Matthew 2 · a question people ask
Hosea's "called my son out of Egypt" speaks of Israel. How can Matthew say it was fulfilled in Jesus?
Here is what each says. Hosea: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1). Matthew: Joseph "departed into Egypt, 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.”" (2:14-15). Matthew doesn't name the prophet, and he doesn't explain how the words were fulfilled; he says that they were. These notes don't explain it for him. Favor's chapters on Exodus 4 and Genesis 46 each draw a line through Hosea 11:1 to this verse, and each is labelled there as a reading, not as something the New Testament states. The chapter on Deuteronomy 8 asks whether Matthew sets Jesus's forty days in the wilderness beside Israel's forty years, and one of its two readings rests partly on this verse; it chooses neither.
The verses
““When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”
“He arose and took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, 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.””