Matthew 2: Jerusalem as Egypt – Part Three

Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel. But now the promised Seed had finally come.

Read Part One and Part Two.

The wise men know that there is a god whose dwelling is with flesh (Daniel 2:10), and a humble Joseph is dreaming dreams once again, but a king who rejects the Word has no other option but to take up the sword.

In this post, we will cover the fourth and fifth steps in the fivefold “covenant” sequence of the chapter: Oath/Sanctions and Succession.

New King on the Block

The era of Christ and His apostles was a period of transition, an overlap between the Old Covenant and the New. It was much like the time between the anointing of David and the death of Saul. Seen in this light, the parallels are remarkable. Just as the anointing of David was an irreversible divine decree, so was the life of Christ. And the Herods’ reaction was much the same as that of Saul. The sword of the Lord in the hand of a king maddened by jealousy was always the sign of a covenant Sanction from the hand of God (1 Samuel 16:14). Saul would have seen both David, and later Jonathan, slain, had not the people restrained him. He employed an Edomite to slay the priests of God. The Herods were Edomites, and for the Herods, there was no restraint. Herod the Great murdered his own family as well as many rabbis. Like Pharaoh, the Herodian dynasty was the bloody hand of Cain. Sadly, the Jews failed to see that the greatest builder in Jewish history¹See History Crash Course #31: Herod the Great. had built a Cainite city upon what would soon become cursed ground.

The massacre of infants at the command of Herod the Great makes perfect sense as a sign of the imminent end of the Old Covenant, a Covenant which began with a barren womb and a barren land. These infants sons — one from each woman, due to the directive concerning the age of the boys—were all Isaacs cut off because the end of the circumcision was nigh. Circumcision was a genealogical “pruning,” bearing the curse upon Land and Womb in Genesis 3 for all nations that there might be a priestly nation, a people fruitful in righteousness.

The prophets condemned Israel’s shepherds when they became wolves, trading and tearing the sheep instead of leading them, shedding the blood of their own people while they perverted or ignored the substitutionary nature of the blood of the sacrifices. A cultic expression of this national self-mutilation was the worship of the priests of Baal, who cut themselves and threw themselves onto the altar on Mount Carmel. God would never accept human blood, at least not until truly blameless human blood was shed. This is why Paul refers to the Circumcision as the Mutilation, and wishes they would go the whole way and castrate themselves. Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel, not a circumcision but a castration, a mutilation. But now the promised Seed had finally come, and He Himself would take up that ax against the serpentine tree of the rulers of Jerusalem.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:7-12)

Analysis (continued)

Cycle Four: Oath/Sanctions

Biblical typology is the art of representation. One thing images—represents—another. The source of all biblical symbols is the imaging of the the Father by the Son, and Matthew 2 is all about fathers and sons. As it retraces the Pentateuch, the Oath/Sanctions cycle corresponds to the cutting off of faithless Israel in the wilderness in the book of Numbers. Turning that event inside out and upside down, this cycle is about the cutting off of the New Israel in the Promised Land. Herod, having been troubled like Achan, is now an un-Joshua offering the firstfruits of the Land in devotion to a false god.

TRANSCENDENCE (Genesis)

• In line 2, the veil across Herod’s eyes is torn away, at least in respect to the deception of the Magi. This relates to the craftiness of Jacob as an image of the God who catches the wise in their own craftiness (Job 5:11-15; Psalm 18:26). The Law of Moses does not prohibit lying but false witness, that is, lying in order to bring the curses of the Law down upon the innocent. That was the strategy of the serpent in Eden. Throughout the Bible, there are numerous instances where God blesses deception by those who lie in order to protect the innocent, most notably the Hebrew midwives who deceived Pharaoh (Exodus 1:15-21). Like his father Esau, “firstborn” King Herod was losing his birthright and his blessing because he had despised the promises to Abraham and was behaving like a Canaanite. This explains why the outwitting of Herod appears in the “kingdom” line where the serpent usually sits (Ethics), the Magi are justified before God (Oath/Sanctions), and Herod’s rage is placed at Succession. We might call this methodology “cryptohermeneutics,” but once you possess the covenant-literary grid it merely has to be applied. Every line is a potential “joke” because—due to the use of the repeated pattern—its placement in the stanza is itself an allusion.

HIERARCHY (Exodus)

• When the lie of the serpent to the woman is thwarted he becomes a dragon to her children, the first example being the slaughter of Abel by Cain. All symbols describe relationships, which is why the use of the words “serpent” and “dragon” in Revelation 12 relate to the target of the evil one. It was the same with Pharaoh, who took up the sword after being deceived by the Hebrew midwives.
• The Greek word “put to death” does mean to kill, but the word from which it was derived ironically means “to adopt.”
• “Two years old and under” was obviously determined by the time discovered in the interrogation of the wise men, but typologically it might allude to the prohibition of the fruit of newly-planted trees (Leviticus 19:23-25). The fruit of the land and the fruit of the womb are both required for historical continuity, and are consistently “married” throughout the Bible until Jesus offers His own flesh and blood (the fruit of the land) as bread and wine (the fruit of the land) and reverses the Cainite crime of beating plowshares into swords. Although the fruit was not to be eaten until the harvest of the fifth year, the pericope is sevenfold, and its second line certainly corresponds to Herod’s plan for the infant Christ.

• The other factor that we must not overlook is that Herod (as Pharaoh) was treating the common people as if they were slaves, in violation of the Law. If an Israelite was sold into slavery, there were limits to the term (six years) and the individual was to be treated with the dignity of a hired servant (Leviticus 25:47-55). In practical terms, there was to be no such thing as an Israelite slave. It is no accident that this prohibition (the stipulations concerning slaves grow more humane between their first mention in Exodus and their expansion in Deuteronomy) occurs in the Oath/Sanctions section of Leviticus, where Israelites were commanded to be just but merciful, bearing the image of Yahweh.³See The Shape of Leviticus. This is also the context of the vacillation by the rulers of Jerusalem on this issue during the ministry of Jeremiah, which was the final straw before the invasion of Babylon (Jeremiah 34:8-22).

ETHICS (Leviticus)

• Now that we know Matthew’s mind, the placement of the reminder of the obligation of the King of Israel to the Law of Moses in the Ethics stanza makes perfect sense.

OATH/SANCTIONS (Numbers)

• Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15 to tie the crime of Herod the Great to those of the kings before the captivity. However, the context of this particular verse is not only the judgment of Israel but also the future hope of Israel. It is a passage about repentance, and continues with the Lord promising that He will turn mourning into joy. Perhaps Matthew uses this text to segue into the next cycle, which speaks of the return of Joseph’s family from Egypt.

Thus says the Lord: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country.” (Jeremiah 31:16-17)

• Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, a woman who, as a symbol of Eve, was not blessed with fertility, but Ramah is also significant. This was the home town of the prophet Samuel, whose mother traveled to Shiloh to ask the Lord to end her barrenness (1 Samuel 1:1; 25:1). The name Ramah means “high place,” which in Jeremiah alludes to the open-air altar-shrines (under the stars) where the Canaanites worshiped their demonic gods before the Israelites took possession of the land. When the Israelites became corrupt, they too adored idols upon these hills and mountains—even upon their rooftops—and committed abominable things in the sight of God. The high places were a permanent feature of Israel, especially in the northern kingdom. “High places” were also constructed down in the Valley of Hinnom, the site referred to by Jesus as Gehenna. This is where the Israelites practiced the worship of Molech and Baal and sacrificed their sons and daughters.⁴For more discussion, see Altar of the Abyss. The sly allusion makes Herod out to be a king like Ahab, and his corrupt church like Jezebel’s priests of Baal. Of course, the irony is that Jerusalem was now spiritual Babylon and the Chaldeans whom God brought to the city came to worship the true Son of Israel.

The Chaldeans who are fighting against this city shall come and set this city on fire and burn it, with the houses on whose roofs offerings have been made to Baal and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods, to provoke me to anger. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth. The children of Israel have done nothing but provoke me to anger by the work of their hands, declares the Lord. This city has aroused my anger and wrath, from the day it was built to this day, so that I will remove it from my sight because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger—their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jeremiah 32:29-35)

• Failure to repent of false worship led to the slaughter and slavery of the children of Israel by Assyria and Babylon. The Lord protected Ramah and the other towns of the kingdom of Judah (Judah and Benjamin) from the Assyrians (Isaiah 10:24,27-29), but the continued corruption of Judah led to invasions by the Babylonians. It is believed that there was a prison camp at Ramah where the people of Judah were held before being carried into exile. This may be the background for Jeremiah’s mention of this town in 31:15. Jeremiah himself was imprisoned there for a time (Jeremiah 40:1).
• What is the connection between Ramah and Rachel? Ramah was a town in the allotment of Benjamin, son of Rachel. He was the last son born to Jacob and his name means “son of my right hand.” Benjamin and Ramah thus symbolized an end to the immediate Succession of Israel, pointing to the cutting off of “the last son.” Joseph’s brothers “slew” him, and Joseph tested them in return with the “slaying” of Benjamin, Rachel’s only other son, whom they presumed to be the only son of Rachel still alive. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt and all Israel suffered in slavery. Just so, Israel’s child sacrifices in the Valley of Hinnom led to that valley being filled with the bodies of the idolaters. In the first century, this massacre not only of the sons of the flesh but also of Israel’s sons of the Spirit (Abraham’s true sons) would lead to a final filling of Gehenna, this time not at the hands of Babylon (the first empire) but Rome (the last). The circumcision intended as mercy for Israel on behalf of all nations (to avoid another flood) was twisted into a kingdom of bloodshed, a land filled with violence (Genesis 6:11).
• The lines of the stanza itself appear to be threefold, creating a three-by-five “prophetic grid.” Meditation on the “grid” placement of each word hammers home the crime of offering human blood when Yahweh has continually provided “a way of escape” through substitutionary atonement.

• Once again, since the subject matter is “cutting off,” there is no Succession stanza in this cycle. But another typological inversion must be noted. In the book of Numbers, those adults who had taken the Covenant Oath at Mount Sinai were condemned to be cut off, but their children would inherit the land. Here, the children are cut off that the faithless rulers might maintain their serpentine claim upon the inheritance. The fiery serpent of bronze was lifted up in the wilderness as a “head” that the “body” of fiery serpents might be scattered. Likewise, the ministry of Christ against the devil would lead to the ministry of His apostles against the vipers who ruled Jerusalem.

Cycle Five: Succession

Commentators take the final section of chapter two as merely statements of historical fact, overlooking not only the typological significance of these words but also the importance of this sequence to the structure of the chapter as a whole. Thus, not only is the passage rendered mostly irrelevant, but the meaning of Matthew’s cryptic, cutting and ironic reference to the prophets goes right over their inert wooden heads. Academics are just like the idols they have created: deaf, dumb, and blind (Psalm 115:8). Jeremiah 10:1-8 has nothing to do with Christmas trees and everything to do with modern theologians.

TRANSCENDENCE (Genesis)

• The Genesis stanza of the final cycle starts with Adam (or Edom) and ends with Joseph, the two young men who were given charge over the food in order to be a blessing to all nations. Of course, the main reference is to Joseph, who, in similar irony, was betrayed by brothers who acted like Gentile kings and sold him into slavery.

HIERARCHY (Exodus)

• The pattern of the stanzas in cycle three is repeated, but there are further ironies to enjoy. The child is now the son of Israel rescued in the Passover step, and the troops of Herod are like the troops who guarded the tomb of Jesus—a “host” of the dead. Again, this corresponds to the swarm of locusts brought forth from the abyss by the fifth trumpet in the Revelation. Here, however, the “plagues” are over. However, there was still a threat to the child in Israel.

ETHICS (Leviticus)

• The name Archelaus means “ruler of the people,” and this son of Herod, who received the larger portion of the kingdom over his two brothers, governed Judea, Samaria and Idumea. Like his father, he was considered to be an alien oppressor by his Jewish subjects, and repeated complaints against him eventually led to him being put on trial and exiled to Gaul. But Matthew’s mention of him here is related to the point of the entire passage, which is the rivalry between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the serpent. Herod the Great had been “cut off” personally but his tyrannical dynasty remained in his “seed.” This explains the logic of the final stanzas, and the chapter’s mysterious final stanza.

OATH/SANCTIONS (Numbers)

• The book of Genesis is filled with appearances by angels, but throughout the Torah such appearances become less necessary because their role as administrators is taken on by priestly human beings. They serve as tutors until men are ready to take over the government. That was the intention in Eden (although the serpent was a false teacher) and, as mentioned, is the pattern in the Revelation. The sudden need for angelic witness indicates not only a new beginning but also the coming of the end of the time of childhood. The Spirit of God would bring an unprecedented level of discernment, wisdom, maturity to the people of God, along with faith, hope, and love, allowing the “childish things” like the Levitical Law to be “put away” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
• This stanza works from the Garden to the Land to the World (Galilee is obviously by the sea) and back again. Matthew’s placement of Galilee under the “Pentecostal” Lampstand of the Spirit anticipates his later citation from Isaiah 9:1.⁵For more discussion, see Peter J. Leithart, Galilee of the Gentiles, Biblical Horizons No. 22, February 1991.

Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:15-16)

• The thinking here is architectural, prefiguring the dominion of the Christ—raised from the dead in the Garden—over the Jewish “land” and the Gentile “sea,” and His faithful rule as a king of Israel who would once and for all remove the high places of the “land” and the “sea” (Revelation 10:2; 16:20). His ministry began in the waters of Jordan, which led to His burial in the land, and ultimately to his ascension to the Sanctuary in heaven.⁶See Jesus’ Three Ascensions.
• There is another crucial correspondence between the kingdom of Christ and that of the Herod’s. Jesus began His ministry in Galilee (by the sea), testified in Judea (the land) and was finally isolated and murdered outside of the Temple of Herod (the garden-sanctuary of the day). The Jews had cried, “We have no king but Caesar.” Many Jews repented and believed, but those who hardened their hearts like Pharaoh were given the king they desired. The campaign of General Titus, “a son of a father,” Vespasian, also began in Galilee, slaughtering Jews in the water as “fishers of men,” continued into Judea, and culminated in the destruction of the Temple in AD70.
• Just as the Herod’s were “Cains” who took refuge in a “Levitical” city for safety from the avenger—and the blood they shed was indeed avenged upon them when the succession of High Priests was finally ended (Numbers 35:28), so Joseph takes refuge in the city of Nazareth, a place that, like Bethlehem, was small, ordinary, and despised, alluding to Israel herself as a priestly nation, and bringing a symmetry to the chapter.

SUCCESSION (Deuteronomy)

• Since Nazareth was so small and obscure a place, the derivation of its name is difficult and disputed. However, the only option that makes sense in the context of Matthew’s literary construct is word “Nazarene” is an allusion to Isaiah 11:1 that promises a “branch” from the stump of Jesse, that is a miraculous Succession arising miraculously from the desolated Davidic kingdom. This supports the assertion that Nazareth comes from the Hebrew netzer, which means “branch” or “shoot.” Matthew refers to “the prophets,” possibly having Jeremiah 23:5, Zechariah 3:8 and Zechariah 6:12 in mind, although these passages use the Hebrew word tsemach for “branch.” The tree of old Israel would once again be chopped down, and a shoot would grow from the stump, allowing a new tree to spring up where the old one had died. The name “Nazarene” seals the doom of the Herods as pretenders to the throne.
• Although this cycle is only fivefold, the festal referent of Succession is the Feast of Booths, the event when Israelites constructed temporary sukkoth out of branches, and worshiped God along with faithful Gentiles. After the exile, the fragrant, evergreen myrtle was added to the list of prescribed trees, alluding to the meaning of the Hebrew name of Queen Esther. The fragrance corresponds to the spices that symbolise the “resurrection” of the world after the “death” of winter, the ascension of the nation of Israel from the grave, and the maturity of the nation’s priesthood as elders in the court of God. Matthew’s point is that even though Herod Archelaus and his successors were simply continuations of the Herodian family tree, the branch of David that Herod the Great had gone to ruthless lengths to cut off was growing to maturity “outside the camp,” where the land meets the sea. Soon, all nations would “celebrate” the Feast of Booths (Zechariah 14:16),⁷See The Festal Structure of Zechariah 12-14 or rather, fulfill its intended meaning in the union of Jew and Gentile.

Matthew’s Vehicular Use of Scripture

Matthew’s citations from the Old Testament are not governed by the wooden and often mutually-exclusive hermeneutical rules prescribed by the historical-grammatical method.⁸For more discussion, see What is Systematic Typology – Part One: The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State However, Matthew simply has different rules, and they reveals his understanding of Bible history as a series of recapitulations of the Covenant-Creation pattern, that is, the Bible Matrix. Concerning Matthew’s use of the Old Testament, R. T. France writes:

There has been much debate about the origin and function of these formula-quotations. Most scholars now regard them as Matthew’s own contributions, rather than as traditional elements in the story of Jesus, and the study of their textual peculiarities indicates that behind them lies some quite original and sophisticated study of the Old Testament in order to discover points of correspondence much more subtle than the direct fulfillment of clear prophetic predictions. Sometimes the subtlety results in an application of the Old Testament text which is ‘to our critical eyes, manifestly forced and artificial and unconvincing’; but C.F.D. Moule, in a helpful discussion from which those words are taken, goes on to argue that this ‘vehicular’ use of Scripture ‘is a symptom of the discovery that, in a deeply organic way, Jesus was indeed the fulfiller of something which is basic in the whole of Scripture.’ In an article which concentrates on the four formula-quotations of Chapter 2, I have suggested that what may seem to us as embarrassingly obscure and even irresponsible way of handling Scripture is in fact the outworking of a careful tracing of scriptural themes, which in different ways point to Jesus as the fulfiller not only of specific predictions, but also of the broader pattern of God’s Old Testament revelation.

A “vehicular use” betrays an agenda, or even a campaign. Matthew’s second chapter takes the chariot from Pharaoh and gives it back to Joseph, Zaphenath-Paneah (“the revealer of secrets”). The revelations would continue until the apocalypse was fulfilled and the Herods wiped from history. They would be exposed, like Haman their Edomite brother, who also misinterpreted the will of the true king, and desired to be exalted but was ultimately thrown down and cut off.

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