There’s an interesting passage at the end of Jesus’ advent story in Matthew:
Now when [the Magi] had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him.” So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod; this happened so that what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: “OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON.” – Matthew 2:13-15
You might be familiar with this story of divine escape from a tyrant king. You might have taken note of the capitalized words at the end of the passage and recognized that this means it’s a quote from another passage of scripture (that’s how the NASB translation does it, anyway). It seems like it’s another one of those great moments where a prophet from back in the Hebrew Scriptures is calling out details about the life of Jesus hundreds of years in advance and Matthew is being gracious enough to point it out.
But do you know what verse is being quoted? It comes from the prophet Hosea, and here it is in it’s context:
When Israel was a youth I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.
The more they[the prophets] called them,
The more they went away from them[the prophets];
They kept sacrificing to the Baals
And burning incense to idols.
Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them in My arms;
But they did not know that I healed them.
I pulled them along with cords of a man, with ropes of love,
And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws;
And I bent down and fed them.
They will not return to the land of Egypt;
But Assyria–he will be their king
Because they refused to return to Me. – Hosea 11:1-5
The passage in Hosea is not a prediction of the future, but is a description of the LORD’s history with Israel. The first two lines form a couplet with “My son” being equivalent to “young Israel”. The passage goes on to explain that even though the LORD has been faithful to Israel, saved them from Egypt and called to them through the prophets, Israel has continued to ignore their God and has turned to the Baals and the idols. As a result, they will be going back into captivity, not to Egypt, but to Assyria.
Put simply, the passage is about the faithlessness of the LORD’s son, Israel.
So, how then is Jesus a “fulfillment” of this passage?
Well, interestingly enough, Jesus is a fulfillment of this passage not because He does the same thing as Israel, but because – though He is in a similar situation – He does not do the same thing.
What? How does that even make sense?
It makes sense if we understand what the Scriptures are trying to do and if we use them the way that they were intended to be used. You see, if we read Scripture as though it is a collection of preserved news articles documenting the events of the day, then the idea of finding “fulfillments” in them is nonsensical: historical accounts have nothing to be fulfilled, they’re just records. However, if we read them as an ongoing narrative of God’s collaboration with humanity, then we are invited to read them literarily: we’re meant to look for style, foreshadowing, symbolism, and layers.
So, it’s a story that’s meant to develop themes and symbols, great. There’s still a problem with this passage though: the theme of Hosea 11 is Israel’s lack of faithfulness towards the LORD whereas the theme of Matthew’s gospel is the faithfulness of Jesus, how does that make them match?
That’s the right question! Here’s my suggestion:
In Hosea 11 we’re getting a peak into the Heart of God and how God feels about His relationship with Israel. The theme throughout the scroll is that God has given His heart to Israel like a Father, Friend, and Lover yet Israel has ignored their role in the world, whored themselves out to other gods, and “grown up” to become a disobedient and arrogant son. As a result, God is heartbroken in every way you can imagine, yet still desires to be faithful to Israel…
This is fertile ground emotionally, spiritually, and theologically. That’s why Matthew wants to make reference to this. Early on in his story about Jesus, Matthew wants you to be thinking about God’s hopes and destiny for His “son Israel” and how tragically Israel turned from that destiny.
Here’s the trick, though, the LORD hasn’t given up on that story! God is still looking for a “son” who will be the faithful one, who will grow closer to Him and be obedient and who will be that blessing to the nations that Israel has always been destined to be.
That story – that hope – is still hanging there… unfulfilled.
So Matthew makes his reference and claims that this story is being fulfilled in the person of Yeshua[Jesus] and we are meant to respond with incredulity and wonder: how?! How is it that this one little boy rescued from an evil king will become the fulfillment of the hopes of “My son, Israel”?
If you read between the lines, you can almost hear Matthew saying, “keep reading, I’ll show you!”
Sure enough, Matthew does show us. Throughout the course of Matthew’s gospel we see Jesus put into several difficult, testing, and challenging situations. Matthew even chooses events and parables in the life of Jesus that have echoes to the failures of Israel and we watch as Jesus remains faithful. In fact, in one of the scenes we even see Jesus do this kind of scriptural interpretation directly… but that’s another post.
It’s a different way to think about what it means for Scripture to be fulfilled than modern people usually think, but it makes sense and it’s much more powerful and effective than some sort of predictive checklist.
It’s also not unusual, the entirety of the Christian Scriptures[New Testament] are filled with these kinds of fulfillment references. Sometimes they point out how Jesus fulfills things by matching up with what was expected, sometimes they point out of Jesus fulfills things by contradicting what was expected (and why we should have seen it coming). Either way though, the writers of the Christian Scriptures feel free to quote, reference, and interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in ways that are inappropriate to do unless it’s all meant to point to something (and Jesus is that something).
In other words, they see the Scriptures as needing to fit Jesus, not as Jesus needing to fit the Scriptures.
They had a deep reverence for the Scriptures, but it was ultimately Something Else that opened their eyes. They didn’t turn their backs on their faith, rather, they were all the more energized to pursue their faith. They’d encountered Something that revitalized them and made their Scriptures come alive to them and they couldn’t help but have that Something re-frame not only their reading of Scripture, but every facet of their lives.
[That something is Jesus, in case that wasn’t clear]To this day, that’s the same story for those that have been made alive in the Spirit. Though the Scriptures are often our favorite place to encounter the Spirit, it is not the Scriptures, but the Spirit that leads us.
Interestingly enough, this setup tends to generate more love for the Scriptures, not less.