Edersheim on Old Testament Quotes in Matthew Chapter Two

Thoughts from Edersheim on Matthew’s Old Testament quotations in Matthew chapter two

Taken from Edersheim’s ‘The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah’.

On Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt with the Lord Jesus and the slaughter of the young children in Bethlehem, Edersheim writes, “Of two passages in his own Old Testament Scriptures the Evangelist sees a fulfilment in these events. The flight into Egypt is to him the fulfilment of this expression by Hosea, ‘Out of Egypt have I called My Son’ (Hos 11:1). In the murder of ‘the Innocents,’ he sees the fulfilment of Rachel’s lament (Jer 31:15, who died and was buried in Ramah)⁵² and there was bitter wailing at the prospect of parting for hopeless captivity, and yet bitterer lament, as they who might have encumbered the onward march were pitilessly slaughtered. Those who have attentively followed the course of Jewish thinking, and marked how the ancient Synagogue, and that rightly, read the Old Testament in its unity, as ever pointing to the Messiah as the fulfilment of Israel’s history, will not wonder at, but fully accord with, St. Matthew’s retrospective view. The words of Hosea were in the highest sense ‘fulfilled’ in the flight to, and return of, the Saviour from Egypt.⁵³ To an inspired writer, nay, to a true Jewish reader of the Old Testament, the question in regard to any prophecy could not be: What did the prophet-but, What did the prophecy-mean? And this could only be unfolded in the course of Israel’s history. Similarly, those who ever saw in the past the prototype of the future, and recognised in events, not only the principle, but the very features, of that which was to come, could not fail to perceive, in the bitter wail of the mothers of Bethlehem over their slaughtered children, the full realisation of the prophetic description of the scene enacted in Jeremiah’s days. Had not the prophet himself heard, in the lament of the captives to Babylon, the echoes of Rachel’s voice in the past? In neither one nor the other case had the utterances of the prophets (Hosea and Jeremiah) been predictions: they were prophetic. In neither one nor the other case was the ‘fulfilment’ literal: it was Scriptural, and that in the truest Old Testament sense.”

⁵² See the evidence for it summarized in ‘Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ,’ p.60.

⁵³ In point of fact the ancient Synagogue did actually apply to the Messiah Ex 4:22, on which the words of Hosea are based. See the Midrash on Ps 2:7. The quotation is given in full in our remarks on Ps. 2:7 in Appendix 9.

Some interesting thoughts from Edersheim on ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ Matt 2:23:

“St. Matthew, indeed, summarises the whole outward history of the life in Nazareth in one sentence. Henceforth Jesus would stand out before the Jews of His time – and, as we know, of all times¹⁵ – by the distinctive designation: ‘of Nazareth,’ נצרי (Notsri), ‘the Nazarene’. In the mind of a Palestinian a peculiar significance would attach to the by-Name of the Messiah, especially in its connection with the general teaching of prophetic Scripture. And here we must remember, that St Matthew primarily addressed his Gospel to Palestinian readers, and that it is the Jewish presentation of the Messiah as meeting Jewish expectancy. In this there is nothing derogatory to the character of the Gospel, not accommodation in the sense of adaptation, since Jesus was not only the Saviour of the world, but especially also the King of the Jews, and we are now considering how He would stand out before the Jewish mind. On one point all were agreed: His Name was Notsri (of Nazareth). St. Matthew proceeds to point out, how entirely this accorded with prophetic Scipture – not, indeed, with any single prediction, but with the whole language of the prophets. From this¹⁶ the Jews derived not fewer than eight designations or Names by which the Messiah was to be called. The most prominent among them was that of Tsemach, or ‘Branch.’¹⁷ We call it the most prominent, not only because it is based upon the clearest Scripture-testimony, but because it evidently occupied the foremost rank in Jewish thinking being embodied in this earliest portion of their daily liturgy: ‘The Branch of David, Thy Servant, speedily make to shoot forth, and His Horn exalt Thou by Thy Salvation. … Blessed art Thou Jehovah, Who causeth to spring forth (literally: to branch forth) the Horn of Salvation’ (15th Eulogy). Now, what is expressed by the word Tsemach is also conveyed by the term Netser, ‘Branch,’ in such passages as Isaiah 11:1, which was likewise applied to the Messiah.¹⁸ Thus, starting from Isaiah 11:1, Netser ¹⁹ bear in popular parlance, and that on the ground of prophetic Scriptures, the exact equivalent of the best-known designation of the Messiah.²⁰ The more significant this, that it was not a self-chosen nor man-given name, but arose, in the providence of God, from what otherwise might have been called the accident of His residence. We admit that this is a Jewish view; but then this Gospel is the Jewish view of the Jewish Messiah.

But, taking this Jewish title in its Jewish significance, it has also a deeper meaning, and that not only to Jews, but to all men. The idea of Christ as the Divinely placed ‘Branch’ (symbolised by His Divinely-appointed early residence), small and despised in its forth-shooting, or then visible appearance (like Nazareth and the Nazarenes), but destined to grow as the Branch sprung out of Jesse’s roots, is most marvellously true to the whole history of the Christ, alike as sketched ‘by the prophets,’ and as exhibited in reality. And thus to us all, Jews or Gentiles, the Divine guidance to Nazareth and the name Nazarene present the truest fulfilment of the prophecies of His history."

¹⁵ This is still the common, almost universal, designation of Christ among the Jews.

fn16. Comp. ch. 4 of this book.

¹⁷ In accordance with Jer. 23:5; 33:15; and especially Zech. 3:18.

¹⁸ See Appendix 9.

¹⁹ So in Ber. R. 76. Comp. Buxtorf, Lexicon Talm. P.1383.

²⁰ All this becomes more evident by Delitzch’s ingenious suggestion (Zeitschr. für luther. Theol. 1876, part 3, p.402), that the real meaning, though not the literal rendering, of the words of St. Matthew, would be כי נצר שמו – ‘for Netser [’branch’] is His Name’.