What prophecy is Matthew 2:23 referring to regarding Jesus being a Nazarene?

Answer

Matthew 2:23 mentions Jesus living in Nazareth to fulfill the prophecy that He would be called a Nazarene. Where can this prophecy be found in the Old Testament?

Matthew does not directly quote a specific prophecy, as there is no Old Testament passage with the exact wording he uses. There are three main interpretations for this verse. Firstly, Matthew might be linking the term Nazarene with the Hebrew word netser, meaning “branch or sprout.” The term “Branch” was commonly used to refer to the Messiah, as seen in Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” In Hebrew, netser would be written as NZR—sharing the same main consonants as Nazareth. Additionally, in Aramaic, the language spoken during Jesus’ time, the word for “Nazareth” sounded similar to the Hebrew word for “branch.” Matthew could be emphasizing that Jesus emerged from an obscure village in Galilee, fulfilling the prophecies about the Branch foretold by the prophets, with the name of His hometown coincidentally resembling the prophets’ term for “branch.”

Another possibility is that Matthew is referencing a prophecy not recorded in the Old Testament but known to his original audience. However, this is less likely and based on speculation.

A third interpretation suggests that Matthew uses the term Nazarene to depict someone who is “despised and rejected.” During the first century, Nazareth, a small town located approximately 55 miles north of Jerusalem, had a negative reputation among the Jews. Galilee, particularly Nazareth, was looked down upon by Judeans, as illustrated in John 1:46. If this was Matthew’s intended meaning, the prophecies he had in mind might include passages portraying the Messiah as rejected and despised:

“But I am a worm…””And not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads” (Psalm 22:6-7). It’s true that Nazarenes were “scorned by everyone,” and so one could see this messianic prophecy as an allusion to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem” «He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. », (Isaiah 53:3). Again, in Jesus’ day, Nazarenes were “despised and rejected,” and so Isaiah’s prophecy could be viewed as an indirect reference to Jesus’ background as the supposed son of a carpenter from Nazareth.

If Psalm 22:6–7 and Isaiah 53:3 are the prophecies that Matthew had in mind, then the meaning of “He shall be called a Nazarene” is something akin to “He shall be despised and mocked by His own people.” Jesus not only identified with humanity by coming to our world; He also identified with the lowly of this world. His upbringing in an obscure and despised town served as an important part of His mission. Jesus identified Himself as “Jesus of Nazareth” during His encounter with Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 22:7-8). After his conversion, Paul mentioned Jesus of Nazareth «I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. », (Acts 26:9). One of the names of the early Christians was “Nazarenes” «For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews tThroughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes: », (Acts 24:5), and the term Nasara, meaning “Nazarene,” is still used today by Muslims to identify a Christian.