Why it matters
Nobody saw it coming.
Couldn't Christians have gone hunting for matches after the fact? Three things make that hard to believe.
Many Jews hoped for a Messiah who would free Jerusalem from foreign rulers. A Jewish prayer written about a century before Jesus asks God for “a son of David” to “purge Jerusalem from the Gentiles.” A Messiah executed by those same foreign rulers looked like proof he wasn't one. Paul admits the cross was “a stumbling block to Jews.”
Psalms of Solomon 17 · 1 Corinthians 1:23When Jesus told his disciples he would be killed and rise again, “the disciples did not understand any of this.” They made the connection only afterward: “Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him.” Nobody was acting out a script.
Luke 18:31–34 · John 12:16These scriptures come to us through Jewish scribes, most of whom never accepted the Christian reading of them. And the Dead Sea Scrolls show the words were already written long before Jesus. No one could have slipped in a better fit.
The Dead Sea Scrolls