Matthew 2:13-15
Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

Hosea 11:1-5
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one, who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.

However -
Matthew was obviously familiar with the Hosea passage (since he was able to quote it), and his readers (he would have reason to expect), would also know the passage as well as he. Yet, he seemed to think that they would find the connection between the Old Testament text and the event recorded impressive, as he did. So what was he thinking?

Some Christians, seeing the difficulty, and despairing of the possibilty of making sense of Matthew's hermeneutic (and several of the other passages he quotes in the same chapter are equally problematic), have simply decided that the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to see a hidden meaning in the words of Hosea. Though the quotation makes no sense to the natural mind, they think, it is nonetheless a valid fulfillment of the prophecy's secret and imperceptible meaning.

This solution will hardly work, since it is (most likely) the skeptical mind of the natural Jewish man that Matthew desires to impress with such citations. If there is no way for a natural and uninspired man to see the validity of the fulfillment, it would have been much better for Matthew to have made no attempt at all to connect the Egyptian journey of the infant Christ with anything in the Old Testament. Yet he saw fit to include this.

The correct explanation, I believe, is that Matthew expected his readers to presuppose, as he did, that Israel's history served as a type and foreshadowing of the Messiah.

Thus the coming of the Messiah out of Egypt in His infancy would mirror the exodus of Isreal referred back to in Hosea 11:1. The assumption is that Israel's exodus from Egypt might reasonably be expected to have its counterpart or antitype in the Messiah's own youthful experience. Seeing this connection leads Matthew to point out the words in Hosea about Israel's experience: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt." His citation is as if to say, "Interesting, don't you think, that Jesus, who is also God's son, came out of Egypt in His childhood? Thus Hosea's recollection of Israel's history serves as an implied anticipation of Christ's childhood 'exodus.' "

Though it might not have occurred to us to think of Israel as a type of the Messiah, it probably had occurred to the Jews, to whom Matthew wrote. It also seems a valid comparison on other grounds. The so-called "Servant of Yahweh" in Isaiah's famous servant songs, is sometimes Israel, asnd sometimes Messiah...suggesting a type/antiotype relationship between the two.

This event in Jesus' childhood might not be the only case of His fulfilling some type in the history of Israel. His baptism by John could be seen as an antitype of Israel's crossing of the Red Sea (compare 1 Cor.10:1-6), and Christ's forty-day temptation in the wilderness could reflect the forty years that Israel was tempted in the wilderness after the exodus. Interestingly, the scriptures that Jesus quoted to Satan during His temptation were all taken from Deuteronomy, a book recounting Israel's sojourn in the wilderness.

There may be few parallels between Israel's later years and those of Christ, since Israel went astray from the womb (Isa.48:8/Ps.58:3), and Jesus never rebelled against His Father. In this, Christ's life, after the temptation may present little data to compare with Israel's mature behavior and experiences.