Dr Paul Allen

As you pointed out, Matthew 2:23 asserts these statements. No Old Testament prophecy corresponds to these precise words. There are two different, yet related, main scholarly explanations to illustrate what St. Matthew is attempting to say in this passage. 1. According to the first, Matthew apparently paraphrases in summary form the words of several prophets. The paraphrase is based on Jesus’ boyhood home, Nazareth, and a similar-sounding Hebrew word  netser , which is translated as “sprout,” “shoot,” or “branch.”  Recall that the family fled to Egypt because of the murderous Herod the Great, who feared the Christ Child as a potential royal competitor and thus slaughtered every male child under two in Bethlehem and the neighbouring area (Matt. 2:16-18). They returned to reside in Nazareth after word came that Herod the Great had died (Matt. 2:19-20). Scripture affirms that Jesus came to restore the throne of his ancestor King David (Luke 1:31-33) and that he is “...

Worried! (Photo credit: photoloni ) In his book Running Scared , Ed Welch makes 4 fascinating observations about worriers and their brand of vision-casting. Worriers Live in the Future Worriers live in the future. We are all people of the past, present and future, and worry has a way of spanning all three time zones . Fear is often triggered by past events, then reacts to crises in the present, and anticipates their consequences in the future. Fear’s preference, though, is to point you to the future, and to do this it relies upon the power of imagination. We tend to think that imagination is the realm of the child, but it is equally the realm of the worrier . We have imaginations so we can consider things that do not yet exist. We admire people with expansive imaginations as visionaries, people who are able to look ahead and anticipate the trajectory of the nation, of the church, of the business, or of the individual. The worrier is a visionary too, in that he sees, or thinks he ...