Matthew 2 Footnotes

This Herod, known as Herod the Great, was different from the other three members of the Herodian dynasty mentioned in the Gospels. They are: (1) Herod Archelaus, son and successor of Herod the Great who ruled over Judea (v. 22); (2) Herod Antipas, who executed John the Baptist (Mk 6:17-29) and who returned Jesus for sentencing by Pilate (Lk 23:6-12); and (3) Herod Philip, ruler in extreme northern Galilee when Jesus began his public ministry (Lk 3:1,19-20).

2:17-18. Matthew loosely translated the Hebrew of Jr 31:15. Ramah was the staging point for the Babylonian exile (Jr 40:1-2), an event Matthew had already identified as important to Jesus’s identity (Mt 1:17). But Jr 31:16-35 also promised an end to the exile and the institution of the new covenant with Israel, events associated elsewhere with the messianic reign (Jr 30:1-9; 33:14-26; see Mt 26:28). With the birth of Jesus, the Davidic Son had arrived and the exile was ended. Thus the weeping in Bethlehem fulfilled, or culminated, Rachel’s weeping. This is the final mourning of exiled Israel.

2:23 According to Lk 1:26 and 2:4, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth prior to the birth of Jesus, prompting some to claim that Matthew was unaware of this and thus presented Bethlehem as their hometown. But Matthew’s focus was only the well-known fact that Nazareth was Jesus’s hometown at the start of his ministry. He was not concerned to tell the reader the hometown of Jesus’s parents. Though he first mentioned them in connection with the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, he nowhere stated that Bethlehem was their hometown. The quote corresponds to no known passage in the OT. The best possibility is that Matthew alluded to Is 11:1 (“shoot” = Hb nezer), but others suggest that “a Nazarene” is a title of dishonor and thus alludes to those texts in which the Messiah is despised (Ps 22:6-8; Is 53:2-3). The two may go together, since Is 11:1 describes the Messiah as arising from the ignominious conditions into which David’s house had fallen and has links to the Servant of Is 49–53 (Is 11:1,10,12; 49:22; 53:2).