What does 'Son of Man' mean?
✓Fact-checked & reviewed for Nicene orthodoxyHow we review →'Son of Man' sounds like a statement of humility — and in Ezekiel, where God repeatedly addresses the prophet as 'son of man,' it simply means a human being. It was Jesus' favorite self-designation, appearing about eighty times in the Gospels, almost always on his own lips. So many assume it is the humble title. The decisive background says otherwise.
It lies in a vision in Daniel 7, where the prophet sees 'one like a son of man' come 'with the clouds of heaven,' approach the Ancient of Days, and receive 'dominion and glory and a kingdom' — everlasting, served by all nations. Coming on the clouds is imagery the Hebrew Bible reserves for God's own appearing. This is no mere mortal.
That is the background Jesus invokes at his trial. Asked whether he is the Christ, he answers by fusing Daniel 7:13 with Psalm 110:1: 'you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven' (Mark 14:62). The high priest tore his robes and cried blasphemy. Far from the humble title, 'Son of Man' may be the most exalted of all.
The strongest challenge, from the Aramaist Maurice Casey, is that the phrase was only an ordinary idiom for 'a man.' Yet the Gospels use the oddly specific doubly-definite Greek form — 'the Son of the Man' — and no ordinary man 'comes on the clouds' with power and glory. The most economical reading is that Jesus deliberately took up Daniel's heavenly figure as a veiled self-designation: veiled enough to invite reflection, pointed enough to convict him at his trial.