Jewish New Testament &
Commentary
Matthew 1 & 2
Bible:
1
1 This is the genealogy of Yeshua the Messiah, son of
David, son of Avraham:
2
Avraham was the father of Yitzchak,
Yitzchak
was the father of Ya‘akov,
Ya‘akov
was the father of Y’hudah and his brothers,
3
Y’hudah was the father of Peretz and Zerach (their mother was
Tamar),
Peretz
was the father of Chetzron, Chetzron was the father of Ram,
4
Ram was the father of Amminadav,
Amminadav was the father of
Nachshon,
Nachshon
was the father of Salmon,
5
Salmon was the father of Bo‘az (his mother was Rachav),
Bo‘az
was the father of Oved (his mother was Rut),
Oved
was the father of Yishai,
6
Yishai was the father of David the king.
David
was the father of Shlomo (his mother was the wife of Uriyah),
7
Shlomo was the father of Rechav‘am, Rechav‘am was the father
of Aviyah, Aviyah was the father of Asa,
8
Asa was the father of Y’hoshafat,
Y’hoshafat
was the father of Yoram,
Yoram
was the father of Uziyahu,
9
Uziyahu was the father of Yotam,
Yotam
was the father of Achaz,
Achaz
was the father of Chizkiyahu,
10
Chizkiyahu was the father of M’nasheh,
M’nasheh
was the father of Amon,
Amon
was the father of Yoshiyahu,
11
Yoshiyahu was the father of Y’khanyahu and his brothers at the
time of the Exile to Babylon.
12
After the Babylonian Exile, Y’khanyahu was the father of
Sh’altiel,
Sh’altiel
was the father of Z’rubavel,
13
Z’rubavel was the father of Av’ichud,
Av’ichud
was the father of Elyakim,
Elyakim
was the father of Azur,
14
Azur was the father of Tzadok,
Tzadok
was the father of Yakhin,
Yakhin
was the father of El’ichud,
15
El’ichud was the father of El‘azar,
El‘azar
was the father of Mattan,
Mattan
was the father of Ya‘akov,
16
Ya‘akov was the father of Yosef, the husband of Miryam, From
whom was born the Yeshua that was called the Messiah.
17
Thus there were fourteen generations from Avraham to David,
fourteen
generations from David to the Babylonian Exile,
and
fourteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah.
18
Here is how the birth of Yeshua the Messiah took place. When his
mother Miryam was engaged to Yosef, before they were married, she was
found to be pregnant from the Ruach HaKodesh. 19 Her
husband-to-be, Yosef, was a man who did what was right; so he made plans
to break the engagement quietly, rather than put her to public shame. 20
But while he was thinking about this, an angel of Adonai
appeared to him in a dream and said, “Yosef, son of David, do not be
afraid to take Miryam home with you as your wife; for what has been
conceived in her is from the Ruach HaKodesh.
21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him
Yeshua, [which means ‘Adonai saves’, ] because
he will save his people from their sins.”
22
All this happened in order to fulfill what Adonai
had said through the prophet,
23
“The virgin will conceive and bear a son,
and they will call
him Immanu’el.”
60
(The
name means, “God is with us.”)
24
When Yosef awoke he did what the angel of Adonai
had told him to do—he took Miryam home to be his wife, 25 but
he did not have sexual relations with her until she had given birth to a
son, and he named him Yeshua.
2
1 After Yeshua was born in Beit-Lechem in the land of
Y’hudah during the time when Herod was king, Magi from the east came
to Yerushalayim 2 and asked, “Where is the newborn King of
the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship
him.”
3
When King Herod heard of this he became very agitated, and so did
everyone else in Yerushalayim. 4 He called together all the
head cohanim
and Torah-teachers
of the people and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?” 5
“In Beit-Lechem of Y’hudah,” they replied, “because the
prophet wrote,
6
‘And you, Beit-Lechem in the land of Y’hudah,
are
by no means the least among the rulers of Y’hudah;
for
from you will come a Ruler
who will shepherd my
people Israel.’ ”
61
7
Herod summoned the Magi to meet with him privately and asked them
exactly when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to
Beit-Lechem with these instructions: “Search carefully for the child;
and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship
him.”
9
After they had listened to the king, they went away; and the star
which they had seen in the east went in front of them until it came and
stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw
the star, they were overjoyed. 11 Upon entering the house,
they saw the child with his mother Miryam; and they prostrated
themselves and worshipped him. Then they opened their bags and presented
him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 But they had
been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they took another
route back to their own country.
13
After they had gone, an angel of Adonai appeared to
Yosef in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and
escape to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you to leave. For Herod is
going to look for the child in order to kill him.” 14 So he
got up, took the child and his mother, and left during the night for
Egypt, 15 where he stayed until Herod died. This happened in
order to fulfill what Adonai
had said through the prophet,
“Out of Egypt I
called my son.”
62
16
Meanwhile, when Herod realized that the Magi had tricked him, he
was furious and gave orders to kill all the boys in and around
Beit-Lechem who were two years old or less, calculating from the time
the Magi had told him. 17 In this way were fulfilled the
words spoken through the prophet Yirmeyahu,
18 “A
voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing
and lamenting loudly.
It
was Rachel sobbing for her children
and
refusing to be comforted,
because they are no
longer alive.”
63
19
After Herod’s death, an angel of Adonai appeared in a
dream to Yosef in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the
child and his mother, and go to Eretz-Israel,
for those who wanted to kill the child are dead.” 21 So he
got up, took the child and his mother, and went back to Eretz-Israel.
22 However, when he heard that Archelaus had succeeded his
father Herod as king of Y’hudah, he was afraid to go there. Warned in
a dream, he withdrew to the Galil 23 and settled in a town
called Natzeret, so that what had been spoken by the prophets might be
fulfilled, that he will be called a Natzrati.
Commentary:
CHAPTER
1
1–16
The New Testament
begins with the genealogy of Yeshua in order to show that he
meets the requirements set by the Tanakh
for who the Messiah must be—a descendant of Avraham (Genesis
22:18), Ya‘akov (Numbers 24:17), Y’hudah (Genesis
49:10), Yishai (Isaiah 11:1), David (2 Samuel 7:13; see
below on “Son of David”) and Z’rubavel (Haggai 2:22–23).
All these names appear in vv. 1–16. This genealogy recalls the pattern
of those in the Tanakh
(Genesis 5, 10; 1 Chronicles 1–9, etc.).
The
genealogy of the Messiah as reported by Luke is different from the one
here; see Lk 3:23–38&N.
1
“Yeshua the Messiah” is rendered “Jesus Christ” in
other English versions, as if the man’s first name were “Jesus”
and his last name “Christ.” Neither is the case. “Yeshua> ” is Jesus’ name
in Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages he spoke; in his thirty-some years
on earth people called him Yeshua. The word “Jesus” represents the
efforts of English-speakers to pronounce the name of the Messiah as it
appears in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, “IeÆsous”—yee-soos
in modern Greek, perhaps yay-soos in ancient KoineÆ Greek, which began
to displace Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Near East
after Alexander’s conquests (331–323 b.c.e.).
In turn the word “IeÆsous”
represents the ancient Greek-speakers’ attempts at pronouncing “Yeshua>.” By using Hebrew
“Yeshua” throughout, the JNT calls attention to the
Jewishness of the Messiah. On the name “Yeshua” itself see v.
21&N.
The
Messiah.
The Greek word here is “christos,”
which means the same thing as Hebrew “mashiach,”
namely, “anointed” or “poured on.” The significance of being
known as “The Anointed One” is that both kings and cohanim
(priests) were invested with their authority in a ceremony of anointing
with olive oil. Thus, inherent in the concept of “Messiah” is the
idea of being given God’s priestly and kingly authority.
The
Greek word “Christos” is usually
brought over into English as “Christ.” In two verses of the New
Testament (Yn 1:41, 4:25) the Greek text has “Messias,”
obviously, like English “Messiah,” a transliteration of the Hebrew
word; there the JNT uses “Mashiach” (see Yn 1:41N).
The
JNT also renders “Christos”
as “Mashiach” in two narratives where its specifically Jewish
significance stands out in bold relief: at 16:15 and at 26:63 (and
equivalently at Mk 8:29, 14:61; Lk 9:20, 22:67). Others might have used
this criterion to introduce “Mashiach” in other passages, for
example, at Ac 2:31, 36, 38. A translator’s decision to use
“Christ,” “Messiah” or “Mashiach” depends on the
purpose of his translation; in the end it may come down to his intuition
or personal preference.
But
usually in the text of the JNT Greek Christos
is rendered by “Messiah”; “Christ” does not appear even once.
This is because “Messiah” has meaning in Jewish religion, tradition
and culture; whereas the word “Christ” has an alien ring and a
negative connotation because of the persecutions Jews have suffered from
those claiming to be his followers. Further, the use of the word
“Messiah” more than 380 times in the text of the JNT is a
continual reminder that the New Testament claims Yeshua to be none other
than the promised Mashiach for whom the Jewish people have
yearned. The English word “Christ” does not point to Yeshua’s
fulfillment of Jewish hopes and biblical prophecy.
Son
of.
The Hebrew word “ben”
(“son,” “son of”) is commonly used in three distinctive ways in
the Bible and in Judaism:
(1)
In both the Bible and in Judaism a man is normally identified as
the son of his father. For example, if Sam Levine’s son Joe is called
up to read from the Torah
scroll in the synagogue, he will be announced not as Joseph Levine but
as Yosef ben-Shmu<el (“Joseph,
son of Samuel”).
(2)
“Ben”
can also mean not the actual son but a more distant descendant, as is
the case in this verse: David and Avraham were distant
ancestors of Yeshua (also v. 8: Yoram was not the father but the
great-great-grandfather of Uziyahu).
(3)
Thirdly, “ben”
can be used more broadly to mean “having the characteristics of,”
and this too applies here: Yeshua had qualities found both in Avraham
and in King David.
Son
of David.
Avraham and David are singled out because they have unique importance in
the Messiah’s lineage. The term “Son of David” is actually
one of the titles of the Messiah, based on the Tanakh’s
prophecies that the Messiah will be a descendent of David and will sit
on David’s throne forever (for the Tanakh
references see Ac 13:23&N). While “Son of David” does not appear
as a Messianic title in the Tanakh
and is first seen as such in the pseudepigraphic Psalms of Solomon
17:23, 36, written in the first century b.c.e.,
the New Testament records the use of this term some 15–20 times?, and
it has been used continuously in Judaism till the present.
Son
of Avraham.
This term is significant in at least four ways:
(1)
Both King David and King Yeshua trace their ancestry back to the
individual chosen by God as the father of the Jewish people (Genesis
12:1–3).
(2)
Yeshua is the promised “seed of Avraham” (Genesis 13:15,
explained by Ga 3:16).
(3)
The Messiah’s mystical identity with the Jewish people (see
2:15N) is hinted at, since every Jew is a son of Avraham (3:9).
(4)
Yeshua also has a mystical identity with everyone who
believes in him, whether Jewish or Gentile (Ro 4: 1, 11, 17–20; Ga
3:29).
3,
5, 6, 16
Tamar … Rachav … Rut … the wife of Uriyah (Bat-sheva)
… Miryam. Women, especially those born Gentiles, were rarely
included in biblical genealogies. The first four were Gentile women whom
God honored by including them among the recorded ancestors of Yeshua the
Jewish Messiah—through whom Gentiles, women and slaves are saved
equally with Jews, men and free (Ga 3:28&N). On whether these women
became Jews or continued to be Gentiles see Ac 16:1&N.
16
Yosef, the husband of Miryam, from whom was born … Yeshua.
The change in language from the litany, “X was the father of Y,”
signals that Yeshua was not conceived in the usual way; other passages
state that the Holy Spirit of God overshadowed Miryam, causing her to
become pregnant without sexual union (vv. 18, 20; Lk 1:27, 31, 34–38;
also see vv. 18–25&NN, Lk 3:23–38&N).
The
Yeshua who was called the Messiah. This somewhat awkward phrase
calls attention to the fact that the genealogy leads up to this
particular person named Yeshua, the particular Yeshua who was known as
the Messiah. There is no implication that he was not the Messiah; he
was called the Messiah because he was and is.
18–25
On the conception and birth of Yeshua compare Lk 1: 26–38,
2:1–7; Yn 1:1–2, 14.
18
Engaged. The Hebrew/Aramaic word for betrothal is “kiddushin,”
which signifies “sanctification, separation,” i.e., the setting
aside and separating of a particular woman for a particular man.
According to the Mishna, adultery during the betrothal period is a more
serious sin than adultery after marriage.
The
Mishna specifies four kinds of death penalty in descending order of
gravity: stoning, burning, beheading and strangling (Sanhedrin 7:1). A
man who has intercourse with a betrothed girl is subject to the same
penalty as one who has intercourse with his mother, namely, stoning
(Sanhedrin 7: 4). Someone who has intercourse with another man’s wife
is liable to death by strangling (Sanhedrin 11:1).
Today,
partly in order to eliminate the possibility of committing this grave
sin, formal Jewish betrothal (kiddushin
or <erusin) and marriage (nisu<in) are generally
combined in a single ceremony.
Ruach HaKodesh,
Hebrew for “Holy Spirit.” The term appears in the Tanakh (Isaiah 51:13(11),
63:10–11) and is equivalent to the “Spirit of God” (Ruach-Elohim),
first seen in Genesis 1:2 as having “moved on the face of the
waters” before God said, “Let there be light.” From this verse,
Isaiah 48:16 and other places in the Bible it can be learned that the
Holy Spirit is divine, not less or other than God. Under the terms of
the New Covenant, Yeshua sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in any person
who trusts God through the Messiah. The Holy Spirit gives such a person
power for service, guidance into God’s truth, gifts to facilitate holy
living, and fruits of righteous behavior. (The King James Version of the
English Bible uses the term “holy ghost,” which has nothing to do
with spooks but is seventeenth-century English for “Holy Spirit.”)
Miryam.
In English this Hebrew name is usually rendered by the spelling
“Miriam” in the Tanakh and “Mary” in
the New Testament. This unfounded and artificial distinction produced by
translators subtly drives a wedge between Yeshua’s mother and her own
Jewishness. The original Miriam was the sister of Moshe Rabbenu
(“Moses, our teacher”; Exodus 2: 4–8) and a prophet (Exodus
15:20); in some respects she is seen as a role-model for the Jewish
woman leader of today. But the name “Mary” evokes in the reader’s
thinking an otherworldly image of “Madonna and Child,” complete with
haloes, beatific smiles and angels in array, instead of the New
Testament’s portrayal of a down-to-earth Jewish lady in an Israel
village managing her wifely, maternal and other social responsibilities
with care, love and faith.
Yeshua’s
mother was discovered to be pregnant by the Ruach HaKodesh.
Sooner or later everyone discovered she was pregnant. But not everyone
discovered that her pregnancy had resulted not from sexual relations but
from the Holy Spirit’s super-natural activity. The “virgin birth”
was a supernatural event (see Section (1) of v. 23N). The God who made
heaven and earth is quite capable of causing a woman to become pregnant
in a way not possible in nature.
Mattityahu
informs his readers of Yeshua’s supernatural conception in order to
counter the obvious and natural inference that Miryam had misbehaved.
The early rabbis developed a tradition that Yeshua was the illegitimate
son of Miryam and a Roman soldier named Pantera (in the second-century
Tosefta, a collection similar to the Mishna, see Chullin 2:23; in the
fifth-century Babylonian Talmud see Sanhedrin 43a, 67a). This calumny,
invented, of course, to counter the claims of the Gospel, was worked up
further in the sixth-century anti-gospel, Toledot-Yeshu (see v. 21N).
20
Adonai,
literally, “my lords”; but grammarians consider it the “plural of
majesty”; so a slightly less literal translation would be “my
Lord.” Long before Yeshua’s day, however, the word “Adonai”
had, out of respect, been substituted in speaking and in reading aloud
for God’s personal name, the four Hebrew letters yud-heh-vav-heh, variously written
in English as “YHVH,” “Yahweh” and “Jehovah.” The
Talmud (Pesachim 50a) made it a requirement not to pronounce the
Tetragrammaton (the word means the “four-letter name” of God), and
this remains the rule in most modern Jewish settings. In deference to
this tradition (which, in my view, is unnecessary but harmless) the JNT
uses “Adonai” where “YHVH”
is meant. (Incidentally, the name “Jehovah” is a modern invention,
an English hybrid based on the four Hebrew letters as transliterated
into German, J-H-V-H, with the individually transliterated Hebrew
vowel-points of “Adonai,” e-o-a.)
The
Greek word here is “kurios,”
which can mean (1) “sir,” (2) “lord” in the human sense, as in
“lord of the manor,” (3) “Lord” in the divine sense, or (4)
God’s personal name YHVH. The JNT uses “Adonai”
only when one can be certain that “YHVH” is meant; it is not
used if there is doubt. So far, editions of the JNT are
conservative on this score; there are probably additional places in the
text where “Adonai”
could safely be substituted for “Lord.” For more on “kurios” see 7:21&N.
21
This verse is an example of a “semitism” (an allusion to
Hebrew or Aramaic) brought over literally into the Greek text. It
provides strong evidence in favor of the theory that there was a Hebrew
or Aramaic oral or written tradition behind the extant Greek
manuscripts, for only in Hebrew or Aramaic does the explanation here of
Yeshua’s name make any sense; in Greek (or English) it explains
nothing.
The
Hebrew word for “he will save” is “yohia>,”
which has the same Hebrew root (yud-shin->ayin) as the name Yeshua
(yud-shin-vav->ayin). Thus the
Messiah’s name is explained on the basis of what he will do.
Etymologically the name Yeshua> is a contraction of
the Hebrew name Y<hoshua> (English
“Joshua”), which means “YHVH saves.” It is also the
masculine form of the Hebrew word “yeshu>ah,” which means
“salvation.”
The
KJV renders this verse, “ … and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for
he shall save his people from their sins.” But in English, saving
people from sins is no more reason for calling someone Jesus than for
calling him Bill or Frank. The Greek is no better; only in Hebrew or
Aramaic does the explanation explain.
In
modern Hebrew Yeshua is usually called Yeshu
(yud-shin-vav, without an >ayin) by nonbelievers.
This verse also shows why the name “Yeshu”
cannot possibly be correct—it does not include all three letters of
the Hebrew root of yoshia>.
However, the matter bears further scrutiny.
According
to Professors David Flusser and Shmuel Safrai, Orthodox Jews, “Yeshu” was how the name
“Yeshua> ” was pronounced
by Galilean Jews in the first century. We know from 26:73 below that
Jews of the Galil had a different dialect than those of Judea. According
to Flusser (Jewish Sources in Early Christianity, p. 15)
Galileans did not pronounce the Hebrew letter >ayin at
the end of a word, much as Cockneys drop “h” at the beginning. That
is, instead of saying “Ye-shoo-ah” they said “Yeh-shoo.”
Undoubtedly some people began spelling the name according to this
pronunciation.
However,
that is not the end of the story. In Jewish anti-Christian polemic it
became customary not to use Yeshua’s correct name but intentionally
and consciously to use the distortion “Yeshu,”
because at some point someone realized that “Yeshu”
is also an acronym consisting of the first letters of the Hebrew insult,
“Yimach sh<mo v<zikhro”
(“May his name and memory be blotted out”; the words adapt and
expand the last phrase of Psalm 109:13). Thus “Yeshu”
was a kind of coded incantation against Christian evangelism. Moreover,
since Yeshua came to be regarded in non-Messianic Judaism as a false
prophet, blasphemer and idolater wrongly being worshipped as God, and
since the Torah says, “You shall
not even pronounce the names of their gods” (Exodus 3:13), the
Messiah’s name was purposely mispronounced. Today most Israelis
saying “Yeshu”
suppose this is the man’s correct name and intend no disparagement.
The JNT avoids “Yeshu” because of its
history and also because in Hebrew it, like “Jesus” in English,
carries the valence of “the god the Gentiles worship.”
But
Yosef Vaktor (see 10:37N) reinterprets the acronym to praise Yeshua, “Yitgadal sh<mo umalkhuto!”
(“May his name and kingdom be magnified!”)
22
To fulfill what Adonai had said through the
prophet.
The New Covenant consistently presents itself as fulfilling prophecies
and promises made by God in the Tanakh.
Such conformity to statements and predictions made hundreds of years
earlier, in defiance of all reasonable probabilities, proves beyond
reasonable doubt that God “knows the end from the beginning.”
Moreover, in this case, it proves beyond reasonable doubt that Yeshua is
the Messiah. Prophecy fulfillment is the chief rational reason, based on
empirical observation of historical events—that is, based on
facts—for Jews and others to accept Yeshua as the Messiah.
There
have been more than fifty messianic pretenders in the last two thousand
years of Jewish history, starting with Todah (Theudas) and Judah
HaG’lili (Ac 5:36–37&NN), continuing with Shim‘on Bar-Kosiba
(died 135 c.e.), whom Rabbi
Akiva recognized as the Messiah by changing his name to “Bar-Kochva”
(“son of a star”; see 2 Ke 1:19N on “the Morning Star”), and
culminating in Shabtai Tzvi (1626–1676), who became a Moslem, and
Jacob Frank (1726–1791), who became a Roman Catholic. But none of them
met the criteria laid down in the Tanakh concerning the
identity of the Messiah; whereas Yeshua met all of them that are
applicable to his first coming (these fulfilled prophecies are listed in
26:24N and in Section VII of the Introduction to the JNT). Of the
four gospel writers Mattityahu especially concerns himself with pointing
out these fulfillments (see 2:5, 15, 17; 3:3; 4:14; 8:17; 11:10; 12:17;
13:14, 35; 21:4; 22:43; 26:31, 27:9). His object is to demonstrate that
Yeshua should be recognized as the Messiah because he fulfilled what Adonai
said about the Messiah through the prophets of the Tanakh.
What
Adonai had said through the
prophet.
On this phrase see 2:15N, third-from-last paragraph.
23
The virgin will conceive and bear a son. This verse
introduces a major controversy concerning the use of the Hebrew Bible in
the New Testament. Following are three objections which non-Messianic
Jews and other skeptics often make to Mattityahu’s quoting Isaiah
7:14b in this verse, along with Messianic Jewish replies.
(1)
Objection: A virgin birth is impossible.
Reply: In liberal
scholarship miracles are characteristically explained away as natural
phenomena in disguise. One might pursue this line here by pointing to
observed instances of parthenogenesis in the animal kingdom or modern
cloning experiments. But there is no instance of human parthenogenesis.
Therefore one must regard a virgin birth as supernatural.
Usually
objection to a virgin birth as impossible follows as a logical
consequence of objecting to any and all supernaturalism. But the God of
the Bible is literally “supernatural,” above nature, since he
created nature and its laws. Therefore, if it suits his purpose he can
suspend those laws. The Bible in both the Tanakh and the New
Testament teaches repeatedly that God does intervene in human history
and does sometimes overrule the natural course of events for his own
reasons.
Frequently
his reason, as in this instance, is to give humanity a sign of his
sovereignty, presence and concern. In fact, Isaiah 7:14a, immediately
preceding the portion quoted, reads, “Therefore the Lord himself will
give you a sign.” The Hebrew word for sign (“ <ot”)
means an extraordinary event that demonstrates and calls attention to
God’s direct involvement in human affairs. The “God” of Deism,
pictured as starting the universe like a man winding a watch and leaving
it to run by itself, is not the God of the Bible.
(2)
Objection: Isaiah, in using the Hebrew word “ >almah,”
was referring to a “young woman”; had he meant “virgin” he would
have written “b<tulah.”
Reply: “ >Almah” is used seven
times in the Hebrew Bible, and in each instance it either explicitly
means a virgin or implies it, because in the Bible “ >almah”
always refers to an unmarried woman of good reputation. In Genesis 24:43
it applies to Rebecca, Isaac’s future bride, already spoken of in
Genesis 24:16 as a b<tulah. In Exodus 2:8 it
describes the infant Moshe’s older sister Miryam, a nine-year-old girl
and surely a virgin. (Thus the name of Yeshua’s mother recalls this
earlier virgin.) The other references are to young maidens playing on
timbrels (Psalm 68:25), maidens being courted (Proverbs 30:19) and
virgins of the royal court (Song of Songs 1:3, 6:8). In each case the
context requires a young unmarried woman of good reputation, i.e., a
virgin.
Moreover,
Mattityahu here is quoting from the Septuagint, the first translation of
the Tanakh into Greek. More
than two centuries before Yeshua was born, the Jewish translators of the
Septuagint chose the Greek word “parthenos”
to render “ >almah.” “Parthenos”
unequivocally means “virgin.” This was long before the New Testament
made the matter controversial.
The
most famous medieval Jewish Bible commentator, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki
(“Rashi,” 1040–1105), who determinedly opposed Christological
interpretation of the Tanakh, nevertheless wrote
on Isaiah 7:14:
“Behold,
the >almah
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanu<el.
This means that our creator will be with us. And this is the sign: the
one who will conceive is a girl (na>arah)
who never in her life has had intercourse with any man. Upon this one
shall the Holy Spirit have power.” (Mikra<ot G<dolot,
ad loc.)
Also in his comment
on Song of Songs 1:3 Rashi explains that “ >alamot”
(the plural of “ >almah”)
means “b<tulot” (“virgins”).
Michael
Rydelnik, a Hebrew Christian, writes,
“Cyrus
Gordon, a greatly respected Jewish scholar who does not believe in the
virgin birth, holds that the cognate languages demonstrate that in
Isaiah 7:14 almah
should be translated ‘virgin’ (see Journal of Bible and Religion,
XXI, 2 [April 1953], p. 106).” (The Chosen People, June 1987,
p. 18)
The
Bible itself shows us how we can know when an >almah
is a virgin. Rivkah is called an >almah
at Genesis 24:43, but it can be deduced from Genesis 24:16 (“Neither
had any man known her”) that she was a virgin. In the same way, we
know that the >almah Miryam was a virgin
from Lk 1:34, where she asks the angel how she can be pregnant, “since
I am a virgin?”
A
possible reason for Isaiah’s using the word “ b<tulah”
instead of b<tulah
is that in Biblical (as opposed to later) Hebrew, “b<tulah”
does not always unambiguously mean “virgin,” as we learn from Joel
1:8: “Lament like a b<tulah
girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.” Deuteronomy 22:19
speaks of a woman after her wedding night as a b<tulah.
(3)
Objection: In Isaiah the context (vv. 10–17) shows that
Isaiah was predicting as a sign to King Achaz that before the >almah’s
as yet unconceived and unborn child would be old enough to choose good
and refuse evil, Syria and the Northern Kingdom would lose their kings,
and Assyria would attack Judah. This prophecy was fulfilled in the
eighth century b.c.e.
Therefore the prophet was not predicting an event some 700 years in the
future.
Reply (for which I
am grateful to the Jewish believer Arnold Fruchtenbaum): On the
contrary, the context, which includes all of Isaiah 7, not just eight
verses, shows that the “sign” of v. 14 was not for King Achaz, who
is referred to as “you” (singular) in vv. 11 and 16–17, but for
the entire “House of David,” mentioned in v. 13, and referred to as
“you” (plural) in vv. 13–14.
The
sign for Achaz was that before the na>ar
(“child,” at least a toddler, never a newborn baby) should know how
to choose good and refuse evil, the events of vv. 16b–17 would occur.
That child was Isaiah’s son Sh’ar-Yashuv (v. 3), who was with him as
he prophesied and at whom he was probably pointing, not the son (Hebrew ben)
of v. 14. This leaves v. 14 to provide a sign to the whole House of
David, including all the descendants of David from that time onward
until the prophecy should be fulfilled—which it was by Yeshua’s
virgin birth.
Occasionally
persons unacquainted with Christian tradition, specifically Roman
Catholic tradition, confuse the term “virgin birth” with
“immaculate conception.” The virgin birth of Yeshua—his being
conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit of God in Miryam before she
had ever had sexual contact—is accepted by all Bible-believing
Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians. The immaculate conception, the
Roman Catholic doctrine (first taught by the Church Fathers) that Miryam
herself was sinlessly conceived, is not accepted by Protestants because
the New Testament makes no mention of it.
Immanu’el
is the name given to the Messiah at Isaiah 7:14, 8:8. As Mattityahu
himself explains, it means “God is with us”—which is how
Hebrew immanu El
is translated at Isaiah 8:10. However, Yeshua was not known by that name
during his life on earth; rather, the name gives a hint (remez; see 2:15N) at who
he is by describing him: he is God-with-us. God’s people experience
the final fulfillment at Rv 21:3, where in the new heavens and new earth
“God-with-them” dwells among them.
In
the Tanakh names frequently
describe an aspect of the person named. In fact the Tanakh
uses several names to refer to the Messiah, including “Shiloh”
(Genesis 49:10), “Branch” (Isaiah 11:1), “Sprout” (Jeremiah
23:5, 33:15), and the longest, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:5–6(6–7)). All
describe the Messiah, yet he was known by just one name, Yeshua.
24–25
Yosef’s behavior shows that he accepted Yeshua as his son.
According to the Mishna, “If one say, ‘This is my son,’ he is to
be believed” (Bava Batra 8:6). The Gemara explains that he is believed
“as regards the right of inheritance” (Bava Batra 134a). Thus Yeshua,
as a legally acknowledged son, is entitled to inherit the throne of King
David from Yosef, a descendant of David (v. 8). (This point is made in
Phillip Goble, How to Point to Yeshua in Your Rabbi’s Bible,
New York: Artists for Israel, 1986.)
25
Until she had given birth. Protestants generally affirm
that Miryam was a virgin when Yeshua was born, but that “his
sisters” (plural: at least two) and four brothers (13:55–56, Mk 6:3)
were Miryam and Yosef’s natural children. The Roman Catholic Church
teaches that Miryam remained a virgin all her life, and that the terms
“brothers” and “sisters” are used loosely to refer to more
distant relatives (compare Genesis 14:12–16, 31:32, Leviticus 10:4).
The Greek phrase “eoÆs ou” (“until”) is
inconclusive because it does not necessarily imply a change; that is,
the Greek could mean either that they did not have relations during the
period before she gave birth but did afterwards, or that they remained
celibate afterwards as well. But celibacy in particular and asceticism
in general, though regarded by pagans as spiritually meritorious, were
and are the exception in Judaism and in New Covenant faith, as both
Yeshua and Sha’ul teach (see 19:10–12&N, 1C 7:1–40&NN, Co
2:18–23&NN, 1 Ti 4:3a&N).
CHAPTER 2
1
Yeshua was born
between 8 and 4 b.c.e. The
reason he was born “b.c.”
(“Before Christ”) is that Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth-century monk
who set up the modern calendar, made a mistake in determining the date
which was not corrected till later. Instead of the terms “a.d.”
(“Anno Domini,”
“in the year of [the] Lord” Yeshua) and “b.c.”
the Jewish community customarily denotes these periods by “c.e.”
(“Common Era”) and “b.c.e.”
(“Before the Common Era”), to avoid relating dates explicitly to the
Messiah.
In
Beit-Lechem.
See v. 6&N.
Herod
the Great (c. 73–4 b.c.e.)
founded the Herodian dynasty (see Lk 3:1N), which ruled the Land of
Israel and its surroundings from 37 b.c.e.
until the war with Rome in 66–70 c.e.
Herod himself was a man of great physical energy and ambition. His
career comes to the notice of historians in 47 b.c.e.
in Syria and the Galil; a combination of military successes, political
machinations and bribery of Roman superiors enabled him to replace the
last of the Hasmonean rulers, Antigonus, when the latter died in 37 b.c.e.
(possibly in consequence of one of Herod’s bribes).
Though
technically Jewish by birth, since his family was from the Idumeans (Edomites),
who had been forcibly converted to Judaism under the Hasmonean Maccabees
in the second century b.c.e.
(see 23:15N), neither his religious behavior nor his ethics reflected
anything of Judaism. He did, however, reconstruct and enlarge the Second
Temple, which had been built under Z’rubavel (see the book of Haggai)
in 520–516 b.c.e. The
Talmudic rabbis said, “One who has not seen Herod’s temple has never
seen a beautiful building” (Bava Batra 4a), but also, “It was built
by a sinful king, and the building was intended by him as an atonement
for having slain Israel’s sages” (Numbers Rabbah 4:14).
Herod
was consistently paranoid about his power. He had all his rivals
exterminated, including those of his wife’s family (he had married
Mariamne, a Hasmonean, and feared the restoration of the Hasmonean
dynasty) and even some of his own children (he had fifteen). He built
remote fortresses, Herodion and Matzada, as refuges should he be
deposed. The events described in 2:1–17 are entirely in keeping with
the man’s independently attested character.
Magi
were not merely sorcerers or magicians, although the term “magician”
comes from this word; nor were they simply astrologers, although they
did observe the stars. They were sages, wise men, often in positions of
responsibility but sometimes commanding respect because of their wisdom
even when not holding office. These Magi came from the Medo-Persian
Empire or Babylon.
2
King of the Jews. At Yn 1:19N I argue that the Greek word Ioudaioi
should
usually be translated “Judeans” and not “Jews” when the context
is the Land of Israel. But the set phrase, “king of the Ioudaioi”
is used in the New Testament only by non-Jews—here by the Magi, and
later by Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers (27:37; Mk 15:26; Lk
23:3, 38; Yn 19:19). This argues for making an exception: all of these
people were interested not in distinguishing Judeans from Galileans but
Jews from Gentiles.
However,
one can make a strong case for rendering Ioudaioi
“Judeans” even here. Not only is the context the Land of Israel, but
three times in vv. 1–6 we read of Beit-Lechem in Y’hudah (Judea).
The Jewish scholar Solomon Zeitlin so understands the phrase:
“The
gospels according to both Matthew [1:1–16] and Luke [3:24–31] trace
the genealogy of Jesus to David, while Mark, who does not give the
genealogy, states that Jesus is the son of David [12:35]. John, who
stresses the view that Jesus was the son of God, nevertheless wrote,
‘But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the
scripture said, that Christ cometh out of the seed of David and out of
the town of Bethlehem where David was?’ [7:41–42]. According to the
gospels Jesus was greeted with the words, ‘Blessed be the kingdom of
our father David’ [Mark 11:10], ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’
[Matthew 21:9]. On the cross on which Jesus was crucified the words
‘Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Judaeans’ were inscribed in Hebrew,
Greek and Latin [Iesus Nazarenus,
Rex Iudaeorum]. Mashiah,
messiah, Christ were synonymous in their minds with ‘son of David’
and ‘king of the Judaeans.’ ” (“The Origin of the Idea of the
Messiah,” in Daniel Jeremy Silver, ed., In the Time of Harvest,
New York: The MacMillan Company, 1963, p. 458)
His
star.
This seems to allude to Numbers 24:17, where Balaam prophesies, “There
shall come forth a star out of Jacob.” Judaism understands this
“star” to be the Messiah. See 2 Ke 1:19N on “the Morning Star.”
4
Cohanim
(plural; singular cohen),
“priests,” a word which today evokes the image of clerics in formal
Christian denominations or functionaries in eastern or primitive
religions. This is because the Jewish priesthood has been dormant since
the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 c.e.
But in Yeshua’s day, when the Temple still stood, Judaism without a
priesthood was unimaginable.
The
task of a priest, like that of a prophet, is to serve as spokesman and
mediator between God and man. The prophet speaks to man on behalf of
God, the priest to God on behalf of man. The cohanim
serving in the Temple were descendents of Moshe’s brother Aharon,
great-grandson of L’vi, Ya‘akov’s third son. In terms of practical
job-description their primary duty was to offer sacrificial animals on
the altar. The ever-bloody altar in the Temple of God was a continual
witness to Israel that God’s penalty for sin is death (see MJ 10:3).
The concepts of priesthood and sacrifice are minimized in today’s
non-Messianic Judaism (see MJ 9:22N), but the Judaism of the Bible is
inoperative without them. Messianic Judaism holds that Yeshua the
Messiah is our everlasting cohen
(MJ 7:23–25) and our everlasting sacrifice (MJ 7:27, Yn 1:29).
Torah-teachers.
The Greek word “grammateus”
translates literally Hebrew sofer,
which has the literal meaning “scribe” and is usually so rendered in
English. But the function of the sofrim
in Yeshua’s day went well beyond copying scrolls or performing
secretarial duties; they were the primary students and teachers of the
content of Judaism, that is, of Torah.
The
leading cohanim, who were mostly
Sadducees, and Torah-teachers,
who were allied with the Pharisees (but see next paragraph), represented
the two main concentrations of power within the Jewish religious
establishment (see 3:7N). The opinions of the two groups frequently
differed, but Herod’s question received a single response; from this
we learn that all Israel agreed that the Messiah would be born in
Beit-Lechem (see v. 6N).
Joseph
Shulam, a Messianic Jewish leader in Jerusalem, points out that modern
scholars believe the scribes were neither rabbis nor Pharisees but
“sages of the >am-ha<aretz” (see Yn
7:49N, Ac 4:13N), Torah-teachers without s<mikhah (ordination; see
21:23N)—but see Mk 2:16&N. For this reason they could not bring chiddushim (introduce new
interpretations) or posek halakhah (make legal
judgments). According to Shulam, this is why the people were in shock
that Yeshua taught like a rabbi and not like a scribe (7:28–29, Mk
1:22&N).
6
In Judaism the citation of a Scripture text implies the whole
context, not merely the quoted words. Thus Micah 5:1(2) reads, in full,
from the Hebrew:
“But
you, Beit-Lechem Efratah, though small among the thousands of Y’hudah,
nevertheless out of you shall one come forth to me who will be ruler in
Israel; and his goings-forth are from of old, from ancient days.”
Some
have taken this verse to mean only that the Messiah is to be descended
from King David, who came out of Beit-Lechem (1 Samuel 17:12), also
called Efratah (Genesis 48:7). But it is bad exegesis to give this very
clear prediction of the geographic origin of the Messiah such a
figurative meaning. Instead it is an effort to fudge the obvious
reference to Yeshua, the eternal Son of God “whose goings-forth are of
old, from ancient days,” as noted in Yochanan 1:1–2&N, 14;
8:56–58&N.
It
is amazing that in many periods of history significant numbers of Jewish
people have fallen for the claims of Messianic pretenders (see 1:22N),
not one of whom fulfilled this prophecy by being born in Bethlehem.
There
are even rabbinic sources which directly identify Beit-Lechem as the
birthplace of the Messiah, for example, the Midrash Rabbah to
Lamentations, Section 51 (on Lamentations 1:16):
“A
man was plowing when one of his oxen lowed. An Arab passed by and asked,
‘What are you?’ He replied, ‘I am a Jew.’ The Arab said to him,
‘Unharness your ox and untie your plow [as a sign of mourning].’
‘Why?’ ‘Because the Temple of the Jews is destroyed.’ The Jew
asked, ‘How do you know this?’ ‘From the lowing of your ox.’
While they were talking the ox lowed again. The Arab said, ‘Harness
your ox and tie up your plow, because the deliverer of the Jews is
born.’ ‘What is his name?’ ‘His name is Menachem [Comforter].’
‘What is his father’s name?’ ‘Chizkiyahu [King Hezekiah is
identified in Jewish literature with the Messiah].’ ‘Where do they
live?’ He answered, ‘In Birat-’Arba, in Beit-Lechem of Judea.’
”
The
same aggadah (story) appears in
the Jerusalem Talmud at B’rakhot 5a; there the last line is, “In the
royal capital of Beit-Lechem.” Moreover, although it does not identify
the Messiah as Yeshua, it implies that the Messiah has come already,
around the time of the Temple’s destruction.
13
An angel of Adonai. See Yn 1:14N.
15
Out of Egypt I called my son. Hosea 11:1 clearly refers
not to the Messiah but to the people of Israel, who were called God’s
son even before leaving Egypt (Exodus 4:22). The previous two Tanakh quotations
(1:23, 2:6) involved literal fulfillment, but this does not. In what
sense, then, does Yeshua’s flight to Egypt fulfill what Adonai
had said through the prophet?
To
answer, we must understand the four basic modes of Scripture
interpretation used by the rabbis. These are:
(1)
P<shat
(“simple”)—the plain, literal sense of the text, more or less what
modern scholars mean by “grammatical-historical exegesis,” which
looks to the grammar of the language and the historical setting as
background for deciding what a passage means. Modern scholars often
consider grammatical-historical exegesis the only valid way to deal with
a text; pastors who use other approaches in their sermons usually feel
defensive about it before academics. But the rabbis had three other
modes of interpreting Scripture, and their validity should not be
excluded in advance but related to the validity of their implied
presuppositions.
(2)
Remez
(“hint”)—wherein a word, phrase or other element in the text hints
at a truth not conveyed by the p<shat.
The implied presupposition is that God can hint at things of which the
Bible writers themselves were unaware.
(3)
Drash
or midrash
(“search”)—an allegorical or homiletical application of a text.
This is a species of eisegesis—reading one’s own thoughts into the
text—as opposed to exegesis, which is extracting from the text what it
actually says. The implied presupposition is that the words of Scripture
can legitimately become grist for the mill of human intellect, which God
can guide to truths not directly related to the text at all.
(4)
Sod
(“secret”)—a mystical or hidden meaning arrived at by operating on
the numerical values of the Hebrew letters, noting unusual spellings,
transposing letters, and the like. For example, two words, the numerical
equivalents of whose letters add up to the same amount, are good
candidates for revealing a secret through what Arthur Koestler in his
book on the inventive mind called “bisociation of ideas.” The
implied presupposition is that God invests meaning in the minutest
details of Scripture, even the individual letters.
The presuppositions
underlying remez, drash
and sod
obviously express God’s omnipotence, but they also express his love
for humanity, in the sense that he chooses out of love to use
extraordinary means for reaching people’s hearts and minds. At the
same time, it is easy to see how remez, drash
and sod can be abused, since they all allow, indeed require,
subjective interpretation; and this explains why scholars, who deal with
the objective world, hesitate to use them.
These
four methods of working a text are remembered by the Hebrew word “PaRDeS,” an acronym
formed from the initials; it means “orchard” or “garden.”
What,
then, is Mattityahu doing here? Some allege he is misusing Scripture,
twisting the meaning of what Hosea wrote from its context in order to
apply it to Yeshua. Such an accusation stands only if Mattityahu is
dealing with the p<shat. For there is no
question that the p<shat of Hosea 11:1
applies to the nation of Israel and not to Yeshua.
Some
think Mattityahu is using the drash
approach, making a midrash
in which he reads the Messiah into a verse dealing with Israel. Many
rabbis used the same procedure; Mattityahu’s readers would not have
found it objectionable.
Nevertheless,
I believe Mattityahu is not doing eisegesis but giving us a remez, a hint of a very
deep truth. Israel is called God’s son as far back as Exodus 4:22. The
Messiah is presented as God’s son a few verses earlier in Mattityahu
(1:18–25), reflecting Tanakh passages such as
Isaiah 9:5–6(6–7), Psalm 2:7 and Proverbs 30:4. Thus the Son equals
the son: the Messiah is equated with, is one with, the nation of Israel.
This is the deep truth Mattityahu is hinting at by calling Yeshua’s
flight to Egypt a “fulfillment” of Hosea 11:1.
This
fact, that the Messiah Yeshua stands for and is intimately identified
with his people Israel, is an extremely important corporate aspect of
the Gospel generally neglected in the individualistically oriented
Western world. The individual who trusts Yeshua becomes united with him
and is “immersed” (baptized; see 3:1&N) into all that Yeshua is
(see Ac 2:38&N), including his death and resurrection—so that his
sin nature is regarded as dead, and his new nature, empowered by the
Holy Spirit, is regarded as alive (Ro 6:3–6&N). Likewise, just as
this intimate identification with the Messiah holds for the individual,
so the Messiah similarly identifies with and embodies national,
corporate Israel. Indeed it is only because Yeshua identifies himself
with the Jewish people, national Israel, the “olive tree” into which
Gentile Christians have been “grafted” (Ro 11:17–24), that he can
plausibly identify with the Messianic Community, the Church, as “head
of the Body” (1C 11:3; Ep 1:10, 22; 4:15, 5:23; Co 1:18, 2:19) and
“cornerstone” of the building (below at 21:42, Mk 12:10, Ac 4:11, Ep
2:20, 1 Ke 2:6–7).
Modern
readers of the Bible, by using “grammatical-historical exegesis,”
ignore all modes of interpretation except the p<shat,
discounting them as eisegesis. This is in reaction to the tendency of
the Church Fathers in the second through eighth centuries to
over-allegorize, an error which probably resulted from their
misunderstanding the limitations of, and therefore misusing, the other
three rabbinic approaches to texts. But the New Testament is a Jewish
book, written by Jews in a Jewish context; and the first-century Jewish
context included all four ways of handling texts. Mattityahu knew
perfectly well that Hosea was not referring to Yeshua, to a Messiah, or
even to any individual. Yet he also sensed that because Yeshua in a
profound yet recondite way embodies Israel, his coming from Egypt
re-enacted in a spiritually significant way the Exodus of the Jewish
people. Since remez and p<shat
have different presuppositions one should expect fulfillment of a
prophecy by remez to be different from
literal fulfillment. At 1:23 and 2:6 the plain, literal sense of the
text, the p<shat, suffices to show
how the prophecies are fulfilled, but here it does not.
The
phrase, “what Adonai
had said through the prophet,”
takes our attention off the prophet himself and puts it on God who spoke
through him. It lets the reader understand that Adonai might have been
saying more than what the prophet himself understood when he wrote. It
prepares him for the possibility that behind Hosea’s p<shat
was God’s remez
to be revealed in its time and lends credibility to the “PaRDeS”
mode of interpretation.
Recognition
that there are four modes of Jewish exegesis also resolves much of the
controversy concerning how certain passages in the Tanakh
ought to be interpreted. For example, most Christians say that Isaiah 53
refers to the Messiah, and some (though not all) traditional Jews say it
refers to Israel. But if there is a mystical identification between the
Messiah and the people whose king he is (an idea expounded at length by
the best-known Christian theologian of the twentieth century, Karl
Barth, in his Church Dogmatics), then the
interpretational conflict vanishes; both claimants hold part of the
total truth.
Moreover,
the idea that the Messiah personifies or is identified intimately with
Israel is a Jewish one. First of all, we see it in the Tanakh
itself. Compare Isaiah 49:3 (“You are my servant Israel, in whom I
will be glorified.”) with Isaiah 49:6 (“Is it too slight a thing
that you should be my servant … to restore the preserved of
Israel?”). The servant is at once Israel and he who restores Israel,
that is, the Messiah. In chapter 12 of Raphael Patai’s The Messiah
Texts he quotes Pesikta Rabbati 161–162, where the Messiah is
called Efrayim (a name symbolizing Israel) and is at the same time
presented as bearing Israel’s sufferings. Likewise the
thirteenth-century work which is at the core of the Jewish mystical
approach called kabbalah, the Zohar (2:212a),
links the Messiah’s suffering with that of Israel. Patai also retells
the eighteenth-century Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav’s story of the
viceroy and the king’s daughter, adding that most interpreters
understand the viceroy to represent both Israel and the suffering
Messiah.
18
The p<shat
of this verse from Jeremiah does not refer to the Messiah but to the
slaughter of the northern tribes of Israel by the Assyrians. But there
is a remez here of which
Mattityahu makes use: the traditional burial-place of Ya‘akov’s wife
Rachel is in Ramah, just outside Beit-Lechem—one can visit what is
called “Rachel’s Tomb” there today. Just as Rachel in her grave
mourns for her posterity descended from her son Yosef, so the many women
of nearby Beit-Lechem mourn for their slain infants.
20–21
What does the New Testament call the Holy Land? Not Palestine but
Eretz-Israel,
“the Land of Israel.” Similarly, the regions north and south of
Jerusalem are called not the West Bank but “Y’hudah” and
“Shomron” (Judea and Samaria; see Ac 1:8). The New Testament, like
the Israelis of today, uses the names the Hebrew Bible uses, not those
employed by the Romans or other conquerors. See 5:5&N.
23
This is a problematical verse. In every instance where Mattityahu
is showing the fulfillment of a Scriptural prophecy (see list in 1:23N),
a specific writer—Isaiah, Jeremiah, David—is named, or “the
prophet,” or “the Tanakh,”
followed by a verse or passage. Here the prophets (uniquely
plural) are mentioned, and no text is quoted. This is clear from the
fact that Mattityahu leaves out “legontos” (“saying”),
the Greek keyword he uses to cite Scripture. Rather, he seems to be
alluding to a general concept found in several prophets, capable of
being fulfilled by the Messiah’s being what the Greek text here calls
a NazoÆraios?
(in some other places the word is “NazareÆnos”).
The questions: Which prophets? What did they actually say? And what is a
NazoÆraios/NazareÆnos?
Some
have suggested that the verse has to do with Yeshua’s taking the vows
of a Nazirite (Numbers 6:1–23). But this is improbable, since there is
no record that Yeshua, who was not an ascetic (11:16–19), ever did
such a thing.
A
second possibility is that since Natzeret (Nazareth, see Lk
1:26N) was a place people made fun of—as in Natan’el’s remark,
“Natzeret? Can anything good come from there?” (Yn 1:46)—Mattityahu
is referring to the many Tanakh prophecies that say
the Messiah would be despised (e.g., Psalm 22, Isaiah 52:13–53:12) and
is informing us that these prophecies would be fulfilled, in part, by
his having the onus of being a Natzrati, a resident of
Natzeret.
The
third possibility is that Mattityahu is speaking of the prediction that
the Messiah will be a netzer
(“branch”) from the stock of Yishai, King David’s father (Isaiah
11:1); but compare Jeremiah 23:5, 33:15; Zechariah 3:8, 6:12, where the
word is “tzemach,” (“sprout”).
Thus several prophets use the idea, though not the word “netzer.”
(For more on “the prophets” see 5:17N.)
What
I consider most probable is that Mattityahu is combining the second and
third alternatives by means of wordplay, a technique very common in
Jewish writing, including the Bible. Yeshua is both netzer
and Natzrati.
Finally,
although one of the earliest names for the Jewish believers was “Notzrim” (“Nazareth-ites,”
that is, “followers of the man from Nazareth,” Acts 24:5&N), it
would be odd for Mattityahu to use the same term for the one they
followed. The Talmud refers to him as Yeshu HaNotzri (B’rakhot 17b,
Sotah 47a). In modern Hebrew “Notzri”
remains the everyday word for “Christian”; but it is wrong and
confusing to speak of “Yeshua the Christian,” i.e., the follower of
Christ—he could not follow himself! The Talmud’s expression should
be understood as meaning “Yeshua the Natzrati, Yeshua from
Natzeret.” I use the term “Natzrati”
instead of “Notzri” (both are
acceptable modern Hebrew) in order to get away from the modern
connotations of “Notzri” in Hebrew.
[i][ii]
[i]The
Jewish New Testament,
(Clarksville, MD: Jewish New Testament Publications) 1996.