Sunday 28th December
Read Matthew 2:21-23
“So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” (NIVUK)
We may sometimes take the gospel writers a little too seriously and forget that they are human too. Search as one might, it is rather challenging to find the prophecy that states ‘he would be called a Nazarene’ (v23b)!
The two most common explanations involve the priest-like rules of Nazirite vows and a pun based on the similarity between the town Joseph and the family eventually settled in (Nazareth) and the similarity with the Hebrew word for ‘Branch’ (nazret) taken from the prophecy in Isaiah 11:1.
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:1-3) (NIVUK)
There is no reason Matthew can’t be drawing on both traditions as he is an amazing writer and can hold two thoughts at the same time… The point he would have us draw though is that Jesus did not grow up in Bethlehem, but away in Galilee. If the gospel is written to make clear to the church that Gentiles would be unwise to throw away their Hebrew roots, this is an astute way to do so. Born in fulfilment of Jewish hopes, raised in frontier, Gentile territory. Jesus is able to save all fully…
