We now come to the final example of the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament that is found in Matthew’s infancy narrative. Up to this point, we’ve looked at Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 (Immanuel), Micah 5:2 (Out of Bethlehem will come a prince), Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt, I called my son”), and Jeremiah 31:15 (“Rachel is weeping for her children”). In this post, though, we come to the odd claim in Matthew 2:23. After he tells us that after Herod’s death Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to settle in Nazareth of Galilee, Matthew says the following: “In this way, what was spoken through the prophets was fulfilled: He will be called a Nazarene.”
The only problem is that nowhere in the prophets is there the statement, “He will be called a Nazarene.” So, what are we to do? Matthew says that the prophets said, “He will be called a Nazarene,” but no prophet in the Old Testament actually said, “He will be called a Nazarene.”
The first clue that Matthew is doing something slightly different than what he did with his previous Old Testament references is that, unlike with the others, when he said either, “That which was spoken by the prophet” or “…by Jeremiah the prophet,” here in Matthew 2:23 he uses the plural: “What was spoken through the prophets.” Simply put, you can’t directly quote a group, therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that what follows isn’t really a direct quote of a specific prophet. Still, that doesn’t help us figure out exactly where Matthew is getting this “He will be called a Nazarene” from.
Well, I have a theory.
To the point, I think Matthew is doing a bit of a wordplay—and I find it incredibly clever and creative.
The Branch
One cannot miss the fact that Matthew really like to quote from Isaiah, particularly Isaiah 7-12, which in its original context was about Isaiah’s prophecies to Ahaz during the Syro-Ephraimite Crisis in the mid-8th century BC. I discuss this a bit in my post about Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 (as well as this post), but the gist of the situation is this: Judah was threatened by Israel and Syria; Isaiah called upon Ahaz to put his trust in YHWH; and Ahaz said, “Nah, I don’t think so! I’m going to call upon Assyria for help!” And because of Ahaz’s unfaithfulness to YHWH, Isaiah proceeds to give a number of prophecies in Isaiah 7-12 that boiled down to this: “Ahaz, you’re inviting Assyria in to help you! They’ll help you alright, but they’re not going to leave—they’re going to end up oppressing you! But the son born to you, when he becomes king, he will put his faith in YHWH and YHWH will work through him to repel Assyrian oppression!”
That royal son through whom YHWH did that was Hezekiah. He is the one to whom Isaiah is referring in Isaiah 7:14, as well as 9:1-7 (“Unto us a child is born”) and 11:1-5 (A “branch” from the stump of Jesse). We’ve already seen how Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14. Later, in Matthew 4:15-16, when telling about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, Matthew quotes Isaiah 9:1-2. In both cases, I think Matthew is presenting Jesus as a new Hezekiah. In describing Jesus as the promised Messiah, Matthew is saying, “He is like Hezekiah, but bigger! Hezekiah was the anointed king through whom God worked to free His people from Assyrian oppression; Jesus is the anointed king through whom God works to free people from the oppression of sin and death itself.”
Given that, can you see where this is going? If you guessed that this whole “He will be called a Nazarene” thing is somehow connected to Isaiah 11, you’d be right!
Now, the full verse of Isaiah 11:1 goes like this: “There will come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.” The Hebrew word that is translated as “branch” is nezer—a word strangely similar to Nazareth. In Isaiah 11:1, this nezer (i.e. branch) is a Davidic king who will bring peace, free God’s people from oppression, and rule in righteousness. In the immediate context of Isaiah 7-12, this nezer is clearly connected to the Immanuel child of Isaiah 7:14 and the “child born to us” of Isaiah 9:1-7.
Another odd thing to consider is the fact that this imagery of “the branch” as some sort of Messianic figure is found elsewhere in the Old Testament:
- Jeremiah 23:5: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
- Jeremiah 33:15: “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
- Zechariah 3:8: “Now listen, Joshua, high priest, you and your colleagues who sit before you! For they are an omen of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch.”
- Zechariah 6:12: [Speaking of Joshua the high priest] “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Here is a man whose name is Branch: for he shall branch out in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.”
The only thing with those passages, though, is that they use a different word (zemah) for what is translated in English as “Branch.” It is also worth nothing that in the Jeremiah passages, the zemah is that of a Davidic king who will reign (and hence very much used in the same way as Isaiah 11:1’s nezer), whereas in Zechariah it is used in relation to Joshua the high priest, whom Zechariah prophesied would be instrumental in rebuilding the Temple. But even with that, we find that, in the larger context of Zechariah 6:11-15, Joshua the high priest gets a crown put on him, thus prophetically showing that this zemah is to be both a priestly and kingly figure. And to top it off, if you really want to have your mind blown, the Hebrew name Joshua is a variation of Yeshua…namely, Jesus!
How Does All This Fit Together?
So what does all this imply? It is clear that Isaiah 11:1’s nezer is used in the same way as Jeremiah’s zemah (i.e. a royal figure who will reign with justice and righteousness), and it is also interesting how Zechariah seems to pick up on this imagery and incorporate a priestly aspect to the royal Branch. In that sense, all of these verses are basically about the same type of thing.
If I was to tease out a possible historical development of this, I’d say the following:
- Isaiah’s prophecy of the Branch was rooted in the realities of 8th century Judah, namely how Hezekiah would be a faithful king who would rule righteously and free Judah from Assyrian oppression.
- Jeremiah, coming about 150 years later and prophesying about the coming exile of Judah to Babylon, picks up on Isaiah’s prophecy regarding Hezekiah as the Branch and builds on it. He thus prophecies that after the oppression of the Babylonian exile, YHWH would again restore His people through a future Davidic Branch.
- Then after the exile, Zechariah adds another wrinkle to the imagery of the Branch by tying together the imagery of both a priest and a king. The Branch would be both a king who would restore God’s people and a priest who rebuilds God’s Temple.
- And then, with Jesus and the New Testament, what do we find? Jesus not only is the Messiah but is also the high priest who atones for sins, as well as the cornerstone of God’s Temple—the reconstituted people of God.
The thing that makes it possible for Matthew to make use of the Old Testament imagery of the Branch is that Isaiah 11:1, unlike in Jeremiah and Zechariah, chose to use nezer and not zemah, making it possibly to do a bit of a wordplay with the name of the town of Nazareth.
Granted, because Matthew 2:23 isn’t directly quoting an Old Testament passage, my comments are probably a bit more speculative. Still, I think everything holds together: the allusion to Isaiah 11:1 (part of a section of Isaiah that Matthew really likes to quote from), as well the Messianic and priestly connotations connected to the image of the Branch, as used in the Jeremiah and Zechariah passages. And then the nezer-Nazareth similarities.
All that leads me to believe that Matthew saw that the name Nazareth opened up a clever opportunity for him to emphasize how Jesus fulfilled these specific Old Testament prophecies about a future priestly Messiah who would free God’s people from oppression and rebuild God’s Temple.
