Matthew 2:13-23
Echoes of the Exodus - Egypt
Matthew 2:13-15 The Escape to Egypt
13 After the wise men had gone back, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt. Stay there until I tell you. Herod is about to seek out the child in order to kill him."Matthew revealed the purpose of Herod’s earlier meeting with the Magi. Herod’s decision was in line with what history has to say about his arbitrary cruelty and his determination to brook no opposition.
14 He got up, took the child and his motherand, under cover of night, went off into Egypt,15 and stayed there until Herod died.Herod died in the year 4 BC. Despite Matthew’s careful emphasis on God’s being totally in control of the unfolding events, Matthew had no problem in making refugees of Jesus and his family. In Matthew’s mind, God’s sovereignty did not involve protection from suffering.
In that way, the word of God spoken through the prophet found literal expression,'I called my son out of Egypt'.Matthew’s quotation from the prophet Hosea served to provide his reason for the family’s flight into Egypt. Hosea had, however, been referring to Israel as a people, and to their liberation from Egypt and from the oppression of Pharaoh.
When Israel was a child, I loved him,and out of Egypt I called my son [11:1].
So far Matthew had identified Jesus as
- son of Abraham
- son of David
- son of Mary
- son of Joseph.
Now he called him God’s son. In the Hebrew Scriptures the title son of God was used of:
- Israel as a people,
- of kings,
- and wise men.
The title said nothing about their personal identity, but conveyed the meaning that the persons concerned had a significant relationship with God, and shared, to some extent, the qualities associated with God. Used of Jesus, it had no trinitarian overtones.
Matthew used the term to compare Jesus with Israel. He was the fulfilment of Israel’s history, of its destiny and of its role.
Within the context, Matthew was making the additional point that, in Jesus, the liberation promised to Israel was about to happen. In some ways Herod represented the ancient Pharaoh. Both embodied the repression, injustice and cruelty endemic to the world’s power structures and currently exercised by Rome and Roman puppets (among whom Herod would clearly have qualified).
The Kingdoms of the World
Matthew had been careful to ensure that the readers’ introduction to the kings and kingdoms of this world (and religious elites collaborating with them) would show them as:
- motivated by self-interest (or national interest) and self-preservation,
- brutal and violent in pursuit of their aims,
- and deceptive in their dealings with people.
At the same time, he highlighted the ultimate futility of their strategies and their power.
Echoes of the Exodus - Infanticide
Matthew 2:16-18 The Massacre of the Infants
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he became very angry. He sent and killed all the boys in Bethlehem and its territories who were two years old and under according to the time he had carefully ascertained from the wise men.Matthew had Herod reflect the behaviour of Pharaoh towards Israel. Pharaoh had ordered the murder of all male Israelites at birth. The Israelite midwives subverted that plan. Herod’s plan to eliminate Christ was undermined by Joseph’s cooperation with the angelic messenger.
17 The word of Jeremiah the prophet was then fulfilled.18 He had said, “A cry was heard in Rama, weeping and loudly lamenting. Rachel was weeping over her children, and did not want to be comforted because they were no more.”Jeremiah was commenting on the despair and confusion at the time of the deportation of the defeated population of Judah to Babylon, six centuries earlier. Rama, a spot somewhere in the vicinity of Bethlehem, had been the place where the deportees had assembled before their journey into exile. Rachel was the especially beloved wife of Jacob, the ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel.
The arbitrary and violent opposition of the political and religious power brokers would overshadow the unfolding life of Jesus.
Echoes of the Exodus – Return to the Promised Land
Matthew 2:19-23 The Return from Egypt
19 When Herod had died,an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said, 20 "Get up, take the child and his mother and go into the land of Israel. The ones who wanted to take the life of the child are dead."21 He got up, took the child and his mother and went back into the land of Israel. 22 When he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod,he feared to go there. Warned in a dream, he went on to the district of Galilee.After Herod the Great’s death in 4 BC, his son Archelaus tried to persuade Rome to make him king in his father’s place. Rome disagreed. The former kingdom was divided into four tetrarchies, each ruled by one of Herod’s three sons and Lysanias. Archelaus was given charge of Judea and Samaria. In the year 6 AD, because of maladministration and excessive brutality, he was deposed, and Judea and Samaria came under the direct governorship of Rome. Antipas, who was in charge of Galilee, proved to be little better than his brother. Violent reprisal faced anyone who challenged the status quo.
Matthew had associated Herod the Great with Pharaoh. Correspondingly, he wished to associate Jesus with Moses, and worded his story accordingly. The angel’s words to Joseph echoed God’s words to the fugitive Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, instructing Moses to return to the country from which he had fled:
Go back to Egypt,for all who are seeking your life are dead [Exodus 4:19].Archelaus’s arbitrary cruelty gave Matthew reason to move Jesus from Bethlehem to Nazareth in Galilee, where he would grow up. During his public life, Jesus would be known as a Galilean.
23 When he arrived there, he settled in a town called Nazareth. In that way, the word spoken through the prophets took shape literally, 'He will be called a Nazarene'.Nazareth was a town located a short distance from the major administrative city of Sepphoris, areas of which were still under construction during the boyhood of Jesus. He and his father were woodworkers. Perhaps they found work there from time to time.
Matthew claimed that unidentified prophets had used the term: He will be called a Nazarene/Nazorean. There is no record of such a statement in any of the existing Scriptures.
Scholars debate the exact word used by Matthew: Nazorean.
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Some believe that it may refer to Nazirites. Nazirites were Jewish ascetics who took a vow to God never to drink wine or to cut their hair. The word “nazir” meant “set apart”, the equivalent of “holy”. The Book of Judges had an angel declare to the mother of Samson that, somewhat like Mary, she would become pregnant to her husband through a special act of divine power, and her son would be a “nazir”.
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Other scholars think that the word might derive from a Hebrew word meaning “branch”. Isaiah had spoken of a coming king as a branch growing from the roots of Jesse (the father of David).
Infancy Narrative - Preparing for the Story that Follows
Matthew’s genealogy can be read as a list, not just of random persons, but of bearers of an evolving story:
- from wandering nomads,
- to captive and oppressed people in Egypt ,
- to occupiers of a land that was not theirs,
- to tribes, barely organised, but prepared to cooperate with each other for the sake of maintaining their religious identity and for military protection,
- to a monarchy that quickly split into two, the Southern and Northern Kingdoms,
- to a conquered and dispossessed people living in exile,
- to a remnant people returned from exile and repossessing their former territories,
- to a conquered people in their own land under the rule of Greek emperors,
- to a kingdom, independent for a short while,
- eventually to become a subject people, conquered by Rome.
Who the individual persons were, and what kind of people they were, seemed to have been irrelevant. God worked through them, and his saving will was not to be thwarted.
At any one time in their evolution, they would have found extreme difficulty even to conceive what was about to happen to them next, or how familiar structures would disappear, to be replaced by unthinkable new ones. Yet, through all this changing history, their God was with them, shaping them through the prophets, critiquing them and promising them salvation.
Matthew was fascinated by the way that Jesus fulfilled that history. Yet, the majority of the people could not accept the change and development introduced by Jesus. Mary and Joseph did; Matthew’s community did.
Herod and the scribes were significant, not so much for themselves, but as representatives of the political and religious structures of the day. The structures were oppressive, evil, whatever about the personal responsibility and sin of the individuals, each of whom was human, fallible, and inconsistent, and a mixture of both good and evil.
Gentiles were able to recognise the Christ, whom professional religious leaders could not. Matthew painted in broad strokes. Not all Gentiles were benevolent; not all Jewish religious leaders were evil. Yet, Matthew’s community remembered Jesus’ violent death at the hands of political and religious leaders, and they carried the still open wounds of opposition and ostracism from members of local synagogues. They thought in simplistic categories: good/evil; for/against.
Matthew had raised the question of Jesus’ identity. He had given a variety of answers, but the issue was not yet resolved. Matthew’s final observation would be made in the concluding paragraph of his Gospel.
Matthew had set the scene for Jesus’ public life.
Next >> Matthew 3:1-12