Out of the New Egypt I Called My Son

By Anthony Rogers

13 Now when they 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 remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” 14 So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. 15 He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” (Matthew 2)

Three issues are commonly put forward as problems with Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1. First, it is alleged that Matthew cited Hosea 11:1 at the wrong point in his narrative, i.e. he cited it after Jesus came out of Israel and went down into Egypt; second, it is claimed that Matthew errantly cited Hosea 11:1 as if it were a prophecy about the future, whereas Hosea 11:1 was actually a historical statement about the past; and third, Matthew applied Hosea 11:1 to a specific individual rather than to a corporate entity, that is, Matthew uses the passage to refer to Jesus as God’s Son while Hosea was speaking about the nation of Israel as God’s son. Attempts to deal with these issues have spawned a number of different explanations, many of which fall short of being fully satisfactory. The following resolution of these problems strikes me as the most persuasive.

With respect to the first issue, in the view of the vast majority of commentators, who assume that Jesus’ departure from geographical Egypt is what Matthew had in view, the apostle’s placement of the citation of Hosea 11:1 (“out of Egypt I called My Son”) is a problem to be solved since it follows the statement of Jesus being taken out of Israel to Egypt (2:14-15a) rather than His being taken out of Egypt to Israel (2:19-21). According to Beale, “the apparent odd placement”[1] of the citation is accounted for by “the repeated OT pattern of Israel or Israelites reentering Egypt and them coming back out of Egypt.” However, this doesn’t solve the problem: if both are in view then it is hard to see why the citation isn’t placed after both and how placing it between them is not justifiably referred to as an “odd placement.” As others see it, this apparently misplaced quotation shows that the “emphasis falls on Jesus’ divine sonship, not on the geography of Jesus’ travels.”[2] While it is true that Jesus’ divine Sonship is being emphasized, the reference to Egypt hardly seems inconsequential in the context, as will be pointed out below. Another answer often given is, if Matthew had put the quotation after the departure from Egypt in 2:21, then that would put it in too close a proximity to the fulfillment statement in Matthew 2:23, which says that Jesus would be called a Nazarene.[3] This view tacitly admits that Matthew put the citation in the wrong place but seeks to excuse it on the grounds of necessity, a fact that must sit in uneasy tension with a robust doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy. In addition, in its current placement Matthew 2:15 is only one verse away from another fulfillment statement (2:17), which shows that Matthew could have placed the statement after the departure from Egypt in 2:21 if that was the point he was making. A final problem with this answer is that it is inconsistent with Matthew’s style. In every other case where Matthew uses hina + plerothe (1:22, 4:14, 12:17, and 21:4) it always refers back to what had just been said rather than to what will be said later.

All of the proposed solutions above, and others that could be given, miss the point that Matthew is driving at: Jesus’ departure from Israel is the fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 precisely because Israel is a new Egypt. This is supported by the following: first, in Herod’s desire to kill Jesus (2:3, 12-13), as well as in his order to slaughter all the children two years and younger (2:16), Herod, the king of Israel, is portrayed as a New Pharaoh (cf. Exodus 1:15-22); Second, in 2:17-18 Matthew interprets the slaughter of Israelite children in Israel as a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15, where Rachel is spoken of as weeping for her children. The context of this passage in Jeremiah is that of God promising to bring about a new Exodus and establish a new covenant. Third, Israel’s religious leaders, like Pharaoh’s court magicians of old, are, like Herod, troubled at the report of Messiah’s birth (2:3-6), while the gentile Magi are on the side of Jesus (2:9-12). Clearly the roles have been reversed and Israel is being portrayed as a new Egypt. This identification of Jerusalem/Israel as Egypt is seen elsewhere in the New Testament: “And their [i.e. the Two Witnesses] dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8).[4] Spiritually or mystically the city is a veritable Egypt (or Sodom); literally the city is identified as Jerusalem in the land of Israel, the place where the Lord was crucified.[5] On this interpretation Matthew’s citation of Hosea 11:1 is exactly where it should be. When Jesus went out of Israel, God’s Son was departing from Egypt.

Turning to the second issue, many object to Matthew’s prophetic use of Hosea’s historical statement. According to Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a youth, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.” This statement clearly refers to what happened in the past. The answer to this observation is ordinarily (and rightly) sought in recognizing that according to Hosea Israel would in some sense return to the land of Egypt, the land of her captivity (Hosea 7:11, 16, 8:13; 9:3, 6), and the Lord would again bring Israel up from there like He did before. At that time the Lord says: “Then I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:15; see also 1:10-11, 11:11). The language used here suggests that this is not speaking of a literal return from geographical Egypt. Indeed, Hosea expressly states the opposite 11:5a: “They will not return to the land of Egypt…” This shows that Hosea, like the other prophets, recognized that God was going to bring about a New Exodus (e.g. Isaiah 43:1-3, 16-21; Jeremiah 23:5-8; Micah 4:1-10, 7:14-20; Zechariah 2:6-12, 10:6-12), a fact that establishes a typological relationship between what happened in the past and would happen in a climactic way in the future. Inasmuch as the previous Exodus was paradigmatic of or would be recapitulated in the future, Matthew was fully warranted in applying Hosea’s statement about the past to the future.

As for the third issue, Matthew’s application of Hosea 11:1 to Jesus rather than to a corporate entity, the answer is found in recognizing the Old Testament principle that the many are contained in or represented by the one, sometimes referred to as a one-and-many principle or the principle of corporate solidarity. For example, in Isaiah 40-55, a section often referred to as the Isaianic New Exodus, the Lord repeatedly promised to redeem Israel, and throughout these chapters the nation of Israel is portrayed as God’s servant (e.g. Isaiah 41:8, 9, 43:10, 44:1, 2, 44:21, 26). However, in four places, commonly referred to as “Servant Songs” (Isaiah 42:1-9, 49:1-7, 50:4-10; and 52:13-53:12), something noteworthy takes place. On the one hand the Servant of these four sections is explicitly identified as Israel: “He said to Me, ‘You are My Servant, Israel, in Whom I will show My glory” (Isaiah 49:3); and yet, on the other hand, the referent of these passages is obviously an individual and not the nation since the passage goes on to say that the Servant will save Jacob/Israel (and the Gentiles nations): “And now says the Lord, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him…He says, ‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light to the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth’” (Isaiah 49:5-6). This “one-and-many” principle can be found throughout the Old Testament and is seen in Hosea as well, such as when statements about individuals like Adam (Hosea 6:7) or Jacob (12:2-5) are applied to the nation.[6] In addition, Hosea recognized that an individual led the original Exodus (12:13), and therefore that an individual would likewise bring about the New Exodus and be the head and locus of the reconstituted Israel of the future (1:11, 3:5). In light of this, it is clear how Matthew, who portrayed Jesus as the true Israel, God’s Son par excellence, the one who was retracing Israel’s steps and atoning for her missteps, could apply a statement about the nation to Jesus as the one to whom it was pointing and in whom it was ultimately being realized.

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[1] G. K. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012), 62. [2] Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), 34. A similar answer is given in Walter Kaiser, The Uses of the Old Testament in the New (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 51. [3] E.g. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, Matthew, Mark, Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 91; Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 220. [4] Significantly, Hosea 11:8 speaks of Israel deserving the judgment that fell on Admah and Zeboiim, names associated in the OT with Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:28). These names are only otherwise mentioned in the curses of the covenant in Deuteronomy 29:23. [5] Contra Leon Morris, Revelation, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), who says that the city is “every city and no city,” 146. [6] For further discussion of this point, see Beale, Handbook, 64.