Navarre Bible Commentary:Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Flight into Egypt by Esteban Murillo

Matthew 2:13-15; 19-23

13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, 20 “Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” 21 And he rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23 And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 333 and 530.

Commentary

2:15. The text of Hosea 11:1 speaks of a child who comes out of Egypt and is a son of God. This refers in the first place to the people of Israel whom God brought out of Egypt under Moses’ leadership. But this event was a symbol or prefiguration of Jesus, the head of the Church, the new people of God. It is in him that this prophecy is principally fulfilled. The sacred text gives a quotation from the Old Testament in the light of its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. The Old Testament achieves its full meaning in Christ, and, in the words of St Paul, to read it without keeping in mind Jesus is to have one’s face covered by a veil (cf. 2 Cor 3:12–18).

Return to Nazareth

2:22. History tells us that Archelaus was ambitious and cruel like his father. By the time Joseph returned from Egypt, the new king was quite notorious. “In the different circumstances of his life, St Joseph never refuses to think, never neglects his responsibilities. On the contrary, he puts his human experience at the service of faith. When he returns from Egypt, learning ‘that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there’. In other words, he had learned to work within the divine plan. And to confirm that he was doing the right thing, Joseph received an instruction to return to Galilee” (St J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, 42).

2:23. Nazareth, where the Annunciation had taken place (Lk 1:26), was a tiny and insignificant Palestinian village. It was located in Galilee, the most northerly part of the country. The term “Nazarene” refers to Jesus’ geographic origin, but his critics used it as a term of abuse when he began his mission (Jn 1:46). Even in the time of St Paul the Jews tried to humiliate the Christians by calling them Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). Many prophets predicted that the Messiah would suffer poverty and contempt (Is 52:2ff.; Jer 11:19; Ps 22) but the words “he shall be called a Nazarene” are not to be found as such in any prophetic text. They are, rather, as St Jerome points out, a summary of the prophets’ teaching in a short and expressive phrase. However, St Jerome himself (cf. Comm. in Isaiah, 11:1) says that the name “Nazarene” fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah 11:1: Christ is the “shoot” (nezer, in Hebrew) of the entire race of Abraham and David.

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

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