The Prophetic Curveball

Like Fred MacMurray, Rachel had three sons. Boy, I’m dating myself with that one.

Work with me here. I know the patriarch Jacob’s favorite wife only gave birth to two boys physically: Joseph and Benjamin. No need to argue about that. Her unfortunate death in the immediate aftermath of bringing the latter into the world ensured she would produce no more heirs for Jacob.

But she still ended up with three boys. Some of our readers are getting it now.

Mine

For everyone else, recall Genesis 48, when Jacob is ill and about to die. On that deathbed, he blesses the two eldest sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. In that context, he tells Joseph this:

“And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance.”

Having previously stripped his eldest son Reuben of the birthright and the double portion that according to Hebrew tradition went with it (a sad tale considered here), Jacob now gave Reuben’s double portion of his estate to Joseph, divided between his two sons. This had the effect of elevating Ephraim and Manasseh by a generation, making them officially sons of Jacob rather than mere grandsons. That is what Jacob meant by “Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are.” That is also why there is no tribe of Joseph, and why Israel still has thirteen tribes even though Jacob only had twelve sons. God would later take the tribe of Levi to be his priests, technically removing them from the tribal tally, so that James could speak of “twelve tribes scattered abroad” even though there remain thirteen. As a nation, Israel respected Jacob’s choice, and Ephraim and Manasseh became two of the largest and most powerful tribes in the nation. The northern kingdom of divided Israel was often called simply “Ephraim”, though it included nine other tribes.

So then, legally speaking at least, if Jacob had three “sons” through Rachel — Benjamin plus Joseph’s two boys — then Rachel also had three sons, though she was long gone by the time Jacob blessed Joseph’s children. From Rachel’s womb came three Israelite tribes.

A Feature, Not a Bug

This is not verbal sleight of hand. I’m coming to a point. We have noted in our studies that God often fulfills the predictions of scripture on more than one occasion. Equally, he may fulfill them in ways the first Israelites to hear them could never have anticipated. Once in a while, God pitches a prophetic curveball.

This is a necessary device, a feature of predictive prophecy, not a bug. The holy scriptures are firmly in the public domain and always have been. God’s enemies are every bit as free to read and study them as those who love him. The Lord thus deemed it appropriate to couch the occasional prophetic word in enigma so that he could give genuine direction and hope to those who love him (like providing the wise men with directions to Bethlehem) while simultaneously confounding his enemies with the very same OT texts. The apostle Paul explains this strategy in 1 Corinthians 2.

Matthew 2 is a classic example of a prophetic curveball. Joseph took his wife Mary and fled to Egypt on the instruction of an angel because Herod was determined to kill off all competition for his throne. After the family had departed Bethlehem, Herod had all male children in the region under the age of two murdered. In this context, Matthew writes, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’ ” When Joseph returned to Israel after Herod’s death, this is exactly what happened. God had called his Messiah out of Egypt, just as Hosea wrote, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

Original Context vs. Fulfillment

“Wait a sec,” says the discerning reader. “In its original context, that prophecy refers to the nation of Israel coming out of Egyptian slavery. You’d never think to apply it to Messiah.” Exactly right. Yet Hosea’s prophecy establishes that God calls his sons out of Egypt. As Moses told Pharaoh, Israel was God’s “firstborn son”. Christ also is also God’s firstborn son, as Psalm 89 and Romans 8 assure us. According to Matthew, that’s a legitimate fulfillment of prophecy. He called it such and evidently had no concern that his devout readers would be inclined to quibble. We ought to base our understanding of legitimate prophetic fulfillment on Jewish precedent. It was no cheat. Code, definitely, but not a cheat.

My point, then, is that a prophecy may refer to a particular set of circumstances in its original context and another set of circumstances in its fulfillment while remaining entirely legitimate. Both Satan and Herod could have discovered where to look for Jesus if they had bothered to read Hosea carefully. They didn’t. The prophetic scriptures insisted the Christ would be born in Bethlehem. They did not compel him to stay there and die on the whim of a godless king.

Another Fulfilled Prophecy

Okay then, back to Rachel and her three sons. Here is another fulfilled prophecy in Matthew, only a few lines down from the one we’ve just been looking at.

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.’ ”

When Herod killed all the male children in Bethlehem under two, Matthew tells us that the crazed king didn’t stop there: he killed the under-twos “in all that region”. The southern border of Benjamin’s tribal allotment is about five miles north of the city of Bethlehem, very much within “all that region”, as you can see on this map. We can be confident large numbers of Rachel’s Benjamite descendants died under Herod’s orders, a great sorrow for the nation. Yet in so doing, Herod unwittingly fulfilled God’s word through Jeremiah.

The Interesting Quirk

Speaking of God’s word through Jeremiah, let’s have a look at that verse in its original context. We find it in Jeremiah 31, where Matthew’s quote strums a bit of a minor chord:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’ ”

What’s incongruous about Rachel’s weeping is this. It’s the only sour note in a long passage about millennial blessing that promises not just the restoration of Judah but that “At that time, declares the Lord, I will be the god of all the clans of Israel.”

Jeremiah is only one of many, many prophets who predicted the comprehensive return of the so-called “lost tribes” from Assyrian captivity and dispersion to reunite Israel forever, a prophecy that still awaits its fulfillment in the millennial reign of Christ. In the original context, the children for whom Rachel is weeping are not the dead Benjamite infants of the first century, but rather the lost tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, carried off by Assyria. Jeremiah is saying something like this: “Right now, Rachel weeps for her boys. They are no more, carried off into captivity, nowhere to be found, their tribal allotments inhabited by half-breed Samaritans and exiles from other nations settled there by the king of Assyria. But in a future day, all the exiles will return.”

Throwing a Curveball

In the glorious era of Israelite reunification, Rachel’s tears will all be dried. That’s a lovely thought, and it’s what Jeremiah is telling us in chapter 31. It’s most definitely not what Matthew is telling us in the passage’s NT fulfillment.

Could you have seen that coming? Only if you were paying very, very close attention. Sometimes the Lord hurls a prophecy right into the strike zone, brushing Satan back off the plate. “Born of a virgin” means ... well, born of a virgin. “Wounded for our transgressions” means wounded for our transgressions. “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage” means precisely what it says. No wordplay there.

But once in a while, God throws a prophetic curveball, leaving his enemies flailing away at empty air. If you’re a fan of the game, as I am, that’s something to cheer.