Interpreting old testament prohetic literature in Mathhew: Double fulfillment

Trinity Journal, Spring 2002 by Blomberg, Graig L

The mid-to-late-1980s saw a flurry of evangelical interest in the NT's use of the OT. Moises Silva and Darrell Bock discussed how one might categorize the various uses in terms of both hermeneutics and text type.1 Walter Kaiser strongly maintained that OT authors consciously intended much of what the NT writers described in terms of fulfillment,2 while Douglas Moo defended a cautious use of senses plenior.3 Richard Longenecker and Gregory Beale debated the reproducibility of NT exegesis of the Old.4 An anthology edited by D. A. Carson and Hugh Williamson presented a survey of each NT corpus' use of the OT and key scholarship on the topic.5 But no consensus on any of the major issues was established and evangelical interest seemingly turned to other issues.6 During the 1990s the majority of the discussion of "intertextuality" between the Testaments, as it is increasingly termed, took place outside evangelical circles and, across the entire theological spectrum, published research consistently narrowed itself to more focused studies of specific passages and themes rather than treating broader hermeneutical questions.7

The new millennium holds out hope for progress on the projects largely abandoned after the eighties, as Carson and Beale are editing a major reference work to be published by Baker on the use of the OT in the New.8 Employing Richard Hays's categories of quotation, allusion, and echo,9 it is designed to be a fairly comprehensive analysis of the meaning of each major NT reference to the Old and, for full-fledged quotations, an assessment of the OT passage in its original context, its pre-Christian Jewish history of interpretation, the text-form used by the NT writer, and a categorization of the hermeneutic employed in its NT context.10 This project is an extremely welcome development. Focusing simply on the particular area of interest of this essay, the gospel of Matthew, it is noteworthy that the major works on Matthew's use of the OT are even older than the flurry of more general interest in the 1980s,11 largely because that decade was also spent debating, and for the most part refuting, the notion that Matthew in its overall literary genre corresponds to the Jewish category of midrash.12 My previous research on Matthew has suggested that a particular OT prophetic text cited by Matthew often points both to and beyond its immediate historic context, without necessarily affirming all that the gospel writer or the individuals he quotes maintains.13 This phenomenon, which I am provisionally entitling "double fulfillment" emerges particularly prominently in Isaiah. Inasmuch as I know of only one recent study on "Matthew and Isaiah" per se,14 it seems unlikely that this essay will prove too redundant.

Now a clarification is required at the outset. The expression "double fulfillment" at times has been a virtual synonym for sensus plenior, that is, the idea that an OT text has a straightforward literal meaning and a second, more esoteric or opaque meaning, often understood to be part of the divine intent of the text but not consciously in the human author's mind.15 That is most assuredly not how I am using the expression. Rather, by double fulfillment I mean that in a number of texts from the latter prophets cited by Matthew, and especially in Isaiah, the results of an ordinary grammatico-- historical exegesis of the OT text point clearly to a referent within the time frame of the OT books. Yet those same passages, especially when read within the context of their immediately surrounding paragraphs or chapters, disclose a further dimension of meaning never approximated by any OT-age event.

It seems plausible, therefore, to affirm that the prophetic author consciously looked both for a relatively immediate referent and for a more longer-term eschatological fulfillment. Usually Matthew provides more information about the nature of that fulfillment than the prophet could have been expected to know, and normally no intermediate events or processes in between the two fulfillments appear to support Kaiser's notions of generic fulfillment or single intent.16 On the other hand, more than pure typology-the repetition of theologically significant patterns of God's actions in history17-seems at work in these texts, even though Matthew frequently does use simple typology and also appeals to the more direct fulfillment of prophetic promises that had no short-term precursors. If double fulfillment is too confusing a term to describe these uses of Isaiah by Matthew, then by all means a better term may be suggested-it is the concept and not the label with which I am concerned. But enough prolegomena; it is time to turn to the texts. I will proceed in their order of occurrence in the narrative of Matthew.

I. ISA 7:14 IN MATT 1:23

Because of the controversies spawned by Isaiah's famous prophecy of a virginal conception, it might seem unwise to begin with this illustration. But in fact it seems to me one of the clearest examples, and one that sets the stage for several others. Despite staunch conservative resistance to the idea,18 I cannot see how the "plain meaning" of Isa 7:15-"before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste"19-can mean anything other than that Isaiah believes the child he has just described (v. 14) will be born within his lifetime, as a harbinger of the destruction (by Assyria!) of kings Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Remaliah (7:1).20 The language of 8:3 echoes that of 7:14 as Isaiah goes in to the prophetess and she conceives and gives birth to a son. It is no longer controversial to observe that the 'almah of 7:14 simply refers to a young woman of marriageable age, without settling the question of her virginity.21 Thus it seems most likely that the child of 7:14 is Isaiah's son, Maher-- Shalal-Hash-Baz.22 Isaiah 8:4 reinforces this equation, with language carefully reminiscent of 7:15-"Before the boy knows how to say 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria." Only now Israel is explicitly included among Assyria's victims.