Friday, June 21, 2024

Robert L. Millet on Matthew 2:23

  

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)