Scholars and most believers agree that the book of Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. Matthew's main goal was to prove to Israel that Jesus was their Messiah. Primarily, he does this by showing the extraordinary degree to which Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies about their coming Savior, though Matthew cannot do this exhaustively in one document. To digress a moment, I don't know for sure how many Messianic prophesies the OT contains, but one source says 332. Some count many more. In the 1950s, Professor Peter W. Stoner, chairman of the departments of mathematics and astronomy at Pasadena City College and chairman of the science division at Westmont College, calculated the chance of merely EIGHT of the main messianic prophesies being fulfilled by one individual: 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That is one in 100,000,000,000,000. The chance that one person would fulfill, say, forty-eight of the prophesies, said Stoner, would be 1 in 10 to the 157th power. That Stoner's math was both sound and convincing was attested to by the Executive Council of the American Scientific Affiliation, in a forward to Stoner's book Science Speaks. And Jesus fulfilled far more than a mere eight or even forty-eight prophesies. A conservative number from most sources is 300+.
We accept most of the "facts" we believe on far, far less evidence than this. Put another way, your chances of winning Mega Millions (as of August 28, 2026) are 1 in about 290,500,000. This is approximately 345,000 times BETTER than the odds of Jesus not being the Christ, yet who believes they're going to win the lottery?
Okay, that was more than a moment's digression. My point is that Matthew set out to demonstrate to the Jews that Jesus was their Messiah. What I mostly failed to see up until now is that Matthew went a step better than that: he presented Jesus as Israel--the way Israel would have been had they obeyed God.
Jesus was brought out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15), as was Israel. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness (analogous to Israel's 40 years), as did Israel. When tempted by sin, Jesus didn't give in but quoted Scripture, as most of us know, but did we stop to realize He quoted exclusively from Deuteronomy? I didn't. It wasn't only that He found those verses fitting to the occasion. Deuteronomy is Moses' final presentation to the Israelites, summarizing the covenant and the law, urging them forward to faithfulness, obedience, and the promised land. The book is legally, historically, and theologically central to the life of Israel. Quoting Deuteronomy is saying, "I demonstrate, model, promote, and stand behind everything that Israel is called to be." Jesus as Israel doesn't mean He is superseding Israel in any way, but that He is completing it, redeeming it, restoring it. This idea of completion is also shown, for example, in His Sermon on the Mount, where He extends the law to matters of inward motivation rather than mere outward compliance.
Matthew also draws parallels between Israel's deliverer (Moses) and Israel's Messiah (Jesus). At birth, both narrowly escaped government orders that all infant boys be killed. Moses applied the blood of the old covenant (Exodus 24:8); Jesus applied the blood of the new. Moses fasted 40 days on the mountain; Jesus fasted 40 days in the desert. It's also quite interesting that the Pentateuch/Torah is attributed to Moses as author, and Matthew presents a series of five discourses that outline Jesus' major teachings.
For one last example, we can jump to Hosea 11:1, which Matthew partially quotes in 2:15. The NIV says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." Here, the line between Jesus and Israel is unquestionably blurred. Jesus died as a human being to save human beings, but He also died as Israel to save Israel. No matter our ethnicity or lot in life, Jesus is never "other" than we. He is both fully God and fully man in ways we have yet to grasp.
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