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THE PROPHECY-FULFILLMENT MOTIFS IN THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO MATTHEW AND THEIR RELEVANCE FOR
CHRISTOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION

by Dhyanchand Carr
Executive Secretary for Mission & Evangelism, CCA, Hong Kong.


Introduction

    “God planned and executed every detail of Jesus’ Life. Many texts in the First Testament of the Bible show the plan which was present in God’s mind. Especially because Jesus had to die to pay the price for sin God could not take any chances. Therefore, God had to plan even the betrayal by Judas well in advance and have it executed carefully...” So runs the thought of many. No doubt many texts in the New Testament and particularly the formula quotations of Matthew..., which are prefixed by the formula “Now all this happened in order to make come true what the Lord had said through the Prophet...” seem to reinforce such beliefs.

    Many will be tempted to ask “What is wrong with such a belief? Is there not a striking correspondence between many of the prophecies and the events which have been seen as their fulfillment?” The response of the scholars to such an assumption has been, “The identification of the prophecies came first. They had created certain expectations. When the faith in Jesus as the Messiah emerged as a result of the indomitable conviction about his resurrection, the Jesus story began to be shaped in the light of the expectations. This is how the illusion of exact prediction and fulfillment came about”. But of course, as every student of the New Testament knows many prophecies which are claimed to have had their fulfillment in Jesus had not been identified as “Messianic” prophecies at all. In fact, as in the case of “Nazarene” no concrete prophecies exist (notice the plural in Matt. 2:23). We have to do hard study to see which prophecies are, predictions of Jesus becoming the “Nazarene”. No doubt, at the other extreme we do have the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem fulfilling to the letter when Jesus is reported to have ridden on both the mother ass and her colt! (Zech 9:9). Therefore, a simplistic solution of the prophecy shaping the narration won’t do. On the other hand, if simple people and not erudite scholars were expected to understand the Gospel Story we cannot go for sophisticated scholarly explanations either. Perhaps we need to look for other motifs in addition to the simple prediction-fulfillment motif. Without ruling out the motif of predictions coming true altogether we need to take into account at least two more motifs – (i) Proverbial Truths getting embodied tangibly in the life of Jesus and (ii) the history of Israel having a symbolic re-enactment in Jesus, the only true representative of the chosen people of God. I wish to suggest that if we pay greater attention to these two motifs we shall have additional bricks for reconstructing Christology in a very meaningful way. This will be the burden of this paper.

1. Embodiment Of Proverbial Truths As Fulfillment

     My grandmother was a very devout woman. Often she used to get very frustrated that none of her daughters nor any of her grandchildren came up to her expectations. During such moments of extreme irritation and disappointment she will quote Isa. 1:2 “Earth and sky, listen to what I am saying! The children I brought up have rebelled against me...” and will go on to say that this text after all had to come true and that is why her children and grandchildren behaved the way they did! She knew well that strictly speaking those words were supposed to be God’s words. But she had little hesitation in applying the same words to her own experience. Most certainly she did not for a moment presume that those words had been spoken about her and her children. She knew that that was the common experience of many human parents as well as that of God as parent of the people of Israel.

     For example, is it not much simpler and more straight forward to understand our Lord’s words with reference to the use of parables. “They see but do not see. They hear but do not hear. Neither do they understand” (Matt. 13:13). This in fact is the reality. So parables, in the light of PS. 78:1f cited in v.34, which are meant to make things clear, in fact, become riddles. Thus, the well known exasperated prophetic comment about Israel’s proverbial stubbornness becomes true all over again. If we take it thus then we are relieved from the burden of having to assume that Jesus deliberately sought to confuse the people just so that the prophecy may be seen to be fulfilled! In other words the prophecy itself in this case should be treated more as a proverb which epitomizes a truth of willful blindness and then discerns a theological purpose which transcends such stubbornness.

     Once this principle is understood it becomes easy to see how “prophecies” about Judas also fit the same pattern. Let us begin with the use of PS. 41:9 in John’s account (Jn. 13:18) “The one who, shared my food has turned against me”. Everyone who reads the psalm knows that this is not a prediction of any kind. Rather, it is a complaint of a saint who realizes that there is no one to turn to but God alone as even close friends become hostile. Our Lord uses this text from the psalm to comfort himself. Friends themselves turning to become enemies is no new phenomenon. It has occurred to other saints before. The same thing is happening again. So, just as the former saint turned to God now Jesus also turns to God. In other words PS. 41:9 was not a prediction about Judas. Our Lord also could not have thought of it in that light. Only for those who have a prior mind set that everything that happened to Jesus was predetermined by God it will give that meaning. For others who are quite accustomed to understanding fulfillment in a proverbial sense would perceive meaning very differently. This way of perceiving meaning is clinched at least with reference to this particular text when we refer to the Lukan parallel. In Lk. 22:21, our Lord says “Behold the hand of the betrayer is sharing a meal with me now”. The allusion to PS. 41:9 is unmistakable. But because Luke did not intend it as a prediction but only as a proverbial saying he avoids the word fulfill. In Matt. 26:23 also Jesus uses the allusion “One who dips his bread with me will betray me...”. It is clear Matthaean narrative also bears the allusion to PS. 41:9 in much the same way. Acts 1:20 where there is a conflation of two texts from the Psalms PS. 69:25 and 109:8 also seem to establish the same principle. For the way in which Matthew brings together the Potters” Field and 30 pieces of silver from Jeremiah and Zechariah we have to wait until we enunciate the next principle.

     I hope, enough has been said in this section to show how what looks like a prediction could easily and more simply be understood as proverbial, however, simultaneously infused with theological significance.

2. Reenactment Of Israel’s Sufferings, Hopes And Call In Jesus

     Jesus came into the world to fulfill the redemptive history of Israel and not just its aspirations for liberation and dominance. i.e., what has been prefigured and foreshadowed in the history of Israel was given full authentication in and through Jesus. Further, Jesus did not come into the world merely to pay the price for sin. Jesus, as Son of God was the “Rock” which went with them That “Rock” was Christ himself (1 Cor. 10:1-4). I am sure many of us have struggled to understand the meaning of these words from Rabbi Saul turned Paul the Apostle. Simply because the way in which the Jewish mind perceived meaning has been difficult for us to discern we have tended to ignore such allusions and implied inferences as well as some direct citations and have taken them merely in the predictive sense willy nilly hinting at God’s fore knowledge and predestination. The result is that we project a god who runs human history through remote control like a computer programmer and who requires a bloody sacrifice to appease his anger against sinners. A simple assessment of the prophecy fulfillment as “vaticinium ex eventu” will never convince the Christians in the pews. Instead, if we paid closer attention to the principle of re-enactment a very different image of God and a very different way of perceiving meaning from the Cross of Christ can be seen to emerge.

      Matthew in fact operates on this principle quite systematically. The slaughter of the infants and the resultant wailing reminds him of the cry of the mothers of Judaea at the time of the exile, the flight of infant Jesus into Egypt and return recall that Israel was called from Egypt (Hos. 11:1), the purchase of the potter’s field with the money returned by Judas reminds him of the promise of return to Palestine and restoration of lost land rights and the 30 pieces of silver remind him of God’s promise to give back a Good Shepherd to the flock that is about to be butchered and scattered... So what happened thro’ Judas is not simply a prediction about the betrayer. Further, it also becomes a pointer that in Jesus there was a re-enactment of all the redemptive significance of the history of Israel. In other words, the re-enactment in Jesus of the paradigmatic aspects of Israel’s history, are in fact a more pointed proverbial fulfillment.

      What really is the import of this principle of re-enactment? It is probably this. Israel are the chosen people of God not simply because they are the Covenant people. They are in fact paradigmatic of the oppressed/victim sector of all Human History. God’s special involvement in their history as the Rock that moved with them is symbolic of God’s presence in the midst of all the oppressed. Jesus as the Son of Man the Human One embodies and incorporates within himself this on going involvement of the Second Person of the Trinity in the history of the oppressed turning their miseries into channels of grace to the rest of humanity.

      This means the “Must” of the sufferings of the Son of Man is in fact a “Proverbial Must” rather than a Predictive/Deterministic Must”. This is how supremely Jesus “fulfills” Isa. 53 which was also not intended originally as a prediction but only as a theological reflection on the meaning of the Sufferings of Israel.

3. The Nature Of Predictions Seen Fulfilled

     We are not suggesting that the element of fulfilling expectations and hopeful predictions is totally absent. From the time “Solomon” proved to be a hoax the prophets of Israel indeed began to look for the real Son of David to come as the Restorer of all that was taken away by the first Son of David i.e. Solomon and as the initiator of the endless reign of God. But this aspiration and hope got mixed up with nationalistic/Zionist aspirations. While Gospel writers like Matthew are keen to show that Jesus is the Son of David they are also keen to divert the attention away from nationalistic Zionist aspirations. This is why Jesus is hailed as Son of David in healing stories which show that Jesus’ healing ministry transcended the nationalistic and cultic/ legalistic boundaries. Thus the Son of David is the universal Son of Man, and in fact the Greater Son of the great David. For the Son of David as healer does not figure anywhere in the First Testament. But it is when Jesus heals the blind and the lame in the Temple that the children shout Hosanna to the Son of David. This is precisely to reverse what David himself is supposed to have done, namely take away Zion from the Jebusites and stigmatize them as ineffectual as blind and lame in fighting back. The ban on the Jubusites to enter Zion then mysteriously gets transferred to all the blind and the lame of Israel. Now this double curse is reversed. The blind and the lame who were forbidden to enter the sanctuary of Zion are brought into the holy place they are forbidden to enter from the time of David and then healed. This action of Jesus therefore removes at once the cultic banning of the handicapped as well as throws open the sanctuary to all those who are kept away as aliens and distant from the Covenant (see Matt. 21:14 and compare with II Sam. 5:8).
So, far from literally fulfilling the prophecy about the Son of David, Matthew radically reinterprets it.

    I suppose enough has been said to show that the prophecy-fulfillment motifs need careful study inorder to reconstruct Christology.

4. The Redemptive Significance Of The Death Of Christ