The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Did Matthew Quote Hosea Out of Context?:  Mt.2:14 – 15

^2:14 So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. ¹⁵ He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son.’

One objection raised by skeptics is that Matthew quotes from the Old Testament in a way that does not respect the original context of those quotations.  Matthew claims that Jesus’ infancy in Egypt and return to the land of Israel constitutes a fulfillment of Hosea 11:1.  The basic objection raised is that Hosea 11:1 is not a prophetic prediction.  Reading the immediate context demonstrates that rather quickly:

^11:1 When Israel was a youth I loved him,

          And out of Egypt I called My son.
² The more they called them,
          The more they went from them;
They kept sacrificing to the Baals
          And burning incense to idols.
³ Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk,
          I took them in My arms;
          But they did not know that I healed them.
⁴ I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love,
          And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws;
          And I bent down and fed them.
⁵ They will not return to the land of Egypt;
          But Assyria – he will be their king
          Because they refused to return to Me.

A second objection can be raised against Matthew in that Hosea clearly believed that Israel would not return to the land of Egypt (Hos.11:5).1  This makes Matthew’s citation of Hosea all the more puzzling.  How can Matthew attribute the quote from Hosea to Jesus as he came out of Egypt?

          Matthew does so because Jesus was ‘filling it to the full’ the story of Israel.  The story of Israel from beginning to end was a ‘frame’ or ‘container’ laying out the basic content of who Israel’s ultimate representative, the Messiah, would be.  It was not a random story that was peppered with clever little predictions about Jesus.  It was a story that moves very deliberately and consistently from creation because, ever since the fall, God has always been restoring humanity to the garden state in which He always wanted us to live, and drawing humans into deeper partnership with Himself.  Here is a table that shows this pattern, highlighting the consistent motifs:

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes that this was the Jews’ understanding of their own story.  He cites as an example a rabbinical commentary, the Genesis Rabbah (14:6), which claims that Abraham was God’s means of undoing the sin of Adam.  In other words, Israel understood itself as being, or becoming, God’s true humanity possessing God’s good land.  In fact, the entire fallen world would one day benefit from Israel’s covenant partnership with God, for God would restore the entire fallen world to how He originally made it.2  This is the story into which Jesus stepped and ‘filled to the full.’  He did not just ‘fulfill’ isolated predictions about certain small details of his life.  He became who Adam was supposed to be; who Noah was supposed to be; who Abraham foreshadowed and was expecting; who Israel foreshadowed and was expecting.  Just as in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was who Saruman was supposed to be, Aragorn was who Isildur was supposed to be, and, to some extent, Frodo and Sam were who Smeagol was supposed to be, Jesus was stepping into a well-defined role which embodied hope.  Jesus was the human covenant partner that God had always desired, who would accomplish God’s good purposes on the earth.

                So Hosea would have been aware of much earlier expectations of the Messiah repeating Israel’s story that went back to the Pentateuch, for the Pentateuch itself, arguably the earliest document of the Bible, already expects it.  This includes Balaam’s two oracles of Numbers 24, which arguably envisions Israel’s king as repeating Israel’s story and coming out of Egypt:

^Num.24:1 When Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not go as at other times to seek omens but he set his face toward the wilderness.  ² And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him.  ³ He took up his discourse and said,

‘The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor,

And the oracle of the man whose eye is opened;

⁴ The oracle of him who hears the words of God,  

Who sees the vision of the Almighty,  

Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered,

⁵ How fair are your tents, O Jacob,  

Your dwellings, O Israel! 

⁶ Like valleys that stretch out,  

Like gardens beside the river,  

Like aloes planted by the LORD,  

Like cedars beside the waters. 

⁷ Water will flow from his buckets,  

And his seed will be by many waters,  

And his king shall be higher than Agag,  

And his kingdom shall be exalted. 

⁸ God brings him out of Egypt,  

He is for him like the horns of the wild ox.   

He will devour the nations who are his adversaries,  

And will crush their bones in pieces,  

And shatter them with his arrows. 

⁹ He crouches, he lies down as a lion,  

And as a lion, who dares rouse him?   

Blessed is everyone who blesses you,  

And cursed is everyone who curses you.’ 

¹¹ Then Balak’s anger burned against Balaam, and he struck his hands together; and Balak said to Balaam, ‘I called you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have persisted in blessing them these three times!... ¹² Balaam said to Balak, ‘…I could not do anything contrary to the command of the LORD, either good or bad, of my own accord. What the LORD speaks, that I will speak’?  ¹⁴ And now, behold, I am going to my people; come, and I will advise you what this people will do to your people in the days to come.’  ¹⁵ He took up his discourse and said,

‘The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor,  

And the oracle of the man whose eye is opened,

¹⁶ The oracle of him who hears the words of God,  

And knows the knowledge of the Most High,  

Who sees the vision of the Almighty,  

Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered. 

¹⁷ I see him, but not now;

I behold him, but not near;  

A star shall come forth from Jacob,  

A scepter shall rise from Israel,  

And shall crush through the forehead of Moab,  

And tear down all the sons of Sheth. 

¹⁸ Edom shall be a possession,  

Seir, its enemies, also will be a possession,  

While Israel performs valiantly. 

¹⁹ One from Jacob shall have dominion,  

And will destroy the remnant from the city.’ 

This second oracle (Num.24:15 – 19) is undeniably a prophecy of the kingly Messiah of Israel.  Balaam’s vision repeats imagery of the Messiah coming from the tribe of Judah, from Jacob’s prophecy (Gen.49:8 – 12): 

^49:8 Judah, your brothers shall praise you;  

Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;  

Your father’s sons shall bow down to you.  

⁹ Judah is a lion’s whelp;  

From the prey, my son, you have gone up.   

He couches, he lies down as a lion,  

And as a lion, who dares rouse him up?  

¹⁰ The scepter shall not depart from Judah,  

Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,  

Until Shiloh comes,  

And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.  

¹¹ He ties his foal to the vine,  

And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine;  

He washes his garments in wine,  

And his robes in the blood of grapes.  

¹² His eyes are dull from [darker than] wine,  

And his teeth white from [whiter than] milk.  

Balaam spoke of a ‘sceptre’ (Num.24:17) just as Jacob spoke of a ‘sceptre’ that ‘shall not depart from Judah’ (Gen.49:10); in poetic parallelism, he clarified this as ‘the ruler’s staff’ (Gen.49:10).  In other words, the tribe of Judah will contribute the kingship in Israel until the ultimate king of Israel comes.  Also, Balaam spoke of this kingly figure from Israel being victorious over Moab and Sheth, and taking Edom and Seir as ‘a possession’ and ‘dominion’ (Num.24:17 – 19), which is language very similar to Jacob’s vision of this ruler from Judah enjoying ‘the obedience of the peoples’ (Gen.49:10), where ‘the peoples’ is regularly understood to refer to Gentiles.  Both are rooted in the vision of Adam originally having ‘dominion’ over the created world (Gen.1:28) and reflects God’s restoration of His original creation order through the Messiah.3

But what of Balaam’s first oracle (Num.24:3 – 9)?  Is this about Israel or Israel’s Messiah?

^7b And his king shall be higher than Agag,  

And his kingdom shall be exalted. 

⁸ God brings him out of Egypt,  

He is for him like the horns of the wild ox.   

He will devour the nations who are his adversaries,  

And will crush their bones in pieces,  

And shatter them with his arrows. 

⁹ He crouches, he lies down as a lion,  

And as a lion, who dares rouse him?   

Blessed is everyone who blesses you,  

And cursed is everyone who curses you.

Was Balaam referring to Israel as a nation, or Israel’s Messiah as an individual?  Was Balaam speaking about God just having brought the nation Israel out of Egypt, or God’s future act of bringing the kingly Messiah out of Egypt?  The pronouns ‘his’ and ‘your’ in 24:3 – 9 seem indeterminate.  I believe that this first oracle refers to the Messiah for two reasons.  First, Balaam’s use of language in the first oracle, not just the second, matches Jacob’s prophecy over the tribe of Judah.  The ‘lion’ symbolizing the tribe of Judah and ultimately the Messiah (Gen.49:9) is repeated almost verbatim by Balaam in his oracle:

^Gen.49:9 He couches, he lies down as a lion,  

And as a lion, who dares rouse him up?  

^Num.24:9 He crouches, he lies down as a lion,  

And as a lion, who dares rouse him?   

Second, the overall logic of the Pentateuch requires a Messianic interpretation.  The ‘blessings and curses’ upon the Gentiles envisioned by Balaam cannot simply take Israel as the highest criterion.  For the Pentateuch itself envisions Israel’s failure, resulting in exile (Dt.27 – 29).  In the final song of Moses, Moses sees that Israel will sin against God, and make Him angry and jealous by worshiping that which is not God; so God will make Israel jealous ‘with those who are not a people…a foolish nation’ (Dt.33:21).  Moses’ experience as the first leader of Israel as a nation leads him to be pessimistic about Israel, but optimistic about God.  The Pentateuch’s literary structure requires its readers to ask which mediator will take the place of Moses and, in fact, the entire priesthood put in place to stabilize the covenant, for both Moses and the priests share a basic human frailty and sin in the Pentateuch’s narrative.  Thus, all the threads of the Pentateuch – and the Old Testament – must be brought together:  God will need to reconstitute Israel itself, and will do so through Israel’s Messiah, the one who can claim to faithfully live out Israel’s vocation, and thus truly carry the name ‘Israel.’  Only the Messiah can serve as the highest criterion to mediate the ‘blessings and curses’ that are part of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen.12:1 – 3). 

My judgment is that Matthew is correct about quoting, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son,’ and attributing that to Jesus.  For Hosea is not the only ‘prophet’ to which Matthew refers in Matthew 2:15.  He is also referring to the prophet Balaam, who gave the oracle in Numbers 24, the prophet Moses, who recorded and included Balaam’s oracle in the Pentateuch, and the prophet Jacob, who considered all of his sons from a spiritual perspective and was the first to narrow Israel’s messianic hope down to the tribe of Judah.  Balaam, Moses, and Jacob were referring to Israel’s Messiah.  And arguably, Hosea understood that as well, reflected in passages other than Hosea 11, although that involves more analysis than time and space permit here.  At times, Matthew used one quotation that drew from multiple Old Testament sources because the Old Testament progressed in a rich, thematic way where biblical writers worked with consistent motifs and themes for over a millennium.  Matthew does this on two other occasions that I can discern (Mt.11:28 – 30 and 27:9 – 10), and I will elaborate on those later. 

For now, I will answer the charge that Matthew is simply quoting the Old Testament out of context.  He did not.  He was quoting the Old Testament in the same way that the Old Testament quoted itself.  He saw the patterns that had already been enacted by God in history, and composed literarily by God’s Spirit in the development of Israel’s Scriptures.  He knew that Israel’s kingly Messiah would have to embody and, in some very real sense, relive Israel’s story in his own life.  So, prior to Jesus, did Matthew see that Israel’s Messiah would come out of Egypt?  Perhaps.  But certainly after meeting Jesus, he saw it.