Few phrases in the Bible are as familiar, or as easily misunderstood, as “the Son of Man”. Many readers assume it is the opposite of “Son of God”: one title for Jesus’ human nature, the other for his divine nature. The phrase is older and stranger than that. In Hebrew and Aramaic it was an ordinary way of saying “a human being”. In one vision in Daniel it describes a figure who looks human and comes with the clouds of heaven. In the Gospels it becomes the name Jesus uses for himself more than any other.
Open Word Bible treats the phrase differently in different places, because it does different work in different places. This article follows it through the Old Testament and into the Gospels, and shows the decisions behind each choice.
An ordinary phrase
Hebrew often says “son of” where English would say “one of” or “a member of”. A “son of strength” is a strong man; “sons of the prophets” are prophets in a group. So “son of man”, בֶּן־אָדָם֙ (ben ʾādām), means simply a member of the human race. The second word is the one used for Adam and for humankind as a whole.
Psalm 8 shows the phrase at work. The psalmist looks up at the night sky and wonders that God takes any notice of people at all:
what [is] a human that you remember them, and a mortal that you visit them?
That is the Literal level, with the reader’s settings left as they are. The two halves of the verse say the same thing twice, as Hebrew poetry often does: “man” and “son of man” are parallel words for a human being, small and mortal under a vast sky. The meaning decision for the verse says just that. (English Bibles number this verse 8:4; Open Word Bible follows the Hebrew numbering, which counts the heading as verse 1.)
Because the phrase means any human being, man or woman, it falls under the reader’s gender setting in this psalm. By default the Literal level says “a mortal”, and a reader who prefers the traditional wording can switch the setting to see “the son of man”. The setting changes the wording, not the meaning: both say “a human being”. The traditional wording is kept as the alternative for a reason the record gives. Hebrews 2:6–8 quotes this psalm and reads it of Jesus, the one human being already “crowned with glory and honour”. A reader comparing the two passages should be able to see the same words in both.
Numbers 23:19 uses the phrase the same way: God is not a human being, that he should lie, nor “a son of humankind”, that he should change his mind. Here the contrast is between God’s reliability and human changeableness, and the Balanced level simply says “a mortal”.
Ezekiel: “Son of man, stand on your feet”
The phrase appears more often in Ezekiel than anywhere else in the Old Testament. In the first chapter the prophet sees the glory of God, a vision of fire, wheels and a throne, and falls on his face. Then a voice speaks:
He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.”
God never calls Ezekiel by his name. He calls him “son of man”, about ninety-three times through the book. The meaning decision says what the phrase does here. Set beside the blazing glory of chapter 1, it reminds Ezekiel that he is a mortal creature standing before God. It also says something about God, who has chosen to speak to a human being and send him.
Many modern Bibles render the phrase by its meaning. The New Revised Standard Version, for example, says “O mortal”. Open Word Bible does not. A rendering decision records the founder’s ruling that “son of man” is kept at every level, Readable included, so that the reader meets the same words each time God addresses the prophet. The phrase stays lowercase, because it is not a title, and it takes no gender setting, because here it refers to one particular man.
The same footnote makes one more point. The address to Ezekiel is not the title “the Son of Man” that Jesus uses. That title comes from somewhere else: from a vision in Daniel.
Daniel 7: “one like a son of man”
Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic, the language of much of Daniel 2–7, and the Aramaic form of the phrase is כְּבַ֥ר אֱנָ֖שׁ (kĕbar ʾĕnāsh), “like a son of man”. It comes at the climax of a dream.
Daniel sees four beasts rise from the sea: a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear, a leopard with four heads, and a fourth beast more terrible than the rest, with iron teeth and a boastful horn. Then thrones are set, and the Ancient of Days takes his seat, his clothing white as snow, his throne flames of fire. The beasts are judged. And then:
As I watched in the visions of the night, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.
The record’s first meaning decision reads the words carefully. “Like” marks a likeness, just as the first beast was “like a lion” and the second “like a bear” (verses 4–5). After four creatures from the sea comes one who looks human and comes with the clouds. The words describe what Daniel saw. They are not yet a title.
Two other decisions add to this. Clouds go with the coming of God himself elsewhere in the Old Testament (Psalm 104:3; Isaiah 19:1), and in the vision this figure travels with them toward the throne, into God’s presence. Yet he is not God: he is brought before the Ancient of Days, and the text keeps the two distinct. Then he receives what the beasts had held only for a time:
He was given authority, glory and kingly power, so that all peoples, nations and languages would serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority that will never pass away, and his kingdom will never be destroyed.
The verb for “serve” is the one Daniel uses for serving and worshipping a god (3:12, 14, 28). A meaning decision, marked uncertain, notes that it need not mean worship in the full sense, but that it is the honour due to God.
Who is the figure?
Daniel asks for an explanation, and an angel gives one. The four beasts are four kings, or kingdoms. Then the angel says that “the holy ones of the Most High” will receive the kingdom and possess it forever (verse 18), and at the end that the kingdom will be given to “the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (verse 27). What was given to the one like a son of man in the vision is given in the explanation to God’s holy ones.
So who is he? Readers have given several answers, and the record for verse 13 sets them out in a footnote marked uncertain:
- he may stand for the holy ones as a group, as each beast stands for a kingdom;
- he may be their heavenly leader or representative, sometimes identified with the archangel Michael, who appears as Israel’s protector later in Daniel (10:21; 12:1);
- he may be a messianic king.
Both Jewish and Christian interpreters have read him as the Messiah. The New Testament takes up the vision repeatedly. Jesus speaks of the Son of Man coming with or on the clouds of heaven (Matthew 24:30; 26:64; Mark 13:26; 14:62). Revelation 1:7 announces that “he is coming with the clouds”, and a few verses later John sees the risen Jesus as “one like a son of man” (1:13).
Some interpreters point out that these readings need not exclude each other. In the Bible a king can stand for his people, and what happens to him happens to them. A figure who represents the holy ones, receives the kingdom on their behalf and shares it with them would fit both the vision and its explanation. On that view the New Testament reading is not far from Daniel: the kingdom is given to the Son of Man, and through him to those who belong to him.
The record does not choose among these readings. It keeps the vision’s own description and leaves the question open.
This shows in the wording. At every level the figure is “one like a son of man”, in lowercase, and the pronouns for him (“he”, “him”) do not take the deity pronoun setting, which would capitalise them for a reader who prefers that. The pronoun for the Ancient of Days in the same verse does take it. A rendering decision explains why: the vision describes the figure, and the wording does not decide who he is. The Readable level gives the plain meaning of the Aramaic: “someone who looked like a human being”.
Daniel 7 was not the end of the image in Jewish writing. A section of the book of 1 Enoch known as the Similitudes, or Parables (chapters 37–71), speaks of a heavenly figure called “that Son of Man”, the Chosen One, who sits on a throne of glory and judges. Its date is debated: it is the only part of 1 Enoch not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and scholars place it anywhere from the first century BC to the late first century AD. Another apocalypse, 4 Ezra, written around the end of the first century AD, sees “something like the figure of a man” rise from the sea and fly with the clouds of heaven (chapter 13). Both show Jews of the period reading Daniel’s figure as an individual and a heavenly agent of God.
In the Gospels
In the Gospels the phrase appears about eighty times, and almost always on the lips of Jesus. No one in the Gospels calls him “the Son of Man” to his face, and no one confesses faith in him by that name. When the crowd in John 12:34 uses it, they are repeating his words back to him: “Who is this Son of Man?” Outside the Gospels it is rare. Stephen uses it once as he dies (Acts 7:56), and Revelation sees “one like a son of man” (1:13; 14:14). Paul never uses it at all.
The Greek form is ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, word for word “the son of the man”. The double “the” is unusual Greek, and it reads like a careful rendering of a Semitic phrase. Scholars have often sorted Jesus’ sayings into three groups, and Mark has all three.
The Son of Man on earth. When a paralysed man is lowered through a roof, Jesus tells him his sins are forgiven. The scribes object that only God can forgive sins, and Jesus answers:
But I want you to be sure of this: the Son of Man has the right on earth to forgive sins.” Then he turned to the paralyzed man.
The meaning decision reads the title as Jesus’ way of speaking of himself, recalling Daniel 7:13–14, where one like a son of man receives authority from God. It lists “any human being” as the alternative it does not choose. The same group includes Mark 2:28, where the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath, and Matthew 8:20, where he has nowhere to lay his head.
The Son of Man who suffers. At Caesarea Philippi, straight after Peter calls him the Messiah, Jesus begins to speak in a new way:
He then began teaching them that the Son of Man had to undergo great suffering, be rejected by elders, chief priests and scribes, be put to death, and rise again after three days.
Nothing in Daniel 7 speaks of the figure suffering. This is new. The record notes that the verb “rejected” is the word of Psalm 118:22, the stone the builders rejected, and that “must” points to God’s purpose written beforehand. In Mark 10:45 the Son of Man “did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. A meaning decision there, marked uncertain, notes that this may be a deliberate reversal of Daniel 7:14, where all peoples serve the one like a son of man. Before he is served, he serves.
The Son of Man who comes. The third group speaks of glory. At his trial, the high priest asks Jesus whether he is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, and Jesus answers:
Jesus said, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”
Here the record makes the link explicit. Jesus joins two passages: Psalm 110:1, where the Lord tells the king to sit at his right hand, and Daniel 7:13, where one like a son of man comes with the clouds to God. The high priest tears his clothes and the council condemns him for blasphemy (14:63–64). Whatever else the phrase meant, at that moment it was heard as a claim to sit beside God.
John’s Gospel uses the title in its own way. The first time it appears, Nathanael has just called Jesus “Son of God” and “King of Israel”, and Jesus answers with the title he chooses for himself:
Then he said to him, “Truly, truly, I tell you all: you will see heaven standing open, and God’s angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man.”
A footnote points to Jacob’s dream at Bethel, where angels went up and down a stairway between earth and heaven (Genesis 28:12). Jesus says that he himself is now the place where heaven and earth meet.
An everyday word or a title?
If “son of man” simply meant “a human being”, how did it become a title? Scholars have argued about this for more than a century, and there is no agreement.
Geza Vermes argued that in the Aramaic of Jesus’ time, “son of man” could be a modest, roundabout way of referring to oneself, something like “one” in “one does one’s best”. On that view, Jesus was not always alluding to Daniel; he was speaking of himself indirectly, and the church later heard Daniel’s figure in his words. Critics, among them Joseph Fitzmyer, questioned whether Aramaic sources from the right period actually show that use. Others hold that Jesus deliberately took up Daniel’s figure, and that the sayings about suffering fuse that figure with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Still others think some sayings go back to Jesus and some were shaped by the early church. Underneath the debate there is a simpler point that most can accept. The phrase was ordinary enough to be modest and mysterious enough to be open. It let Jesus say something about himself without using a title, like “Messiah”, that already came with fixed expectations.
The records do not try to settle the history. They describe what the text says: in the Gospels, Jesus uses the phrase of himself, and it recalls Daniel 7:13–14. That is the reading at Mark 2:10, 8:31 and 14:62, at Matthew 8:20 and at John 1:51.
Capitals, and “the Human One”
So the phrase appears in two forms in Open Word Bible, and the difference is deliberate.
Where it is a description, it is lowercase: “son of man” in Ezekiel and in Daniel 8:17, where Gabriel addresses Daniel the same way; “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7:13 and Revelation 1:13. Revelation’s form has no “the” in Greek, and the record there notes that it repeats Daniel’s description rather than the Gospels’ title, though verses 17–18 show that the figure is Jesus.
Where it is the title Jesus uses, it is “the Son of Man”, with capitals, at every level. The rendering decisions at Mark 2:10 and John 1:51 record that it is never under the gender setting, and list the alternatives that were not chosen: “the Human One”, which the Common English Bible uses, and “the Son of the Human”. These renderings bring out something real, since the phrase does mean a human being. But in the Gospels it has become a name, and a name keeps its familiar form so that a reader can follow it from Daniel to the trial before the high priest.
Two things follow for a reader. First, “the Son of Man” is not simply the human half of a pair with “Son of God”. It does say that Jesus is human, but it also points to the figure who comes with the clouds and receives an everlasting kingdom. Second, when the phrase appears in Ezekiel or the Psalms, it is not a hidden reference to Jesus. It means what it says: a human being, mortal and small, whom God has chosen to notice and to address.
The full records, with the alternatives and footnotes, are in the reader: Open Daniel 7, Open Ezekiel 2, Open Psalm 8 and Open Mark 14. See also one like a son of man in Revelation 1 and Jesus’ answer to Nathanael in John 1.