Matthew 2

Matthew 2:1-23

Subdivision 2. (Matthew 2:1-23.)Borne witness to and rejected: the Nazarene. So the King has come - the true King, for whom all is waiting, for whom all still waits: for He came but to be rejected, and immediately He has come, we find Him rejected, by the very people who for centuries had been taught to expect Him, and carefully prepared to receive Him. He is worshipped by those from afar but when He comes to His own, they have no heart for Him; and this is discovered before He has even been personally before their eyes. There is but the announcement that He has come, and we see at once what afterwards they formally declare, that they have “no king but Caesar.” There is no help but to leave them, then, to Caesar. Gentiles indeed receive and worship Him: yes, Gentiles, but not the Gentiles. The special link between God and Israel is broken by their unbelief, and now the question is to be asked, “Is He not the God of the Gentiles also?” From God’s side this can only be answered as the apostle answers it (Romans 3:29), that He surely is. But in fact only a remnant really receive the Lord, and these are the subjects of a divine work in their souls. This, however, is John’s testimony and not Matthew’s; while in Matthew the worship of the magi, while Jerusalem is but “troubled” at their coming, shows the impending dispensational change. Already the end of Judah’s “sceptre” - her tribal rod of authority - as predicted by Jacob, is fairly within sight, and the Edomite Herod reigns over the land. The true King is forced out of it, but only to renew from the beginning in Egypt the history of the people in the sight of God, that He may (as He will yet) show them His grace. But this involves much more for Him through whom the blessing is to come to them, and is no release to Him from the path which ends but at Calvary. He returns, after Herod is dead, to the land of Israel, only to find Archelaus in the place and reigning in the spirit of his father Herod, and to take His own place at Nazareth as the “Branch of Jesse,” returning to the lowliness out of which David sprang, but with the hopes of much more than David’s house resting upon Him. But we must look at all this more in detail.

1. The King, the Lord of glory, is come into the world, and has to be announced among His own people by men from afar - by Gentiles. Yet not only had prophets from long since prophesied of Him, and the scribes could put their finger upon the place of His birth, but Daniel had predicted the exact time of His coming. Heaven had been recently giving its witness also, immediately before and at His coming. Zacharias and Elizabeth had announced in their own child His fore-runner. An angelic vision had brought the shepherds to the manger where He lay.

Simeon had blessed God for His salvation seen, and with Anna had spoken of Him to many in Jerusalem itself. And yet the city is only startled for a moment from its slumber when “magi from the East” come with the inquiry, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?” and with the declaration that a star had been seen by them as the sign of His birth, - a sign so fully believed on their part that here they were, from their own far off land, to seek and to worship Him. The magi were the great natural observers of their day, though this connected itself largely with practices which from them have got the name of “magic.” They were men of occult science, the astrologers and soothsayers, the interpreters of dreams and auguries. True knowledge in them was variously mingled with imposture and with superstition; so that they figure as variously. No doubt, we may find in those who were real among them the affecting expression of minds that, having lost hold of primitive revelation, turned to search the dim border land of the unseen, to dreams and omens, and the face of the far off heavens, to find that God who was not far off but nigh at hand; and here in these travelers we may see one supreme example of God meeting such in their own way, to lift them out of such groping into the light indeed. They had heard of a “King of the Jews” and assuredly something more than merely that. Though He were King of the Jews, yet His coming had to do with them, awakening expectant joy and reverence in their hearts. The prophecy of Balaam is the only one of which we know, which could in their minds connect such an one with a “star;” but this, though of a Gentile and to Gentiles, if it were traditionally known to them, must have come through 1600 years of most uncertain conveyance to reach them thus. Besides the Jews scattered through the East, furnished a more direct means of knowledge. Balaam had said nothing about a star to herald the King: it was the King himself who was to be the star. Yet the prophecy was couched in terms natural to one of the magi; a class to which the seer himself seems clearly to have belonged; and the appearance of a supernatural star to men of this kind, accustomed to see portents in the heavens, might naturally connect itself with such a representation.

The star was surely supernatural. No conjunction of planets, such as Kepler pointed out, could be spoken of as a star, nor have begotten so perfect a conviction in the minds of men well acquainted with the heavens. It was, in fact, a beautiful witness of the God of nature to the men of nature, - of One not under bondage to the uniformity in general so necessary to us, that we may have a stable world to reckon on. But this is only a suited back-ground on which the more plainly to display Himself as the Living and Almighty God transcending far the universe He has made, and willing in love so to display Himself. What messengers these from among the Gentiles, to awaken, if it might be, Israel to jealousy. They come to Jerusalem, expecting, doubtless, at the capital city, to find all men ready to greet the inquirer with a gospel message. They come to find an Edomite on the throne of Israel, and with all the old Edomite hatred in his heart, craftily though he may hide it, and even gather the chief priests and elders together, to hasten them on the way. These, too, can tell all about the place of Christ’s birth textually. They give a response which must have stricken the blood-stained tyrant to the heart; but of faith in God they show nothing. They answer that Christ is to be born “in Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet: And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art in no wise least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come a Ruler, who shall be a shepherd to my people Israel.” Such, literally, are the words they use: and one might suppose that in using them they meant to inflict a wound that Herod should not be able to impute to them, but which should come home to him as the voice of God Himself. And so it was, though the words are not found in Micah just as they quote them here. For Hebrew was not any more the language of Israel as a whole; and it was quite the custom to paraphrase, rather than quote literally a scripture appealed to. The Hebrew, besides smaller differences, does not give “shepherd” in this passage, but simply “Ruler.” The Greek of the Septuagint follows the Hebrew: so that the variation is their own. And yet who can deny that the one word is God’s thought as to the other? He who had sent Moses to the sheepfolds to learn how to guide His people in the wilderness - He who in the land had chosen David and “taken him from following the ewes great with young” (demanding therefore, the tenderest care) to feed and guide with no less tenderness, the flock of His pasture - He had indeed consecrated the “shepherd” as the picture of the Ruler whom He had appointed and would raise up. There is but One who has out-done this picture. The scribes show, then, in their variation from the letter their acquaintance with the character of Messiah as prophecy reveals Him. But we hear no more of them. They cite the text for Herod; and they do it well; but they have no heart for the. One they testify to. They are like signposts upon a road on which they do not move an inch. They pass on the word those who value it; Herod himself also becoming the instrument in guiding worshipers to the feet of Jesus. They only, obedient to the Word, turn their faces toward. Bethlehem; and as they do so, the star which they had lost by the way, appears again and goes before them, until it comes and stands over where the young child is. It does not leave them now till they are face to face with Him they seek. Then they worship. It is but a humble house, we may be sure, and there are in it but a young mother and her babe. But they worship, - worship, not the mother but the Babe. Divinely taught, they pour out their gifts at His feet, “gold and frankincense and myrrh.” The Church of old seems almost unitedly to have interpreted them as, in the gold, the recognition of His royalty; in the frankincense, the acknowledgement of His Deity; while the myrrh, used afterwards at His burial, was taken thus to be the anticipation of His death. We might be disposed, from the use of these things in Scripture, to take the gold as the recognition of His divine glory; the frankincense as the fragrance of a life lived, as none other ever was, for God. But to some of these things as we, know, His disciples were long after strangers, nor could we argue that the magi knew the real significance of what they did. But the worship was real, and the great joy with which they had greeted the star on its reappearance, was we may be sure, more than justified in the result. They are divinely instructed in a dream not to return to Herod; God again thus meeting them in their own peculiar way, and they return by another road to the place from which they came. 2. And now Joseph also is warned by an angel of the Lord of impending danger at the hands of Herod, and flees by divine direction with the young child and His mother into Egypt. There is no manifest display of power made. The angels that appeared, to announce a Saviour, do not encircle with chariots and hosts the infant King. Everything marks that He has come to take no exceptional place in this way from the common lot of men. Nay, it is a necessity of the work which He has come to do that He should stoop to this; and in subjection to these human conditions, manifest His exaltation above fallen man. Prophecy, however, has marked out His course all through; and it is that this may be fulfilled that He goes down to Egypt. But just here we find what calls for special examination. The prophecy to be fulfilled is that of Hos 11:1 : “Out of Egypt have I called My Son;” but this does not, at first sight, appear to be a prophecy at all; and certainly not a prophecy of Christ. Any one looking at it would say that it was simply a rebuke of Israel as a nation, for repaying with apostasy and Baal-worship the love which God had shown in their redemption of old. He had them taken out of the misery of their bondage, and called them to adoption as His own family among the families of the earth. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.” But how had they repaid it? “As they [the prophets] called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed to the Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.” This, of course, could only speak of Israel as a nation. And yet the application of the first verse to the Lord is no mere application. It is not that such a thing took place now in relation to Him who was Son of God by a fuller title, as corresponded to that which had taken place of old in regard to God’s “first-born,” Israel. The manner of quotation is much too precise for that: the Lord going down into Egypt definitely to fulfil what is spoken by Hosea. Evidently there is here something deeper in the way of fulfilment than we are accustomed to. It is common to say that we have here an example of typical prophecy; but we must understand what we mean, if we say this. For certainly it could only be in fragments of the national history that there could be any typical reference to the Lord; and what follows in the prophet indicates only entire and emphatic contrast, as we have seen. We must, therefore, have some guiding principle to enable us to discern, with any certainty, what is typical from what is not. Now in Isaiah 49:1-26 we have such a principle: for of whom is it written: “Jehovah hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name, . . . and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified?” This, one would say, must be the nation; but immediately we hear a voice that is not the nation’s: “Then I said, I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nought and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with my God.” Now notice the claim: “And now saith Jehovah, that formed ME from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob again to Him: Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in Jehovah’s eyes, and my God shall be my strength. And He said, It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be my Servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation to the ends of the earth.” Here, to a Christian, there can be no doubt of the application: it is Christ alone who fulfils this. But then He is also the true Servant, formed from the womb to be this, and the Israel in whom God will be glorified: Here Christ and Israel are both identified and distinguished at the same time. Israel, that had failed utterly, - failed even in hearing this glorious Person when He came, - Israel comes to fulfil its destiny only in and through Christ, who comes of Israel; who is (according to the prophetic language) the lowly “Shoot” from the cut down “stem of Jesse,” and the “Branch” that should “grow out of his roots;” and upon whom, in full complacency and in seven-fold power, “the Spirit of Jehovah” was to “rest” (Isaiah 11:1-16). In Him, the “Son born” to them, Israel nationally, is yet to revive. His glory involves their blessing. He begins anew for God their history, purged of its failure and its shame; and hence conies the necessary application of such passages as that in Hosea, “Out of Egypt have I called My son.” Yet how differently is it fulfilled in these two cases! For Him there could be no captivity, no house of bondage. For them this had been the discipline needed, the “furnace,” because of the dross that the Refiner must purge out. Typically, for us all, it speaks of the bondage to sin in our natural state, out of which a divine voice alone can “call” us. For Him, of all this there was nothing, and could be nothing. Egypt shelters, not ensnares, nor takes captive.

He has no natural state to be delivered from. The world of nature, had He desired it, would have yielded Him all it had. The Voice that called Him out of it called Him but to the work for which He had come; and so the “favor,” even “with man” was exchanged for rejection, as also for one dread hour, the “favor with God” seemed to be eclipsed in the darkness of abandonment, only to shine out, however, immediately in the glory of His resurrection and return to heaven. All, then, should be clear as to the application of Hosea. The next quotation that we find here, which is from Jeremiah, and which speaks of Rachel weeping over her dead, is introduced after a very different manner, “then was fulfilled,” not “that it might be.” This is really but an application. When Bethlehem mourned her babes slaughtered by Herod, then it was as if Rachel from her grave close by were repeating her lamentation. But Rachel must be comforted here also, in a deeper way than in the prophet. He had escaped, who by and by would freely offer Himself to redeem from the power of the grave, and bring back to a better life the heirs of death. 3. But the days of the Edomite were drawing to an end; and soon the angel of the Lord appeared once more to Joseph in a dream, with words that bring back those that set the face of Moses the deliverer toward the people to whom he was commissioned: “they are dead that sought the young child’s life.” But only had one tyrant succeeded another, so that they do not return to Judea, where Archelaus had begun his short but cruel reign, but into Galilee, and they came and dwelt in Galilee in a city called Nazareth. In this, too, prophecy was to be fulfilled, - not a specific one, but the tenor of the prophets generally: “He shall be called a Nazarene.” Galilee means “circle” or “circuit;” and here was the place in which, though but for a short time through the unbelief that rejected Him, Israel’s lost blessings were to return more gloriously. Part of Israel’s inheritance as it was, it was now called, as elsewhere stated, “Galilee of the Gentiles,” because so full of Gentiles. There the ruin of the people was most plainly to be seen; and thus it was the fitting place for grace to be shown; it would be grace there most manifestly. So, when the Child returns, the land is claimed, as it were, once more: it is the only place in the New Testament where the expression is used, “the land of Israel.” Such it shall be yet, when owned in the future as Emmanuel’s land (Isaiah 8:8) And this connects with what we have had before, and with that to which our attention is once again and more distinctly directed in this summing up of various prophecies . “He shall be called a Nazarene.” This was, of course, a name actually given to the Lord, and generally in scorn, from the place to which in general His birth was accredited, and in which so large a proportion of His life on earth was spent. Nazareth was, it seems, nowhere in very good repute, but especially among the Pharisees and traditionalists. It had no history, no memories, was consecrated by no great names; and its own name, which seems to have been but a feminine form of netzer, a “sprout” or “shoot,” may even refer to this. It was thus expressive of lowliness, if yet of life, and identical with the word in Isaiah 11:1, where Messiah is spoken of as the “rod” or “shoot out of the stem of Jesse;” and here His greatness and His lowliness are seen together. The stem has been cut down; it is better characterized as that of Jesse than of David, for royalty no more attaches to it: and thus the Son of David comes into no outward state or glory, but the opposite. And yet Jesse bears witness in his name also that “Jehovah exists;” and He is the God of resurrection. The Sprout, if lowly, has yet the energy of life in it. In Him the cut down tree is to revive, and to eclipse all its former glories. He is the “righteous branch” of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 23:5, Jeremiah 33:15), and Zechariah’s Branch, Jehovah’s Servant, who is to build the temple of Jehovah, and bear the glory (Zechariah 6:12). His lowliness is but the stooping of strength in love and to service, - even to death, because His work is resurrection. How great and wonderful is this lowliness, when once we penetrate its real character! how necessary, when once we have understood the need which He came to relieve. Here then is the key to His position; and it is manifestly the one in which we find Him throughout Matthew’s Gospel. For this Branch is to reign, and be a Priest upon His throne. Not only Israel’s burden is He lifting, but our own. For Israel in their long probation, in which they failed so utterly, were only the representatives of men -all men - our own: and therefore ours also is the royal Saviour. And this expression implies all this. Nazarene He may be called from opposite sides, for opposite reasons.

Those who would dishonor, those who honor Him, here unite together. The Cross is a death of shame, but it is His glory. Up in the glory of heaven, amid the universal homage there, when the apostle turns to see the “Lion of the tribe of Judah,” he beholds what might seem but the entire contrast to it - “a Lamb as it had been slain.”