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THE EMMANUEL – “GOD WITH US”
The Gospel according to Matthew is a well-organized anthology of apostolic preaching. The college of scribes, who lived in Antioch toward the end of the eighth century and were responsible for the final redaction, compiled a large amount of traditional material and did so very well.
According to the Pentateuchal scheme, the five books of the law are organized into five great discourses of Jesus, which form the main framework. However, between one discourse and another, there is a narrative section in which the evangelist collects episodes from the life of Jesus with a didactic intent. Therefore, each block comprises a narrative section and a discursive section. There are always five blocks.
The first block contains chapters 3 and 4, in which the passage from the Baptist to Jesus is narrated, and the ministry’s beginning culminates in the programmatic speech on the mountain. The first block ends with that key verse: “When Jesus had finished these talks.” The second part begins with a series of narrative miracle episodes in chapters 8 and 9, followed by the great missionary discourse; the Church is entrusted with continuing Jesus’s work. After the final verse: “When Jesus has finished giving these instructions,” the third part begins, and so on. Therefore, there are five blocks, each consisting of the actions and words of Jesus.
Nevertheless, we still have to add the beginning and the end. In this way, we can say that the Gospel of Matthew is composed of seven large parts, a sign of totality and fullness, because the number 7 in the Jewish tradition is associated with the week or the days of a phase of the moon, marking fullness—seven parts: five central, one opening, and one closing. The closure is represented, of course, by the story of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. The opening, in the first two chapters, contains the so-called ‘Infancy narratives.’ It is a theological introduction to the Gospel.
In this case, Matthew worked within his own tradition. The content of the first two chapters of Matthew is unique to the first evangelist; it is not found in the other evangelists. As we know, Mark and John do not narrate Jesus’s childhood. Luke describes it, but in adifferent way, with different episodes. Only the names of the people and cities correspond.
The entire narrative is their own, whether Luke’s or Matthew’s. This means these stories were not part of the common tradition but resulted from a particular theological reworking. The school of Matthew’s scribes has reworked a synthesis into a preamble to the Gospel,based on the study of the Scriptures.
From the beginning, one could already see where it would all end. From the beginning ofJesus’s historical experience, there were signs of the fulfillment of his work. That is why the infancy narrative in Matthew is structured around five biblical quotes. I insist on the number because it is not accidental.
First, they built a frame of reference using these five biblical references. The first is from Isaiah (7:14): “The young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.” The second is from the prophet Micah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrata, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.” The third is from the prophet Hosea, at the beginning of chapter 11: “From Egypt, I called my son.” The fourth is from the prophet Jeremiah, in the book of Consolation, chapter 31: “In Ramah, a voice mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.” The fifth is not from a particular prophet but from the prophets in general: “He will be called Nazarene.”
It is an expression not found precisely in any prophetic text, but it alludes to a Hebrew concept, probably the נצר (netser). The sprout will be called Nazarene because it is the prophetic sprout from the root of ‘Jesse,’ as different prophetic traditions promise. (The word Isaiah uses for ‘sprout’ is נצר (netser), an agricultural metaphor that, by Matthew’s day, was understood to refer to the coming Messiah.)
Therefore, Matthew’s school began with biblical texts and prophetic images of a messianic type. He has chosen five, always as a reference to the law, and around these five sentences, he has built childhood episodes to show how the fulfillment of the Scriptures occurs in Jesus. The usual refrain is: “This happened to fulfill what was said by the Lord through the prophet.”
There is, therefore, a compliance underlying. In the life of Jesus, the promise is fulfilled, as the prophets foretold. In particular, when Hosea 11 is quoted: “Out of Egypt I called my son,” an important idea is given to us. When the prophet refers to his son, he thinks of Israel; in Matthew’s text, the son is Jesus.
“Out of Egypt I called my son”: It is the Lord, God of Israel, who remembers the Exodus; it means: “I brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, who are like a son to me.” In Matthew’s application, alluding to the flight to Egypt and the return, the meaning of the text becomes: “God the Father brought back His Son Jesus from the condition of exodus in Egypt.”
The relationship is between Israel and Jesus. This is an important principle of Matthew’s theology: Jesus is the true Israel. The man Jesus is the fullness of the people; he is among the people and represents the true qualities of the people of Israel. He is the true Israel, the holy remnant, and the Son of God in the complete and strong sense. Jesus lived what Israel lived. Not only does Jesus keep the promises made to Israel, but he is also the faithful Israel; he is the one who responds to the Father as God pleases. This is the fulfillment of the covenant. In Jesus, God’s project is fulfilled. God keeps the promise because Jesus, the true Israel, is faithful. It is the perfect encounter that leads to fulfillment, to fruition.
The book of Matthew begins with a noteworthy expression. In English, it is often translated as ‘genealogy,’ but in Greek, there is a better word: “Book of Genesis” ‘Βίβλος γενέσεως’ = Biblos geneses. Precisely: “Genesis” is the title of the Bible’s first book. The editor deliberately begins his text with the expression “Book of Genesis.” It seems to be the initial title: “Genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” The book of Genesis is a synthesis of the Old Testament; the genealogy mentions the names of Jesus’ ancestors. With a relatively typical narrative scheme in the Old Testament, he summarizes 42 names, from Abraham to Joseph, reviewing two thousand years of Israel’s history. From father to son, from generation to generation, his mercy remains faithful. He promised Abraham, he promised David, he promised the exiled people in Babylon, and he brought them back. And in the fullness of time, the promise was fulfilled.
The book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ, which opens the Gospel of Matthew, synthesizes the biblical story, simply through the names of parents and children across generations, manifesting the power of God’s blessing. Four women’s names appear in the midst of all the men’s names. They are not random. Matthew omits the names of the great mothers of Israel, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, and in their place appoints foreign people. He begins by naming Tamar, a Canaanite; then he names Rajab, the prostitute from Jericho, herself a Canaanite; then he names Obed, a holy but Moabite woman, a foreigner belonging to a hated people. Finally, the one who was Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, was responsible for David’s adultery.
Four foreign women are described as being in irregular or sinful situations. Why are these women named in the genealogy? To show universal openness. There was already openness in Jesus’ genealogical roots. If, in Jewish tradition, belonging to the people was determined by the mother or the woman, and if there were foreign women in Jesus’ family, it means that foreigners were somehow already at home in the Old Testament.
The final opening of the gospel: “Make disciples of all peoples” is not a new and free invention but the logical consequence of what came before, of the root, the ancient intention of God. Old and new things, from the only heritage of this head of the family, are precisely the promises fulfilled in Jesus. Furthermore, ‘four’ is a cosmic number: the four parts of the world, the four cardinal points. Four foreign women refer to the whole world, to all humanity.
But the ending names the fifth woman, Mary. After repeating the same literary cliché 42 times, he changes at a certain point. Let’s read toward the end of the genealogy: Eliud, the father of Eleazar. Eleazar became the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Joseph—the logic should continue: Joseph begot Jesus, and so it would usuallyend, but it doesn’t end like this—Joseph is presented as the husband of Mary, from whomJesus was born, called the Messiah. Nor does it say Joseph, the husband of Mary, who begot Jesus, but instead emphasizes that Jesus was born of Mary.
In the cases of the other women, the formula was this: “Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar… Salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab… Boaz became the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.” So the usual way should have been Joseph begot Jesus from Mary. Instead, after strong insistence on an identical formula, the narrator deliberately changes at the end: “Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus, who is called the Messiah.” The man Jesus recognized as the Messiah. All these generations are 14, plus 14, plus 14.
Why does it stand out? It is a particular style typical of Jewish culture, a little difficult for us to understand. ‘Fourteen’ is David’s number because, in Hebrew, as well as in Greek and Latin, there were no numeral signs; rather, the letters of the alphabet were used as numbers. Thus, א = ‘alef,’ the first letter of the alphabet, is equivalent to 1, and ב = ‘beth’ is the second letter and equals 2. In Hebrew, only the consonants are written; the letters of the alphabet are all consonants. David’s name is made up of three consonants דָּוִד – DVD, and in the Hebrew alphabet, D equals 4, V equals 6, and the other D again equals 4. Adding 4 + 6 + 4 = 14. And in the common way of speaking of the scribes, 14 is David’s number. The name David is equivalent to 14.
The evangelist Matthew elaborates on this genealogy by grouping it into three sets of 14. The son of David, the heir of the promises, the Messiah is David, plus David, plus David. It is an underlining of compliance and fullness; they are 14 X 3. It is a fullness of the promise made to David and his descendants.
Also, the narrative of Jesus’s birth raises the question of Joseph and the virginal conception of Jesus. Matthew recounts the dream: an angel of the Lord tells Joseph not to be afraid and to trust Mary because what was born in her comes from the Holy Spirit; it is not the result of adultery, as one might expect, but a creative intervention of the Spirit of God. Joseph trusts.
It is a revelation from God; this revelation explains to him what is happening. The angel gives him a commission, and Joseph accepts it. He trusts, gets up, and does as the angel indicates: he takes his wife, Mary, with him. “All this happened to fulfill….” Here begins the first significant reference to the word Emmanuel. In the Isaiah passage, the name Emmanuel is highlighted: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” Since it speaks to a Greek environment, the evangelist translates it into Greek.
Emmanuel is a symbolic name coined from Isaiah with a particular meaning. That child will not be called Emmanuel; he will be called Jesus, but Jesus is God-with-us. This is understood in the end. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the Risen Christ’s last word is precisely this: “I am (God’s name) with you every day.” Emmanuel, God with us, is Jesus himself. He is God made man, truly present in his community, the Church, every day until the end of time. Not that this is a forcing of the biblical text. Someone said the virginity of Mary, the virginal conception, was an invention to square the Scriptures. Impossible, because this verse from Isaiah was not read in the Jewish tradition as messianic; that is, in the Jewish community of that time, they did not expect the messiah to be born of a virgin, and therefore there was no reason to say that Jesus was born of a virgin so that correct interpretations are accepted.
The extraordinary fact of Jesus’s birth illuminated the biblical interpretation, and the historical fact of the virginal conception clarified Isaiah’s prophecy. Therefore, the Christian text rereads and interprets the ancient prophecy, making sense of it and showing the whole relationship of fulfillment. Jesus, true Israel, fulfills the promises to Abraham, David, and their descendants.