Stop 4. Pattern

A pattern is different. An earlier event or person is read as a picture of a later one. The first event was not a failed prediction; it happened, and it meant something then. The later one fills it out.

Hosea looks back, not forward: "When Israel was a young man, I loved him like a son, and I summoned my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1). Matthew says Jesus' return from Egypt fulfilled it: "I called my Son out of Egypt" (Matthew 2:15). The Son relives Israel's story, and where Israel failed, he does not.

Isaiah 7:14 is the standard case where readers disagree. The NET reads, "Look, this young woman is about to conceive and will give birth to a son." Matthew reads, "Look! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son" (Matthew 1:23). Isaiah gives the sign to King Ahaz with a time limit: "Before the child knows how to reject evil and choose what is right, the land whose two kings you fear will be desolate" (Isaiah 7:16).

Some readers take Isaiah 7:14 as a direct prediction of the virgin birth. Others read a sign given in Ahaz's own day that Matthew sees filled to the full in Jesus. Both readings confess the virgin birth; they differ on how the prophecy works. So the arc carries two labels.

Learning to tell prediction from pattern guards against two mistakes. One reads every pattern as a coded timetable. The other reads every prediction as only a pattern.

Picture: Hosea to Matthew and Isaiah 7 to Matthew. Layer: band 2.