Egypt: A Dead End or a Hiding Place in God's Christmas Plan?

Sometimes God initiates sharp turns in our lives. We may feel we reached a dead end. But destiny often embeds the setbacks we anguish over. This next prophecy about God’s Christmas plan helps us see that. The prophecy lies within a passage in Hosea 11 about the Lord’s relationship with Israel. The surface meaning of verse 1 refers to the Exodus, when God brought Israel from the bondage of Egypt:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

In Matthew’s narrative about Christ’s birth and the events after it, however, Matthew applied the second part of the passage to Jesus. Matthew used the passage from the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible, to say that generations before Jesus was born in

The Giza Pyramids/Photo: Ricardo Liberato, Wikipedia Commons

Bethlehem, God shared a future event with Hosea. A time would come when Jesus, the promised Seed in the Garden of Eden, would be called from Egypt. Matthew’s observation was a stunning one.

At this point of the Christmas story, Jesus was an older child. Joseph and Mary cared for Him in a house. Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem because of a mysterious, lingering star that signaled a kingly birth. When King Herod learned of the Magi’s intentions, he urged them to report back once they found the baby “so that I too may go and worship him.”

In Bethlehem, overwhelmed with joy, the Magi paid tribute to the baby Jesus. But a dream warned them not to share their discovery with Herod. They return home by another route. An angel also warned Joseph to leave Bethlehem after the Magi departed:

 Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:13-15, ESV).

Herod realized that the Magi had outfoxed him.  Worried about the biblical prophecies that foretold a future king and because of the age given to him by the Magi, Herod ordered infants two years old and younger killed.  When Herod himself died, Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned to Israel and settled in Nazareth.

As God protected the ancient Israelites from Pharaoh by bringing them out of Egypt, God protected His own Son by sending Him into Egypt. The land of the Pharaohs became the hiding place of God.

In God’s Christmas plan, the abrupt turn toward Egypt wasn’t the end of the story, and the delay wasn’t forever. Jesus still would be viewed as the Great Light Who would preach within the ancient tribal boundaries of Naphtali and Zebulun (Matthew 4:12-16).  

The God-led turn toward the pyramids and desert of Egypt was only another essential step in the Lord’s phenomenal plan. 

Next: God’s promise that Jesus would be a prophet like Moses