Matthew writes for a Jewish-Christian community in the decades after the resurrection, likely in Syrian Antioch, defending the claim that Jesus of Nazareth is Israel's promised king. He has just finished a genealogy that runs from Abraham through David to Joseph. Now, in his second scene, the first people to recognize the king are not priests in Jerusalem but pagan astrologers from somewhere east — Babylon, Persia, the old territory of the exile. Matthew is signaling early what his Gospel will end with: the nations bending the knee while the religious establishment plots a death.

From the writers we read together

Michael S. Heiser

biblical scholar, author of The Unseen Realm

Heiser's reading of this scene runs straight through Deuteronomy 32. After Babel, the nations were handed over to lesser elohim, and astrology — the worship of the host of heaven — was part of that handover. So when Matthew opens his Gospel with star-readers from the east bowing down, something jurisdictional is happening. The God of Israel has reached into the very discipline by which the nations sought their lesser gods, and used it to summon them home. The star does not validate astrology; it overrules it.

What Heiser presses on is the geography. These men come from the east — from the lands of exile, from the territory of Babylon and Persia, from the old empires that had ruled God's people. Their arrival in Jerusalem is the first installment of a promise older than David: that the nations would stream to Zion to find the king. The kingdom is contesting territory from the first chapter. Herod feels it immediately, which is why he reaches for a sword.