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The BibleTexts.com Bible Commentary Copyright 1996-2005 Robert Nguyen Cramer THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW |
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Willoughby C. Allen (The International Critical Commentary: The Gospel according to St. Matthew, Third Edition, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, no date, page 9) writes:]
According to Jewish law, a betrothed woman was already the wife of her betrothed husband;... Mary's condition seemed to make the fulfilment of their contract of marriage impossible for a religious man... On the other hand, he [Joseph] did not wish to expose her to shame... Appeal to the courts for a divorce would expose Mary to public ignominy, and make her liable to severe penalties. Refusal to carry out the contract of marriage would leave her and her child in disgrace in the house of her parents. The latter seemed the more merciful course, and Joseph determined, therefore, to repudiate her by private arrangement.
To explore "Divorce as understood by Jesus and the earliest Christians, browse http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/divorce.htm.
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The story of the mysterious magi, which overturns the traditional motif of the superiority of Jewish hero to foreign wise man, continues the theme of David kingship. Jesus is born in Bethlehem, where David was brought up and anointed, and Mic 5:1,3, which is here quoted as fulfilled in Jesus, is, in its original context, about a promised Davidic king. The central theme, however, is the homage of Gentiles. The magi, whose country of origin is unspecified -- Persia, Babylon, and Arabia are the usual guesses -- represent the best wisdom of the Gentile world, its spiritual elite. Perhaps Isa 60:3-6 is in the background. Num 23:7 LXX [Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament], according to which Balaam is 'from the east', almost certainly is. Jewish tradition made Balaam a magus and the father of magi; and according to the OT, when the Evil king Balak tried to enlist Balaam in the cause against Israel, the seer instead prophesied the nation's future greatness and the coming of a great ruler. This is close to Matthew, where the cruel Herod, attempting to destroy Israel's king, employs foreign magi who in the event bring only honour to the king's rival. Matthew's magi are Balaam's successor.
The 'star' goes before the magi and comes to rest 'over the place where the child' is. This is no ordinary star, and attempts to identify it with a planetary conjunction, comet, or supernova are futile... Matters become clear when we recall that the ancients generally believed stars to be animate beings, and Jews in particular identified them with angels (cf. Job 38:7). The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, 7, and Theophylact must be right in identifying the magi's star with an angel, and one may compare the angelic guide of the Exodus (Ex 23:20,23; 32:34)...
Dale C. Allison, Jr., in The Oxford Bible Commentary (edited by John Barton and John Muddimen, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001, page 850) comments in part:
The quotation of Hos 11:1 in v. 15 evokes thought of the Exodus, for in its original context 'Out of Egypt I have called my son' concerns Israel. Our text accordingly offers a typological interprettion of Jesus' story. By going down to Egypt and then returning to the land of Israel Jesus recapitulates the experience of Israel. But there is, more particularly, a Moses typology here...
The Most difficult verse in the passage is the very last, v. 23. 'He will be called a Nazorean' does not appear in the OT. Yet Matthew refers to 'the prophets' being fufilled... Matthew contains an involved wordplay. The LXX interchanges 'holy one of God' -- an early Christian title for Jesus (Mk 1:24; Lk 4:34; Jn 6:69) -- and 'nazarite' (cf. Judg 13:7; 16:17). This matters because if we make that substitution in Isa 4:3 MT ('will be called holy'), the result is very near v. 23. Further, in Acts 24:5 Christians are 'the sect of the Nazarenes'... It is likely that members of the Matthean community referred to themselfves not as 'Christians' (a term missing from this gospel) but as 'Nazoreans'. Certainly that would have given v. 23 an even greater impact: Jesus followers bear the name that he bore.
It should be noted that The Oxford Bible Commentary is a "First choice" recommendation on the BibleTexts.com "Recommended Bible Study Books & Resources." If you do not already have this book, it would make an outstanding addition to your biblical resources.
Historians are unable to find any evidence of the murder of the children.
The slaughter of infants two years old or less in a town of the size of Bethlehem (population ca. 300) at this time would not only have been a comparatively minor incident, and so probably unknown to Josephus, but also completely in line with Herod's known character. The evangelist sees the episode as yet another facet of Israel's whole spiritual experience, summed up in Jesus, and seen against the context of Jer xxxi.
The murder of the babies and the flight to Egypt represent the persecution of a potential royal rival by a reigning king. This is a constant feature in hellenistic biographies of heroes and in tales of royal succession the world over: a king attempts to kill or exile successors to protect his own position. Matthew's story is borrowed specifically from the account of Moses' birth in Exodus (1:1-2:10): the Pharaoh orders the midwives to destroy all male children born to Hebrew women because the Hebrews are multiplying and thriving; when the midwives fail to heed the Pharaoh's order, he commands that all male babies be thrown into the Nile and drowned. Once again, Matthew's story is designed to go with the prophetic text, in this case one from Jeremiah.
Although Herod the Great was capable of slaughtering babies wholesale (he had three of his own sons put to death and he wanted his soldiers to execute notable political prisoners at the time of his death to make sure that everyone mourned his passing), the incident Matthew relates is undoubtedly a fiction.
Herod acts in character; the story may not be historical but possesses verisimilitude and is reminiscent of Pharaoh's command to kill the male offspring of the Israelites (Exod 1:16), a classic example of genocidal abuse of power. If the incident is historical, the number of children killed need not have exceeded 20.
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