Matthew’s “Prophecies” About Jesus

Overview

** The remaining seven prophecies quoted by Matthew are fulfilled by people other than Jesus: **

• Herod, by slaughtering babies in the vicinity of Bethlehem (2:16–18)
• John the Baptizer, by preaching in the desert (3:1–3) and by preparing the way for Jesus (11:10)
• those who hear Jesus’ parables, by not understanding them (13:10–15)
• Pharisees, by being hypocrites (15:7–9)
• the disciples, by running away when Jesus is arrested (26:31, 56)
• the priests, by how they spend the money returned by Judas (27:3–10)

Everyone knew that Jesus was from Naza reth, why didn’t they recognize that he thereby fulfilled the prophecy, “He will be called a Nazorean” (2:23)? In this strange case, the answer is simple: no such prophecy exists. In the five remaining scenes in our analysis, the most likely reason why no one other than Matthew identified them as prophecy fulfillments is that the prophecies Matthew quotes are awkwardly paired to the stories that allegedly fulfill them.

• (1) Matt 1:23 (Isa 7:14). We should not be puzzled that no one besides Matthew would think that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy that a virgin would give birth to a boy named Emmanuel. Not only was Emmanuel not Jesus’ name, but we have no hard evidence prior to Luke’s gospel that Christians believed in the virgin birth (Miller, Born Divine, 207–8).
• (2) Matt 4:13–16 (Isa 9:1). Who could have recognized that Jesus’ move to Capernaum fulfilled a prophecy that people who lived all over northern Palestine had seen a great light?
• (3) Matt 8:17 (Isa 53:4). It was surely not obvious that Jesus’ healing the sick and casting out demons meant that he was the one who “took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
• (4) Matt 12:15–21 (Isa 42:1–4). It is counterintuitive, to say the least, that when Jesus ordered those whom he had healed not to tell others about him that he thereby fulfilled the prophecy that God’s servant “will not wran gle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets,” especially since Jesus often taught and argued with opponents in public, presumably in a loud voice.
• (5) Matt 13:35 (Ps 78:2). When, in order to reveal hidden truths, Jesus speaks to the crowds only in parables, it is puzzling how he fulfills a verse from a psalm about someone who tells parables in order to explain tradi tional wisdom (see Ps 78:2–4), especially since Jesus had earlier decided to tell parables as a means of hiding the truth (Matt 13:10–15).

We should also note two additional cases of an awkward fit between prophecy and event in Matthew’s infancy narrative. First, it is confusing when Matthew tells us that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy “I called my son out of Egypt” (Hos 11:1) by fleeing toward Egypt (Matt 2:15). The proph ecy refers to the exodus, in which Egypt is the place of slavery and death, whereas in Matthew’s story Egypt is the place of safety. Second, it is less than obvious that a massacre of babies in and around Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecy about Rachel weeping for her children in Ramah (Matt 2:18, quoting Jer 31:5), a town twelve miles from Bethlehem. What would really have helped Matthew would be a prophecy about weeping in Bethlehem, but since there is no such prophecy, one about Ramah had to do. Readers with out a precise knowledge of Judean geography will mistakenly assume that “Bethlehem and all its surrounding region” (Matt 2:16) includes Ramah. However, if a town twelve miles away counts as the surrounding region, so too does a major chunk of Judea, including Jerusalem, which is five miles from Bethlehem.

Seven of the prophecies Matthew identifies as fulfilled are quoted out of context in ways that distort their original meanings. By context here I do not mean historical context, which Matthew always ignores, as do all ancient authors interested in the oracular meanings of prophecy.

• (1) In 1:23 Matthew applies to Mary and Jesus the prediction that “the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son” from Isa 7:14. Matthew includes the line about naming the boy Emmanuel, for although Jesus was not called by that name, Matthew nonetheless believes that Jesus fulfills its symbolism. However, the next line of the prophecy (Isa 7:15) has no possible application to Jesus. The same is true for the verse preceding the one Matthew quotes (Isa 7:13). Matthew can read Jesus into Isa 7:14 only if he isolates it from the verses immediately before and after it.
• (2) In 2:13–15 Matthew correlates “I called my son out of Egypt” to the family’s escape to and return from that country. Matthew quotes only one line of Hosea’s pronouncement, and it’s easy to see why (Hos 11.1-2). Hosea 11:1a makes it clear that “my son” in 11:1b is a collective reference to Israel. Quoting the whole verse would wreck the correlation to Jesus. This is doubly true for the next verse, which not only refers to the Israelites in the plural, but also speaks of their idolatry. Both features of Hos 11:2 make it impossible for Matthew to read Jesus into it.

• (3) In 2:16–18 Matthew asserts that Jeremiah’s poetry about “Rachel weeping for her children” because “they are no more” (Jer 31:15) was fulfilled in Herod’s massacre of the babies in Bethlehem. The verse that Matthew quotes is the beginning of a short poetic unit that ends at Jer 31:17. Jeremiah 31:16–17 comforts Rachel with the promise that her children will return to her. No wonder Matthew selects only 31:15.
• (4) Matthew 3:3 claims that John the Baptizer fulfilled a prophecy about someone in the desert urging people to “prepare the way of the Lord.” The quote comes from the Greek version of Isa 40:3. Its immediate context in Isa 40:4 makes it clear that it is the “way,” not the voice, that is in the desert. However, Matthew (here borrowing from Mark) needs Isaiah’s prophecy to be about a voice in the desert in order for John, who preached there, to fulfill it.
• (5) In 8:17 Matthew quotes Isa 53:4a (“he bore our infirmities and carried our diseases”), which Matthew sees fulfilled in Jesus’ healings and exorcisms. However, Isa 53:4b (“we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted”), as well as the immediate context in 53:3–5, indicates that 53:4a means that God’s servant is afflicted with diseases that are punishments for the sins of others.

• (6) In 13:35 Matthew asserts that when Jesus taught in parables he fulfilled “what had been spoken through the prophet, ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter secrets that have been hidden since the foundation of the world’” (adapted from Ps 78:2 LXX). In Psalm 78 parables are meant to shed light on traditional wisdom sayings that every generation knows (see Ps 78:4). Those sayings might be hard to understand but are not secrets, as they are in Matthew’s adapted quotation. In order to impute this different meaning to the psalm, Matthew rewrote the second half of Ps 78:2, changing the word that means “difficult things” (problēmata in Greek, the source of our word “problem”) into one that means “hidden things.” Matthew’s revised version of Ps 78:2 contradicts its plain meaning in its original context: “secrets that have been hidden since the foundation of the world” (as “quoted” by Matthew) cannot be “things that we have heard and known, and that our ancestors have told us” (Ps 78:3).

• (7) Matthew 26:31 is copied from Mark, who carefully quoted Zech 13:7 out of context so that “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered” can be taken as a prophecy about Jesus and his disciples. In Zechariah’s own context the sentence Mark extracts expresses God’s determination to punish a worthless shepherd and to kill most of his sheep. These seven cases—two of which come from Mark, and five of which are Matthew’s own work—quote the scriptures in such a way as to exclude integral elements in the prophecies that disallow or work against the mean ings Matthew reads into them. Matthew’s studious process of quoting shows that he is not quoting from memory, for his selective quotations are precise textual maneuvers. It is only because Matthew can consult written texts that he knows exactly which words to include in his quotations and, what is equally important, which words not to include. Matthew’s deliberate selectivity suggests that he was aware that the prophets he quotes did not think they were prophesying about Jesus.

• (1) Matt 1:23. “The virgin will conceive.” There is no reference to a virgin in the Hebrew original of Isa 7:14. All versions of the Septuagint use the word parthenos, which means “young woman” but can in special circumstances have the meaning of “virgin” (Miller, “Wonder Baby,” 10; Miller, Born Divine, 189–90). Matthew is able to read the meaning he wants into Isaiah only by quoting this prophecy from a Greek translation that allows a meaning not available in the Hebrew text.
• (2) Matt 2:15. “I called my son out of Egypt.” Here Matthew makes the opposite choice. The Hebrew text of Hos 11:1 has “my son” while the Septuagint has “his children.” Both versions refer to the people of Israel, but only in the Hebrew wording is it possible for Matthew to see a prophecy about Jesus.
• (3) Matt 8:17. Matthew asserts that Jesus’ many healings and exor cisms fulfilled Isa 53:4, which he quotes in a translation that closely follows the Hebrew: “He took away our illnesses and carried off our diseases.” Mat thew’s translation is accurate, but also creative, for it bends Isaiah’s original meaning, which is not that the servant of Yahweh removes diseases, but rather that he suffers them: “He has borne our infirmities / and carried our diseases.” While the translation that Matthew used (or made himself) lets him read this verse as if it were a prophecy about Jesus’ healings, the very different Septuagint version cannot be applied to Jesus’ healings: “He bears our sins and suffers pain for us” (Isa 53:4 LXX).
• (4) Matt 12:18–21. Here Matthew quotes Isa 42:1–4. The Hebrew and Greek versions differ only in the final line: “the coastlands wait for his law” (Hebrew) versus “in his name the gentiles will hope” (Greek). The Septua gint here works nicely as a prophecy about Jesus, whereas a rendering that follows the Hebrew text could not.

Fabricating Prophecies: Matthew 2:23

“He will be called a Nazorean” is not a quotation from the scriptures, and Matthew knows it. We can tell that he knows it because he presents this prophecy differently than all the quotations in his gospel, in two ways. **First, he does not introduce it as a quotation, but instead inserts it into his story in indirect discourse, as a paraphrase: “He [Joseph] settled in a town called Nazareth, in order to fulfill the prediction of the prophets that he will be called a Nazorean.” Second, Matthew ascribes the saying generically to “the prophets,” rather than to “the prophet” (as in 2:15, for example) or to a named prophet.** There is no prophecy about Nazareth in the scriptures; the village is not mentioned anywhere in the OT. **Either Matthew created this prophecy out of nothing, or else he got the idea for it from a verse or verses focused on some word that reminded him of the word “Nazorean.”** Whether Matthew produced this prediction by redoing some verse(s) from the scriptures or directly from his imagination matters little: the fact remains that there is no scripture predicting anything about Nazareth or one of its residents. So why did Matthew go to the trouble of fabricating this prophecy? It was probably because he needed some prophetic legitimation for Jesus’ well-known origins in Nazareth, an obscure village with no David ic or messianic associations. (“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” in John 1:46 has the ring of a derogatory proverb.) Besides, Nazareth is in Galilee, a gentile environment. A primary purpose of Matthew’s infancy narrative was to preempt Jewish objections to Jesus’ origins. According to Matthew, Jesus had a legiti mate Davidic pedigree through his legal father Joseph (Miller, Born Divine, 89, 91).

Matt 1:23 (Isa 7:14)

Isaiah’s prediction is about his own immediate future: he expects the boy to be born within the next year or so. Jewish interpretation of this prophecy understood it to have been fulfilled in the birth of Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, the king to whom the prophecy was ad dressed. This interpretation is attested by Justin, to his chagrin, in Dialogue with Trypho 67:1. Contemporary Jewish tradition did not understand Isa 7:14 to be a prophecy about the messiah. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 147n42: “Isa 7:14 was not applied messianically in Jewish usage. A list of 456 such ‘messianic passages’ is given in Edersheim, Life, II 710–41; and Isa 7:14 is not among them. Knowing this, Justin, already in the second century, was accusing . . . Jewish scholars of tampering with OT evidence pertinent to the Messiah (Dialogue lxxi–lxxiii).”