son who is identified within YHWH's own identity and is identified historically as Jesus of Nazareth.

Christian and Jewish counter-readings

Counter-missionary Jewish responses (Tovia Singer, Let's Get Biblical!; Michael Skobac; Gerald Sigal; Asher Norman) typically address the OT case along these lines:

The Angel of YHWH is a created angel; the YHWH-language is a delegated authority (the shaliach principle: an agent represents the sender as if the sender were present).
Plural-language is the plural of majesty.
El Gibbor in Isa 9:6 refers to the Davidic king being given a divinely-honoring throne-name, not to ontological deity.
YHWH-Tsidkenu in Jer 23:6 / 33:16 is a name describing what YHWH does through the Branch, not a title of the Branch's deity.
Daniel 7's Son of Man is corporate Israel (Daniel 7:18, 27, the saints possess the kingdom).
The Two-Powers tradition was always considered heretical by mainstream rabbinic Judaism.
The NT-YHWH-text application is Christian creative re-reading, not legitimate exegesis.

Christian responses:

The shaliach principle does not warrant the Angel of YHWH receiving worship, forgiving sin, accepting the divine name, or speaking in YHWH's first-person voice. Shaliach representation has limits Hebrew jurisprudence enforces.
The plural-of-majesty hypothesis fits some uses but does not explain "Let us go down" (Gen 11:7) where the plural is in a context of divine action requiring multiple subjects.
El Gibbor in Isa 10:21 (3 verses later in the same prophet) is unambiguously YHWH; it is hermeneutically illegitimate to assign the same divine title to YHWH in 10:21 and a merely-honorable Davidic throne-title in 9:6.
YHWH-Tsidkenu as a "name describing what YHWH does through the Branch" requires that the Branch's name be YHWH-Tsidkenu, not that some other action be ascribed to YHWH; the Hebrew syntax does not support the descriptive-only reading.
Daniel 7's Son of Man is BOTH corporate (the saints share His kingdom, vv. 18, 27) AND individual (one who comes before the Ancient of Days and receives worship, vv. 13-14). The corporate reading does not exclude the individual reading; they are theologically interlocked (Christ as the corporate head of the people).
Boyarin's Border Lines and Jewish Gospels document that the Two-Powers tradition was mainstream pre-Christian and was post-hoc declared heretical by rabbinic authorities in response to Christian use. The tradition exists; the rabbinic reaction confirms it.
The NT YHWH-text application is systematic and would have been recognized as exegetically grounded by 1st-century Jewish-Christian readers; it is the rabbinic counter-tradition that develops after Christianity and reads back its own counter-Christological hermeneutic onto the OT.

The dispute is genuinely contested at the exegetical level, and it has been continuously contested for two millennia. The Christian case is not "the OT obviously says Jesus is God"; it is "the OT contains a sufficient and recognizable pattern of distinction-within-divine-identity that, when paired with Jesus's resurrection-validated claim to be the figure who fulfills the pattern, warrants the Christian confession."

See Salvation of the Unevangelized §Jewish-counter-missionary engagement; Failed Messianic Prophecy Objections for the broader response to Jewish counter-missionary claims.