Kings, Wise and Ununwise Men in Mt 2

I've just started using Tom Wright's little Matthew For Everyone (SPCK, 2002) commentary in my quiet times (into which the wife has encouraged renewed discipline!). And I thought this on Matthew 2:1-12 was suggestive:

What he [Matthew] tells us [in the story of the visit of the Magi] is political dynamite. Jesus, Matthew is saying, is the true king of the Jews, and old Herod is the false one, a usurper, and an impostor....

Wright explains that here, at the start of his gospel, Matthew has significant members of Gentile nations bow to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew will end his gospel with Jesus commissioning his followers to go out and make disciples from every nation; this, it seems, is the way that the prophecies of the Messiah's worldwide rule are going to come true....

There is another way as well in which this story points ahead to the climax of the gospel. Jesus will finally come face to face with the representative of the world's greatest king - Pilate, Ceasar's subordinate. Pilate will have rather different gifts to give him, though he, too, is warned by a dream not to do anything to him (27.19). His soldiers are the first Gentiles since the Magi to call Jesus 'king of the Jews' (27.29), but the crown they give him is made of thorns, and his throne is a cross. At that moment, instead of a bringt star, there will be an unearthly drakness (27.45), out of which we shall hear a single Gentile voice: yes, he really was God's son (27.54).

Whom will we have for our king: Herod, Jesus, Caesar?

Whom will we be like, the Magi, Herod, Pilate, the Centurion?

And I got to wondering if we might see Adam typology going on here too?

Revd Dr Field suggested a fresh thought to me at our wedding, by the way, that the Bridegroom at the Wedding at Canna (as the responsible head of a new household, in a marriage) might be seen as a failed Adam.

Herod is a rebel Adam, a rebel king. In the context of Jesus' birth, it is natural to think of the incarnation, of Jesus the man, the Man, the Man who is King: the True Adam.