Today marks the traditional date for the Feast of the Epiphany (though, as in the Anglican Church, usually celebrated on the Sunday between 2-8 January), which commemorates the visit of the Magi bearing their gifts to the baby Jesus narrated in Matthew 2:1-12. This feast has special significance to the vast majority of present-day Christians who, like me, are Gentile in their origin.
Matthew begins his Gospel by identifying the subject of his biographical work as “Jesus Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1, trans. JRM). These titles, as well as the order in which he lists them, provide an essential clue for how to understand the narrative that follows. Both of them allude to covenant promises found in the Hebrew Bible, and implicitly assert God's faithfulness to those promises, despite the people's unfaithfulness ("exile:" Matt 1:11, 17). Matthew is making the claim that this Jesus of Nazareth, about whom he is writing, was the long-awaited heir to the promise of a Davidide who would finally bring the nation's exile to an end and inaugurate the hoped-for everlasting kingdom (2 Samuel 7:4-17; Psalm 89; cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:21). Simply put, Jesus was the rightful heir to Israel's throne occupied, at the time of his birth (ca. 5-4 BCE), by the Idumean Roman puppet, Herod the Great.
Jesus, the “son of David,” was also, according to Matthew, the “son of Abraham,” the status Jewish people proudly saw themselves to have (e.g., Matt 3:9; 8:11-12; 4 Macc 6:17, 22: 18:1; t.Ned. 2.5; Sifre Deut 311.1.1 et al.; cf. the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians). By this designation Matthew alludes back to Genesis 12:1-3 (reiterated and expanded in Genesis 15, 17, 22) and thereby identifies Jesus as the “seed” of Abraham in whom the promise of blessing for all the world is fulfilled. Jesus, in other words, was Israel's king for the whole world. How this blessing is extended and received is clear from the conclusion of the Gospel, where the resurrected Jesus commissions his disciples in Matthew 28:19: people from all nations—even Scots-Irish Americans like me!—receive the Abrahamic blessing when they respond to the gospel and become disciples (i.e., “followers”) of the “son of Abraham.”
This is how the visit of the Magi must be understood in Matthew's story. These astrologers “from the east” (Parthia? Babylonia? Arabia?), having seen his “star” (the tailed comet recorded in the Spring of 5 BC?) deduced (because of the planetary massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 7-6 BC?) that a baby had been “born” (τεχθεὶς) “King of the Jews” (Matt 2:2). Here Matthew's skill as a storyteller and narrative theologian becomes evident, as he tells the story of the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus by using the template provided by the story of the birth of Moses in the Torah. His basic theological point is obvious: just as Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of captivity in Egypt, so this Jesus would be the deliverer who would effect the New Exodus promised in, inter alia, Isaiah 40-55.
In Matthew's narrative, Herod (thus implicitly viewed as a usurper to the throne) and “all Jerusalem” responded to news of the birth of the Jewish King the very paranoid way Pharaoh and the Egyptians were said to have done more than a millennium earlier in response to the Israelites' fecundity (Exodus 1): they were “terrified” (ἐταράχθη [Matt 2:3]; cf. Josephus, Ant. 2.206, 215; likewise, the response of Herod in ordering the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem [Matt 2:16] parallels that of Pharaoh in ordering the murder of all male Israelite infants [Exod 1:22]).*
In contrast to this Jewish response (foreshadowing the passion narrative; cf. Matt 27:1, 25, 37), the Gentile Magi found Jesus and “prostrated themselves” (προσεκύνησαν) before him (Matt 2:11; i.e., they assumed the posture indicative of the worship due to God alone; cf. Matt 4:9-10). In Matthew's narrative, it becomes clear that this act of homage/prostration is a picture of the rightful act of worship due the one already described as "God with us" (Matt 1:23). More significantly, Matthew intends the Magi to be understood to be the firstfruits of the anticipated pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the one true God (cf. Matt 8:11-12) The Evangelist does not, as he does a number of other times in the chapter, use a formula quotation to argue that this act "fulfilled" a biblical text or texts (cf. Matt 2:5-6, 15, 17-8, 23). But he didn't have to. Indeed, his narrative clearly echoes two texts. First, Psalm 72:10-11, 15, 17:
The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him;
the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts.
All kings will bow down to him
and all nations will serve him ...
Long may he live!
May gold from Sheba be given him.
May people ever pray for him
and bless him all day long ...
May his name endure forever;
may it continue as long as the sun
All nations will be blessed through him [cf. Matt 1:1!],
and they will call him blessed."
Second, Isaiah 60:6, a text describing the nations' coming to Israel's light (Isa 60:3) when their exile is finally over:
Herds of camels will cover your land,
young camels of Midian and Ephah.
And all from Sheba will come,
bearing gold and frankincense
and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.
Significantly, for the last line the LXX translation of Isaiah 60:6 reads, "ἥξουσιν φέροντες χρυσίον καὶ λίβανον οἴσουσιν καὶ τὸ σωτήριον κυρίου εὐαγγελιοῦνται" ("And they will come bearing gold, and they will bring frankincense, and they will proclaim the salvation of the Lord"). By implication, with this resounding echo Matthew declares that the Magi's prostration before the baby Jesus is eloquent testimony that this child would be the one to bring God's promised salvation to his people (Matt 1:21!).
All too often we Gentile Christians forget that the one we love and serve is, first and foremost, Israel's Messiah, and that it is by God's grace alone (cf. Rom 11:6) that we “wild branches” have been “grafted in” so as to replace the “natural branches” who have been broken off the olive tree because of their unbelief (Rom 11:17-24). Paul, the Jewish Apostle to the Pagans, however, sees this as a temporary strategic expedient to allow time for the Gentile mission he was spearheading: the natural branches will one day be grafted back on. Once the "fullness" (τὸ πλήρωμα) of the Gentiles has come in (cf. Gen 10; Isa 66:18), "all Israel" will be saved as God fully restores the twelve tribes (Rom 11:25-27; cf. Deut 32:43 [Rom 15:10]) to receive the eschatological blessing!** Thus we Gentile followers of Jesus Messiah ought to remember what Paul wrote in a later letter: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called 'uncircumcised' by those who call themselves 'the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:11-13, NIV). Soli Deo Gloria!
I will close by quoting the Collect for Epiphany from The Anglican Book of Common Prayer:
O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
*Herod the Great is thus transparently portrayed by Matthew as the "Pharaoh" of the Second Exodus in keeping with his portrayal of Jesus as the New Moses. On this, cf. the classic argument of Dale C. Allsion, Jr. in his The New Moses: a Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Cf. also the updating of his argument in "Enacting Moses: Jesus and Simon Stylites," in Interpreting Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025) 85-148.
**Cf. Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans' Apostle (New Haven and London: Yale, 2017) 59-64.
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