The second prophecy listed by Matthew as fulfilled is
Matthew 2:6 ‘You Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are in no way
least among the princes of Judah:
for out of you shall come forth a governor,
who shall shepherd
my people, Israel.’
The original statement is:
Micah 5:1 Now you shall gather yourself in troops,
daughter of
troops.
He has laid siege against us.
They will strike
the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek.
2 But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
being small among
the clans of Judah,
out of you one
will come forth to me that is to be ruler in Israel;
whose goings forth
are from of old, from everlasting.
3 Therefore he will abandon them until the time that she who
is in labor gives birth.
Then the rest of
his brothers will return to the children of Israel.
4 He shall stand, and shall shepherd in the strength of
Yahweh,
in the majesty of
the name of Yahweh his God:
and they will
live, for then he will be great to the ends of the earth.
5 He will be our peace when Assyria invades our land,
and when he
marches through our fortresses,
then we will raise
against him seven shepherds,
and eight leaders
of men.
6 They will rule the land of Assyria with the sword,
and the land of
Nimrod in its gates.
It is clear that at least one scholar understood that verse
2 referred to the birth of the Messiah, because he communicated that to the
Wise Men. But the context, before and after, involves warfare, in particular
against the Assyrians. Would anyone familiar with this prophecy, when it was
given, have understood that it was talking about the birth of God’s Son, the
Savior?
The third fulfilled prophecy, according to Matthew, is this:
Matthew 2:14 He arose and took the young child and his
mother by night, and departed into Egypt, 15 and was there until the death of
Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Here’s the original:
Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
and called my son
out of Egypt.
2 They called to them, so they went from them.
They sacrificed to
the Baals,
and burned incense
to engraved images.
3 Yet I taught Ephraim to walk.
I took them by his
arms;
but they didn’t
know that I healed them.
4 I drew them with cords of a man, with ties of love;
and I was to them
like those who lift up the yoke on their necks;
and I bent down to
him and I fed him.
5 “They won’t return
into the land of Egypt;
but the Assyrian
will be their king,
because they
refused to repent.
This seems to be speaking of the Exodus, and subsequent
events. (Ephraim is sometimes used, in the Old Testament, to signify the
Northern Kingdom.) Apparently God meant this prophecy to cover more than one
event, one national – all the Israelites – and one related to the early life of
Christ. Matthew tells us that it is, in part, anyway, a prophecy of Joseph,
Mary and Jesus going to Egypt. However, note that Hosea prophesied that the
Israelites wouldn’t return to Egypt.
Clearly, that didn’t include the Holy Family.
The fourth prophecy, a sad one, is:
Matthew 2:18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamentation,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she wouldn’t be
comforted,
because they are
no more.”
The source is Jeremiah 31:11 For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob,
and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he. 12 They shall
come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow to the goodness of Yahweh,
to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the
flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they
shall not sorrow any more at all. 13 Then shall the virgin rejoice in the
dance, and the young men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning
into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. 14 I
will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be
satisfied with my goodness, says Yahweh. 15 Thus says Yahweh: A voice is heard
in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she
refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. 16 Thus
says Yahweh: Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for
your work shall be rewarded, says Yahweh; and they shall come again from the
land of the enemy. 17 There is hope for your latter end, says Yahweh; and your
children shall come again to their own border.
It would seem that this would have been difficult, or
impossible, to read as a prophecy of Herod killing the boy babies to try to
kill Christ. The passage, as a whole, is a prophecy of the restoration of
Israel.
We know that these four prophecies have been fulfilled, and
how they were fulfilled. The Bible tells us that they have been fulfilled. But,
in their own time, they would seem to have caused real difficulty for anyone trying
to understand them the way Matthew did. All
of them had more than one meaning, and the first meaning was not related to Christ’s early life. God
could, of course, have especially revealed the second meaning to an individual,
or more than one. Perhaps He did this in relation to Micah’s prophecy of Christ’s
birth in Bethlehem. These four examples are not atypical. Additional prophecies
referred to in Matthew, who, more than the other Gospel writers, emphasizes
fulfilled prophecy, seem equally obscure in their original context, unless we
know how they were fulfilled.
The above is an excerpt from my recently published e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which may be obtained free of charge, or purchased from Amazon for $0.99, which is the lowest price Amazon lets an author set. Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain.
The previous post in this series is here. God willing, the next post in this series will continue a discussion of this topic, prophecy. Thanks for reading.
The following is not excerpted from my book:
On September 24, 2019, the Resurrecting Orthodoxy blog posted an examination of the use of Isaiah 53 (the suffering servant passage) in the New Testament, and concludes that most people's understanding of it (including mine) are wrong. More examinations of the use of prophecy in the New Testament are to be added, in this series.
