Why could the Old Testament rabbis not see the 2,000-year gap between the first and second comings of the Messiah?
The Old Testament rabbis could not see the gap because God had not revealed it. They viewed the messianic prophecies as one continuous picture, unable to distinguish between the coming King and Kingdom and the coming suffering Savior, just as distant mountains appear as one range. Only afterward was the nearly 2,000-year interval recognized.
Les explains that the Jewish rabbis and scholars looked at prophecies of a coming King and Kingdom, and also a coming Savior, but they could not see any period of time between them. He compares this to approaching a mountain range from a distance: if the farthest mountain is the highest, you cannot tell that they are all part of one range. That is how they saw many of these things. They saw one aspect of the prophecy and the other, but they could not differentiate that there would be 2,000 years between them. Les says this was because God had not revealed that there would be almost 2,000 years between His first advent and His second. From His appearance first to be the King and offer the Kingdom, He ends up being the suffering Savior. Now there have been 1,900 and some years between the fulfillment of the one, and the other is still future. They could not reckon that.