Matthew 2:23 Commentary and Bible Study

You search in vain to find where this quotation comes from in the Old Testament. There is no prophecy which says this. Ridderbos comments, ‘The town Nazareth, in fact, is not even mentioned in the Old Testament. Various attempts have therefore been made to dig up something in the Old Testament which loosely resembles the word “Nazarene”. One possibility is the Hebrew word nēzer (“crown”); another, more likely one is nēser (“shoot”), as in Isaiah 11:1, where the Messiah is called a “branch” from Jesse’s roots.’ But Ridderbos remains unconvinced by the attempt to find a Hebrew word from which Nazarene is derived.Matthew’s wording is significant: ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets.’ The use of a plural word ‘prophets’ suggests that this is the general drift of more than one prophet, and not the exact words that are being quoted from any one prophet. What would that mean? Ridderbos prefers to explain the quotation as drawing attention to the low esteem of Galilee in general and Nazareth in particular. He says, ‘Even though Christ had been born in the royal city of Bethlehem, he would be known as “Jesus of Nazareth.” In human eyes it was not a mark of prestige but a badge of inferiority (cf. John 1:46) to be born in Nazareth, or indeed, anywhere in Galilee.’ In the verse Ridderbos refers to, Nathaniel replies to Philip’s claim to have found the Messiah with the words, ‘Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Isaiah 49:7 uses the term ‘to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth’ to describe the reputation that Messiah, the servant of the Lord, will have among the people in general. Isaiah 53 expands on the suffering and humiliation that he will endure on behalf of his people. Several times in the Gospels Christ is said to be held in low regard because of his association with Nazareth (Matthew 13:54-57; Mark 6:3; John 6:42; 7:15, 41, 52).