Prophecy Trivia & the End of the Nativity Story

How did Matthew know about the prophecies from the old scriptures that he used in his Gospel narrative? Matthew was a Jew writing to Jews to convince them that Jesus was their prophecied Messiah. The prophecies hidden as they were (or so it seemed to me) could be known by all Jews who were familiar with the scriptures. I, like many other Christians, accept Matthew's assertion that these actually foretold this part of Messiah's story.

I looked up Ramah and discovered two things: 1. Rachael (see yesterday's blog), Jacob's beloved wife died near there during childbirth. 2. Rama was the town where, historically during the time of Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Judah, King Neb detained captives prior to deportation. The captives deemed too old or too weak to make the trip to Babylon were slaughtered. This was the primary fulfillment of the prophecy in Jeremiah 31:15. Later Matthew applied it to another slaughter: Herod's slaughter of all the boys two years old and under, after the birth of Christ. (Matthew 2:18)

Now for the end of this part of the Christmas story, and one more prophecy:
"After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 'Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead.'
"So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: 'He will be called a Nazarene.'"

OK. I don't know who the prophets were who said this, but I can tell you that Nazareth was an insignificant place, lacking in commendation and with a certain crudeness in the Galilean dialect. In fact, Nathanael, when he first learned of Jesus of Nazareth, asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" So my Bible dictionary says, "Thus the word Nazarene was a fitting title for the One who grew up 'as a root out of dry ground, dispised and rejected by men.'"
(Isaiah 53:2-3)

Anyway, we've come full circle. Our story started in Nazareth and this part ends in Nazareth. (Read again Luke 2:1-7)
Merry Christmas,
Paulita