Matthew 1:18-2:23 (1)
Typology
Just to
remind us again we are reading Matthew typologically. We explored a bit about
what that way of reading the Bible looks like in the last post. Here I want to
call attention to a refinement offered by Patrick Schreiner in his recent book Matthew:
Disciple and Scribe.[1]
He invites us to
reflect on three questions as we consider what Matthew tells us:
-How
does this echo Israel’s story?
-How
does Jesus fulfill Israel’s story?
-How
does it move the story of Israel forward?
We’ll
follow his advice, then, as best we as we move ahead.
Matthew 1:18-25: Joseph in Jesus’ Birth Story[2]
Most
Bible readers know that Matthew’s birth story is Joseph’s experience of Jesus’
birth. Luke gives Mary’s experience in his gospel. Hers gets more attention
because it is a bit more dramatic and she is, after all, Jesus’ birth mother.
Joseph, meanwhile is but his step-father. The high-point in Mary’s story is her
stirring declaration in response to Gabriel’s announcement that she shall be
Messiah’s mother: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word” (Lk.1:38). It is seldom recognized
however that Joseph shows, not speaks, a similar dedication and readiness to
respond to angelic direction in Matthew’s story. Not as dramatic, perhaps, but
equally compelling. After all, Matthew calls Joseph “a righteous man” (1:19).
He sees
in Joseph a typological figure. And that at two levels. The first we can
discern by revisiting the events Matthew relates of Joseph’s experience of
Jesus’ birth.
-He learns that Mary is pregnant but in
a dream learns this child is from the Spirit and will be his people’s savior
(1:18-25).
-His family goes on the lam to Egypt to
escape a paranoid and vindictive King Herod.
-In another dream Joseph learns Herod
is dead and his family can leave Egypt to come home.
-As they return, however, another dream
warns him to settle in Nazareth out of the reach of Archelaus, Herod’s son.
Matthew knows another
Joseph in Israel’s story whose story parallels at key points and he uses him as
Jesus’ Joseph’s typological foil. This is the Joseph we find in Genesis 37-50.
This Joseph
-was a righteous man (though he began as a rather
bratty teenager),
-dreamed dreams from God throughout his life,
-brought his family to Egypt to save them from a
severe famine, and
-then whose family left Egypt (admittedly centuries
after his death).
Jesus’
Joseph is then fulfills the type Genesis’ Joseph prefigures. The former exceeds
and thus fulfills the latter in that while Genesis’ Joseph temporarily saved
his people from a famine by hearing and heeding God’s dreams, Jesus’ Joseph
saved his people from their sins by enabling Jesus to survive by hearing and
heeding God’s dreams.
Applying Schreiner’s three questions, we can that
later Joseph clearly echoes earlier Joseph from Israel’s
story. Later Joseph, and the story eventuating through him is thus integrated
into Israel’s story. Later Joseph’s action enables Jesus to play his role in
that story. And through Jesus that story is moved forward to its climax and
culmination.
But there’s even more to
this Joseph typology than this. His life provides a template in many respects
for that of Jesus himself. The chart below gives the details of this matching
template.
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Jesus as the New Joseph
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Pattern
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Joseph
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Jesus
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Chosen by his father
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Rejected by his brothers
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Undergoes suffering and exile
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Exalted in a foreign court
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Forgives his brothers
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Saves his people
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Thus in
the providence of God one of the Old Testament’s central saving figures
provides insight and depth to the life and work of Israel’s and the world’s
greatest saving figure, later Joseph’s son Jesus. These two typological
trajectories then, overlap and intersect in Matthew’s skillful telling to give
voice to the reality of Jesus’ life at every level.
“He will forgive his people from their sins”
We tend
to take this as an expression of God’s intention through Jesus to offer a
general forgiveness to all of humanity. This seems especially important to us
at Christmas time. However, careful attention to it suggests that Jesus is
addressing the problems (idolatries) that landed Israel in exile. In other
words, “his people” means Israel here not humanity in general.
The
context of the biblical story backs up this reading.[3]
Remember that
-Israel was mandated to be the people
through God would spread his blessing (Gen.12:1-3) and take care of the problem sin had created.
-Israel defaulted on this mandate so
incorrigibly and egregiously that God finally resorted to the tough love of
sending them into exile.
-God was still committed to using
this people of his calling as his vehicle to spread his blessings everywhere
and to all people. Then in Isaiah 40-55 we hear his promise to bring them back
from exile in a New Exodus and restore them so they could finally be the
Abrahamic people he intended them to be.
-this New Exodus was heralded with
these words:
“Comfort,
O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins” (Isa.40:1-2)
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins” (Isa.40:1-2)
-This is the
forgiveness Matthew understands Jesus to be enacting for his people. Despite
this the return from Babylon was not the glorious affair God promised in
Isaiah. The people did return (some of them). They rebuilt the temple but it
was never more than a poor knock-off of Solomon’s temple. And we are never told
God returned to this temple as king of his people. Israel remained under the
heel of a foreign power even in their homeland. Exile continued for them.
-This is the
situation Jesus was born into, indeed, was born for. His mission was to end
Israel’s exile and offer it one last chance to “repent” and believe the “good
news” that in and through Jesus God was reasserting his rule over the
rebellious nations of the world, including Israel if it failed to respond to
Jesus.
-This work of
Jesus directed Israel reflects God’s reassertion of his rule in this world.
This included a double judgment. First, on the Israel that failed to respond to
Jesus (in the crushing war against Rome in 66-70 which ended with the
destruction of the temple (and which Jesus prophesied in Mt.24). This is Jesus’
horizon for his work, ministry, and teaching. Second, is the judgment against
the nations which was enacted by Jesus when God raised him from dead. Paul
makes much of this and uses it as the main horizon for his work and teaching. A
third horizon for a final judgment exists but I will reserve comment on it till
we reach ch.24.
The Virginal Conception of Jesus[4]
We can’t
go through this section without talking about the virginal conception (that’s
the right term, not birth), So we’ll talk a bit about it. But not in the usual
way. A careful reading of the Old Testament on virginity gives us some
different handles to reflect on its significance.
In the
light of the Old Testament material it is not the miraculous element that would
claim a Jewish/Jewish-Christian reader’s attention. Miraculous births were
neither unknown to it nor intrinsically impossible for God. So the question
that exercises us today - could such a thing have possibly happened? – would
not have been for them.
But what
would they have heard about virginity from the Old Testament? According to
Leithart two things would have struck them. Virginity
-is primarily about a people rather than individuals. and
-is much more about faithfulness than sexuality.
In terms
of Israel’s covenant virginity is about faithful worship and obedience to God.
Unfaithful worship and disobedience causes Israel to lose its virginity or
become a harlot. Forgetfulness of God and his covenant rather than sexual
deviancy is what virginity is primarily about (Jer.18:13,15; 2 Cor.11:2-3).
Single-hearted devotion to God in Christ is the biblical focus of virginity.
As I
noted above, miraculous births of key Old Testament figures were part and
parcel of its story.
-Isaac, the child of -promise, was born to barren Sarah.
-Jacob, the father of Israel, was born to barren Rebekah.
-Moses was saved from death by his parents’ deception.
-Samson’s mother was barren.
-So was Hannah, Samuel’s mother.
It may well be that Jesus’
miraculous birth is to be seen in this trajectory. As the greatest of all Old
Testament figures it seems most appropriate that his birth is miraculous. As
the capstone of this trajectory his birth is both similar to yet different than
his predecessors. As Leithart puts it, “Jesus was not simply conceived by
parents beyond child-bearing years, but by a virgin. Moreover, Jesus was
conceived not by the union of sperm and egg, but by the Holy Spirit. Even from
His birth, He was, in a preliminary way, the spiritual man: not of the earth,
earthy, but the heavenly man.”[5]
Matthew’s genealogy, the lens
through which we should read his birth story, is unusual for its inclusion of
women (as we have already noted). Jewish genealogies usually didn’t in the 1st-century.
But those women Matthew did include are all tainted characters, much as Manasseh,
the king for whose sins Israel was sent into exile (2 Kings 23:26-27)? This the
history Jesus entered into, a history full of real people enmeshed in all sorts
of tragic and faithless actions and behaviors. In that kind of world Jesus came
to live and labor, get his hands dirty, and suffer for and bear the sullied
reputation of his people, to save them.
But there’s one other woman in
Jesus’ genealogy – Mary. An untainted woman. Remembering the corporate emphasis
of virginity (and harlotry) in the Old Testament, Leithart suggests that the
tainted and untainted figures here represent Israel in both its faithless
harlotry and its faithful remnant. God comes into this compromised community,
then, through the faithful minority.
And here’s a connection with the
passage Matthew quotes concerning the virgin birth, Isa.7:14. King Ahaz of
Judah was given this sign of a virgin giving birth as he stared down the barrel
of an invasion from Rezin of Aram and Pekah of
Israel. This sign was meant to assure Ahaz that he could trust God and not try
to resolve this crisis through his own resources.
In the
setting in which Matthew tells his story of Jesus, the culmination and climax
of Israel’s story, this sign seems most a propos. If Ahaz remained firm in his
faith Israel would survive the attack and continue on its journey. However, the
opposite could also take place. And did. Ahaz did not in faith request a sign
from God, the sign of the virgin. But God gave it to him anyway. Now as a sign
of the king’s disobedience and that his rule would be destroyed (Isa.7:17).
Thus
Christ’s virginal conception and birth serves a similar role to Israel. Through
a faithful, “virginal” remnant (Mary and Joseph in this story) the Lord would
provide one who would signal salvation from the threat of destruction in the
coming war with Rome to those who embraced him in faith and a sign of
destruction for the unfaithful (those prostituted themselves as Ahaz had in
distrust and rejection) in that conflict.
Emmanuel,
“God is with us,” though it gives us warm feelings at Christmas time, has a
sharp edge to it, as those Ahaz and centuries later the Jews who rejected
Jesus, found out to their hurt. And remains the case today, I suspect, whenever
we invoke Emmanuel without intent and commitment to follow him.
[1] Patrick Schreiner, Matthew: Disciple and Scribe (Baker,
2019).
[2] See Schreiner, “Matthew’s
Gospel as You’ve Never Read It Before,” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/matthew-gospel-never-read-before/.
[3] For this view in more detail see Andrew Perriman, Re:
Mission (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007).
[4] See Peter Leithart, “The Virgin Conception of Christ: A Redemptive-Historical
Interpretation,” at https://theopolisinstitute.com/26705-2/.
[5] “The Virgin Conception of Christ: A
Redemptive-Historical Interpretation” at https://theopolisinstitute.com/26705-2/.
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