(continuing at Matthew 2:16) Herod, we are told, is furious when he finds out that the magi from the East have escaped undetected from his land. Now he must figure out where in Bethlehem the newborn threat to the throne abides...
A few details which might be of interest. [Raymond Brown's "The Birth of the Messiah" or a standard biblical commentary.] As we all know, a number of babies never make it to birth. It seems that about 1/3 of children died by age 6 and less than 20% made it through their twenties. The town of Nazareth is thought to have roughly 1,000. Based on expected birthrate in the neighborhood of thirty or so one can assume there were roughly two dozen baby boys available to Herod's sword.
One reasonable question is why would King Herod not know where the Magi had gone. We know the King is very distressed by the news so it seems that it would be a simple matter for him to get the information he needs. A village of this size is certainly large enough for some anonymity, but it is hardly large enough, nor would the magi be moving quick enough, to avoid detection. This is not clandestine Seals Ops in a major metropolitan Amereican city! Rather, it is an open and public visitation within the confines of a large village. Why did Herod not send someone with or have someone trail the magi from behind? The text does not address this, so we are left to speculate. Perhaps it is God's hand at work to deceive Herod and protect Jesus. Maybe the king's arrogance exceeded his paranoia. Most scholars offer the possibility that the birth narrative is a midrash of sorts. In such a case it is not simply scientific history. In other words, it is about Truth not facts.
[A review of other Jewish writings at this time shoes a tendency to expand on OT narratives with additonal stories about the figures involved, for example, Abraham and Moses, in numerous works (e.g. Josephus). Such stories serve as supplements which broaden our understanding of the figures involved. This is a common feature of all cultures. As a child I knew George Washington chopped down the cherry tree because he could not tell a lie. Legendary stories are almost always a layer of every "popular" historical narrative circulating among people.] [ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/03-Torah-Halacha/section-25.html ]
Matthew clearly is illustrating a parallel to the Moses story. The revelation of God here would be this: understand the Jesus story in light of Moses. Jesus, the New Moses, is the fully-filled-ment of the Moses story. Jesus is the true lawgiver and messenger of God. This is expressed in a culturally accepted mode of communication. In Ancient Jewish writing, like all ancient writings, there are different rules and accepted methods of telling the story.
If the latter is the case, then some of our questions are not relevant. Trying to make sense of the story remains the goal, but the "making sense" is not seeking to figure out what happened, rather it is seeing through the story to hear the message about Jesus, Moses and fully-filled OT stories.
Jesus is in Egypt, the babies left behind are massacred by the crazed king. Herod fails in his attempt to destroy Jesus. We also know God rescued Jesus from human agents bent on His destruction. Such delieverance is for our benefit.
[One disturbing feature of the story is the massacre. Even if it is only 20 babies (and not the hundreds I assumed) it is still twenty or so babies murdered. Twenty or so mothers and fathers destitute and heart broken. Twenty families and untold friends of families horrified. And the question bubbles up, why? Why would God save the Jesus but not them? I have wrestled with such questions elsewhere in this blog, but suffice to say this is a rescue intervention story. In such a story, the point is how someone (in this case the Holy Family) escapes the clutches of death. We do well to recall this is literature and as such, like all literature, intends to tell a story. It is as much about raising questions as it is answering. It calls us to think, why does God do this for this particular child? It never answers the other question, why not save others. In a world where everyon dies eventually and especially in their world where so few lived to early adulthood, the question is not important.]
The events, as unfolded by Matthew are identified as "full-filling" Jeremiah. Note, however, the absence of the term 'in order to.' There is no hint of divine causality as we saw in previous texts which we looked at earlier. Rather, we are told the words of Jeremiah are "full-filled." First of all, the words in Jeremiah 31 are an introduction to a longer prophecy. What Matthew quotes is the sad part, but immediately after that is a more upbeat message. The messge Jeremiah declares from God tells Rachel "Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is reward for your work, they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for the future, your children shall come back to their country." It is a propehcy of hope in the face of the loss and destruction of the invasion of Judah and the forced exile of her people.
This was no OT prediction that babies would be slaughtered, rather it is a connection of this slaughter to the OT story of God's people. It connects the time of Jesus to the time of the second exile. And it also connects the story of Moses (delivered from the fate of other babies who were to be slaughtered at Pharaoh's command) to the beginning of Jesus.
The last "fulfillment" for today is Mt 2:23. We are told that Jesus goes to Nazareth to fulfill what was spoken by the prophets: "He will be called a Nazorean." Note that no prophet name is given (like Jeremiah above). There is a reason for this. There is no verse which makes such a declaration in the OT. John Chrysostom (lived between 350-400), the great archbishop and preacher, said that Matthew was quoting a text long lost to Christian and Jew (because it was not accepted as scripture). Others think Matthew had a secondary text from which he is quoting, hence the vagueness. A third option, Brown offers the possibility that it is cobbled together Isaiah 4:3 ("Whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy") and Judges 16:17 (Samson said "for I have been a nazirite to God from my mother's womb"). The word Nazarene, while meaning from Nazareth, is also open to two other philological nuances. Recall, the Hebrew love of puns and play on word. Two other near-sounding terms Nazir (one consecrated and made holy by a vow) and Neser (a branch, a Mesianic image in Isaiah 11:1 "a shoot will go forth from the root of Jesse, and from his roots a branch") may well be alluded to here. Once again, not the way we prefer to do etymology, but it is the way that they did it. For my illustration it is even more important. It demonstrates fulfillment not of a particular verse (or promise/prediction) but a fulfillment of a non-specific referent. Yet, the general reference, with a multitude of nuances and meanings, is in fact true to Jesus' identity.
The story of Jesus, as told by Matthew, begins by creating intentional connecting points between Jesus and the story of salvation. The connection between Genesis' Joseph and Mt's Joseph (dreams) and Exodus' Moses and Jesus (birth situation) help us see that Jesus can only be known in and through the OT story. And fulfillment, much more than a realization of a freestanding prediction, is a taking up of the OT story--the whole OT story. Until we come to grips with that, our consideration of the prophets and the prohetic will have more in common with the National Inquirer's year end predictions than it does with the Divine promise and plan of the Bible.
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