“Son of Man”: From the Dust of Isaiah to the Glory of the Gospels

by Ron Ash August 31, 2026

Introduction

Few phrases in all of Scripture carry more theological weight — or more interpretive complexity — than “son of man.” It appears in the Old Testament dozens of times, most famously in Ezekiel and in Daniel’s apocalyptic vision. It appears in Isaiah in a way that is often overlooked. And it appears on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament more than any other self-designation he uses — over eighty times across the four Gospels.

But here is what makes the phrase so remarkable: it means something very different depending on who is speaking it, in what context, and against what scriptural background. In Isaiah, “son of man” is a reminder of human frailty and mortality. In the New Testament — particularly in Luke 19:10 and the broader Gospel tradition — it becomes the vehicle for one of the most audacious claims ever made: that the eternal Son of God has entered human history as a human being, to seek and to save what was lost.

“Son of Man” in Isaiah: The Frailty of the Human Creature

Isaiah uses the phrase “son of man” (ben adam in Hebrew) in a way consistent with its most basic Old Testament meaning: a human being, with all the limitations, mortality, and creaturely dependence that entails.

“I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass?”
— Isaiah 51:12

Here “son of man” (ben adam) is used in direct parallel with “man who dies.” The son of man is the mortal human being — the creature made of grass, subject to death, dependent entirely on God for existence and meaning. Isaiah reinforces this in one of Scripture’s most memorable images:

“All flesh is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows on them; surely the people are grass.”
— Isaiah 40:6–7

Isaiah 56:2 uses the phrase in a more neutral, inclusive sense:

“Blessed is the man who does this, the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
— Isaiah 56:2

Summary of Isaiah’s use: In Isaiah, “son of man” consistently means a mortal human being — frail, transient, creaturely, dependent on God. It is a term of humility, even of limitation. The son of man is grass. The son of man dies. The son of man is not God.

The Bridge: “Son of Man” in Ezekiel and Daniel

In Ezekiel, God addresses the prophet as “son of man” over ninety times. The effect is striking: God, speaking from his overwhelming heavenly glory, consistently addresses the prophet with this term of creaturely humility. The more glorious God appears, the more clearly Ezekiel’s creaturely status is emphasized.

Daniel 7 introduces a use of “son of man” that is categorically different — and it is this use that Jesus most directly invokes:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”
— Daniel 7:13–14

This “one like a son of man” comes on the clouds of heaven — a prerogative elsewhere reserved for God alone — and receives universal, eternal dominion. He is a heavenly figure of cosmic authority who has human form. This is the “son of man” that Jesus claims to be. And the claim is explosive.

“Son of Man” in the New Testament: Jesus’s Most Frequent Self-Designation

In the four Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as “the Son of Man” more than eighty times — far more than “Messiah” or “Son of God.” He uses it in three distinct ways:

1. The Son of Man Who Has Authority on Earth

“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...”
— Matthew 9:6

“For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
— Matthew 12:8

Jesus claims authority that belongs to God alone — using the very phrase that in Isaiah meant “mortal, creaturely, limited human being.” The irony is deliberate: the one who appears to be merely a son of man is exercising divine authority.

2. The Son of Man Who Must Suffer and Die

“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
— Luke 9:22

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
— Mark 10:45

Here Jesus uses “Son of Man” in a way that echoes the Isaianic sense — the mortal human being who suffers and dies. But he transforms it: the suffering of the Son of Man is a deliberate, redemptive act — a ransom, a sacrifice, a giving of life for others.

3. The Son of Man Who Will Come in Glory

“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”
— Luke 21:27

“But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God.”
— Luke 22:69

Here Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13–14 almost directly. The Son of Man who suffers and dies is the same Son of Man who will come on the clouds in glory, seated at the right hand of God, exercising universal and eternal dominion.

Luke 19:10 — The Son of Man Who Seeks and Saves

“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
— Luke 19:10

Spoken after his encounter with Zacchaeus — the despised tax collector who climbed a tree to see him — this verse brings together every strand of the “son of man” tradition in a single sentence.

“The Son of Man came” — the language of the Incarnation. He did not merely appear or emerge. He came — from somewhere else, from outside the human story, entering it from above. This echoes Daniel’s “one like a son of man” coming from the heavenly realm.

“to seek out” — the language of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep (Luke 15:4). The Son of Man actively seeks. He goes to where the lost are — to Jericho, to the house of a tax collector, to the margins and the places where respectable people do not go.

“and to save” — the language of Isaiah’s Servant, who bears the sins of many and makes intercession for transgressors (Isaiah 53:12). The Son of Man does not merely find the lost — he saves them, paying the price of their lostness with his own life.

“the lost” — in the context of Luke 19, Zacchaeus: despised, excluded, beyond redemption by every human measure. And yet the Son of Man comes to his house, eats at his table, and declares salvation to his household.

The contrast with Isaiah could not be more stark. In Isaiah, the “son of man” is grass — mortal, transient, not to be trusted as God is trusted. In Luke 19:10, the Son of Man does what only God can do: he seeks the lost, saves the perishing, and restores the outcast to the family of God. He is simultaneously the mortal human being and the divine Savior.

The Theological Significance: The Communicatio Idiomatum

The contrast between Isaiah’s use of “son of man” and Jesus’s use in Luke 19:10 and throughout the Gospels is the theological heart of the Incarnation. What the Catholic Church calls the communicatio idiomatum — the communication of attributes — means that because Jesus is truly God and truly man, what is said of his humanity can be said of his divinity, and vice versa.

St. John Chrysostom reflected on Jesus’s use of “Son of Man”:

“He calls himself Son of Man to show that he has truly taken our nature upon himself — not in appearance only, not as a phantom, but truly and really. He is Son of Man because he is born of a woman. And he is Son of God because he is born of the Father before all ages.”

The Catholic Church, in the Catechism, draws on this tradition:

“Jesus calls himself ‘the Son of Man’... By this title he reveals that he is at once the humble servant who will suffer and the glorious Lord who will come again.”
— CCC 440

Other Key New Testament Uses

John 3:13–14: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Jesus explicitly claims to have descended from heaven — the opposite of Isaiah’s son of man, who is of the earth. And he connects his being “lifted up” on the cross with Moses’s bronze serpent — the instrument of healing for those who look upon it.

John 6:53: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Isaiah’s son of man is grass — perishable, consumed, gone. Jesus’s Son of Man offers his flesh and blood as food and drink for eternal life.

Acts 7:56: Stephen, at the moment of his martyrdom, sees “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” The one who was crucified as a criminal is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Isaiah’s grass has become the eternal King.

Revelation 1:13; 14:14: The book of Revelation returns to Daniel’s imagery — “one like a son of man” — but now the figure is unmistakably Christ in his glorified state: eyes like flames of fire, feet like burnished bronze, voice like the roar of many waters.

The Catholic Church’s Reading of This Trajectory

The Catholic Church reads the trajectory from Isaiah’s “son of man” to Jesus’s “Son of Man” as one of the most profound movements in all of Sacred Scripture — the movement from type to fulfillment, from shadow to reality, from the creature to the Creator who became a creature. The Second Vatican Council articulated the governing principle:

“God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New.”
— Dei Verbum, 16

Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, reflected on Jesus’s use of “Son of Man”:

“The title ‘Son of Man’ is Jesus’s preferred self-designation... It expresses both his lowliness — he is truly man, truly one of us — and his exaltation — he is the one who comes from God and returns to God, who exercises divine authority and will come again in glory. In this title, the humility of the Incarnation and the glory of the Resurrection are held together in a single phrase.”

Conclusion: The Grass That Became the Bread of Heaven

Isaiah looked at humanity and saw grass — beautiful, yes, but transient. Mortal. Dependent. The son of man is grass, and the grass withers.

Jesus took that phrase — that reminder of human frailty and creaturely limitation — and made it his own. He called himself the Son of Man not despite its connotations of mortality and limitation, but because of them. He wanted his hearers to understand: I have truly become one of you. I have entered fully into the human condition — into the grass, into the dust, into the mortality that Isaiah described.

And then he transformed it. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. The Son of Man has authority to forgive sins. The Son of Man will come on the clouds of heaven. The Son of Man gives his flesh for the life of the world.

The grass did not merely wither. The grass was taken up into the eternal life of God — and in being taken up, it became the bread of heaven for all who are lost, all who are mortal, all who are grass.