Matt 2:13–23 — Jesus, the New Israel

Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy and birth of Jesus. His purpose is to show that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of Abraham and the son of David. He reports the miraculous virgin birth in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.

In chapter 2, wise men from the region around Babylon arrive in Jerusalem after seeing a star arise in the west. They presumably knew something of Jewish messianic hopes because the Jews had been deported to Babylon six centuries earlier. They ask, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?”

Herod regards this as a threat to his royal power. He assembles the Jewish leaders and asks where the Messiah is to be born. They correctly answer, “In Bethlehem of Judea,” and quote Micah 5:2: “From you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”

Herod sends the wise men to locate the child and report back, claiming that he too wants to pay homage. His real intention is to kill the child. The star guides the wise men to the house where Jesus is, and they joyfully present their royal tribute. An angel then warns them not to return to Herod, so they depart by another route. An angel also warns Joseph that Herod intends to destroy the child, and Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt.

Predictive and Typological Fulfillment

Matthew repeatedly places fulfillment quotations throughout his narrative: “This happened to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.” Ten such quotations occur in his Gospel, and three appear in Matthew 2:13–23. Matthew uses them to explain the theological significance of Jesus and to demonstrate that he is the culmination of redemptive history.

In Matthew 1, the virgin birth fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy that a virgin would conceive and bear a son called Immanuel. In Matthew 2:5–6, the scribes quote Micah’s prophecy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. Our passage then contains three more fulfillments. Verse 15 quotes Hosea 11:1: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Verses 17–18 quote Jeremiah 31:15 about Rachel weeping for her children. Verse 23 appeals more generally to “the prophets,” who said the Messiah would be called a Nazarene.

These three differ from Micah 5:2. Micah straightforwardly predicted that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, and Jesus was born there. We may call that predictive fulfillment.

The three quotations in our passage are examples of typological fulfillment. God established persons, institutions, and events in the Old Testament as types or foreshadows of Christ. The Passover lamb, for example, was a type of Christ, the Lamb of God who atones for sin. The lamb was the shadow; Christ and his atoning death are the antitype, substance, and reality.

Because this type-antitype pattern is embedded in Scripture and redemptive history, prophets can speak better than they know. They may address old-covenant events while their words possess a greater spiritual significance that points toward Christ and the new covenant. The three fulfillments in our passage teach that Jesus is the new Israel, the end of exile, and the Lord’s new planting.

Jesus Is the New Israel

After the wise men depart, an angel tells Joseph to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt because Herod is seeking to destroy him. Joseph obeys that very night and remains in Egypt until Herod’s death. Matthew then explains: “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’”

Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” His use of this verse has produced considerable discussion because Hosea does not initially appear to be making a messianic prediction. He is looking backward to the historical exodus rather than forward to the Messiah. Moreover, the “son” in Hosea is the nation of Israel.

The following verses continue the image of God as a father caring for his national son: “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms. . . . I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love. . . . I bent down to them and fed them” (Hos. 11:3–4). In Hosea’s immediate context, God’s son is the nation rather than an individual Messiah.

Critical interpreters who reject the inspiration of Scripture often treat Matthew’s reading as an example of New Testament authors misusing the Old Testament. They accuse Matthew of beginning with Christian convictions and then taking verses out of context to find prophecies of Jesus.

Some conservative interpreters acknowledge Matthew’s apostolic inspiration but argue that he was permitted to handle the text creatively in a way we may not imitate. That does not resolve the difficulty. Matthew claims that Hosea’s words were fulfilled in Jesus. If his interpretation bears no relation to Hosea’s true meaning, apostolic privilege cannot turn error into fulfillment.

Another proposal weakens “fulfilled” to mean something like a contemporary application. Preachers often draw legitimate applications from similarities between an ancient situation and present circumstances without claiming that those applications are the passage’s original meaning. Matthew, however, claims more than a similarity between Israel and Jesus. He explicitly says that Jesus’ return from Egypt fulfilled the prophetic word.

Matthew understands Jesus to be recapitulating Israel’s history. Jesus is the true Israel. The prophets often picture restoration after exile as a new exodus. Jesus’ return from Egypt to the land therefore fulfills the promised return—not merely the historical return under Zerubbabel five centuries earlier, but the deeper return from spiritual exile.

The infant Jesus’ descent into Egypt and return also foreshadow his death and resurrection. In his death, he bears his people’s sins and enters exile beneath God’s wrath and judgment. As God’s obedient Son, he submits to that exile. In his resurrection, he returns from exile and creates the new people and temple of God in the new creation.

Matthew 2:15 must also be read alongside Jesus’ baptism in the next chapter. After Jesus rises from the water, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). God once brought up a national son, Israel, to be a people who loved and worshiped him. He now presents his only begotten Son, who fulfills all righteousness and is perfectly pleasing to him.

The nation of Israel was itself a type of Christ. Christ passed through the judgment of the cross and emerged into resurrection life. All who believe in him are gathered into the new people of God.

Jesus Is the End of Exile

The narrative returns to Herod. When he realizes that the wise men have not returned, he becomes furious and orders the death of every male child in Bethlehem and its surrounding region who is two years old or younger. Matthew writes:

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Ramah was a staging point where captives from Jerusalem were assembled before being taken into Babylonian exile (Jer. 40:1). Rachel’s tomb was nearby. Jeremiah poetically depicts Rachel resting in her tomb and weeping as she watches the descendants of Jacob being carried away.

By quoting Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew implies that the exile in some sense continues into Jesus’ day. The weeping of Bethlehem’s mothers continues Rachel’s lament from six centuries earlier. God’s people remain in spiritual exile, waiting for their deliverer.

The following verse in Jeremiah is essential: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy” (Jer. 31:16). Jeremiah speaks amid exile, but already looks beyond it to restoration.

Matthew sees in the slaughter of Bethlehem’s children both the continuation of exilic sorrow and a sign that exile is nearing its end. The long-awaited Davidic King, God’s obedient Son, has arrived. He will lead his people in a new exodus and bring them into their inheritance.

As with Hosea 11, this is typological rather than merely predictive fulfillment. Matthew is not applying an old pattern to a superficially similar event. He sees Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s story. In Jesus’ person and work, God begins the promised restoration and creates a new Israel.

Jesus Is the Lord’s New Planting

After Herod dies, an angel tells Joseph that he may return with Mary and Jesus to the land of Israel. Joseph learns, however, that Herod’s son Archelaus reigns in Judea and fears returning there. Warned again in a dream, he travels north to Galilee and settles in Nazareth. Matthew concludes, “So that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

This fulfillment quotation is unusual because Matthew does not cite a specific text. He refers generally to “the prophets.” What prophecies does he have in mind?

One suggestion connects “Nazarene” with the Nazirite vow described in Numbers 6. The Hebrew term for a Nazirite means one consecrated or set apart to the Lord. Nazirites abstained from wine and other grape products, did not cut their hair, and avoided contact with dead bodies. Samson is the best-known example. The Nazirite represented what Israel should have been: holy, separated from the world, and devoted to God.

Jesus, however, was not a Nazirite. He drank wine, turned water into wine, and was even accused of being a drunkard. Most commentators therefore connect Matthew’s statement with the several Old Testament prophecies about the Branch. One Hebrew word for branch, netzer, sounds similar to Nazareth or Nazarene. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah contain six prominent Branch prophecies.

Jeremiah 23:5–6 declares:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

The royal house of David is pictured as a tree cut down during the Babylonian exile because of Judah’s apostate kings. Yet the stump is not dead. A shoot—a living Branch—springs from it. Jesus is that righteous Branch. He fulfills all righteousness through his active obedience to God’s law in his people’s place, and his name is “The Lord is our righteousness.”

The Branch metaphor contains the same relationship between the individual and the corporate that appears in Hosea 11. At one level, the Branch is the individual Messiah. At another, it includes all who are grafted into him. Isaiah 60:21 says, “Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.”

The Branch interpretation also connects Nazareth with the land. After the exodus, Israel was a vine planted in the promised land. Psalm 80:8–9 says, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.”

Through this new exodus, Jesus is the Branch planted in the true land, the heavenly country of the new creation. Those grafted into him by faith are the branch of God’s planting, the work of his hands. Because of the Messiah’s righteous reign, his people dwell securely and possess the land forever.

Matthew emphasizes this connection by using the expression “the land of Israel” twice. The angel tells Joseph to take the child and his mother to the land of Israel, and Joseph obeys by going to the land of Israel. The repetition draws attention to the exodus pattern. God created old-covenant Israel through redemptive judgment, led the people out of Egypt, and planted them in the land as a holy nation devoted to his worship.

Jesus is restored Israel coming out of Egypt through a new exodus. Yet the earthly land is only a type of the new creation. The holy family does not remain in Judea but settles in Galilee, beyond the center of the old temple establishment and its leadership. God is beginning anew with the true Israel.

Matthew develops this in chapter 4, when Jesus begins his ministry in “Galilee of the Gentiles.” He quotes Isaiah: “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light.” The new Israel will include not only Jews who believe in Jesus but Gentiles as well.

Christ Fulfills Israel’s Story

Typological fulfillment reveals something profound about Christ’s relationship to the Old Testament. Jesus does not fulfill only a collection of isolated predictions. The whole story of Israel is a type, and Jesus is the antitype. Scripture is an organic unity in which God’s words and deeds—from the promise to Abraham through the exodus, wilderness, land, kingdom, and exile—prepare the way for Christ.

Christ recapitulates Israel’s history in his own person. He brings Israel from exile through a new exodus and into its promised inheritance, accomplishing the complete restoration not of Israel according to the flesh but of the Israel of God.

Old Israel failed in its calling. The people broke the law, worshiped false gods, and were sent into exile. The prophets nevertheless looked toward a new exodus, a new covenant, and restoration in the new creation. Those promises long appeared unfulfilled. A small and weak remnant returned under Zerubbabel and rebuilt the temple, but the second temple could not compare with Solomon’s glory.

God preserved a faithful remnant through those centuries. Matthew’s genealogy names some of them: Eliakim, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, and Matthan. Scripture tells us almost nothing else about them, but they preserved the line while waiting for the Messiah. Eventually the remnant narrows to one person: Jesus himself, the nucleus of the new Israel.

At his baptism, the heavenly voice identifies the one who finally fulfills Israel’s calling: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” He fully keeps the law and fulfills all righteousness. Those who believe in him are grafted into him, and his righteousness is credited to their account. We are accepted before God not because of our obedience but because of Christ’s obedience for us. Moreover, the Spirit progressively works that righteousness within us. Like branches grafted into a living tree, we receive the life that is in Christ.

This theology provides a lens for the rest of Matthew. Jesus preaches the good news of the kingdom, heals the sick, casts out demons, and calls twelve disciples corresponding to Israel’s twelve tribes. The new Israel gathers around him as believing Jews and Gentiles are grafted into Christ and follow him.

God sovereignly created old-covenant Israel by judging Pharaoh, leading the people through the sea on dry ground, and bringing them into the land. In the Gospel, he sovereignly creates the new Israel through Jesus’ ministry and ultimately through his atoning death and glorious resurrection. Seeing Christ as the fulfillment of Israel’s story strengthens our faith and directs our hearts toward him in humble repentance and love.