The Gospel of Matthew and the New Israel: Part I Matthew’s suggested fulfillment of prophetic Scripture in Jesus has a long history of being doubted and criticized. Many have accused him of stretching the available sources, harmonizing, and even historical embellishment in order to make Hebrew Scripture fit with his conviction that they had spoken of Jesus of Nazareth. Readers are often critical, as I once was, when comparing his suggested prophecy with the Old Testament references. Perhaps the most well known controversy surrounds the occurrence of is his quotation of Isaiah 7:14, applied to Jesus’ birth, that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.” The objection is that Hebrew word alma could mean “young woman” and Matthew here has harmonized in order to make the virgin birth story fit with the Hebrew Scriptures. In reality, Matthew is simply quoting the Jewish translated Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. Hundreds of years before the publication of his Gospel, where the Hebrew word alma meaning young woman or virgin was translated into Greek, the Greek word parthenos (virgin) was used to translate alma by its Jewish translators. In other words, this is how Hellenistic Jews would have read Isaiah 7:14 before Matthew’s time and he is simply being a faithful Jew, using the widespread Greek translation of his forefathers. Here, no stretch of the imagination is very necessary for Matthew to see Isaiah’s virgin as finding fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth. Another objection arises sometimes out of Mathew’s quotation of the prophet Hosea. Matthew uses the saying from Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I have called my son” and applies it to the event in which Jesus’ family returns from Egypt to Nazareth in Galilee. What is Matthew doing here? Clearly for Hosea, the “son” is a metaphor for Israel. Though at first glimpse the suggested fulfillment of Scripture seems unstable, I am of the persuasion that there is far more here than we might notice at first glance. For Matthew, though writing his Gospel in the style of a Roman biography, he is a skilled theologian in his own right and is here concerned with weaving together Jewish themes and expectations, telling the story of how Israel’s story culminates and comes together in the return of God as king to his people. He does this actually in his opening genealogy in which Jesus is seen as the forty-third generation from Israel’s father Abraham – the one who through all the nations of the earth will be blessed according to the promise made after Abraham offered up his only son (Gen. 22:18). If you were a Jew, the number seven was pretty significant and the seventh seven even more so. As far as Mathew’s genealogy is concerned, Jesus marks out the beginning of the seventh series suggesting that the time of completion, the fulfillment of promise, of Sabbath rest, of Jubilee, and thus of freedom from slavery, and that the long awaited return from exile had arrived. Jesus then is seen by Matthew here as the fulfillment of Jewish hope. Like Isaiah’s Servant, Jesus the Son of God, would embody the people of God succeeding in their failures and carrying out their calling on their behalf. Thus for Matthew, to equate Jesus with Israel was a rather natural result of contemplating his significance in light of Scripture. And to speculate, perhaps Matthew is suggesting that God suffers the slavery of his people. The kingly title “son of God” would function as a term representing a Jewish king who would descend from David and who would represent God to Israel and Israel to God. However, as YHWH was the true king of Israel and the people awaited his return, the notion of Israel’s king collided with the everlasting covenant with David in which a king would come forth from his lineage. It then was only natural to see the Son of God as divine or as John records, “the root and offspring of David.” For the early Jewish Christians, one could not pull apart the meaning of Son of God – it meant that God was king through a descendant of David. It was then no arbitrary choice for Jesus to call the twelve in The Gospels. The disciples would represent a new people in a fashion that would echo YHWH calling the twelve tribes of Israel. The idea of God’s son was a well known term in that day for many Jews. It was primarily based on the notions of the promises made to David, the second king in Israel’s monarchy, and reminded the nation of the expectation that would arouse the hope that one day, YHWH the true king would come to dwell with his people and save them from evil and oppression. Israel was an oppressed people. The first of these tyrants was Egypt, followed by Assyria, then Babylon, and at that time, Rome. People looked back to the stories when YHWH first reigned as king and then reigned through his anointed (Greek: Christ), the son of God. Psalms 89, when read, would be an inspirational reminder that God had not abandoned them in their distress but that he would soon act to alleviate suffering and end injustice: I have found my servant David; with my holy oil I have anointed him; my hand shall always remain with him; my arm will also strengthen him. The enemy shall not outwit him, the wicked will not humble him; I will crush his foes before him. and strike down those who hate him. My faithfulness and steadfast love will be with him; and in my name his horn shall be exalted. I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!” I will make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him, and my covenant with him will stand firm. I will establish his line forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure (Psalms 89:20-29). 2 Samuel 7: 8-17, Psalms 2, Psalms 45, and Psalms 89, among others passages were staple texts that reminded them that someday his anointed son would deliver his people from their oppressors and reign as king forever. This is the one of the central themes in Jewish thought pervasive in the Old Testament. From the expulsion from Eden, to the hope of the promise land, the return from exile and, to the promise of a new creation, Israel’s hope was a hope that their God was going to rule as king through an intermediary, reestablish communion with them, and restore creation. From the thorns and thistles, of Genesis 3:18, Isaiah would envision a day when: Instead of thorn shall come up the cypress; Instead of the brier will come up the myrtle; (Is. 55:13) A new covenant and a world remade was the expectation of the prophets, looking forward to a time when “the dwelling place of God would be with mortals” (Rev. 21:3). The notion of God’s son carried integrated ideas from several Old Testament notions. 1. Adam, the son of God, made in his image and likeness was created to represent him and reflect his glory. 2. The son of god or anointed king would represent God to the nations and the nations to God. 3. As well, with Hosea and along with a number of other Jewish writers, Israel was the son of God “through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed,” and whose vocation was to “be a light to the nations” (Is. 49:6) fulfilling the promise made to Abraham. 4. All these themes are interwoven and come together for the New Testament writers in Jesus Christ, the second Adam and image of the invisible God, the anointed Son of God, and for Matthew, the new Israel enacted though Jesus carrying out the vocation of God’s chosen people.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 11:33:52 +0000
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