Matthew 4:15

Matthew 4:14–15 are the fourteenth and fifteenth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. In the previous verses Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist and then left Nazareth for Capernaum. These introduce and then contain the first portion of a quote from the Book of Isaiah showing how these movements were preordained by scripture.

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

The World English Bible translates the passage as:

For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 4:14, 4:15

Verse 14 is one of many in Matthew introducing an Old Testament prophecy. This uses the author of Matthew's standard "that it might be fulfilled" structure that appears many other times in the gospel

This verse is based on Isaiah 9:1 in the Old Testament. In the King James Version Isaiah 9:1 reads:

The author of Matthew considerably abbreviates the verse. France notes that Matthew seems to only be interested in the geographic names of the verse, to the extent that the grammatical links that makes Isaiah 9:1 comprehensible are left out of Matthew 4:15 turning it into little more than a list.

Capernaum, where Jesus had relocated, was in the region of the Tribe of Naphtali in Galilee, it was also near the land of the Tribe of Zebulun. In the Greek "toward the sea" refers to a specific route, and Jones feels it should perhaps be more accurately read as "on the road to the sea." In Isaiah this verse is in the section describing the Assyrian invasion of northern Israel. "Toward the sea, beyond the Jordan" thus refers to the geography from the view point of the Assyrian invaders. To them the region of Zebulun and Naphtali would be across the Jordan River on the way to the Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages the "way of the sea" became a common name for the trade routes through this area, based on this verse.

...
Wikipedia