“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way…”1
It’s interesting
how the story of Jesus’ birth is started in this section of Matthew. It makes the reader
think that there’s going to be a detailed narrative about how Christ was born, similarly to
the story in Luke. Matthew, though, is a different kind of writer and decides to focus on
Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father whereas in the narrative in Luke, Mary’s experiences are the
focus of the story along with the shepherds out in the fields.2
Instead, Matthew focuses on
Jesus’ earthly adoptive father, Joseph, a descendant of David,3
who was considered
righteous, yet is also revealed to be apprehensive about his fiancé.
The writer of Matthew was most likely a Jewish Christian, and wrote the gospel
sometime around 80-100 CE,4
for a church community that was primarily Jewish, but
was in the process of being “pushed out” of the larger Jewish community because of their
following of Jesus as the Messiah. These Jews, along with some Gentile members, was
the audience Matthew wrote for as he brought his readers of Matthew a “true meaning of
Christ.”
5
Matthew seems to want to reliably and incontrovertibly place Jesus as Jewish,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, as well as prove that Jesus is the Messiah. Beginning the
gospel with an account of Jesus’ ancestry is how this is accomplished going all the way back to Abraham and ending with Joseph, a direct descendant of King David, Jesus’
adopted family, whose lineage needs to be cleared up to erase any possible doubt of
Jesus’ lineage, and to explain how Jesus was conceived (by the Holy Spirit, and not of an
adulterous affair). So, Matthew sets up the identity of Jesus as the descendant of
Abraham, a child of a virgin, the King of the Jews, and God’s Son called out of Egypt.6
It’s here in this context that the man Joseph is introduced in Matthew 1:19. Take
into account, however, some presuppositions about the immediate family of Jesus. Joseph
and Mary are already engaged, and Mary is already pregnant. So it’s as if the author
places the reader somewhere during the year that Joseph and Mary had gotten engaged
and we’re now faced with Joseph at odds with himself about what to do with this woman
he is supposed to marry pregnant with, as he assumes, someone else’s child. Joseph does
not know, yet, how the child was conceived.
Engagements at that time were considered contracts, most typically between the
groom and the bride-to-be’s father. People were married a year after the marriage
contract was made, and during that time the couple could not live together or have any
marital relations. The couple would also not live together until after the wedding. The
woman, however, could still be accused of adultery during the engagement the same as a
married couple, and the engagement could only be voided if either of the couple dies or if
the groom chooses to divorce his fiancé.7
Again, it’s here that the reader is transported
into a story that has been unfolding for close to a year.
Joseph, an ideal Jewish man, knows the Law regarding what he should do now
that he knows Mary is pregnant. Joseph again also knows that he could divorce Mary,
accusing her of adultery, which could bring her public shame and even have her put to
death because of her transgression. So Joseph, being a man of righteousness and above
reproach knows that he must divorce her. Joseph shows that he is merciful as well, and
decides in the end that he will send Mary away, quietly divorcing her, so that her disgrace
wouldn’t become public knowledge. Here, Joseph is possibly showing the kind of mercy
that Jesus will later call for from his followers and is illustrated through his teachings.
Mercy, however, isn’t enough for Matthew, and offers his readers an addition.
One that shows both that Joseph is a very good man, and one that also offers a reader
more of an explanation of just who Jesus really is. In verse 20, an angel appears to
Joseph; presumably just as he had decided to divorce Mary quietly and then went to bed
satisfied that he is doing the right thing. This is the first of many instances that Matthew
uses dreams in the narrative of the gospel to help explain details to both the reader and to
the characters experiencing the dream in the narrative they wouldn’t have otherwise
known. Here, in Joseph’s dream, his decision to divorce Mary is overshadowed by an
otherworldly explanation. Joseph will be the father of Emmanuel, “God with us.” If the
narrative of Matthew were a movie, the opening scene would show a sleeping Joseph and
the angel appearing to him in a dream. Dreams were a way of showing readers in the
Jewish and the Greco-Roman world in the first century that something extraordinary was
going to happen or was about to happen.8
The angel gives Joseph (and the reader) some
important information. It’s here and in through verse twenty-five that Matthew shows the reader Joseph is a pretty awesome guy and that the baby yet to be born will be of the
most extreme importance. The angel starts by telling Joseph to not be afraid of wedding
Mary. The angel is also telling Joseph, in effect, don’t worry about what the Law says;
you need to do what God says. This would have to be a crucial moment in Joseph’s life.
Since he was a righteous man, the ideal Jewish man, he is now being told that he needs to
forsake what he already knows; his life, his religion, and his ethical principles and is now
being invited to participate in something much larger than himself; something that the
prophets have been waiting for to be fulfilled. In a way, Joseph is being asked to sacrifice
himself for the sake of Jesus. In the angel’s words of telling Joseph to not be afraid,
echoes of past patriarchs and prophets can be heard, of God telling them to be obedient,
to surrender, and to do that which God wants done. “Don’t be afraid,” God said to
Abraham.9
“Don’t be afraid,” God said to Isaac.10 “Don’t be afraid,” God said to
Joshua.11 It seems that God always passes this message onto the faithful. To no be afraid
to act. In Matthew, Joseph is asked to take a leap of faith, and go against what he knows
the law states. By doing so he is following in the tradition of and does something that is
on par with the well-known characters of the Hebrew Bible. Again, Joseph is a righteous,
Jewish, man.
The angel also tells Joseph that the child his fiancé is carrying is not simply an
illegitimate child, but one that was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Unlike other Greek
myths, which would have been known to first-century Jewish and Gentile readers, this
conception didn’t take place like those spoken of in Greek myth. No god had sex with Mary. Instead, this conception is indicative of God acting in the world directly in order to
bring about the salvation of that world. It could be said that here is one of the first
indications that an eschatological event is taking place. The child about to be brought into
the world, given to Mary directly by God, is going to change the world. This also gives
the relationship between God and Jesus special significance.
The angel also tells Joseph what to name the baby. By doing so, Joseph is
accepting the child into his own family, and thus, his bloodline, to tie Jesus to the line of
David, all the way back to Abraham. Matthew also shows the reader the importance of
Joseph, as a “Son of David,” the only other person besides Jesus to be called that.12 This
allows Joseph to adopt Jesus as his own flesh and blood, tying Jesus lineage to his earthly
father’s. According to Senior, this also highlights Jesus’ status as an outsider, a position
shared with the women of the genealogy of Jesus’ ancestry, and possibly as a way for the
author of Matthew to show how the Gentiles who follow Jesus at the time of the writing
of the gospel that they were also now “adopted” into the family of Abraham.
The name, Jesus, or Joshua also has special significance. Joshua was Moses’
successor and by having Joseph name his son the same shows the reader that Jesus is now
fulfilling the role Moses played in leading God’s people out of bondage, only now, that
release will be from the slavery of death, instead of slavery to a nation. The meaning of
the common name Jesus/Joshua also has significance: Jesus or, “Yahweh saves.”
13 This
common name places Jesus as one that places himself and humanity as united, and also emphasizes the eschatological even of Jesus coming into the world, that is, that he came
to the world to save it.
Matthew uses the introduction of Joseph, his dream, what the child will be called,
and shows that this was all done to fulfill prophecy. In verse twenty-three, is found the
first of ten different “formula quotations.”
14 By using scripture found in Isaiah15
,
Matthew shows that Jesus is a fulfillment of scripture, and emphasizes these fulfillments
to helps prove to the reader that Jesus is the Messiah long awaited for and this is also
emphasized by the angel saying that Jesus will “save the people from their sins,”
16 which
also points to the end of the narrative and Jesus’ death on the cross, thereby literally
fulfilling this scripture. Boring states that there are reasons this passage from Isaiah was
used. The first is that the original scripture was addressed to members of the House of
David. Second, that Matthew’s faith in Christ is shown to be true through scripture.
Third, in Isaiah, the prophet states that a young woman will conceive and bear a son, and
Matthew most likely was already familiar with the virgin birth of Christ.17 The main
reason Matthew uses this fulfillment quotation is to “identify Jesus as Son of God, as
presence of God among God’s people.”
18 It’s interesting to note that the angel also tells
Joseph that while he will name Jesus, but that the people will call Jesus Emmanuel, or “
God is with us,” a symbolic name that denotes Jesus’ ongoing presence within the Church. Finally, this portion of scripture ends with Joseph, dutifully obedient, carrying out
the instructions that the angel gives him. Joseph even goes above and beyond and doesn’t
even consummate his marriage to Mary until after she has given birth. Verses 18-25 also
seem to more fully explain the seemingly oddly placed reference in verse sixteen
regarding Joseph and Mary, and also serve to introduce some of the fundamentals of
Matthew’s Christology. In Jesus and throughout Matthew’s narrative, it is shown that
God is with us and by not giving Joseph any speaking parts; Matthew instead puts the
spotlight on Jesus himself. Through his divine origin, his lineage to David, and to be the
world’s Savior, is anchored by Matthew’s use of the “all this…” in fulfillment of
scripture. The texts that Matthew uses again point to the eschatological framework of the
Christ. Jesus came to usher in a new age, in which God and humanity will no longer be separated.