Out of Egypt

In Matthew’s account of the Savior’s early life we have the detail that Joseph took his young family to Egypt to escape the danger of Herod. “When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matt. 2:14-15).   Matthew’s is the only Gospel that gives us this detail, but we know so little about what actually took place.  It must have been an enormous journey for them; if they went all the way to Cairo (where the pyramids are) then they would have traveled about 450 miles with much of that being in the desert.  The text tells us that they stayed there for some time until an angel appeared in a dream again to Joseph saying, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life” (Matt. 2:20).  If the angel was referring only to Herod, then it may not have been very long after their arrival since, according to the Bible Dictionary, “In the same year in which [Herod] gave the order for the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem, he had Antipater, another of his own sons, put to death. A few months later Herod himself died.”  But, at least in the KJV text, there were multiple people who wanted the death of Jesus and so perhaps there were others who needed to pass away before they returned.  The only thing we know for certain is that Jesus was twelve years old when they went to the Passover at Jerusalem and so clearly they were back from Egypt by then (see Luke 2:42).    

                It appears that the prophecy that Matthew referred to when he quoted the phrase “Out of Egypt have I called my son” is Hosea 11:1 which reads, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”  The phrase certainly seems to be a historical statement about the children of Israel who were called out of Egypt with Moses, for that phrase is used often in the Old Testament to describe the exodus (see Exodus 12:39, Joshua 5:4, 1 Samuel 10:18, etc.).  But knowing the dualistic nature of Old Testament writing, there’s no reason Hosea’s statement couldn’t also have been a prophecy about the future coming of the Savior (in the same way that Isaiah 7:14 likely referred to Isaiah’s times and the time of the coming of the Savior).  Perhaps this idea of the Savior coming out of Egypt in this way is also symbolic.  Just as the children of Israel came from Egypt and made the journey from there to the promised land, so did the Savior travel the same journey.  In a way perhaps we can think of this as a metaphor for how the Savior understands us and has, through the atonement, gone through the same things that we have.  He understands whatever we are experiencing as we try to travel the straight and narrow path because he has “descended below them all” (D&C 122:8).  The Exodus of the children of Israel is symbolic of the journey that all of the covenant people of the Lord make in mortality as they seek to return to our Father in Heaven.  We can rest assured that the Savior has traveled the same road; he has “come up out of Egypt” like the faithful are trying to do and He has marked the way back to the Promised Land.  And we can trust He knows precisely how to help us successfully make the same journey.