Introduction
Concept of Recapitulation.
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God is giving another Exodus of His people who have suffered under another King who has again murdered their children in hopes of keeping Israel oppressed. Like the first Exodus under Moses the leadership of the 2nd Exodus is led by one who escaped the wicked King’s murderous designs.
There is thus re-capitulation going on here in Matthew’s Gospel. Just as Israel of old was persecuted but delivered by the child (Moses) who had escaped the Tyrant’s persecution so the God has granted another Deliverer to Israel by another deliverer who likewise has escaped the Tyrant’s persecution.
So, what Matthew is doing here is a retelling of Israel’s story. Jesus is the greater Israel who is repeating Israel’s drama. In Matthew’s Christology Christ is faithful-obedient Israel where Israel was unfaithful and disobedient. In Christ there is a final Exodus with a faithful deliverer.
Matthew is thus giving us Literary clues that all that God intended with Israel was now coming to pass in Christ.
There is continuity then with the OT except at this point the recapitulated covenant story is marked by the success of God’s suffering servant Messiah as opposed to the failure that OT Israel had been. This success of the suffering servant Messiah is what makes the covenant now a “new and better covenant.”
That this is the purpose of Matthew is seen in the genealogy with which he opens his book. Jesus, descendant of Abraham, descendant of David, is the culmination of true Israel. Indeed Jesus is the TRUE Israel and as the true Israel He recapitulates the story of Israel so that Matthew wants us to see Jesus as Israel.
This recapitulation motif is underscored by the fact that Jesus is taken down into Egypt. When finally Jesus returns from Egypt there is then a connection to Israel’s ancient History of coming out of Egypt.
Matthew is giving us a literary and redemptive history akin to the work of the Pointilist Artist at the end of the 19th century. Pointilism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. This is what Matthew is doing with his Gospel. He is painting His Gospel with small distinct dots of narrative in such a way that when one looks at his Gospel they see points of contact with Israel’s history so that the two together form one History. Matthew thus is not only a literary Pointilist but he is also one of those artists who gives you two works in one work.
You know the kind I’m speaking of. We’ve all seen those pictures that if you stare long enough at them you being to see another picture. Matthew is giving us two pointilist pictures. One is of OT history but the other is of Jesus participating in that History now fulfilled and culminating in Him.
In our text today we have that not only here with the parallel’s between Moses as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants and the Lord Christ as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants (2:16) but we have it also in the fact just as OT Israel was God’s son and came out of Egypt (2:15) so the Lord Jesus is God’s embodiment of Israel who is called out of Egypt.
This recapitulation continues in vs. 18 where Mt. quotes from Jer. 31:15. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, sees Jerusalem being sacked by the Babylonian invasion and with that sacking he sees the judicially innocent children being slaughtered by the Heathens. The prophet Jeremiah imagines, with his poetic vision, that Rachel, the wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph (who would be associated with Israel through Ephraim and Manasseh) and Benjamin (Judah), is weeping for her descendants, her children. Rachel is thus, for Matthew, the OT epitome of Israel’s mothers who are now weeping for their children brutally massacred by another occupying force. For Matthew then, the Lord Christ is thus caught up with not only Israel’s Exodus but also in the great historical event of their Exile.
However, there is a note of promise here also for Jeremiah’s lamentation is in the middle of four chapters, Jeremiah 30-33, that are filled with comfort and consolation and joy. Jeremiah 30-33 gives us a prophetic vision of hope though as well as misery. Jeremiah will speak of a Messianic age to come when the new and better covenant will bring in everlasting peace and righteousness. Despite all the despair that Jeremiah records there is a promise of a time when sins will be forgiven, the Holy Spirit poured out, and eternal life present. That time that Jeremiah had spoken of has now come but what Matthew wants to do is that he wants his readers to see that the Lord Christ, as the new and better Israel, bringing a new and better covenant, shares in the brokenness of Israel’s redemptive History. He is the Deliverer saved from the Pagan King. He is part of the history of Israel’s Exile. Matthew is identifying Christ’s History with Israel’s redemptive history.
This recapitulation is also seen in vs. 23. When the Lord Christ is eventually led out of Egypt back to Israel his family settles in Nazareth. The scorn for Nazareth is seen later in John’s Gospel when one of the future disciples asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” upon hearing that Jesus came from that hamlet. Nazareth was to Israel what Burr Oak might be to Michigan or Longtown might be to South Carolina. Every state has there Nazareths. Remote nowhere hamlets occupied by those considered untermensh by the elite. Nazareth was a no account village in a no account region (Galilee).
But Matthew, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration is going to use that origin of residence of Jesus to exercise another example of Historical recapitualation. Matthew tells us that the Lord Christ “being called a Nazarene,” is a fulfillment of the prophetic word. The problem comes though that you can exhaustively search the Prophets and will find nothing that explicitly says that the Messiah will come from Nazareth.
So … how do we handle that.
Well, we suspect that what Matthew is doing is that he is appealing to Isaiah 11.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit
Here is the connection.
In the Hebrew the word for Branch in Isaiah 11:1 is neser (nay-tser) and to the hearing it sounds like “Nazareth.” The connection is that just as a branch (nay-tser) from a stump is a humble and lowly origin so the Lord Christ as Messiah coming from (nay-tser) Nazareth is one from a humble and lowly origin. The Lord Christ as the Messiah is Isaiah’s nay-ster (Branch) hailing from nay-ster (Nazareth).
Of course this is all typical of the way God often works. Throughout the OT he takes people from the backwaters of life … the people who are of lowly estate … the people the elite consider the poor white trash and he uses them to change the course of History. Jesus was a mere (nay-ster) Branch, from (nay-ster) Nazareth.
Here there is prophetic fulfillment and recapitulation. In terms of prophetic fulfillment Jesus not only shares Israel’s History but He is the one whom Israel’s History is pointed. In terms of prophetic fulfillment The Lord Christ is the lowly branch (the remnant / Isaiah 6) — the only thing left of the great Kingdom of Israel that God cut down with the captivity. The fact that Jesus hails from despised Nazareth is consistent with a lowly branch being all that was left of a great Kingdom.
However, like the context where the Jeremiah passage is taken that records Rachel’s weeping there is in the Isaiah 11 context where the branch language is taken a great amount of hopefulness. There in Isaiah 11 you also find the record of the Messiah becoming King that rules over a re-creation of peace,
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush,[b] from Elam, from Babylonia,[c] from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
In these verses (Mt. 2:13-23) then we find pointilist recapitulation. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the greater deliverer who escapes the blood-lust of a wicked King. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as one who goes down into Egypt because of travail and comes out of Egypt to peace. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the weeping of Mothers in his time in Israel, during the time of Herod, parallels the weeping of Mother’s in the Babylonian slaughter. The Lord Christ recapitulates Israel’s history has being the foretold lowly nay-ster (branch) who comes from lowly nay-ster (Nazareth).
What Matthew is communicating is that the one has come who is the embodiment of all that Israel was intended to be. Messiah IS Israel.
Application
1.) Herod was a paranoid madman. He executed one of his favorite wives as well as at least three of his sons.
In view of such executions, the emperor Augustus reportedly quipped, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son”
Those who begin by hating THE Child end by hurting children. Hating God and God’s Revelation leads to hurting people. If people will be ungodly they will act inhumane. Herod is the proof-text for this but not the only proof text. Adam and Eve hate God and His Revelation and so turn on each other. Cain hates God and His Revelation and so turns on Abel.
2.) Iraneus “Against Heresies” posits that the babies of Jerusalem killed were the first Christian martyrs.
3.) With the played out drama of Herod’s maniacal slaughter it is not beyond reason to suggest that as the Word is Incarnated in Christ so the anti-word is Incarnated in Herod. At the very least, I think we are to see here the long warfare that God spoke of in Genesis between the seed of the woman (the Lord Christ) and the seed of the Serpent. The Serpent, via Herod, lashes out to strike the seed of the woman but He misses due to God’s providence.
4.) The slaughter and Christmas
There is, in the combination of the Triumph of the Christ child’s escape with the slaughter of the innocent the reminder that hope should not be buried in the context of calamity. For those who live with tragedy and sorrow in lands that know something of persecution and slaughter there is, in Matthew’s Christmas account the understanding that midst untold sorrow and suffering God’s plans are not being snuffed out. Hope remains. It is a bitter-sweet consolation coated in God’s severe mercy but a consolation all the same.
5.) Already a fulfillment of
Luke 2:34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
