Chapter 4 - The King Fulfills Prophecy (2:13-23)

4 The King Fulfills Prophecy (2:13-23)

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise and take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” And he arose and took the Child and His mother by night, and departed for Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “Out of Egypt did I call My Son.”

Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the magi. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because they were no more.”

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise and take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” And he arose and took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he departed for the regions of Galilee, and came and resided in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” (2:13-23)

The first of the four Old Testament passages around which Matthew presents the events of chapter 2 is that of the Messiah’s being born in Bethlehem (2:6; cf. Mic. 5:2), which has been discussed in relation to the coming of the magi. The other three are given in the present text. One refers to the escape to Egypt, another to the slaughter at Ramah, and the other to the return to Nazareth.

THE ESCAPE TO EGYPT

The coming of the magi no doubt was a time of great encouragement and assurance to Joseph and Mary, confirming the wondrous words of the angels to them (Matt. 1:20-23; Luke 1:26-38), to Zacharias (Luke 1:11-20), and to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-14). It also confirmed the testimonies of Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45) and of Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38) about the Child to whom Mary gave birth. Even these wise men from far-off Parthia had been told the news by God and came to worship Jesus and give Him gifts.

But the rejoicing was short-lived. No sooner had the magi departed than an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, giving him a warning from God. This news was not of joy and hope, but of danger and urgency. Arise and take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him. Just as the magi had been warned by God to disobey Herod (v. 12), Joseph was now warned by God to flee the evil, murderous king.

From pheug (to flee) we get our word fugitive, one who escapes from something or someone. The word is here in the present imperative, indicating the beginning of action that is to be continued. Joseph and his family were immediately to begin fleeing, and were not to stop until they were safely within Egypt and beyond the reach of Herod. The distance from Bethlehem to the border of Egypt was about 75 miles, and another 100 miles or so would have been required to get to a place of safety in that country. Traveling with a baby made the trip both slower and more difficult.

Egypt was a natural asylum for the young Jewish family. During the period of Greek rule of the Mediterranean world, which occurred during the intertestamental period, Alexander the Great established a sanctuary for Jews in Alexandria, the Egyptian city he named for himself. Throughout the Roman rule that followed, that city was still considered a special place of safety and opportunity for Jews. The Jewish philosopher and historian Philo, himself a prominent resident of Alexandria, reported that by A.D. 40, a few years after the death of Christ, the city’s population included at least one million Jews. In the third century B.C. a group of Jewish scholars in Alexandria had produced the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. The Septuagint was used by much of the early church, and it was from that version of the Old Testament that many New Testament writers quote.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, it seems reasonable that Joseph used the valuable gifts of the magi (the gold, frankincense, and myrrh) to pay for the trip to Egypt and the stay there, where the Lord instructed Joseph to keep his family until I tell you.

Obviously God could have protected His Son in many other ways and in many other places, even in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, under Herod’s very nose. He could have blinded Herod’s soldiers, destroyed them by an angel, or simply have miraculously hidden the family. But God chose to protect Him by the very ordinary and unmiraculous means of flight to a foreign country. The commands to go to Egypt and then to leave were given supernaturally, but the trip itself and the stay there were, as far as we are told, marked by no special divine intervention or provision. The family was not instantly transported to Egypt, but had to make the long, tiresome journey on their own, just as hundreds of other Jewish families had done during the previous several centuries. To decrease the chance of being noticed, Joseph took the common precaution of leaving by night, probably telling no one of his plans.

We know nothing of the stay in Egypt except the bare fact that Jesus and His family were there. Countless speculations have been made about the sojourn. Some ancient writers, supposing perhaps to enhance and improve on the biblical account, manufactured stories of the baby Jesus healing a demon-possessed child by placing His swaddling clothes on the afflicted child’s head, of causing robbers to flee into the desert, and of causing idols to disintegrate as He walked by them. Others, such as the second-century pagan philosopher Celsus, sought to discredit Jesus by claiming that He spent His childhood and early manhood in Egypt learning the occultic practices for which that country had long been famous. Like many Jewish opponents of Christianity during his day, Celsus maintained that Jesus then returned to Palestine to impress the people with miracles and deceive them into thinking He was the Messiah.

It is likely that the stay in Egypt until the death of Herod lasted no more than a few months. It is now that we are told the primary reason for the family’s going to Egypt: that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “Out of Egypt did I call My Son.” The Old Testament writers were the Lord’s spokesmen. Just as they had no way of knowing, apart from divine revelation, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, they had no other way of knowing that He would live awhile in Egypt. The flight to Egypt was one more piece of divine evidence that Jesus was God’s Son, the promised Messiah.

Seven centuries earlier God had told Hosea that “out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos. 11:1). Herod’s threat was no surprise to the Lord, who, long before Herod was born, had made plans to foil that wicked king’s plans against the true King. The reference to “My son” in the book of Hosea is to the nation Israel. It was a historical statement about what God had done in delivering His people from bondage under Pharaoh, calling them out from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Why, then, did Matthew interpret as predictive an event that occurred perhaps 700 years before Hosea and an additional 700 years before Matthew quoted Hosea?

The setting of the book of Hosea is failure, decadence, and spiritual tragedy. Through the unfaithfulness of his own wife, Gomer, Hosea vividly portrays the unfaithfulness of Israel to the Lord. Gomer was a physical prostitute, and Israel was a spiritual prostitute. God’s chosen people had chased after false gods as unashamedly as Gomer had chased after her lovers. Though Hosea’s heart was grieved and broken, he continued to love his wife and sought to win her back. She wound up in a brothel, having lost all sense of decency and shame. The Lord then commanded Hosea to redeem her: “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods” (Hos. 3:1). The prophet then bought Gomer’s freedom “for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley” (v. 2). He brought her home, gave her back her place of honor as his wife, and continued to love her as he had before. She was his wife, and he maintained his covenant. Hosea 11:3-4 tells how God taught the Israelites, carried them, healed them, led them, loved them, eased their burdens, and fed them. He called them from Egypt in order to be faithful to them, in spite of their unfaithfulness to Him.

Despite everything, God promised to bring Israel back to Himself. Israel would suffer His rebuke and His judgment, but one day that people would return to their God, because He had called Israel to be His son. Thus God reminded His people of His great and long-lasting love for them. “When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos. 11:1). He would not go back on that calling. When Matthew quotes the last part of that verse from Hosea, he applies it to Christ. Though Hosea was not knowingly predicting that the Messiah would also one day be brought out of Egypt, Matthew shows that Jesus’ return from Egypt was pictured by Israel’s calling from that same country many centuries earlier. The Exodus, therefore, was a type of Jesus’ return from Egypt with Joseph and Mary. As God had once brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to be His chosen nation, He now had brought out His greater Son to be the Messiah.

A type is a nonverbal prediction, an Old Testament person or event that illustrates some aspect of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the future but does not specifically describe it; the writer has no way to see the future antitype. God’s nonverbal predictions are as true and vivid as His verbal ones. But we cannot legitimately call a person or event a true Old Testament type except as the Bible itself tells us of it. The only certain Old Testament types are those given as such in the New Testament. No type is in itself visibly a type; such reality awaits the New Testament identification. When the New Testament uses something in the Old as a prefigurement of something that has occurred or will occur later, we can safely refer to the Old Testament something as a type. Ignoring such limits results in the freedom to allegorize, spiritualize, and typify the Old Testament by whimsy. Because types are veiled revelation, divine testimony to their identity must be given by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament text. Therefore, because of the specific association that Matthew gives here, we know that the Exodus of Israel from Egypt is a type of Jesus’ return from Egypt as a young child.

In a still deeper sense Jesus came out of Egypt with Israel under Moses. As Matthew has already shown, Jesus descended from Abraham and from the royal line of David. Had Israel perished in Egypt, or in the wilderness, or in any other way, the Messiah could not Himself have come out of Egypt or even have been born.

THE SLAUGHTER AT RAMAH

The third fulfilled prophecy that Matthew mentions in chapter 2 is that of Herod’s brutal slaughter in Bethlehem. After Joseph had secretly taken Jesus and His mother to the safety of Egypt, the malevolent Herod, enraged by the magi’s failure to report back to him (see 2:7-8), committed one of the bloodiest acts of his career, and certainly the cruelest.

The Greek word empaiz generally carried the idea of mocking, and is so translated in the King James Version of this passage. The root meaning is “to play like a child,” especially in the sense of making sport of or jesting. It is used to describe the accusations and taunts of Jesus’ enemies against Him (Matt. 20:19; 27:41; Mark 15:20; Luke 22:63; 23:11; etc.). But the idea in Matthew 2:16 is better rendered as tricked. Either meaning, however, refers to Herod’s perception of the motives of the magi, not their true intention. It was not their purpose to trick or mock the king but simply to obey God’s command “not to return to Herod” (v. 12). The king, of course, knew nothing of God’s warning and saw only that the wise men did not do as he had instructed.

Herod’s hatred of the newborn contender to his throne began when he first heard the news of His birth. The purpose of having the magi report back to him was to learn the exact information needed to discover and destroy the Child—not to worship Him, as he had deceitfully told the magi (2:8). The magi’s going home by another way, and so avoiding Herod, added infuriation to hatred, so that he became very enraged.

Thumo (to be enraged) is a strong word, made still stronger by lian (very, or better, exceedingly). The Greek is in the passive voice, indicating that Herod had lost control of his passion and now was completely controlled by it. His senses, and what little judgment he may have had, were blinded. He did not bother to consider that, because the magi did not return to him, they probably had guessed his wicked intent and that, if so, they would surely have warned the family. The family, in turn, would have long fled Bethlehem and probably the country. In light of Herod’s perverted mind, however, he possibly would have taken the same cruel action—out of the same senseless rage and frustration—even had he known that the primary object of his hatred had escaped. If he was not able to guarantee killing Jesus by killing the other babies, he would kill them in place of Jesus.

In any case Herod’s rage was vented in the desperate and heartless slaughter of all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under. He went up to the age of two because of the time which he had ascertained from the magi. Jesus was probably no older than six months at this time, but even if that had been the age Herod determined from the magi’s information (2:7), it is likely he would have taken no chances. Killing all the male babies up to age two was a small precaution in his evil thinking, in case the magi had miscalculated or deceived him.

Herod’s crime was made even more vile and heinous by the fact that he knew that the Child he sought to destroy was the Messiah, the Christ. He questioned the chief priests and scribes specifically about “where the Christ was to be born” (2:4). He arrogantly and stupidly set himself against God’s very Anointed (cf. 1 Cor. 16:22).

It seems as if, from the earliest part of his message, Matthew wanted to portray the rejection of the Messiah by those from among whom He came and in whose behalf He first came (Acts 3:26; Rom. 1:16). The chief priests and the scribes, along with the many other Jews in Jerusalem who must have heard or known about the magi’s message of the one “who has been born King of the Jews,” showed no interest at all in finding Him, much less in worshiping Him (see Matt. 2:2-5). Though Herod was not himself a Jew and had no right to a Jewish throne, he nevertheless declared himself to be the king of the Jews and made a pretense of concern for Jewish religious and economic interests. In an illegitimate and perverted way, therefore, Herod’s rejection of Christ both reflected and represented the Jews’ rejection of Him.

The slaughter in Bethlehem was the beginning of the tragedy and bloodshed that would result from Israel’s rejection of her Savior and true King. Those innocent and precious babies of Bethlehem were the first casualties in the now-intensified warfare between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God’s Christ, God’s Anointed. Within two generations from that time (in A.D. 70) Jerusalem would see its Temple destroyed and over a million of its people massacred by the troops of Titus. Yet that destruction will pale in comparison with that of the Antichrist—a ruler immeasurably more wicked and powerful than Herod—when in the Great Tribulation he will shed more of Israel’s blood than will ever have been shed before (Dan. 12:1; Matt. 24:21-22). All of that bloodshed is over the conflict with the Messiah.

The least of Herod’s intentions was to fulfill prophecy, but that is what his slaughter did. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled. Herod’s beastly act is recorded only by Matthew, yet it was predicted in a text given to the prophet Jeremiah. The term fulfilled (from plro, “to fill up”) marks this out as completing an Old Testament prediction. This prophecy, like that of Jesus’ return from Egypt, was in the form of a type, which, as we have seen above, is a nonverbal prediction revealed in the New Testament. In the passage (Jer. 31:15) from which Matthew here quotes, Jeremiah was speaking of the great sorrow that would soon be experienced in Israel when most of her people would be carried captive to Babylon. Ramah, a town about five miles north of Jerusalem, was on the border of the northern (Israel) and southern (Judah) kingdoms. It was also the place where Jewish captives were assembled for deportation to Babylon (Jer. 40:1). Rachel, the wife of Jacob-Israel, was the mother of Joseph, whose two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, became progenitors of the two half-tribes that bore their names. Ephraim is often used in the Old Testament as a synonym for the northern kingdom. Rachel was also the mother of Benjamin, whose tribe became part of the southern kingdom. She had once cried, “Give me children, or else I die” (Gen. 30:1), and now her beloved “children,” her immeasurably multiplied descendants, were being taken captive to a foreign and pagan land.

Rachel weeping for her children therefore represented the lamentation of all Jewish mothers who wept over Israel’s great tragedy in the days of Jeremiah, and most specifically typified and prefigured the mothers of Bethlehem weeping bitterly over the massacre of their children by Herod in His attempt to kill the Messiah. So even while Israel’s Messiah was still a babe, Rachel had cause to weep again, even as the Messiah Himself would later weep over Jerusalem because of His people’s rejection of Him and the afflictions they would suffer as a consequence (Luke 19:41-44).

Though Matthew does not mention it here, because he is emphasizing the tragedy of the massacre, the passage he quotes from Jeremiah continues with a beautiful word of hope and promise: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Restrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded,’ declares the Lord, ‘and they shall return from the land of the enemy’” (Jer. 31:16). Within a few generations, the Lord brought His people back from Babylon, and one day He will bring all His chosen people back from captivity to Satan. “All Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins’” (Rom. 11:26-27; cf. Isa. 27:9; 59:20-21). But before that great and wonderful day, disobedience, rejection, and tragedy would continue in Israel. The massacre of the little ones in Bethlehem signaled the start of terrifying conflict.

THE RETURN TO NAZARETH

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise and take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” And he arose and took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he departed for the regions of Galilee, and came and resided in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” (2:19-23)

The fourth and final prophecy that Matthew mentions in chapter 2 pertains to the journey of Jesus’ family from Egypt to Nazareth.

When Herod was dead, the greatest immediate danger to Jesus was over. In his Antiquities Josephus reports that Herod “died of this, ulcerated entrails, putrified and maggot-filled organs, constant convulsions, foul breath, and neither physicians nor warm baths led to recovery.” A rather fitting end, it seems, for such a man. Not nearly so fitting was the elaborate and costly funeral that his eldest son and successor, Archelaus, prepared in his honor—especially in light of the fact that just five days before he died, Herod, by permission from Rome, had executed another son, Antipater, because of his plots against his father.

The angel of the Lord had told Joseph to stay in Egypt “until I tell you” (2:13). Now the angel reappeared to Joseph as promised, telling him, Arise and take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead. The fact that the angel spoke of those who sought the Child’s life indicates that Herod was not alone in his plans to destroy his supposed rival. But like Herod, the other conspirators seeking the death of the Child were themselves now dead.

Joseph was not instructed to return to any particular city or region but simply to take the Child and His mother back into the land of Israel. When he arrived in southern Israel, however, and heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. The ones who had previously sought to kill the infant Jesus were dead, but Archelaus posed another, more general, threat. In one of his numerous acts of brutality shortly before he died, Herod had executed two popular Jewish rabbis, Judas and Matthias, who had stirred up their disciples and other faithful Jews in Jerusalem to tear down the offensive Roman eagle that the king had arrogantly erected over the Temple gate. The following Passover an insurrection broke out, and Archelaus, reflecting his father’s senseless cruelty, executed three thousand Jews, many of whom were Passover pilgrims who had no part in the revolt.

Any Jew, therefore, who lived in the territory of Archelaus was in danger. Consequently Joseph was again warned by God in a dream, [and] he departed for the regions of Galilee. That they came and resided in a city called Nazareth was not only because Joseph and Mary were originally from there (Luke 2:4-5) by divine providence, but that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled. Matthew focuses on two features through all of this narrative: (1) divine revelation as indicated by angelic instruction for every move, and (2) the fulfillment of a divine plan revealed in the Old Testament.

The specific statement that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene does not appear in the Old Testament. Some interpreters have tried to connect Nazarene with the Hebrew nser (branch) spoken of in Isaiah 11:1, but that idea is without etymological or other support, as is the idea of trying to tie the prophecy to the “shoot” of Isaiah 53:2. Because Matthew speaks of the prophets, plural, it seems that several prophets had made this prediction, though it is not specifically recorded in the Old Testament.

Other sayings and events unrecorded in the Old Testament are nevertheless quoted or referred to in the New. Jude tells us that “Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way’” (Jude 14-15). Yet no such prophecy is mentioned in Genesis or in any other part of the Old Testament. In a similar way we know of Jesus’ teaching that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” only because of Paul’s later reference to it (Acts 20:35). The saying is not mentioned by any of the gospel writers, including Luke, who reported the account in Acts. John tells us that he did not even attempt to record everything that Jesus said and did during His earthly ministry (John 21:25).

Matthew does not tell us which prophets predicted that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene, but only that more than one of them did so. The prophecy is said to be fulfilled when Jesus was taken to live in Nazareth, where Joseph and Mary had formerly lived. Matthew’s original readers were largely Jewish, and it was probably common knowledge among them who the specific prophets were that had made the prediction. For later readers, the Holy Spirit obviously felt it was enough that we simply know that the prediction was made and that it was fulfilled as Matthew explains.

Nazareth was about 55 miles north of Jerusalem, in the regions of Galilee, where the Lord had directed Joseph to go. The town was in an elevated basin, about one and a half miles across, and was inhabited largely by people noted for their crude and violent ways. The term Nazarene had long been a term of derision, used to describe any person who was rough and rude. That is why Nathanael, who was from Cana, a few miles to the south, asked Philip, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). The question is especially significant coming from Nathanael, who by Jesus’ own word was “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (v. 47). Nathanael was not given to maligning his neighbors, but he was shocked that the one “of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote” (v. 45) actually could come from such a disreputable place as Nazareth.

The early Jewish persecutors of the church apparently considered Jesus’ being from Nazareth as evidence that He could not be the Messiah, rather than, as Matthew tells us, a sign that He was. Tertullus, acting as attorney for the high priest Ananias and other Jewish leaders, spoke derisively of Paul before the Roman governor Felix as “a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). The church Father Jerome wrote that in synagogue prayers Christians were often cursed as Nazarenes, with the petition that they would be blotted out of the Book of Life (see Ps. 69:28). Jesus’ living in Nazareth not only fulfilled the unnamed prophets’ prediction, but gave Him a name, Jesus the Nazarene, that would be used as a title of reproach, thus fulfilling many other prophecies that depict the Messiah as “despised and forsaken of men” (Isa. 53:3; cf. 49:7; Ps. 22:6-8; 69:20-21). The gospel writers make clear the fact that He was scorned and hated (see Matt. 12:24; 27:21-23, 63; Luke 23:4; John 5:18; 6:66; 9:22, 29).

It was therefore at lowly and despised Nazareth that the royal Son of God, along with the righteous Joseph and Mary, made His home for some thirty years.