Church of the Nazarene

Matthew 2: He shall be called a Nazarene

I like to think about the little mysteries of the Bible and Matthew’s comment that Joseph’s moving his family to the town of Nazareth, thus making Jesus a “Nazarene” is a fulfillment of prophecy is one such mystery. There’s no record of such a prophecy being stated, yet Matthew seems quite confident that pointing his readers to this is yet another proof of the Messiah-ship of Jesus. I’ve found a couple of explanations to this. Some people think it has to do with the similarity of “Nazarene” to a Hebrew word meaning “Branch.” Use of that term is found in the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah. It has to do with the Messiah’s being a descendent of David. The other idea has to do with the prophecies concerning the Messiah’s being despised and rejected. The connection is that Nazareth is considered to be a backward, unimportant place that could only produce backward, unimportant people. There’s a danger in overstating the standing (or lack there-of) of Nazareth here. It’s not as though it’s thought of as a bad place. It’s more of a “no place” than it’s a “bad place.” From the point of view of the religious scholars of that day, Nazareth and a hundred other small towns don’t qualify as a place worthy of consideration. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be overlooked and rejected…a sort of “Nazarene.” Whatever the answer to this little riddle, Matthew thinks it should help people decide, along with the rest of his Gospel, that Jesus, is, indeed, the Messiah of God.

Take Away: We don’t have to solve every mystery of the Bible, sometimes they just add a bit of spice to our study of it.