2:15
Matthew interrupts his story here and gives his audience some background information. Verse 2:15 tells about what would happen later after Herod died. But verse 2:16 says that Herod had not yet died.
2:15a
where he stayed until the death of Herod: There is some implied information here. It is that Mary and the baby Jesus all lived in Egypt with Joseph until King Herod died. Then they went back to Israel shortly after Herod’s death. You may want to include some of this implied information in your translation. For example:
where he stayed ⌊with the child and the child’s mother⌋
2:15b
This fulfilled: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as This fulfilled is literally “in order to be fulfilled.” This phrase indicates purpose. God told Joseph to take the child and his mother and leave Egypt (2:13), in order to fulfill what he (the Lord) had said through the prophet (2:15).
Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:
This happened to fulfill
-or-
This was done to make come true (Good News Translation)
fulfilled: As the previous note suggested, the Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as fulfilled is literally “be fulfilled.” This word means “came true” or “happened.” God spoke the words of 2:15c hundreds of years before Jesus was born. And now those words came true regarding Jesus.
In the Greek, the verb “was fulfilled” is passive.
Here are some ways to translate this verb:
• As a passive verb. For example:
In this way what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet was fulfilled (NET Bible)
• As an active verb, as in the Berean Standard Bible. For example:
⌊When God told Joseph to take the child and his mother and leave Egypt,⌋ this fulfilled
• As a stative verb. For example:
came true (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
happened
what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: The phrase what the Lord had spoken through the prophet refers to the words/message that the Lord God told the prophet Hosea to tell the people. Hosea then spoke these words to the people. He also wrote them down.
Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:
the message that the Lord God spoke through the prophet. He said,
-or-
the words that the Lord told the prophet to say to the people. He said,
This same clause also occurs in 1:22. You should translate it the same way in both places.
prophet: The word prophet also occurs in 1:22 and 2:5. Also see prophet in the Glossary.
2:15c
Verse 2:15c is a quote from Hosea 11:1. You may want to include this information in a footnote.
Out of Egypt I called My Son: This clause means that Jesus was in the country of Egypt when God told Joseph to leave and bring his family back to Israel.
Here are some other ways to translate this clause:
I called my son ⌊to come⌋ out of Egypt
-or-
I told/commanded my son to leave/exit Egypt
-or-
I summoned my son to return from Egypt
Out of Egypt: The phrase Out of Egypt refers to the “Son” being in Egypt when God “called” him. It does not refer to the location of God when he said these words.
The phrase Out of Egypt is emphasized in the Greek. That is the reason that it is put first in the Berean Standard Bible. If you have a natural way to emphasize the phrase Out of Egypt in your language, you may want to do so.
I called: The Greek verb that the Berean Standard Bible translates as called refers to telling someone to come.
My Son: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as My Son refers to Jesus here. However, this is a quote from the Old Testament long before Jesus was born. So do not translate this as “my son Jesus.”
© 2023 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.