The Narrative of Jesus' Infancy

from Wilfrid J. Harrington: Matthew, Sage Theologian, Chapter 3.

She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins. (Mt 1:21)

The Genealogy Of Jesus (Mt 1:1-17)

The Old Testament, especially Genesis and 1 Chronicles, makes skillful use of genealogies. In his turn, Matthew finds his genealogy to be an effective way of establishing the identity of Jesus. He traces Jesus' ancestry back to David and Abraham: 'An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham' (1:1). In particular, he shows that the one whom Christians proclaim as 'Messiah' can be correctly named 'son of David'.

Matthew's pattern of three sets of 14 generations is patently artificial; to get his 'fourteen generations from David to the Exile' he passed over in silence some of the kings of Judah. He appears to have been influenced by current apocalyptic thought which cast world history in periods of seven, in other words, 'weeks' of years. For Israel's history Matthew counts 'two "weeks" of generations (2 x 7 = 14 generations), from Israel's beginnings in Abraham to its high point in King David, two more weeks from its high point to its low point in the disaster of the Babylonian exile, and two further weeks during its ascent to its goal, Jesus the Messiah. Jesus Christ thus begins the seventh period, the period of perfection and fulfilment (see Daniel's seventy weeks of years in Dan 9). Hence Matthew uses an apocalyptic convention to proclaim that God has secretly ordered the economy of salvation so that all of Israel's history moves smoothly towards the Messiah.8

One must note that this Jesus is not only son of David - he is also 'the son of Abraham. ' As such he is fulfilment of the promise that through Abraham 'all the nations of the earth' would be blessed (Gen 12:3; 22:18). Significantly, the gospel closes with the commission to 'make disciples of all nations' (Mt 28:19). With his designation of Jesus as 'the son of David, the son of Abraham', Matthew is declaring the Messiah to be the Saviour (1:21) of Jew and Gentile.

When one looks at Matthew's list, one finds a mixed bag. To an extent we are faced with names only. But we can put faces on a goodly number of the names - and not all are prepossessing. Jesus' ancestry is not a saintly line; it is, in generous measure, disreputable. True, it begins on a high note, with Abraham the man of faith - who is followed by a weak Isaac and a rascally Jacob. It is comforting to stress this'aspect of the genealogy. One might say that Matthew is, in his manner, making the same point as the author of Hebrews: the sinless Jesus is 'like his brothers and sisters in every respect' (Heb 2:17). He had no control over his ancestry. There is, too, the comforting assurance that God 'can write straight on crooked lines,' that inadequate humans cannot thwart his purpose. They may indeed serve his purpose.

The Women

A fascinating feature of Matthew's genealogy is the prominence of women in his list. One would have expected Mary, of course, but not the others: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba. Their presence is due to the fact that they are 'holy irregularities': there is something not quite regular in the relationship of each with her spouse. Tamar (Gen 38) is an obvious example. She had been married to Er, son of Judah, who died without issue. According to levirate law (Deut 25:5-6), it was the duty of the next son, Onan, to marry the widow; the first son of that union would be regarded as son of the deceased, so guaranteeing the only immortality he might have. 9

Tamar had been hard done by her father-in-law who would deprive her of her legal right. Her claim was not selfish: she was upholding the cause of her dead husband. She took the law into her own hands. In the event, Judah has to admit: 'She is more righteous than I' (Gen 38:26). To see in Tamar's conduct an example of the end justifying the means is, for us, an obvious temptation - and a glaring instance of missing the point of biblical story. It is obvious that, in its context, her conduct is admirable: she was a woman of her day and age. She has done no more than the exploited widow of Jesus' parable: she had, in the face of male callousness, taken a womanly way to get her way (see Lk 18:2-5). A message is that the little ones of this world, the marginalised, have a God-given right to vindicate their rights. Is it not, after all, the message of the Magnificat?

Rahab and Ruth are less easy to assess. In the genealogy Rahab appears as wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz. She is certainly the Rahab of Joshua 2 - she who had sheltered Joshua's spies. A snag is that Boaz comes nearly two centuries later than the age of Joshua; a marriage of Rahab and Salmon is unlikely, to put it mildly! Straightway, for us, a problem. Biblical writers would shrug and ask: 'What problem?' They put their question, not ours. Rahab was a woman who had read the writing on the wall. Jericho was doomed - she cut her losses and threw in her lot with the eventual conquerors. Not very noble, perhaps, but surely very human.

Ruth, a Moabitess, having lost her Israelite husband, elected to stick with her mother-in-law, Naomi. The shrewd older woman was able to engineer a marriage for Ruth with Boaz, kinsman of her late husband. There is more than a suggestion that he was cleverly manipulated by the women. But all turned out well. Ruth, the Moabitess, became great-grandmother of David. Ruth is a touching human story. As in the case of Tamar there is concern for the right of a dead husband. There is, in Naomi and Ruth, an edifying love bond between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. And there is the charming touch: two admirable women do, gently, manipulate an admirable man.

Bathsheba -'the wife of Uriah' - is rather different (2 Sam 11). It is easy enough to see that she was not notably upset at having caught the attention of King David. And there is no evidence of overwhelming grief at the death of her husband. Indeed, her major role in winning the throne for her son Solomon, and his obvious acknowledgement of her part, make clear that she was an ambitious woman. She is, in my view, the least attractive of the four.

There we have them. Now, what of us? We can ask ourselves if we have anything like Tamar's passion for justice. Rahab might alert us to a temptation to cut our losses. True, she had ended up on the winning side - but could she really live with herself? The love of the older and the younger women, Naomi and Ruth, of different nationalities, is surely a headline. And there is the message that romance, and a dash of female charm, are precious human values. We should be grateful that we have the gift of the Song of Songs, that celebration of sexual love. There is the less savoury but no less human side. The love-affair of David and Bathsheba led to the callous murder of an innocent Uriah. We are joyously reminded that human love, when it is truly such, is God's loveliest gift to humankind. We are painfully reminded that. we humans can pervert love. It seems to me that the four women are, in diverse ways, a radical challenge to us. They are a challenge to what can be best and what might be worst in our humanness.

Message of the Infancy Narrative

Matthew's genealogy has told the reader that Jesus is 'son of David' and 'son of Abraham. ' Matthew leaves the 'son of Abraham' motif and its Gentile connotation until the story of the Magi (Mt 2:1-12) and concentrates first on son of David. What emerges is that Jesus is of the Messianic line. What we have been at pains to show is that he is of this line. Here is documentation to back up the assertion in Hebrews that he is like us in all things. Jesus of Nazareth is of the human family of David. Jesus the Saviour is of the human race. There is our comfort and our hope.

The Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke have had a notable influence on Christian tradition and have put a profound mark on Christian art. The long Christian appreciation of them has not been misplaced. We had sensed that there was something special here - that these texts said quite a lot more than they appeared to say. In our day we have, happily, come to realise that both infancy narratives - which are wholly independent of each other - are, first and foremost, christological statements. It is along this line, and only here, that we can grasp their true meaning.10

Matthew 1-2 compared with Luke 1-2

Matthew and Luke shared a twofold tradition: Jesus' home was Nazareth; Jesus was descendant of David and, as such, appropriately born in Bethlehem. Reconciliation of these traditions has influenced the shape of their narratives. For Matthew, Jesus' birth in Bethlehem offered no problem; in his view, Bethlehem was home of Joseph and Mary. He has to move Jesus from Bethlehem to Nazareth. For Luke, on the other hand, the home of Joseph and Mary was Nazareth. He has to arrange to have Jesus born in Bethlehem. This contrived reconciliation, by each evangelist, of the dominant Nazareth tradition (throughout the gospels Jesus is counted a Nazarene) with the Bethlehem tradition, would suggest that birth at Bethlehem is to be taken as a theologoumenon (a theological affirmation related as an historical event) - in this case an affirmation of the Davidic descent of Jesus.

In building his infancy narrative Matthew has made use of two main blocks of material: a cycle of angelic dream appearances, and the Magi story. The material has been thoroughly edited by Matthew but the two blocks are still recognisably distinct. Angelic dream appearances: 1:20-25; 2:13-15; 2:19-23. It is evident that Joseph wears the cloak of the famous patriarch Joseph, especially in his being a man of dreams and in his going down to Egypt. The Magi story: 2:1-12. As it stands, this is a self-contained story, with no mention of Joseph. Matthew composed its sequel (2:16-18) when he combined it with the flight into Egypt episode.

A feature of Matthew's gospel is his use of formula citations (Old Testament quotations) which sit loosely in their context. They are notably frequent in his infancy narrative: 1:22-23; 2:5-6; 2:15; 2:17-18; 2:23. Matthew has recognised the applicability of particular Old Testament texts to particular incidents in Jesus' career. He introduced them because they fit his theology of the oneness of God's plan and because they help to bring out, for his Christian readers, who and what Jesus is. Thus, the five infancy narrative citations tell us that the virginally-conceived Jesus is God-with-us, that as Son of David he was, fittingly, born in Bethlehem, that, in being called out of Egypt, he re-enacted the Exodus of his people, that he suffered the Exile of his people, and that as the Nazorean he began his saving work.

The Birth of Jesus

Joseph and Mary were betrothed. In Jewish society, betrothal was something far more more serious than our marriage engagement. Betrothal was really a marriage contract, except that the partners had not begun to live together. Joseph discovered that his betrothed was pregnant 'of the Holy Spirit' is Matthew's nod to the reader; Joseph was not aware of that factor and was in a quandary. He was a 'righteous' man, that is, Law-observant. He assumed that Mary had been unfaithful. The death penalty for adultery (Deut 22:23-27) was not then, if ever it had been, in force; divorce was the answer. This was the course Joseph decided on - except that he wanted to divorce her 'quietly. ' It is not clear how he could have hoped to achieve this. And divorce would not have helped Mary at all. She would have been left on her own to bear her baby - in a thoroughly disapproving society. The 'righteous' man, Joseph, was a confused man. He desperately wanted to do the decent thing, but his 'solution' was no solution at all.

Happily for him - and for Mary - God took a hand. In a dream all was made clear. Mary was not an unfaithful bride but a wholly privileged instrument of God. Her child, of divine parenthood, would be Saviour; he is the one who 'will save his people for their sins. ' And here Matthew throws in his formula-citation. He looked to Is 7:14 (in the Greek) and found there a word of promise: 'the virgin would bear a son'. That son will be Emmanuel, God-with-us. Cleverly, Matthew has anticipated the close of his gospel: 'Remember, I am with you always' (Mt 28:20). In that unique child of Mary, a first-century Palestinian Jew, we meet our God. Paul had put it in his inimitable fashion: 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself' (2 Cor 5:19).

The Magi Story (2:1-12).

In this narrative, Matthew has cast back into the infancy the reactions that, historically, greeted the proclamation of the risen Lord: some believed and paid homage; others rejected the message and the preachers. In other words, christological revelation was followed by proclamation and by the twofold reaction of acceptance/homage and rejection/persecution. But this had been prepared for in the ministry of Jesus. The same pattern is presented in the infancy narrative.

There seems little point in looking for the homeland of the Magi -whom Matthew seemingly regards as astrologers of some sort. Nor is there any point in looking to a comet, a supernova, or a planetary conjunction to account for 'his star' (1:2). A star which rises, goes before, and comes to rest over a place is no natural phenomenon but a miraculous (more precisely, a symbolic) star. More to the point is that, for Matthew, the Magi represent the Gentiles, fittingly alerted not by an angel (as Luke's Jewish shepherds) but by a star. The liturgical tradition of the feast of Epiphany has caught Matthew's intent. The Magis' role as prefiguring the acceptance of Gentiles into the Christian community points toward the universal character of the gospel. Jesus is functioning as son of Abraham.

The Balaam narrative of Numbers 22-24, embroidered with Jewish tradition, would, skillfully used by Matthew, appear to have been the inspiration of the Magi story. Balaam was summoned by Balak 'from the east' to curse Israel. Significantly, Philo calls him a magos. Similarly, Herod tried to use the Magi for his own ends. In his oracle Balaam had declared: 'A star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel' (Num 24:17). Here, credibly, is 'his star' (Mt 2:2).

Flight and Return (2:13-23)

The next two episodes are coloured by the story of Moses in Egypt - again as elaborated in Jewish tradition - and also echo the Exodus motif. The basic story line in 2:13-15 concerns the rescue of the child saviour from the machinations of the wicked king by flight into Egypt. Jewish tradition, as we find it, for example, in Josephus, had it that the Pharaoh of the Exodus had been forewarned by one of his 'sacred scribes' of the birth of a Hebrew who would constitute a threat to the Egyptian kingdom. Pharaoh and the whole of Egypt were filled with dread (see Mt 2:3). Pharaoh's plan was frustrated by a warning communicated in a dream to Moses' father. The parallels between this Jewish legend and the pre-Matthean infancy narrative are manifest. Read against the background of Exodus 1-2 Jesus emerges as a Moses-figure. The Hosea quotation - 'Out of Egypt have I called my son' - refers to the exodus of Israel from Egypt. Matthew sees that Jesus relives the history of his people, not only in the Exile but in the previous going down into Egypt.

The story line in 2:16-18, involving the massacre of the male children in Bethlehem, echoes Pharaoh's decree against the male infants of the Hebrews. Matthew, with his formula citation of Jeremiah 31:15, works in another theme: that of the Babylonian Exile. Again, Jesus is associated with a tragic event of his people. The names in the three formula citations: Bethlehem (the city of David), Egypt (the land of the Exodus) and Raman (the mourning place of the Exile) are theologically suggestive. The final episode (2:19-23), too, gives us three significant names: Israel, Galilee and Nazareth. The 'citation' here is not really such: Matthew is playing on the name Nazareth. Quite likely, he is thinking of the neser, 'branch' of Is 11:1 and of nazir - one consecrated to God. At any rate he knows that this son of David, Son of God, is none other than Jesus the Nazorean.

In the following chapters we look at this 'Nazorean' through Matthew's eyes. I have, previously, striven to discern the distinctive christological insights of Mark and Luke. Now I add the view of Matthew. I find refreshing pluralism. And that before throwing in the heady brew of Paul and John.