Scholars studying Matthew's Gospel note that the Flight into Egypt forms part of a deliberate pattern of parallels the evangelist draws between Jesus and Moses across his infancy narrative: a threatened infant, a murderous royal decree, a period spent in or associated with Egypt, and an eventual return, a sequence that echoes the Exodus narrative closely enough that most critical scholars read it as intentional theological patterning rather than coincidental historical overlap.
This reading does not require concluding that no historical journey underlies the account, only that the specific narrative shape Matthew gives it, including its explicit citation of Hosea and its structural echo of Moses's own infancy, reflects deliberate literary and theological composition addressed to an audience Matthew expected to recognize these scriptural allusions, generally understood to have included a substantial Jewish Christian readership familiar with Hebrew Bible narrative patterns.
The episode also carries an important theological function within Matthew's wider infancy narrative: it associates Jesus, from infancy, with the experience of exile and displacement, and with Egypt specifically as both a place of refuge and a place bound up with Israel's own founding story of deliverance, a resonance Matthew appears to intend his readers to notice.