Hebrew Gospel Pearls #4 – Matthew 2:13-15

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Nehemia: As we know, the name Yehovah doesn’t appear even one time in the Greek New Testament. And so he was looking at different Hebrew versions to see, okay, where do they have the name “Yehovah?” And as he’s comparing du Tillet and Munster, he sees that they’re basically the same version with slight differences. But Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew is something completely different.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to episode 4 of Hebrew Gospel Pearls. We are in Matthew chapter 2 starting in verse 13, and we’re going to see how far we get this time.

Keith: [laughing] We’re no longer what we would say, as much as we’re trying to go by the sections, we realized there’s so much information for each one that we just don’t know. So let’s just see what happens, Nehemia. Let’s get started.

Nehemia: Let’s see how far we get. Yeah, okay. Let’s just start with reading it. You know, the way that Shem Tov has it broken up, he has it broken up into 115 sections, the Book of Matthew, and section 4 is only three verses, which is why I think maybe we’re going to get more than three verses done this episode, but let’s see.

Let me read it because it’s such a short section. “Hem holchim vehinei malach Hashem nira el Yosef,” “They were walking…” this is the magi or the astrologers, whoever they were, these wise men. “They were walking and behold an angel of the Lord.” And it has “Hey” there for Hashem, we’ll get back to that. “An angel of Yehovah appeared to Joseph.” “Kum vekach et hana’ar ve’et ima uvrach leMitzrayim.” “Arise and take the boy and his mother and flee to Egypt,” “vesham ta’amod ad omri elecha,” “and there, remain, stand until I tell you,” “ki Hordus yevakesh et hana’ar laharog,” “for Herod is seeking the boy to kill.”

“Veyikach et hana’ar ve’et imo” “And he took the boy and his mother,” “vayehi shama ad met Hordus,” “and he was there until the death of Herod, “ligmor ma shene’emar al pi hanavi,” “to complete that which was said by the prophet,” “umiMitzrayim karati livni,” “and from Egypt I called my son.”

So, three verses, that’s the entire section. What’s interesting is, Shem Tov has these critical remarks, we’ve talked about these. By “critical” I mean he’s criticizing the Gospels. These are called “hasagot”, these critical remarks, the Hebrew word for that. And these 115 sections, I would assume… Say, “assume”.

Keith: Assume.

Nehemia: I would assume the reason is that after each short section, he wants to give a critical remark. And so one of the things I’ve been looking at is what is his remark after section 3? After section 4? After section 5? And after some of the sections he doesn’t have any remark.

Keith: Uh-oh.

Nehemia: And you’re left wondering, “There was nothing in whichever section that was, to comment on?” And some of the sections he just doesn’t have a comment.

Now, for example, in sections 6 and 7 he has no remark, nothing to say. And in section 4 he does say something interesting that we’ll get to later – he draws a parallel with Moses. I don’t know if we’ll get to that this episode or the next one. But he’s comparing Yeshua’s life here to Moses’ life in the house of the daughter of Pharaoh. So it’s really interesting. But he doesn’t have anything really of substance to say on these three verses, and I guess there’s not… And it’s surprising, as we’ll see. Like, he could have said something here that would have been a really good question that Shem Tov didn’t raise, and I wonder about that, but we’ll get to that.

All right, can we start with the phrase, “the angel of the Lord,” the angel of Yehovah?

Keith: Absolutely, we must.

Nehemia: I mean, that is such an interesting phrase in and of itself. George Howard explains how, when he was originally studying Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, he wasn’t actually interested in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew per se. He was looking at the du Tillet and the Munster versions of Matthew that were published in the 1500s. Munster was a Protestant theologian and linguist. Du Tillet was a Catholic Bishop. Around about the same time, in the early 1500s, they both claimed to have found a Hebrew version of Matthew preserved by the Jews. They eventually published these Hebrew versions of Matthew in a printed book – that’s what published means back then, and even today – they took the manuscript and they published it. And it was assumed that Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew was the source of those two manuscripts.

Well, Howard is looking up a completely different issue. He’s not interested in Hebrew Matthew. He’s interested in the name Yehovah in the New Testament. As we know, the name “Yehovah” doesn’t appear even one time in the Greek New Testament, and so he was looking at different Hebrew versions to see, “Okay, where did they have the name Yehovah?” And as he’s comparing du Tillet and Munster, he sees that they’re basically the same version with slight differences, but Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew is something completely different. It is not the same text as du Tillet and Munster. It is, what he became convinced was, an original Hebrew composition rather than a translation.

Now, we should point out that many translations have “Yehovah” in them – that is, they’re translations from the Greek into Hebrew. And I just want to pull up here one of the things that we were talking about we wanted to bring, which was the Delitzsch’s version. So I have here on my computer in the Accordance Bible Program, I have Delitzsch’s Hebrew translation. You could also get it online. You can download it for free from a number of different websites.

Delitzsch’s Hebrew New Testament, Matthew 2:13, let’s start with the Greek. So the Greek mentions “angelos koriu”, which is the “angel of the Lord, angel of Lord.” And then, Delitzsch has “mal’ach Yehovah” – Yehovah with the full vowels, by the way. And Delitzsch tells you he’s translating from Greek! We know he’s translating from Greek, so why would he put “Yehovah” in this verse when the Greek had “Lord”? Why didn’t he write “mal’ach Adonai”? Any thoughts on that, Keith?

Keith: I don’t have any thoughts on that, Nehemia, because I’ll be honest with you – I’m like George Howard when I started looking at this and saying, “Wait, wait, wait.” And you’re the first person that brought this to me about the little Hey with the apostrophe in it. I mean, every time I see it I get stopped in my tracks, so.

Nehemia: So that’s an important point there, that a rabbi who’s copying the Gospel of Matthew, it would be very surprising for him to write “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey”. The rabbis will have a synagogue, and on the front of the synagogue will be a verse, a verse from the Bible. And usually in the verse it’ll say, “Hey” with an apostrophe, which stands for “Hashem”, or in some periods they wrote Yud-Vav-Yud or three Yuds or two Yuds. And in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, usually in the manuscripts we find the Hey with the apostrophe. And we all know – everybody who studies any Hebrew manuscript, any modern Hebrew text – the Hey stands for “Hashem”, and that Hashem means “the Name”, and it represents Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. And again, even when they’re quoting the Tanakh and it’s in a synagogue, a holy place from their perspective, and they put the name, they don’t put Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Some synagogues do, especially Sephardic synagogues, but most synagogues that I’ve ever been to do not. They put just the Hey. In the verse they’re quoting from the Tanakh it has Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Now, I’m looking here in Salkinson-Ginsburg’s translation. Salkinson and Ginsburg were these two Jewish converts to Christianity in the 19th century, and what’s interesting is to compare their translation with Delitzsch. Delitzsch was a Christian, born a Christian gentile, but he was a great Hebrew linguist. Ginsburg was the great scholar of the mesorah. To this day, he’s considered the great scholar of the mesorah, but he was a Jew converted to Christianity.

And so it’s interesting to see the comparison. Both of them tell us up front, they tell us straight out, the purpose of their translation was to present the New Testament in a way that it would very familiar to Jews. In other words, they wanted it to sound like the text of the Tanakh, the text of the Old Testament, because that’s what Jews would read and say, “Wow, this sounds Biblical.”

So Delitzsch, who was great linguist of the Tanakh, he very consciously mimicked his translation of the New Testament after the Old Testament Hebrew. Sometimes he couldn’t do it, because there’d be a word that doesn’t appear in the Tanakh, but he did his best to do it. So Matthew 2:13 in Salkinson and Ginsburg – Salkinson translated it but he died before he’d finished, so Ginsburg finished it. It says in verse 13, “Vayehi belachtam veyara mal’ach Yehovah el Yosef.”

So both Delitzsch and Salkinson and Ginsburg have “mal’ach Yehovah” “the angel of Yehovah”, whereas in the Greek it says, “the angel of the Lord”. And they could have written “mal’ach Adonai, mal’ach haAdon,” which is literally, “the angel of the Lord”, but they wrote “Yehovah”. I think it’s really interesting.

Keith: I have a question.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: So this is really interesting, and again, this is happening as we’re dealing with this in real time. So can we just ask a question? Why would Howard be interested in this topic? Can we throw that out there?

Nehemia: So this is in a sense a mystery, that the New Testament does not have the name of Yehovah even one time in the Greek. And the mystery is, why not? It’s kind of strange. And one answer is, “Well, by this time for 200 years the Jews had not spoken the Name.” That’s one explanation. In other words, what happened is, scholars looked in the Septuagint and the Septuagint never has the name “Yehovah”. The Septuagint’s the ancient Greek translation of the Torah, and later other books were translated, but originally it was just the Torah.

Keith: You mean that they were reading didn’t have the Name.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Keith: You’re saying the Septuagint that they were reading didn’t have the Name.

Nehemia: Right, well hold on, I’ll get to that. So the Septuagint does not have the Name. Whenever it has Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in the Hebrew it has “Kurios”, “Lord”, and sometimes “Theos”, God. It does not have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. And so they decided based on that, “Well, we know the Septuagint was translated in 250 BC, approximately, under the reign of King Ptolemy of Egypt. When he was creating the library of Alexandria, he wanted every book in the world. So he brought 70 rabbis, or 72 rabbis according to one version, and they translated it, we’re told, identically even though they were in different rooms, supposedly.”

Long story short, if the Septuagint doesn’t have it, the conclusion was that people didn’t speak the Name in 250 BC, and by the time of the New Testament, sure they read Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in their Hebrew text, but they pronounced it “Adonai”. That was the assumption and still is, for many scholars.

However, what’s come out lately is that there isn’t a single manuscript of the Septuagint that predates the year 150 that has “Lord”, that has “Kurios” in place of “Yehovah”. In every single one of them it has one or two things. It has either… the most common one is it’ll have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in Hebrew characters in the Greek text of the Septuagint, or it will have “Ya’o”, in one instance which is yota alpha omega, the letters pronounced “ya-oh”, which presumably is equivalent of the Hebrew “Yeho” which is the prefix form. 4Q20 in the Dead Sea Scrolls has “Ya’o” in place of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. All the other manuscripts from before around the middle of the 2nd century AD of the Septuagint have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey either in paleo-Hebrew characters or regular Hebrew characters.

And the takeaway from this is that the original Septuagint didn’t have “Lord”, didn’t have “Kurios” in place of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. It had the letters Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Origen, who’s the Church Father who comes along and wants to determine what is the most accurate text of the Tanakh, of the Old Testament in Greek, studies the manuscripts of the Septuagint and he tells us that the most accurate manuscripts of the Septuagint contain the name of God in Hebrew characters.

So the question is this. This is the $64,000 question. Did the original New Testament written in Greek by Matthew, Mark, Luke, et cetera – did they have “Lord”? And especially in the context when they’re quoting Old Testament verses where it says, “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey”, did they have “Lord”, “Kurios”, or did they have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in paleo-Hebrew characters?

Now, we’ve found manuscripts of the Old Testament where it has Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in Hebrew characters in the Greek text – meaning you’re reading Greek left to right, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a right to left word, which is Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey! For example, Nachal Hever, they have the 12 minor prophets from Nachal Hever in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That was actually written by two different scribes, because you can tell from the handwriting, there were two different scribes who wrote Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in paleo-Hebrew characters. You have the Papyrus Fouad, and you have other ones.

The point is that this was the question that Howard was asking, and many scholars have asked. Did the original New Testament have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey? Maybe they pronounced it “Lord”, right? That’s a possibility. But what they wrote in the Septuagint was Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Did the New Testament have that, or did it have “Kurios”? That’s the $64,000 question scholars have been studying for decades. And Howard said, “You know what? Let me look at these Hebrew versions to see, when they translated it from Greek, where did they put Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey?”

And then he had heard, “Wait a minute. These priests, one a Protestant, one a Catholic – that is, Munster the Protestant and du Tillet the Catholic – they found a manuscript of Matthew among the Jews.” And he looks at that and then he compares it to Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew and it’s like, “Wow, Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew is really different from the Greek in many places, and sounds like it was written in Hebrew,” according to him.

Keith: You know, Nehemia, one of the things that does strike me in looking back now is that when I’m reading in the New Testament… Let’s just talk about this verse in 13. And when I get to this word, the phrase, “The angel of the Lord”, and I know the angel of the Lord is supposed to be, in my mind, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, I’m thinking, based on what happens in the Tanakh in terms of my English translations, I always found it interesting that they’re referring to the same capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D in the Tanakh and yet they make it capital L, small o-r-d. And so for me, I just have to say the thing that was confusing is, why would they do that? In other words, what’s the agenda? Why would they not… I mean, if I’m reading this and I’m only reading in Matthew, why not treat the fact that they’re talking about Yehovah, why not capitalize the letters like they do in the Tanakh in the explanation that they give?

Nehemia: So what you’re talking about is when the New Testament’s quoting the Tanakh, the Old Testament, and in the Tanakh it says Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and in English it’s written all caps, LORD, why isn’t it all caps LORD in the New Testament? And the answer is, they’re translating from the Greek, and the Greek doesn’t have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, Yehovah. It has “Kurios”, Lord”, that’s why. So I think what they’re doing, in a sense, is being faithful to the Greek. They’re not being faithful to the Hebrew. Right? [laughing] That’s where the problem comes in.

Keith: To say the least.

Nehemia: All right. I think at some point we’re going to want to do a study where we go through every single instance where it has Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, or actually it’s “Hashem” representing Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. I don’t think we’ll do that right now. But the fact that they write it here, I think, is simply a function of this phrase that appears repeatedly in the Tanakh, “mal’ach Yehovah”, the “angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord,” which is always “malach Yehovah, malach Yehovah, malach Yehovah.” It appears in the Tanakh 58 times, this phrase.

Now, is it too controversial for us to talk about the way that some Christians interpret mal’ach Yehovah in the Tanakh? Is that something we could do?

Keith: I don’t think it’s too controversial, because I have to honest. For me, again, the reason I brought up this issue of “angel of the Lord” with the capitals being different, is that in my mind, every time I see “Lord”, capital L, small o-r-d, all of a sudden as we go through Matthew, we’re going to find that that word is also used for Yeshua. So for example, Lord, written exactly the same way…

Nehemia: Ah, you’re talking about a different issue here, okay.

Keith: No, no. The reason I want to bring this up though, and I’m right on bringing it up right now, is that when I first saw this, I’m always remembering something. And I’ll tell you what’s happening for me, is that I’m having to read Matthew completely different than any time I’ve ever done in my life, including in the last years that I’ve known you. Because what we focused on when we were working with the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, what we focused on was the prayer that Yeshua taught. And I mean, we went in and we went out, and we went around and all of that. And I didn’t get a chance to really focus on Matthew as a full text of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

This phrase jumping off the page for me, gives me a flood of information and a flood of thoughts. And one of the thoughts is, I wonder if that’s why when I would say, “Lord”, L-O-R-D, before I knew anything about the Name, before I knew anything about the Tanakh and the Hebrew and all of those sorts of things, in my mind, what did it mean?

So again, that’s why I’m bringing it up. And I think there are a lot of people like me. We’re having our minds having to be changed in terms of that word. It’s not a small thing. [laughing] For you, you’re like, duh, but for us it’s a big thing.

Nehemia: So you raise a really interesting point which is different than I was talking about. In other words, we have 58 times in the Tanakh the phrase, “mal’ach Yehovah”, and that takes on a theological connotation in some Christian circles, starting with Justin Martyr around the year 150. As far as I know he was the first one to bring it up, maybe somebody before him who brought it up. We’ll get back to mal’ach Yehovah.

What you’re talking about is when it says “Lord” in English. Let’s just say in English, and let’s say we didn’t use any capital letters, right? Let’s say we wrote everything in all caps, or all in small caps. Let’s say you just heard it, and you didn’t know whether there was a capital L-O-R-D or not. How do you know who Lord is? In other words, Sarah refers to her husband as, “My Lord”, “Adoni”. In Hebrew we can see a distinction between adoni and Adonai.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Adoni means “my Lord”, referring to a human or an angel. Adonai only refers to God. And that distinction, that clear distinction is lost when you translate it into Greek, because Greek just has the word “Kurios”. First of all, in the original Greek there are no capital letters. Everything’s written in all caps. It’s what’s called “majuscules”. So you wouldn’t have a distinction of Lord out of respect being capital like you do in English, because everything’s all caps, right? When Sarah refers to Abraham, she refers to him as “Kurios”, right? And that’s the same Kurios that then is used to refer to God. So you don’t know from the Greek, you only know from the context. And what you’re saying is Yeshua’s called “Kurios”, Yehovah is translated “Kurios” when it refers to the Father, and there’s a certain ambiguity that’s introduced by the Greek, absolutely.

Keith: Let me say something.

Nehemia: That’s a fascinating issue.

Keith: This was something that changed for me, and you may remember, after our study we went on tour, we did a bunch of things together. And I called you up and I said, “So I want to ask a question. How many times…” and I’m bringing this up now, because it sets the stage for what we’re talking about. “How many times where there can be no confusion, does Yeshua actually speak this name?” And I’m not going to get into all the detail of that, but what the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew allowed for me is to actually see where that happens. Whereas before that, again, every time I see “Lord”, capital L, small o-r-d, it’s used interchangeably for anything, anywhere, anyhow. And actually, I have to say to you, it confused me until Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. And again, it’s just another one of the blessings, if I could say, the pearls of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, that Hey with an apostrophe that we’ve now seen twice. We saw it, I think it was chapter 1.

Nehemia: It was also “mal’ach Yehovah”.

Keith: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: So here’s what I want to say, we need this with a grain of salt and be careful. When the Tanakh has “Yehovah” and they write in the Hebrew, and Delitzsch writes “Yehovah” and Salkinson-Ginsburg write “Yehovah”, and Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew has “Yehovah”, well, I mean, you could say it’s just translated there from the Greek, right? In other words, they saw “Lord” in the Greek, and every time you see “Lord” in the Greek you have to parse it. Is this LORD all caps, or is this Lord capital L, small o-r-d? Or is it lord all small l-o-r-d? So you have to parse of one of three options when you see it in the Greek. Ginsburg did that, and Delitzsch did that, and maybe Shem Tov did that when… Supposing he translated it, maybe he did that.

What’s interesting to me is when Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew has Yehovah represented by “Hashem” and there isn’t “Kurios” in the Greek, that’s what’s interesting to me. And we’ll get to that later, in a much later episode. That’s the beauty, because there you can’t say he’s translating from the Greek, it’s not in the Greek. Wow, so this is an interesting topic, mal’ach. I mean, just these two words.

Oh! Can we talk about mal’ach Yehovah, angel of the Lord, in Christian theology?

So there’s an idea that goes back the 2nd century, at least. Justin Martyr wrote a book called Dialogues with Trypho, and there he talks about the “angel of the Lord”, he describes what’s known as the “pre-incarnate Christ”. In other words, in the Old Testament, when it says “angel of the Lord”, according to many Christians, that angel of the Lord isn’t just some anonymous angel, as we would get the impression as Jews reading the Tanakh, but actually that is Jesus making a cameo appearance in the Old Testament. That’s a very common idea.

I think it’s obvious that in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew we’ve now had “angel of the Lord” twice, that could not be the pre-incarnate Christ because Yeshua is already on earth, to state the obvious. And then we’ll say, “Not every instance of ‘angel of the Lord’ is the pre-incarnate Christ,” but they selectively identify instances of this angel, which I find fascinating as a Jew, to say that Yeshua is an angel, because angel means a “messenger”. Boy, that’s the kind of theology we don’t want to get into, maybe.

Okay, let’s go on in verse 13. What else have you got there, Keith?

Keith: In 13, actually, something stopped for me. So I’ll tell you what I’m doing, Nehemia. I mean, what’s beautiful about this is, we have different approaches. One of the things that I’m doing is, I’m taking my two English translations and I’m reading them and then I’m looking at Howard. I’m looking at the tool that we have. I’m looking at Delitzsch. And for example, when I look at that verse in 13, there is something that jumps off the page, for me. I’m also looking at the Greek, like you were just discussing. And in all of the versions including Delitzsch, it says, “And the angel of Yehovah, the angel of the Lord appeared,” and then it gives in all of those versions, except for in the Shem Tov, “in a dream.” In Shem Tov it doesn’t say, “in a dream.” It just says, “appeared.”

Now, at this point when I’m reading in Shem Tov, all of a sudden Joseph gets another stripe on his shoulder in terms of importance, and I’ll tell you why. [laughing]

Nehemia: How so?

Keith: When I find in the Tanakh examples of where the angel of Yehovah appears – not in a dream, not to say that’s not important, but when it’s not in a dream but it appears to them – it seems to be that there’s something that will kind of make me slow down. So again, in this situation in Shem Tov it says, “The angel of Yehovah appeared.” Now, we’re supposed to slow down. In Shem Tov at least, this is what I did. I slowed down and I said, “Wait. I don’t see that in Delitzsch. I see ‘in a dream’. In my English versions I see, ‘in a dream’.” And most of the translations it says, “in a dream”. And then there’s another phrase later that says that when it was time for him to leave, he leaves at night so it’s supposed to connect with the idea – he had a dream, he woke up at night and he left.

But when I see the “angel of Yehovah appeared” in Hebrew, I’m thinking again more about Joseph, and it’s going to connect two verses later, but I don’t want to jump there. Just when I saw that, it made me have a level of respect for Joseph. He kind of gets a bad rep, you know? It’s not really Joseph in the first chapter, it’s the father. But now, Joseph gets a visitation. I mean, I’m talking about what Hebrew Matthew says, “The angel of Yehovah appeared to him,” like how many examples do we see that in the Tanakh? And I was going through this in the Tanakh. I was going through and I was going to have you go on the tap tap and look at it.” But I’d like people to do that, to go through and find how many times you see the “angel of Yehovah”, not in a dream, not in a vision, but appearing to the person. According to Hebrew Matthew that’s what happened.

And again, that made me think, “Wow, Joseph is really something.” It changed my view of him, just from Hebrew Matthew.

Nehemia: Well, that’s interesting. So I just did a quick search here as you suggested, “angel of Yehovah” and looked for the word “khalom”, dream, and I didn’t find any verses that came up. Now, maybe it’s in an adjacent verse, so let’s be careful. We didn’t do a systematic study of all 58 places right now. But generally, the “angel of Yehovah” does not appear in a dream. He appears when a person is awake.

Keith: Except for if you’re Joseph in the first chapter, what happens is, he has the dream. The angel of Yehovah appears in a dream. The angel of Yehovah tells him in a dream. But in this one little phrase, it’s not… Joseph all of a sudden had a change. It’s not in a dream now.

Nehemia: That’s interesting. So we have the story in Genesis that you were making me think about, that we talked about in Torah Pearls years ago. And there, Abimelech who is the Gentile King, he’s the Philistine King, Genesis 20, where God appears to the Philistine King, the Philistine King, Abimelech. He takes Abraham’s wife and then in verse 3 of chapter 20 it says, “And Elohim came to him, to Abimelech, in a dream at night and He said to him, ‘Behold. You’re dead, because of the woman which you have taken. She is married.’” And then Abimelech understands he’s got to give her back. He’s told in this dream, and he has a conversation with God in the dream. “But she told me that’s her brother and not her husband.” So that’s interesting. So Abimelech has Yehovah appear but it’s not an angel, and of course, maybe that was an angel, it just didn’t tell us how Yehovah appeared, right?

Sometimes Yehovah appears as somebody and we’re told later that’s an angel, or early in the story, that’s an angel, but it’s Yehovah speaking, because Yehovah speaks through the angel, at least that’s the Jewish understanding. Yeah, it’s interesting, this whole dynamic of angels versus Yehovah Himself.

Keith: I just thought it was… The reason I say things changed for me is that I just started looking at Joseph a little bit different. Again, not to diminish the fact that he had this visitation through a dream, but hey, look – maybe he had bad pizza, it was a dream. But just in case there’s any confusion, “the angel of Yehovah appears to him,” that’s what it says…

Nehemia: Interesting.

Keith: …in Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

Nehemia: Now, I want to give credit here to T-Bone, because I was going over this portion with him in preparation, making some notes, and he had a great question. He always has these great questions. He asked, “Why did the angel tell them to flee to Egypt? We’re commanded in Deuteronomy 17:16…” It’s talking about the king, “Even so the king must not acquire many horses for himself or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since Yehovah has said to you, ‘You must never return that way again.’”

So we have this commandment that applies to the king, but it’s a general statement, that God has told us, “Don’t go back to Egypt.” And then we see in the Book of Jeremiah there are these people who want to go to Egypt after they assassinate Gedaliah, who was the representative of the Babylonian king. They say, “Okay, now we’re in a lot of trouble, because we’ve killed the Babylonian appointed governor.” Even though he was a Jew, he was appointed by the Babylonians. So they say, “Okay, now we need to flee to Egypt.” They go to Jeremiah. He says, “Absolutely don’t go back to Egypt.” And what do they do? They take Jeremiah with them as a prisoner, and Jeremiah ends up dying in Egypt.

So we have these two different situations, one is in Deuteronomy, where there’s a general statement, “Don’t return to Egypt.” And in Jeremiah he reminds them, “Don’t go to Egypt. We’re not supposed to go to Egypt.” And here, the angel comes and tells them to go to Egypt.

So T-Bone asked that question. I blame him. It’s a really good question. It’s one of those things I’ve read before and I hadn’t really thought about it. What’s your thought on that, Keith?

Keith: I’ve got to say, the benefit of T-Bone, the benefit of T-Bone is, one… And I love the fact that you’re talking to him about it, because it gives us now different perspectives, obviously, of this. And the other thing that’s he’s done, which is not a small thing, is he’s actually working with the Hebrew. So maybe that slows him down, I don’t know.

Nehemia: Wait, so tell the people how that’s available, what T-Bone’s doing.

Keith: One of the things that we’re doing now is we’re making it available that there’s an interlinear. And I think it’s a broad brush interlinear, meaning we’re taking the tool that we have that has the vowel points there, and we’re giving an English word under that Hebrew word, so if you don’t know anything about Hebrew, you can at least see the English word. And again, what I think that has done for me, maybe it’s doing that for T-Bone, Nehemia, like you said, you’re reading it and you’re like, “I didn’t think about it.” You don’t have to slow down as much as those of us who haven’t had Hebrew to be as what’d I’d call “at the tip of our tongue.” It’s made me to slow down. But maybe that’s what’s happening. But I want to say something about the “to Egypt” issue. When I saw “to Egypt”, I again stopped, and I started asking the question. And I’ll tell you why I’m asking this question, so bear with me just for a minute.

Last year, we did something. We had people called Readers of the Book Club. And the goal was for them to read the entire Tanakh in a year. Now, maybe that’s something – and I think you would say when you were growing up, how many times would you read through the sections of the Tanakh just when you were in the synagogue? How often…?

Nehemia: Well, the Torah itself we read once a year, we went through the Torah. So the rest of the Tanakh, I sat and read it because I wanted to know what was in it, but the average Jew may never read the Book of Job or the Book of Judges. They might read a section from Job or a section from Judges. But to read it from cover to cover, I would say 99 percent of Jews couldn’t tell you where Job is in the Tanakh.

Keith: Okay, now here’s what’s interesting. Now, I’ve gone on this process, Nehemia, where I’ve read through the Bible, read through the Bible. I used to have a little program called The One-Year Bible, where you’d read through the entire Old Testament, New Testament. That’s the way I understood it then. So we did this exercise. This is going to relate to this. The exercise was to take a full year and read the entire Tanakh, and so people went through it, and there were many people that would say, “You know, I never really knew about X. I never really thought about X.” This is tying into what we’re going to end up talking about in a couple of verses.

But when I saw “flee to Egypt”, immediately I start thinking about who was ever sent to Egypt, and I think about Abraham going to Egypt. And I think about Isaac, Abraham…

Nehemia: Not Isaac, but Abraham and then Jacob.

Keith: Yeah, but… then Jacob. And then the next thing that hits me is, I think about Joseph getting this command to go to Egypt and I think, “I know of another Joseph that went to Egypt.” But again, if I start just in Matthew, I don’t get a chance to kind of have that background, and it illuminates the situation, I guess that’s my point. So I mean, Egypt being kind of a place that was used, obviously when we think of Egypt, and who came out of Egypt, and the importance and the significance of Egypt, man, I mean, the Egypt issue jumps off the page, I guess is my point.

Nehemia: I love T-Bone’s question. And I think it has to be one of those things where it remains a question. If you believe that an angel actually appeared to him and said these things, then it’s not that big of a question, right? In other words, we talked about this with the virgin birth story – can God violate His own law? And the answer is, yeah, He does all the time. He establishes, this is the principles for us, but then He may say… Like for example in the Tabernacle, we’re told not to have any images before God, and in the Tabernacle it tells us to make two cherubs, right? So what’s going on? I thought God can’t violate His own law. Well, yeah. If He tells us to do something specifically, we do it. Or He tells Moses to take the rod, and on the rod to put the serpent. Well, we’re not supposed to make any graven images. You know, Moses could have said to Him, maybe he should have said to Him, “But Yehovah, you told me in the 10 commandments, all 600,000 Israelites heard it. Don’t make any graven images!” Instead, Moses was obedient to God. So if you believe God is speaking to Joseph, it’s a question, but it’s not really a question.

Keith: I love it. So in verse 14, I mean, I don’t know. Can I go to verse 14 or not?

Nehemia: We can go to verse 14, absolutely.

Keith: So then again, I’m still on Joseph, everybody. Just so everyone understands, I have a new respect for Joseph, a new understanding of Joseph. First, we find out that he gets a visitation. Second of all, it tells him to go to Egypt. The third thing he does, which immediately made me remember Abraham, verse 14. And it says, “And he arose and he took the child and his mother by night,” in English. It doesn’t say that in Shem Tov, “and he departed for Egypt.” And I think about Joseph being, I think the word is, a “righteous” man. And part of that righteousness maybe has to do with the fact that when he hears a thing from the Father, he actually does it. So he believes that he’s been told to do this, and he actually does it. And I think Abraham, “Go,” and he goes. He tells Abraham, “Take your son,” and the next morning he gets up and he takes his son.

So for me again, when I read that, I think about the fact that Joseph is a person that when he hears it, it doesn’t seem like there’s much debate between Joseph and the call. He’s in Israel. He says, “Go to Egypt,” and he says, “Okay.” He gets up and he goes to Egypt. And then it says, “And he was there.” I mean, can we go to the… Do you want to say something about verse 14?

Nehemia: Well, I want to say something about Egypt as a character in the story.

Keith: Oh, good.

Nehemia: In other words, we have the angel of Yehovah. We have Joseph, we have the boy who’s not named, at least in this section. We have the mother who’s not named. And then we have Egypt, which is named as a character.

Keith: Three times, by the way. Three times Egypt comes up.

Nehemia: That’s interesting. So the reason… I would say, one of the points of naming Egypt as a character in this account has to do with something that I don’t think we’re going to get to this time, we’ll get to it next time, which is that there is a dialog going on here, I believe, between… I don’t want to spill the beans, but there’s this incredible insight you get from understanding the cultural context here, the Jewish understanding of the Exodus story, of Exodus chapter 1, and it’s something not stated explicitly in the Tanakh, but it’s something that certainly the Jews of this time, they believed it happened. It was told in Jewish legend, and that’s something that’s in Exodus 1 that is in Egypt. So Egypt needs to be in the story in order to tell you, I’ll just give the main title here, the headline.

Keith: Please do.

Nehemia: So the headline here is that this account of Yeshua is parallel to the account of Moses, especially as the Moses story is told in Jewish legend. There were these Jewish stories that were told, and you see this in the Targum. We’ll get to it next time. I don’t think we have time to get to it today. But in a sense there’s more to the story in Exodus 1 in the minds of the Jewish audience in the 1st century AD than just what’s in Exodus 1, and part of that has to do with Egypt. So if Egypt wasn’t in the story, you might have lost that connection.

Keith: And Nehemia, I want to tell you why I think this is really, really important. And I argue that we weren’t going to get to the second section, because what’s in these three verses – and it’s actually, how can I put it – it’s really an interesting thing, because in these three verses we jump ahead in time, and then the next verses, we go back in the actual present time. So there is obviously something really important that Matthew is trying to communicate about Egypt, and again, we see it show up three different times. And he doesn’t mention Yeshua. He doesn’t mention Mary. He mentions Joseph and he mentions Egypt, and then he does a really amazing thing, which I guess we can’t talk too much about either, is he ends with the Tanakh, with a statement from the Tanakh which we have to unpack, and your cousin unpacks it in a really powerful way. [laughing]

Nehemia: So I think we’ll get to that in the Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus. Just as a reminder to people, we’re having this conversation in each episode, talking about the different sections of Hebrew Matthew, and then we’re going to go even more in depth in what we’re calling Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus. And what we decided to do, because there are two ministries involved, is one week it’ll be on Keith’s website, the next week it’ll be on my website. So episodes 1, 3, 5 – the odd number of episodes – are on Keith’s website, bfainternational.com. The even numbered episodes 2, 4, 6, 8, so this episode which is episode 4, they’re going to be on nehemiaswall.com as Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus. And I think we’ll have to wait for the Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus to get to verse 15, which is a quotation from the Tanakh, and to see how Matthew is using this verse from the Tanakh.

Keith: Folks, I want to say something again. Nehemia said it in the last episode, I’m going to say it again in this episode. We don’t anyone to miss this. We don’t want anyone to miss the opportunity. If you’re serious and if you really want to be a part of the Plus section, this is a way of us doing two things. One, it’s a way for us to go deeper. We can spend more time. Someone says, “You guys can talk for hours.” And we’re only scratching the surface, Nehemia. We’ve got all of these resources that we’re using, and I know there are some people, because I’ve heard from them, that are frustrated that we have these two levels of this. But this is a necessity for us in order for us to keep doing this.

I went for a walk yesterday, and I thought about all of the people that are Support Team members at nehemiaswall and Premium members at BFA. And I want to say to those people, you are the reason that we’re able to do this. I’m sitting here today… Again, I think I’ve got six different things that came through Nehemia’s ministry that he sent us so we could produce this. This is not a small thing. The amount of people that are actually putting their hands and their eyes in this, I don’t know how many people there are now, but there are a lot of them.

Nehemia: And we’re adding more and more staff by the day to get this done.

Keith: And for some reason, they won’t do it for free. [laughing] And they shouldn’t. And so here you guys, I just want to say to you, if you do have the desire to want to be in the Plus section at BFA International, there is a way for you to contact us and we will do what we can to make sure that you get there. But I wanted to say again, Nehemia, the idea has challenged me, it has pushed me, but I think there’s purpose in it, because we’re finding a way to tell people thank you. And we’re able to go deeper into the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew with Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus. So hopefully, we can get into this, because this next section is really, really important in terms of understanding…

Nehemia: I think so yeah.

Keith: …what’s happening here.

Nehemia: I think in a sense, what we’re going to do here in this episode of Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus, which will be number 4, is lay the foundation for how the New Testament uses the Tanakh…

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: …every time it quotes… Maybe not every time, but many times when it quotes it, you need this context. And then, in Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus 5, I have one of the most exciting discoveries of my life!

Keith: And guess what, folks. I’m so happy…

Nehemia: I can’t even wait!

Keith: No, listen. The odd numbers are over at BFA International. Now tell them, Nehemia, for episode 4, how do they get to Plus?

Nehemia: So you go to nehemiaswall.com, become a Support Team member. You could do that by making a donation, and if you have any other questions about that, you can contact us over at nehemiaswall.com.

Keith: Excellent.

Nehemia: All right, shall we end in prayer, Keith?

Keith: Please.

Nehemia: You go first.

Keith: I’d like to pray. Father, thank You again for just the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Thank You for the opportunity to find sources and resources that help us to come at this from a different way. Especially, thank you for what we can learn as a result of this process. Jew and gentile coming together, using the resources that we have to find common ground, and we’re finding it all over the pearls that exist.

We thank You that they’re coming up to the surface, that people can see the beauty of what’s in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. We thank You for what You have done, and we pray that You’ll continue to give us grace. We are challenged by technology. We’re challenged by how to do this, but we’re going to keep doing it as long as we have the ability to do so. And we thank You for it, in Your name.

Nehemia: Yehovah, Avinu Shebashamayim, Yehovah our Father in Heaven, Yehovah who speaks to even the gentile through dreams, to Abimelech the Philistine. You spoke to him in a dream, and to others You send Your angels, awake and in dreams. Yehovah, send Your angels and send Your message by whatever mechanism You choose to guide us, to guide all those who are calling upon Your name, Amen.

Keith: Amen.

You have been listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

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