Descent Into Egypt
DESCENT INTO EGYPT
MATTHEW 2:13-23
This Jesus is as tragically fresh as today’s headlines. Before he’s old enough to walk, he’s running from an assassination attempt.
The massacre of the innocents, though unrecorded elsewhere (apart from a possible allusion in a contemporary Jewish apocalypse, which compares Herod’s conduct to Pharaoh’s plot against the Hebrew infants), is completely consistent with Herod’s character in his closing years. The holy family’s flight into Egypt was remembered in some Jewish circles; rabbinical tradition preserves a distorted reminiscence of Jesus’ sojourn there. Herod died in March, 4 BC; his kingdom was divided between three of his sons, of whom Archelaus became ethnarch of Judea. Archelaus inherited his father’s vices without his qualities of statesmanship (and his misrule led to his deposition in AD 6); Joseph was well advised, on returning from Egypt, to settle in Galilee, where another of Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas (cf. 14:1ff.), ruled as tetrarch.
This passage is marked by three Old Testament quotations with introductory formula (cf. 1:22f.). The first (2:15), from Hosea 11:1, refers to God’s calling Israel, his firstborn son (cf. Exodus 4:22), out of Egypt at the time of the exodus. Its application here to Jesus reflects the evangelist’s intention of portraying him as recapitulating in his personal experience the experience of his people, and being afflicted in all their affliction (cf. Isaiah 63:9). The second (2:17f.), from Jeremiah 31:15, pictures the matriarch Rachel sitting by the frontier town of Ramah (near which was her tomb, according to 1 Samuel 10:2), weeping for her children as they were driven off into captivity. Now Rachel, here perhaps symbolizing bereaved motherhood of all ages, weeps disconsolately again as more of her children fall victims to a new tyranny (Matthew may have in mind the alternative location of her tomb near Bethlehem; cf. Genesis 35:19). The third quotation (2:23) presents a problem: no such text occurs in any edition of the Old Testament known to us. The least improbable explanation sees an allusion here to Isaiah 11:1, where the Hebrew word translated “branch” (in reference to the coming ruler of David’s line) has the same root consonants as “Nazarene.” All these oracles are said to have been spoken by the Lord through various prophets; they are but his spokesmen (which is the essential meaning of “prophets”).