I have seen this written “There are no scriptures in the Torah that point to Yeshua as the Messiah.” This is a focus point of many anti-missionaries online who hope to change one’s faith in Yeshua or to keep one from ever believing Yeshua is the Messiah sent of God. The most important thing to understand is that the “messianic concept” is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. This does not preclude that the Torah does not direct our attention to a future expectation of the Messiah, the one sent of God to save His people. Historically, we know (i.e. from the Apostolic Writings) there are a few places in the Torah that have been interpreted which allude to the future expectation of the Messiah such as what we find in Devarim / Deuteronomy 18 (a prophet like Moshe) or in Bereshit / Genesis 3:15 (crushing the head of the serpent). Here (Devarim / Deuteronomy 18) Moshe describes this future person as being a prophet like himself. Yes no mention of “the Messiah” in this context in the Hebrew text. Rashi says (on 18:15) this describes a prophet to prophet characteristic, the one whom the Lord will raise up will be from the midst of Israel and who will function as Moshe functioned having words given to him directly from God teaching His Torah. (Yeshua did this.) Another scripture that alludes to the future expectation of the messiah is suggested from Bereshit / Genesis 22 (the akedah) Rashi on Genesis 22:13 part 1 states “והנה איל BEHOLD, A RAM — It was predestined for that purpose from the six days of Creation (Mishnah Avot 5:6; Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 23).” This substitutionary sacrifice concept Rashi describes as being predestined to occur from before the creation. This seems to follow in a parallel fashion to the Messianic interpretations on Yeshua in the Apostolic Writings (NT), where the disciples later drew upon tradition as an interpretive technique to establish that Yeshua was the Messiah promised of God. Modern scholars suggest that the messianic concept was introduced later in the history of Judaism, during the age of the prophets. A simple search in the online Jewish encyclopedia (google it) with the search term “preexistance” will produce a lot of information on this along with the supporting Scriptures from the Tanach and the rabbinic literature. (Also try searching sefaria.org) A lot of times we take for granted certain scriptures and our own knowledge of these things as straight forward as accepted theology which direct us to understand (from the Torah) an expectation of the Messiah. My wife tells me I do that and then expect others to just have this general understanding taking for granted what I know… my bad! One thing is certain though, the interpretation of certain sections from the Torah as referring to the future expectation of the Messiah come from a rich traditional rabbinic environment. This becomes apparent when one does due diligence to study these things! We do not have to doubt these Scriptures (and others) from the Torah and the Tanach direct us to believe Yeshua is our Lord and Savior. If someone claims otherwise, it may take a little work to show the “half-truth” of their claims, but it is rewarding when having found the truth, because as Yeshua said, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)
