Matthew’s text of Mic 5:1 (5:2 ET)
differs strongly from both the MT and the LXX (which essentially follows the MT).
Matthew’s reading shortens the text (e.g., by dropping the reference to
Ephraim); explicitly denies the plain meaning of the first phrase of the LXX and
MT ("you are too small"/"[you are] small" is replaced by
"you are by no means the least"); and άρχων (מושׁל) is replaced by
ήγούμενος. The quotation's intent is plain: a tendentious insistence on the importance
of Bethlehem as the birthplace of the ruler. The addition of a phrase
from 2 Sam 5:2 (referring to David's rule over Israel) emphasizes the point
that this ruler is to be Davidic.
The most likely life-setting for
this quotation is within early Christian apologetical attempts to prove that
Jesus is the messiah born in Bethlehem. This scenario is explicitly played out
in John 7:40-42, where "the crowd" debates whether the messiah could
come from Galilee, when scripture indicates that he must come from Bethlehem. While
the current form of the Matthew quotation is most likely due to Christian
adaptation, it is possible that our text is originally a Jewish messianic
composition.
The accompanying story (Matt
2:1-12) of the visit of the magi can hardly have been developed out of the
Micah/2 Samuel composite quotation-the quotation touches only one detail of the
narrative. The quotation, then, was put together independently from the
narrative. For Brown, this independence indicates that Matthew himself has
added the quotation. This may well be true, but we must ask further: where did
Matthew get the quotation? If Matthew was simply seeking a proof-text to
illustrate the story of the magi, it makes little sense that he would go to the
trouble of altering Mic 5:1 and adding 2 Sam 5:2 for good measure. Lindars
rightly sees this as a product of pre-Matthean apologetic activity, but his
model of oral tradition cannot explain the complex conflated text: the
likeliest possibility is that Matthew drew on a written testimonia
source compiled to prove that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
The Mic 5:1/2 Sam 5:2 conflation
occurs in the later testimonia tradition (Justin 1 Apol. 34.1; Dial.
78.1; Irenaeus Proof 63). The exact correspondence of these quotations
with Matthew’s however, shows that Justin and Irenaeus were simply copying
Matthew’s text. (Martin C. Albl, “And Scripture Cannot be Broken”: The
Form and Function of Early Christian Testimonia Collections [Supplements to
Novum Testamentum 156; Leiden: Brill, 1999], 182-84)
