A popular verse in the Gospel of Mathew, often cited as a prophetic fulfilment by Jesus Christ, is that of Mathew 2:23. The verse reads :
“and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.”
Scholars and Christians have long speculated what this verse means and have commented on the subject many times throughout history. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, “No explicit prediction to this effect is found in the recorded Old Testament prophecies, and various theories have been advanced to explain the reference…. but these interpretations seem far-fetched, to say nothing of other difficulties.” [1]
Trying to understand what the author of Matthew’s Gospel had in mind is thoroughly intriguing. Considering the language in verse 23, there are essentially three positions utilized to show fulfilment.
First, the connection is often framed as a vague allusion to Isaiah 11:1, where the Hebrew text reads, “A shoot will spring from the stump of Jesse, and a branch (netser) will grow from his roots.” This verse uses netser to symbolize a future ruler descended from David, emphasizing royal lineage. By contrast, being called a “Nazarene” functioned as a term of derision in the Gospels, reflecting Nazareth’s perceived insignificance. Furthermore, no surviving ancient Jewish, Greek, or Aramaic text explicitly links the place-name Nazareth to netser. Rather, “Nazareth” is most commonly traced to a Hebrew root meaning “to guard” or “to watch”, a fitting description for a town perched on a hillside, and a sense quite distinct from the symbolic “branch” of Isaiah. The Greek term Nazarene, meanwhile, simply denotes someone from Nazareth. Taken together, these points suggest that reading Nazareth as a deliberate fulfillment of the “branch” prophecy stretches the linguistic evidence further than it can bear.
Second, it is meant as a quotation of Judges 13:5, “the boy shall be a Nazirite.” I think this is a highly intriguing passage, but ultimately it falls short of the prophetic comparison. To start with, Judges 13:5 refers to Samson, not a messianic figure. With a considerable amount of typological similarities between Jesus and Samson, this is a possibility, but the absence of this in Matthew’s Gospel makes me have my doubts. I think it is plausible that the author of Matthew’s Gospel might have this verse in mind, but ultimately I think there is a far better explanation.
Lastly, some argue this verse is a quotation of a now-lost document/traditon that Matthew considered to be authoritative. I find this to be the most plausible option of all three. A lost oral prophecy or oral tradition could quite possibly be what Matthew is referring to at the end of Chapter 2. Considering that if Mathew intended to cite an exact prophetic quotation from the Old Testament, he could have cited a specific prophet instead of saying summarily, “the prophets,” I find this quite compelling. Further note John Chrysostom’s 9th Homily on Matthew where he writes:
“For many of the prophetic writings have been lost; and this one may see from the history of the Chronicles. For being negligent, and continually falling into ungodliness, some they suffered to perish, others they themselves burnt up and cut to pieces. The latter fact Jeremiah relates; Jeremiah 36:23 the former, he who composed the fourth book of Kings, saying, that after a long time the book of Deuteronomy was hardly found, buried somewhere and lost. But if, when there was no barbarian there, they so betrayed their books, much more when the barbarians had overrun them. For as to the fact, that the prophet had foretold it, the apostles themselves in many places call Him a Nazarene.”