Spiritualised Hermeneutics and Old Testament Interpretation in Matthew 2

In obedience to an angelic vision, Joseph takes his family to Egypt to escape the bestial and murderous Herod. Upon the tyrant's death which is believed to have occurred about 4BC, the family (again at the instigation of an angelic command) returns to Israel and re-settles in Galilee.

Matthew in v.15 reports the return of Joseph, Mary and the toddler Jesus as the fulfillment of Hosea 11.1:

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

What kind of hermeneutic or interpretative method is being employed by Matthew? The verse comes in the midst of a passage of condemnation and denunciation of Israel's conduct, the type of passage we frequently encounter in the prophets. Immediately after the statement in chapter 11.1, the passage goes on to condemn Israel – Ephraim the northern kingdom and promises that they will be defeated by Assyria.

It's hardly a cheering passage and certainly not a passage that would normally be deemed 'messianic', an example of clear prophecy pointing to the coming Christ.

In fact Matthew's utilisation of the verse seems to be in violation of what many would consider to be basic hermeneutical principles and it leaves many commentators baffled – but it shouldn't, if you employ the right hermeneutic, the kind of hermeneutic used by the apostles throughout the New Testament.

On one level it's clear that Christ is the True Israel, the fulfillment of all its types and symbols. He is the people, the land, the temple, its covenants, holiness, glories and promises. And thus in one sense Israel's departure out of Egypt is a picture of salvation, the gospel itself. Egypt is the land of death, a symbol for hell as the Nile and Red Sea also represent the realm of chaos waters, the underworld realm of Leviathan and the Beasts. The departure from Egypt is even a picture of the resurrection – a move from death to life, the house of bondage to the land of milk and honey.

And yet there are layers here as Christ's departure with his parents is not yet the resurrection but something of a reiteration of the Exodus – and yet the verse in Hosea is presented by Matthew as a thing fulfilled in his departure while yet a toddler. Jesus is in another sense re-tracing the steps of Israel but unlike the covenant breakers, he, the Second Adam in the Garden-Holy Land will be faithful.

It is a hermeneutical method that is clearly thematic and yet defies easy, clear or principled explanation and for that reason some have (unbelievingly) believed that Matthew was in error, reading something into passage that wasn't there.

The New Testament teaches us that the Scriptures are God-breathed and that they do not find their origin in man (2 Tim 3.16, 2 Pet 1.20-21). This is true of both Hosea and Matthew, both of whom can be reckoned among the prophets.

This teaches us that while some forms of theology overemphasize the unity of the Scriptures and have a tendency to force doctrines into a coherent framework or system and thus as a result they downplay, explain away or in some cases negate nuances and even whole categories of doctrine – the critical approach of treating the Bible as a completely disunified collection of books is also wrong. Even many professed Bible-believing and Evangelical scholars have adopted the methods of the academy and treat authors, genres and contexts in such a divorced or even absolutised fashion that there can be no possible coherence.

The passage in Matthew teaches that there is a coherence to the whole of Scripture – and yet it's not cast in a rationalistic form or in accord with a Baconian-style scientific-data approach. Rather the binding principle, the coherent aspect that ties everything together is the Holy Spirit working through these authors crafting a revelation over 1500 years that all points a central theme – Christ. He is the coherence, the heart of the system as it were.

And yet the system is a spirit-inspired system, a meta-system rooted in an eternal epistemology that necessarily eludes us. We can apprehend aspects of it and we can understand what we need to know. It defies our categories of sense-experience and even logic but it is not irrational or devoid of any sense. It is beyond us. It is a system rooted in revealed mysteries communicated to us in words and concepts we can understand to a point, albeit a sufficient point. It is the unveiling of spiritual mysteries – things not discernible through our means, and yet it is not mysticism. We can ascertain the message, and through the Holy Spirit understand it, incorporate it, believe it, trust in it and act on it.

God in His providence often shaped history – interpreted by the Spirit-guided Prophets – as dramatic gospel-depicting episodes. Real people leading real lives and involved in real events were nevertheless also part of a grand sweep, a series of repeated gospel-kingdom themed episodes which were also part of a grand story, all of which was moving toward the events surrounding the Incarnation, cross and resurrection. There are layers upon layers and yet undoubtedly many of the people involved in these narratives were unable to grasp their part in what was being unveiled. They did not have our advantage of being able to look back through a Christocentric lens. It's miraculous, wondrous and thus in complete defiance of academic categories. The academy is forced to assert that the way these events are tied together is beyond belief and so the focus is in terms of how authors manipulated the narratives and interpreted them to create a theology. Even many Evangelicals have embraced this. The events, the providential history as it were is something less than true – the inspiration question only coming into play (if they still call it that) in how the prophets crafted and shaped the narratives. Theological liberals just go a step further in their denial of the supernatural at work.

Contrary to these faulty unbelieving models, we can follow the connection between Matthew and Hosea, the analogies between Old and New Testaments and we can certainly understand the principles of Christocentricity, but we must be very cautious in terms of method – we clearly do not have all the necessary tools to extract all that can be found in the Old Testament.

Can we move beyond the apostles and pick up more in terms of the themes and symbols? I certainly think we can and yet this must be restrained because as much as we might like to be, we cannot always be dogmatic. There are sometimes clear connections, types and symbols. Others are questionable. Others are something of a stretch and yet at the same time there are sometimes breathtaking connections, whole series of strung together themes that leave the reader in a state of awe and amazement, and rightly so as these moments of doxological study remind us and encourage us as to the Divine origin and nature of this collection of Holy Books we call the Bible.

I am slightly uncomfortable with those who suggest hermeneutics requires a degree of artistry. I do see occasions in which I think authors might be getting carried away and building further elaborations on already questionable and theoretical constructs. That said, the Scriptures are certainly inexhaustible and virtually unfathomable. Given the spiritual nature of this work and exploration there are problems with constructing hard and fast or universal tools – that work the same way in all situations. Many such constructs are unfalsifiable as indeed all analogies, all types and symbols (if pressed), begin to wither and break. This doesn't mean they are invalid but rather they are being misused, stretched beyond the parameters they were meant for. Types are often fuzzy or blurry in how they represent their antitypes. When put under the microscope or forced in to sharp focus, the antitype is sometimes lost and the analogy and symbolism break down. It's not a problem with the type but with the epistemological and hermeneutical methods being used. It's a classic case of missing the forest through the trees.

All of this points to another stark reality, the hyper-literalistic approach of Fundamentalism (and certain sectors of Evangelicalism) is blatantly wrong and potentially very misleading. They cannot account for Matthew's use of Hosea, nor will their method properly account for the New Testament's rather figurative and sometimes 'loose' rendering and utilisation of the old. A rejection of their pedantic, minimalist and often inconsistent hermeneutic does not in any way suggest a liberal or allegorising view of the Scriptures. Rather it takes its cues from the apostles themselves and is the faithful way to read the inspired and infallible Bible.

There are those that abuse these principles, those that reject fundamentalist literalism on a different critical basis and as such undermine the Scripture's authority. They too must be opposed and at least on that point we can stand with the fundamentalists in condemning their naturalistic tendencies or sometimes blatantly critical and theologically liberal agenda. And this agenda is increasingly finding its home in the halls of Evangelical academia and over the past decade or so is starting to really play out in the Evangelical pulpit.

The chapter continues with two further examples of this principle at work. We have the Slaughter of the Innocents in Matthew 2.16-18, which quotes Jeremiah 31.15 – a seeming interlude passage within the larger context of rejoicing in anticipation of the New Covenant. There will be weeping and lamentation in Ramah, but:

Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.

A fascinating statement to be sure because amid the weeping there is a call for refrain – for the promise of hope and joy that follows. Additionally there's a hint of the fact that not just exiled Israel shall come from the land of the enemy, but in fact the True Israel, Christ shall return from Egypt and from the grave. Buried and woven within this prophecy concerning the New Covenant are promises (on a typological level) of the return from exile and the return of Christ from Egypt. Again there are layers upon layers of prophecy. Some have used this patent reality to argue that while yes, the promises in the Old Testament point to Christ and are fulfilled in him, nevertheless there are the many promises to the Jews and must be fulfilled in connection with political Israel.

And yet the New Testament makes it clear this is not the case. The promises are all affirmed and confirmed in Christ (2 Cor 1.20) and the repeated teaching within the New Testament in passages such as Ephesians 2 and even the oft cited Romans 11 make it clear the Church (the Body of Christ) is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. The whole book of Hebrews, but especially chapter 7 makes it plain – the Old Covenant has been fulfilled and as such there's no going back, there is no aspect of the Old order yet to be fulfilled or that could be fulfilled apart from Christ. Such hermeneutics (in the name of Biblical literalism) rest on a rejection of Christocentricity. This is Biblicism gone astray.

Finally there is Matthew 2.23 – he shall be called a Nazarene, a puzzling passage (and use of the Old Testament) for it seems to point to Judges 13.5, a verse immediately in reference to Samson. Now Samson despite his sometimes puzzling conduct is reckoned among the heroes of the faith and as a Judge he was certainly a type of Christ. Thus it follows there is a connection but what is a seemingly subtle and even tenuous one. On the basis of the Matthew-Judges connection the exegete could both be overwhelmed and yet run wild with potential Christological connections found in the Old Testament. It's true Christ is literally on every page if you have eyes to see but again I would argue for a restrained hermeneutic as the tools needed, the tools employed by the apostle Matthew, tools clearly enabled and amplified by the Holy Spirit's work of inspiration elude us. We must be careful in how we draw such connections but again this testimony in Matthew regarding Judges points to the fact that other popular and even respected methods of interpretation are simply off base.

The richness of the Scriptures continues to leave us in a state of awe and rightly so. The more you study, the more you dig, the more you meditate on the words, the layers of truth and the glorious complexity of it all, you realise the Scriptures are not like other books. We hold a miracle in our hands, the Divine Words revealed from on high and yet how often we are distracted by the cares of the world and how many who profess Christ – sadly let these books collect dust while they are distracted and entangled by the cares of this world.

We are warned of this danger in the example of the seed cast among the thorns in Matthew 13. We would do well to take heed that the word in our hearts is not choked and deceived. The threat is real.