Jewish leaders who opposed Matthew's community undoubtedly reviled Jesus by wondering how a great Messiah could come from politically insignificant Nazareth (compare Jn 1:46). Nazareth was, like many Galilean towns, "a tiny agricultural village." Earlier estimates suggested that it contained as many as sixteen hundred to two thousand inhabitants (Meyers and Strange 1981:27, 56), but more recent estimates have suggested five hundred (Stanton 1993:112). It was the sort of community where everyone would know everyone else's business, but it was a religiously orthodox town (see Meyers and Strange 1981:27; Finegan 1969:29). Though Nazareth existed in the shadow of the large, Hellenized Jewish city of Sepphoris, Galilean villages and towns were not very dependent economically on the two Hellenized cities (Goodman 1983:27, 60).

But while Nazareth was humanly insignificant, Matthew emphasizes that it was divinely significant. Jewish leaders may have been inclined to question, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1:46 NASB), but Matthew turns their objection around by showing divine significance in the choice of Nazareth as Jesus' hometown. Matthew accomplishes this exercise by a wordplay, a standard and accepted form of argumentation in both Jewish and Greco-Roman rhetoric (Keener 1992b:54 n. 101). Although we would not use an argument based on wordplay today (in English wordplays usually constitute bad puns rather than arguments), Matthew's argument demonstrates that we, like Matthew, should be prepared to answer our culture's objections and questions regarding our Lord Jesus in culturally relevant ways. His case for Nazareth also reminds us that God often uses the despised things of the world to accomplish his purposes (1 Cor 1:27).

That Matthew is making a play on the name Nazareth is easier to recognize than the specific word with which he is playing, and scholars divide in their opinions here. Two views are most common. Those who believe that Matthew would not use a wordplay that worked only in Hebrew usually hold that Matthew intended "Nazirite" (Patte 1987:39-40; Meier 1980:16). Scholars who argue this position typically assume that Matthew drew a typological application from Samson in Judges 13:5 (part of the former prophets), which he attributed for some reason to the Messiah.

But whereas Matthew's less skillful readers would have to have satisfied themselves that the text was in their Bible somewhere, those skillful enough to recognize that no single text said this would also recognize Matthew's method; many might also know Hebrew. Thus other scholars appeal to the prophets' messianic title "the branch" (Is 4:2; Jer 23:5; 33:15; Zech 3:8; 6:12); Isaiah 11:1 uses the same term, which is more clearly messianic than "Nazirite."