Click link to the next study in my sequential chapter study through the Gospel of Matthew.
When “the days of David drew near that he should die, and he charged Solomon his son, saying: ‘I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. And keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn; that the LORD may fulfill His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul,’ He said, ‘you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’" (1 Kings 2:1-4) But they did not take heed to their ways and walk before Him in truth. "This Herod being a foreigner, and made king by the Romans, which now reigned over the Jews, in him was fulfilled Jacob's prophecy, that ‘the sceptre should not depart from Judah’; Genesis 49:10 that is, the Jews should have governors of their own nation, ‘until Shiloh come’; that is, until Christ the promised Messiah come in the flesh." (William Burkitt)
“Jesus is born in an occupied land, a small outpost, on the edge of a mighty empire [of Rome].” (Matthew: Brazos Theological Commentary— Stanley Hauerwas) “This kingdom of Rome was the last of four kingdoms to exert dominion over Israel, prophesied about in Daniel as originally strong as characterized by ‘the legs of iron’— but then, over time, it was divided and weak with ‘feet of mingled iron and clay.’ (Dan 2:41) It still had ‘iron teeth’ to devour and ‘ten horns’ (Dan 7:7) representing ethnic nations within the former empire. These tribal-nations [of toes] have been generally identified as the Ostrogoths, Heruli, Franks, Vandals, Lombards, Visigoths, Suevi, Burgundians, Alamanni, and the Anglo- Saxons.” (Wake Up America - Larry W. Wilson)
Rome still reigns in the little horn, "antichrist," coming up plucking up three of the ten horns. "And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words." (Dan 7:8) In the midst of the ten horns, the Roman catholic church sprang up claiming apostolic succession. It rooted up: “‘The Exarchate of Ravenna,’ ‘The kingdom of Lombardy,’ and ‘The Duchy of Rome,’ these three becoming ‘the Patrimony of Peter,’ making the Roman church a small temporal kingdom, which began about that time to coin money, and to assume other signs of temporal authority, such as the establishment of an armed force (the Papal Guards), etc. It was shortly after the development of this usurpation that the Papacy claimed authority over the kings of the earth, one Pope even presuming to crown Charlemagne as ‘King of the Holy Roman Empire’ on Christmas Day, 800 A.D.” (Burton Coffman)
“‘Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men’— the Magi— ‘from the east came to Jerusalem,’ (1) a sort of religious philosophers, from Persia or Arabia.” (Abbott's Illustrated NT) saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” etc. "By computing the time mentioned by Daniel (Daniel 9:25-27), they knew that the period was approaching when He would appear…. It was natural that this expectation should spread into other countries. Many Jews at that time lived in Egypt, in Rome, and in Greece; many, also, had gone to Eastern countries, and in every place they carried their sacred writings, and diffused the expectation that some remarkable person was about to appear.” (Albert Barnes)— “the promised hope of blessing to all the nations, the One who will claim their obeisance (cf. Ps 68:28–35; Isa 18:1–3, 7; 45:14; 60:6; Zep 3:10)...” (R. T. France)
“'For we have seen His star in the East’—‘we, being in the East, have seen His star’” (Albert Barnes)—“and have come to worship Him.” (2) "God the Father commands even the angels of heaven to worship Christ: When He bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.’ [Ps 97:7] (Heb 1:6) By the express command of God worship is given to the Lord Jesus Christ. We must not fail to grasp the plain logic of the word of God here. We may put it in the form of a syllogism. Major Premise: Worship belongs exclusively to Jehovah, the only true God; Minor premise: God commands worship to be given to Jesus Christ; Conclusion: Jesus Christ is the true God and Jehovah. The first commandment, therefore, should be read in the light of the gospel. When it says, ‘Thou shall have no other gods before me,’ it commands us to acknowledge and confess the Lord Jesus Christ to be the true God and our Saviour. Jesus Himself said this: ‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.’ (John 14:1) That is the full significance of the first commandment… To obey it is to join with Thomas as he exclaimed of Christ: ‘My Lord and my God’” (Chariots of God by Alan Cairns) Concerning the order of Magi-- “H. Leo Boles pointed out that Daniel ‘was made president of this order in Babylon (Dan. 2:48), and that Jeremiah spoke of this class among Babylonians.’… Dummelow, among many, noted the spiritual implications of the worship from the wise men and called it: ‘A prophecy of the succeeding centuries, in which the chosen people have persistently rejected the Messiah, and the Gentiles have accepted him.’ [J. R. Dummelow, One Volume Commentary].” (Coffman Commentary)
The narrative throws “a strong and searching light upon the conditions that prevailed in those days amongst the Jews found in Jerusalem, the descendants of those who had returned under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah. The King of the Jews was born in Bethlehem and yet for weeks they knew nothing about it. That Herod the king should be in ignorance was not at all surprising, for he was no Israelite but an Idumean. But of all people the chief priests should have been apprised of this great event for which they had been professedly waiting—the birth of the Messiah.” (F. B. Hole)
"'When Herod the king had heard, he was troubled,’ etc— for he was a foreigner, and became ruler by force.” (Geneva Study Bible)— He "was therefore much concerned to hear that there was a new King born; and supposing Him to... [then] restore a temporal kingdom to Israel, he could not but be troubled at the news.... especially having a confirmation of it by such an extraordinary means, as persons coming from a far country...." (Matthew Poole)— "'and all Jerusalem with him.’ (3) The Jews were subject to foreign powers for failing to observe the law of sabbath rest for the land, as the Book of Daniel has abundantly testified; yet "after their seventy years’ captivity, have seven seventies of years (490 years) granted for the enjoying of their own country..., besides the mercy of mercies, the grace of the Messiah." (Trapp)
They never recovered their full freedom down to its entire suspension by Christ.
"'And when he gathered the chief priests and the scribes of the people’— writers and expounders of the divine law.” (Justin Edwards) Herod had previously slain many of the elders of the Sanhedrim, such as "opposed his access to the kingdom.” (John Lightfoot) So, this is not la quorum of the Sanhedrium counsel but those with various traditions in Herod's own court. "It was all the theologians of the nation whom Herod convened, because it was a theological response that he wanted.” (F. B. Meyer)
“‘He [Herod] inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah;' “In Micah 5:2, the Hebrew word is ‘thousands’; whereas Matthew says ‘princes’; and he had authority for so doing, as giving an improved reading. The Hebrews numbered the nation by thousands. Gideon a prince said to the angel, My family is poor in Manasseh. 6:15. Here the Hebrew reads, ‘My thousand is the meanest in Manasseh.’ As Christ was the King of kings, and as every thousand had its prince, so Matthew makes the quotation in an enlivened form.” (Joseph Sutcliffe)—"'for out of you shall come a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ( (Micah 5:1) “The following description of the One who shall come is a paraphrase of the rest of Micah 5:2, with an allusion to the shepherd theme in v. 5:4 (poimainō, govern in RSV, means ‘to shepherd’), but its actual words are drawn from 2 Samuel 5:2, the description of David’s role as shepherd of Israel.” (R. T. France) "'Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared.' (4-7)— "not 'the time when the star appeared,' but 'the age of the star‘s appearance.'” (Robertson's Word Pictures) There was no prophecy about the year of His birth, but rather about His baptism.
Daniel had foretold: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.” (Daniel 9:25a) The command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem— “There are four decrees concerning the rebuilding of Jerusalem that Scripture records. The first was Cyrus' decree to rebuild the temple in 538 B.C. (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-4; Ezra 6:2-5). The second was Darius I's decree in 512 B.C. confirming Cyrus' earlier one (Ezra 6:1; Ezra 6:6-12). The third was Artaxerxes' decree in 457 B.C. (Ezra 7:11-26).” (Thomas B. Constable) “This one decree [last one mentioned] fits the prophetic specifications better than did the previous ones because it commissioned Ezra to appoint magistrates and judges.” (Ranko Stefanovic)
From then until Messiah the Prince [appears in ministry], there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. "There shall be seven weeks [of years]“- 49 years - 405 BC - “To this work of restoration seven weeks are allotted. As we reach the end of this first division, seven weeks from the beginning, we are to find Jerusalem restored in its material aspect, the work of building the street and the wall fully accomplished.” (Uriah Smith) “‘And sixty two [more] weeks [of years]— If 457 B.C. is the correct decree…, then we should expect the appearing of Messiah ‘seven and sixty-two weeks later’ (the first 7+ another 62 = 69 x 7 = 483 years), in the Sunday year of A.D. 27. History precisely confirms this to be the case! Jesus waited until His thirtieth birthday, which occurred in the Fall of A.D. 27., to begin His ministry. Notice how Luke documents the year of Jesus’ baptism: ‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene… The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ.’ (Luke 3:1,15) Have you wondered why people thought John the Baptist might be the Christ? I believe some people were expecting Christ because they knew that 483 years had lapsed since the decree of Artaxerxes. The year had come for the Messiah to appear and John the Baptist, a forerunner of Messiah, was attracting a lot of attention because the power of the Holy Spirit rested on him. (Luke 1:17) Within this context Luke wrote, ‘When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.’ (Luke 3:21-23)” (Wake Up America- Larry W. Wilson) We will talk later about the last week of years or seven years, but back to the Magi of the east.
"And he sent them [the Magi] to Bethlehem and said, 'Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.' (8) He crowns his hypocrisy with a final base lie. For it was not that he wanted to bow down to the Child in adoring worship, but he intended to bow down the Child's soul into the dust of death." (Paul E Kretzmann)
When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.’ (9-11) “Johnson pointed out that ‘No adoration was offered to his mother.’ (Coffman Commentary) “‘And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.’) But mystical implication of these gifts are that they are symbolic- as the gold of deity; the incense of prayers of the saints; and the myrrh, of death and embalmment.The gifts “remind the reader of the homage of the Queen of Sheba to the son of David, with her gifts of spices and gold (1 Kgs 10:2).” (Tyndale by R. T. France)
A look at Psalm 72: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles will bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts. Yes, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him. For He will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him who has no helper. He will spare the poor and needy, and will save the souls of the needy.” “This was accomplished partly in Solomon; see 1 Kings 4:21; 1 Kings 4:34; 1 Kings 10:25; perfectly it is, and shall be in Christ:… ‘Yes,… He shall be the universal Monarch.” (Trapp) He will gather his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven, Mark 13:27. “He will redeem their life from oppression and violence;’ the two ways whereby the souls or lives of men are usually destroyed.-- ‘and precious shall be their blood in His sight;’ precious is the blood of his little one. ‘And He shall live;’ to wit, long and prosperously, as Solomon did; yea, eternally, as Christ did. Other kings must lose both their lives and kingdoms; but this King, whom Solomon typified, shall live for ever.” (Trapp) ‘And the gold of Sheba will be given to Him.” (Ps 72:10-15)
"'Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed'- or withdrew- 'for their own country another way.' (12) What a surprise would this vision be to the sages, just as they were preparing to carry the glad news of what they had seen to the pious king! But the Lord knew the bloody old tyrant better than to let him see their face again." (Jamieson, Fausett, Brown)
“Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of Yahweh appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt,’ The nearness of Egypt had always made it a natural asylum for refugees from Palestine. So Jeroboam had found shelter there (1 Ki 11:40), and at a later date, Johanan the son of Kareah and his companions had fled thither from the face of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 43:7).” (C. J. Ellicott) — ‘and stay there until I bring you word for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him. (13) When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, (14) and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son.’ (15) (Hos 11:1)"About 800bc, the LORD spoke through the prophet Hosea, saying, ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.’
“Notice that Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1—which originally referred to the nation of Israel coming out of Egypt—and actually declares it more perfectly ‘fulfilled’ in Jesus Christ!.. A careful study of Matthew reveals even further that Christ’s story actually repeats the history of ancient Israel, point by point—but He overcame where we had failed. Notice the following amazing parallels between the history of ancient Israel and Jesus Christ: • In the Genesis, a man named Joseph has dreams and goes into Egypt to preserve his family (Genesis 45:5). In the gospel of Matthew, another Joseph likewise had dreams and goes into Egypt to preserve his family (Matt. 2:13). • When the young nation of Israel comes out of Egypt, God calls it 'my son' (Exod. 4:22). When Jesus comes out of Egypt, God says 'Out of Egypt have I called my son' (Matt. 2:15)..... • In the Torah, the name 'Israel' first applied to one man: Jacob—representing his spiritual victory over sin. Even so, in the gospels, Jesus Christ is the Israel who came 'out of Egypt.' He is the One victorious Man who overcame all sin!" (Spiritual Israel by Doug Batchelor)
"’Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry;' etc. 'In their anger they slew a man,' saith Jacob of his two sons; 'cursed be their anger, for it was fierce,' etc., Genesis 49:6-7.” (John Trapp), "'and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. (16) Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying (17): 'A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.' (18) (Jer 31:15) “So Jeremiah speaks, after he had warned the Benjamites to flee from Bethlehem, and from Ramah, the adjacent district, to avoid the sword of the Chaldeans. Jeremiah 6:1; 31:15.” (Joseph Sutcliffe)
“The captives were assembled at Rama, Jeremiah himself being in chains, and there the fate of those who had escaped in the destruction of the city was decided at the will of the conqueror, Jeremiah 40:1. The nobles had been slain; the sons of the king had been murdered in his presence; the eyes of the king had been put out, and the people were then gathered at Rama in chains, whence they were to start on their mournful journey, slaves to a cruel monarch, leaving behind them all that was dear in life. By a beautiful figure of speech, the prophet introduces the mother weeping over the tribe, her children, and with them weeping over the fallen destiny of Israel, and over the calamities about to come upon the land.” (Barnes) "But prophecies have often a double sense, for the prophets always spake with the Messiah before them." (Sutcliffe) For the coming destruction on the world after the Judgment: “Few images could be more striking than thus to introduce a mother, long dead, whose sepulchre was near, weeping bitterly over the terrible calamities that befell her descendants.” (Albert Barnes)
Jeremiah “goes on to assure Rachel that her lost children (the reference is to captives taken into exile) will return, so that ‘there is hope for your future’. Perhaps Matthew intends us to see also in Bethlehem’s mourning a temporary sorrow, out of which God will bring joy and deliverance through Bethlehem’s Messiah, returning from a foreign land; there is no precise correspondence, but the relevance lies in the perception of God’s working through disaster to blessing, through death to life.” (R. T. France) The faithful remnant of every generation will be brought by resurrection of the body from the four corners of the earth to Abraham's bosom.
"Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the LORD appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.” (19-20)
Compare- “Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead.’ Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt.” Exodus 4:19-20 “This recollection of the story of Moses is, as we shall have occasion to see, just one in a series of recollections of that story in Matthews first chapters. Its purpose is not to intimate that there was, happily, some vague or coincidental connection between Moses, the first deliverer, and Jesus, the messianic deliver, but rather that the histories of those two men were, in the mysteriously providence of a consistent God, and according to the principle that the last things as the first, strikingly similar even down to details.” (The New Moses- A Matthean Typology by Dale C. Allison Jr)
“Then he arose, took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. (And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.’ (21-23)“‘A Nazarene’— A term of contempt (cp John 1:46, 7:52). The very name of Nazareth suggested insignificance. In Hebrew it meant sprout or shoot. The name is prophetically given to the Messiah (Isaiah 11:1).” (Vincent’s Studies)
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