Monday, January 20, 2014

"Out of Egypt I called my Son": Israel Rebooted in Her Messiah

Matthew concludes his brief discussion of Jesus’s flight to Egypt by pointing to the fulfillment of Scripture: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matt. 2:15 quoting Hos. 11:1). This is a very important fulfillment quotation. In addition to helping us understand one of the ways the earliest Christians interpreted the Old Testament it helps us understand the mission and purpose of Jesus.

The first obvious point to make is that this fulfillment is not what is normally understood as prediction-fulfillment. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them" (Hos. 11:1–3).

Hosea 11:1 is not a forward looking prophecy; it instead looks backward to Israel’s history to make the painful point that even though God had called and treated Israel as a son they rejected him and worshipped idols. How can Matthew argue that Jesus’s early life in Egypt fulfilled a prophecy that was not even a prophecy? The key to answering this question lies in the ancient interpretive approach understood as typology. Typology basically boils down to correspondence in history. The earliest Christians looked to how God worked in the past in the Old Testament in order to understand how he was working in the present and how he would work in the future.

Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1 in Matt. 2:15 draws a strong connection between Jesus and Israel; Jesus and Israel are typologically related. What is the significance of this typological relationship? Israel’s purpose in the Old Testament was to mediate God’s blessing, presence, and glory to the nations (Gen. 12:3; Ps. 67:1–7; 96:1–10; 145:10–12; Isa. 2:1–4; 56:7; 66:19; Zech. 8:23). God’s plan to bless the nations would be mediated through the seed of Abraham (Gen. 12:3). Israel failed in this purpose by rejecting God in favor of idolatry (Hos. 11:2–7) but God’s purpose and plan would not be thwarted.

In Matthew’s view God restarted or rebooted Israel in her Messiah Jesus. Jesus relived the history of Israel but instead of failing in the purpose to mediate God’s blessings to the nations Jesus succeeded in his sinless life and atoning death. You may not be familiar with thinking about Jesus as a second Israel but that is surely how Matthew understood him. Consider the following points. Why did Jesus choose twelve disciples (Matt. 10:1)? Why not eleven or thirteen? He was intentionally reconstituting the twelve tribes of Israel around himself with allegiance to himself as the foundational criteria. Why did Jesus fast and undergo forty days of temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11)? Couldn’t the same thing have been accomplished in ten days or twenty? And why was it necessary to be tempted during this time? Jesus was reliving the history of Israel. Israel was tempted for forty years in the wilderness with food as a central point of temptation (Deut. 8:2–3; cf. Exod. 16:2–3; Ps. 78:17–32). Israel failed to trust God and complained and grumbled while Jesus passed the test and determined to depend upon God’s promises and word instead of taking the easy way out. Why did Jesus need to be baptized since he was without sin (Matt. 3:13–17)? He needed to fully and completely identify with his people as their representative. God confirmed Jesus’s role as a new Israel when the voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). The Old Testament clearly indicates that Israel was God’s chosen son (Exod. 4:22, 23; Jer. 31:9, 20; Hos. 11:1) but at the baptism God declares that Jesus would take upon himself Israel’s identity and mission.

Jesus’s identity as the new Israel brings us back to Matthew’s statement that Hosea 11:1 was fulfilled in Jesus’s early (albeit short) time in Egypt. Hosea 11:1 is not prophetic or Messianic in any normal or obvious sense but becomes such by reflecting on the history of Israel that Jesus was reliving. Hosea 11:1 is a particularly useful summary of this stage of Israel’s history because it speaks of Israel as a child and calls Israel “son.” Jesus, as God’s son representing the new Israel, relived Israel’s history in miniature and reconstituted the new people of God through the witness of the twelve disciples based upon allegiance to Jesus as the son of God and Israel’s true king. Matthew can thus rightly write “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matt. 2:15b).

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