The Scripture behind the Scripture

Out of Egypt Have I Called My Son

Hosea 11:1 recalls that out of Egypt God called his son, meaning Israel at the exodus. Matthew 2:15 applies these words to the child Jesus returning from Egypt, and this famous case must be handled honestly.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”Hosea 11:1

“And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”Matthew 2:15

In its own place

In its own place. Hosea prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century before Christ, calling a wayward nation back to God. Hosea 11 opens with tender language of God as a father to Israel his child, When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. In its plain original meaning this is not a prediction of the future at all but a remembrance of the past. It looks back to the exodus, when God delivered the people of Israel, whom he elsewhere calls his firstborn son, out of slavery in Egypt. The verse recalls God's fatherly love in that founding act of redemption. The tragedy of the chapter is that despite this love, Israel turned to idols and rebelled, and Hosea goes on to lament the nation's unfaithfulness even as he holds out God's enduring compassion. So in its own context Hosea 11:1 is a backward glance at the exodus, a statement of God's covenant love for the son he redeemed from Egypt, setting up the sorrow of that son's ingratitude. It is historical reflection and covenant lament, not a forecast of a coming individual.

Where the New Testament takes it up

This is a direct quotation, but it is a famous and important case because Hosea's words originally refer to Israel's exodus, not to a future Messiah, and Matthew reads them typologically rather than as simple prediction. In Matthew 2:15, when Joseph takes the child Jesus and his mother to Egypt to escape Herod and later returns, Matthew says this fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Matthew is clearly aware that Hosea was speaking of Israel, for he follows the Hebrew sense, out of Egypt have I called my son, rather than the Septuagint, which reads his children. The point is not that Hosea predicted the Messiah's flight to Egypt. Rather Matthew reads Jesus as the true Israel, the true Son, who recapitulates and fulfills the story of God's people. Where Israel the son went down to Egypt and was called out yet proved unfaithful, Jesus the Son goes down to Egypt and is called out and proves perfectly faithful. This is typological fulfillment, seeing a pattern in Israel's history brought to its intended goal in Christ. Christians should say this plainly rather than pretending Hosea foretold a detail of Jesus' infancy. Matthew's inspired reading discerns Jesus as the one in whom the whole vocation of God's son Israel is finally realized.