By Angus Harley

I will begin with a few comments on the OT texts plainly cited by Matthew in chapter 2.

Matthew 2:6; Micah 5:2

Micah looks at events in Israel and Judah around 750-687BC.   Micah 5 predicts Judah and Israel being overrun by enemies and taken into exile (Mic.5:3). Israel was exiled into Assyria between 740-722BC. Judah was taken into the Babylonian exile around 607-586BC. Upon return from exile, both Israel and Judah will be reunited (v3). Assyria by this time has left Israel. A king in Judah, from Bethlehem Ephrathah, will arise to protect Israel from Assyria, and will even conquer their land should they attack (vv2-9).

Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1

Hosea’s book looks at events in Israel and Judah from around 790-686BC. In Hosea 11, God is lamenting that in the past he loved his son Israel but it soon abandoned him for idols (vv2-4). For that reason, Yahweh will return Israel to Egypt (v5), and Assyria will rule them and destroy them (vv5-6). However, God will restore Israel from captivity in both Egypt and Assyria (vv10-11).

Matthew 2:18; Jeremiah 31:15

Jeremiah’s perspective is on events in Judah between around 627-586BC. Specifically, his concern was the nation of Judah going into exile and returning from exile. Judah returned from exile in 537BC, and both Israel and Judah are restored (Jer.31:31). Rachel and Ramah weep for their children, the Israelites taken into captivity. Ramah was the place where Jewish slaves were gathered before going to Babylon (Jer.40:1). Notice how the text says that Jeremiah was not sent to Babylon, but set free by Nebuzaradan. They will be restored, says Yahweh (vv16-17). There will be a new covenant, not like the covenant Yahweh made with Israel when they came out of Egypt (31:32).

Matthew 2:23; no specific OT text

Matthew said that by Jesus going to Nazareth, the Scriptures were fulfilled that the Messiah would be a Nazarene. There’s no OT text implying the Messiah would be from Nazareth. However, in the NT, it is perhaps implied that Nazareth is a redneck town lacking in any kind of honor or prestige. The Messiah was a humble redneck carpenter, from a redneck town! The OT anticipated this, prophetically speaking (see ahead).

Overall picture

The OT Scriptures are used in Matthew 2 solely to convey the Christ-event, specifically, Jesus’ birth, exile in Egypt, return from Egypt, and settling in Nazareth. The historical events of Israel and Judah, wherein both nations are taken into exile, and then Judah returns from exile in Babylon, are absorbed into the ‘drama’ of the Christ-event. Matthew has no trouble patching together various parts of the OT to depict these things, as he is weaving a Christological tapestry using the OT’s content as his thread.  

This broad, sweeping use of the OT, especially of the Latter Prophets, is particularly magnified in Jesus being called a Nazarene. Scholars guess at which OT evidence points to a link between Nazareth in the OT and Jesus entering into Nazareth. The general consensus is that the link is purely theological. Nazareth by Jesus’ day was like a place of redneck exile compared to the ‘blue bloods’ of Jerusalem. Jesus’ lowliness as a Nazarene is compared to the various exiles of Israel, and also compares to figures like the Suffering Servant who was despised by his own. 


The creative blending of OT exiles, peoples, events, and figures by Matthew is exemplified in how he cites Jeremiah 31:15 to explain Herod murdering all children in Bethlehem two years old and under. The context of Jeremiah 31 refers to returning from exile in both Egypt and Babylon. Herod could be seen as the equivalent of either the pharaoh or the king of Babylon, who crushes the Bethlehemites; they are like the Israelites of old who were taken into exile, and the Israelite families whose children were murdered at the hand of the pharaoh (Exo.1). Matthew goes on to refer to a different Son who returns from Egypt once the ‘pharaoh’ of Judah is removed by death. This Son is not Israel as to the flesh, but the Messianic Son, ‘the remnant’, who is lowly and returning to the ‘land’. He embodies the new Israel of God that is determined by adherence to God’s Messiah. Yet, he is not returning to a purified land, but to one hostile toward him, for he is called a Nazarene.


Dispensationalists tell us that Matthew’s recounting of the Christ-event and his use of the OT in Matthew 2, and elsewhere in the NT, continues a literal reading of the OT.

There are at least two insurmountable problems with the above, DT, reading. As the old saying goes, you live by the sword, you die by it. The sword of literalism does not allow that Christ ‘literally’ fulfilled Micah 5:2, Hosea 11:1, and Jeremiah 31:15. Yes, Jesus came up out of Egypt, but the nation of Israel did not, nor did Judah return from Babylon. Moreover, Jesus’ return was not upon the unity of Judah and Israel; nor were Assyria and Babylon world powers threatening Israel. Secondly, Jesus is not in a straight-line of continuity with Israel so as to succeed where it failed. Israel failed. Period! Its failure, as demonstrated by the return from exile in Egypt and Babylon, showed that the prophetic text of the Latter Prophets was anticipating a true and greater Messianic fulfillment of the OT text that was not based on literalism. Israel was a nation of the flesh that failed to uphold the Law of the Old Covenant, a covenant of the flesh. Jesus did not return to a jubilant Promised Land, but to a kingdom of darkness that was opposed to him and would eventually murder him. For Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world, but of the next, in heaven (John 18:36); and there is no inheritance in our world, only in the next (Heb.11-12). Jesus’ covenant is a New Covenant, sealed in the heavens alone (Heb.8-9). Jesus as the Nazarene shows how the exile continues, and the true Israel of God, his true Son, will be despised by his own people, and eventually murdered by them, just as the infants were killed by Herod. Death in this world, even death in the Promised Land, is the Messiah’s lot and that of his people. It is not a matter, therefore, of succeeding where Israel failed; but of two different people, with God’s true people being those who follow the Christ of Nazareth.

Whether one wishes to call the above model ‘typology’, ‘shadow’, ‘picture fulfillment’, ‘sensus plenior’, or something else, the main point to grasp is that the historical content of the OT is understood as prophetic of the Messiah, and is fulfilled in him in ways that the OT prophets could not have anticipated, even though they did comprehend the general exile/return-from-exile paradigm of the Latter Prophets that was based on the Messianic reign. From a NT perspective, this is to say that its hermeneutic is the historical-Christ first, and that the OT content, both broad and narrow, is shaped to magnify and support the Christ-event of the New Covenant era. Therefore, the Scriptural hermeneutic strongly indicates NT interpretive priority, with the OT playing a subordinate and supporting role, whichcenters only on the Christ-event.