The formula citations used in the
infancy narrative by Matthew, include the following:
Matthew 1:22-23 citing Isaiah 7:14
Matthew 2:55-56 citing Micah 5:2
Matthew 2:15b citing Hosea 11:1
Matthew 2:17-18 citing Jeremiah 31:15
Matthew 2:23b citing (?)
Of course, the most difficult of these
citations to deal with is the last one:
“And he came and dwelt in a city called
Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall
be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:[2]3). Scholars have debated for centuries as
to the particular Old Testament passage to which Matthew made reference, for
there is no clear message from any of the prophets in our present Old Testament
that would find fulfillment through the Holy Family’s settling in Nazareth.
Three main theories have been asserted that Jesus as a Nazarene was the
fulfillment of passages dealing with (1) Jesus as one who lived in Nazareth;
(2) Jesus as a nazir, a Nazarite, one consecrated and made holy to God
by a vow (see Numbers 6:1-21; Judges 16:7); and 3) Jesus as neser, a
branch in fulfillment of the passage in Isaiah 11:1 (see Brown, Birth of the
Messiah, pp. 209-212). The problem of course, with the latter two possibilities
is that they have little or nothing to do with the Lord settling down in
Nazareth, the focus of Matthew’s remarks. It may well be that the specific prophecy
in question has been lost or was never included in the present canon. One
incident in the New Testament is worth considering in this light: the passage
in Jude 9 seems to be a quotation or paraphrase from the apocryphal Assumption
of Moses. Given that such mighty prophets as Zenos and Zenock and Neum have
escaped Old Testament mention, we may conclude that the prophecy alluded to in
Matthew 2:23 has been lost to the world for a time. (Robert L. Millet, “The
Birth of the Messiah: A Closer Look at the Infancy Narrative of Matthew,” in The
Fourth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium on the
New Testament [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints 1980], 141)
