Old Testament is
tortured, and genuine prophecies are made no better than coincidences,
when coincidences are exalted to all the dignity of express predictions.
One can scarcely venture to speak of the death of Herod when Jesus was
to return from Egypt, as being deliberately typified in the death of
those who sought the life of Moses. But it is quite clear that the words
in St. Matthew do intentionally point the reader back to this narrative.
For, indeed, under both, there are to be recognised the same principles:
that God does not thrust His servants into needless or excessive peril;
and that when the life of a tyrant has really become not only a trial
but a barrier, it will be removed by the King of kings. God is prudent
for His heroes.

Moreover, we must recognise the lofty fitness of what is very visible in
the Gospels--the coming to a head in Christ of the various experiences
of the people of God; and at the recurrence, in His story, of events
already known elsewhere, we need not be disquieted, as if the suspicion
of a myth were now become difficult to refute; rather should we
recognise the fulness of the supreme life, and its points of contact
with all lives, which are but portions of its vast completeness. Who
does not feel that in the world's greatest events a certain harmony and
correspondence are as charming as they are in music? There is a sort of
counterpoint in history. And to this answering of deep unto deep, this
responsiveness of the story of Jesus to all history, our attention is
silently beckoned by St. Matthew, when, without asserting any closer
link between the incidents, he borrows this phrase so aptly.

A much deeper meaning underlies the profound expression which God now
commands Moses to employ; and although it must await consideration at a
future time, the progressive education of Moses himself is meantime to
be observed. At first he is taught that the Lord is the God of their
fathers, in whose descendants He is therefore interested. Then the
present Israel is His people, and valued for its own sake. Now he hears,
and is bidden to repeat to Pharaoh, the amazing phrase, "Israel is My
son, even My firstborn: let My son go that he may serve Me; and if thou
refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn."
Thus it is that infant faith is led from height to height. And assuredly
there never was an utterance better fitted than this to prepare human
minds, in the fulness of time,