Similarities between Jesus and Moses Births

(Matthew Chapter 2)


The whole book of Matthew focuses quite heavily on the fulfillment of prophecy. This is very clear in this second chapter. We see that in all aspects of his life Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies pertaining to him beginning with his birth in Bethlehem.

Verse 11 is interesting in that it shows the wise men "go into the house" to worship. This blows apart the traditional Christmas nativity scenes where the wise men bring their gifts while Jesus is in the manger. It is made even clearer that some time had passed, and thus Joseph and Mary had moved from the manger to a house, when we see that Herod's edict to kill all male children under the age of two years old, based upon the time the wise men had given him.

But in spite of Herod's evil plans, God protected the young Jesus by warning his parents to get out of that place and go to Egypt…and again this fulfilled scripture, as did their return to Nazareth so that Jesus could be "called a Nazarene" and "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

There is another interesting aspect to this sequence of events as well. We saw that when Moses was alive he said that the Lord would raise up another prophet like him, from amongst their brethren (Deut 18:15-16, Acts 3:22-23). What we see is that there are many parallels between the lives of Moses & Jesus. For example, the rulers at the times of both their childhoods sought to kill all male children under the age of two. They were also both brought up out of Egypt. Moses was given the Old Covenant law to teach Israel and Jesus brought the New Covenant into effect to save the spiritual Israel. There are many other interesting similarities in their lives and again this strengthens the fulfillment of scripture and proof that Jesus is the Christ.