Did Matthew introduce the Magi to emphasize the Good News to foreigners?

It’s not new for people to see their own kind as important, and to see foreigners as unworthy—maybe even to hate and persecute them.  The Lord of the Bible sees that as a problem.

When the Lord tells his people to care for the needs of the aliens among them, he reminds them that they were once aliens.  They were once oppressed foreigners, so they ought to know better than to mistreat foreigners.  (Exodus 23:9 is one of many examples.)

Matthew, who wrote his Gospel for a Jewish audience, leaves many hints that the Good News is for all nations.  Chapter 1 reminds them that the Canaanite Rahab and Moabite Ruth are part of their story—and part of the heritage of Jesus.

In chapter 2 we meet foreigners from the “East.”  Magi as an ethnic group originated in Persia (today’s Iran).  But anyone coming from there was seen as coming from the North, the literal direction of their route into Judea.  To come from the East meant they came from Arabia.

Matthew never calls them kings, nor does he limit them to three.  They were a delegation large enough to travel the desert safely and important enough to get an audience with the king in Jerusalem.  Some among them might have been Sheikhs, a title roughly equivalent to Elders and Lords, which others might view as kings within their tribal culture. 

Matthew calls them Magi.  Over time the tribal name had become associated with learned men, so early English translators called them “wise men.”  In any case, they were geographically and culturally foreign.  The culture was foreign in following an astronomical event to find a newborn “King of the Jews.”  The two kings mentioned were Herod and Jesus, not Magi.  But Matthew, writing for Jews, sees the foreign Magi as significant to the story of Jesus.

The Magi acted honorably in contrast to Herod, who was infamous for killing off political opponents.  Killing children to get rid of a newborn rival was a Herod-like move.  Matthew reminds his readers that this wasn’t unfamiliar suffering.  “Rachel’s children” had been taken away many times, as Jeremiah had written of the young people taken captive to Babylon.

As perilous as Herod’s brutality would have felt for Joseph and Mary, the Lord had plans which Herod could not prevent.  He sent the family, for their safety, to another foreign nation, Egypt, until Herod was no longer a threat. The gifts of the Magi probably funded their move.

Matthew sees how the story of Jesus begins much like the story of the Hebrew nation begins, with a return from Egypt.  The Exodus story includes a significant but often overlooked observation:  “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. . . . Many other people went up with them” (Exodus 12:37-38).  It was more than a Hebrew nation that came out of Egypt.  It was international.

God had cared about the slaughter of slave children in Egypt.  He had a plan for the saving of their people.  He had cared about those taken captive to Babylon. And he had a plan for their return.  He cared about the vulnerable family hunted by a paranoid king.  He had a plan that connects them with the first “out of Egypt” story.  In every ordeal, he had a saving purpose.

Whatever our ethnicity, the people of God are called not to make things harder for the foreigners, but to treat them as we would want to be treated.  We don’t pattern ourselves after oppressors. We are people of the Good News. The world already knows how to hate.  Heaven teaches us how to love.