The prophet Hosea quoted God as saying, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (11:1). But Matthew told us that Hosea’s prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus’s parents took him to Egypt for a time as a baby to protect him from Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents” (Matt. 2:13–18). Thus, Matthew, not the “spiritualizing amillenarian” centuries later, took a passage from Hosea that referred to Israel and told his readers that it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
