Matthew 2:13-18
After the scholars were gone, God’s angel showed up again in Joseph’s dream and commanded, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.”
Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother under cover of darkness. They were out of town and well on their way by daylight. They lived in Egypt until Herod’s death. This Egyptian exile fulfilled what Hosea had preached: “I called my son out of Egypt.”
Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills. (He determined that age from information he’d gotten from the scholars.) That’s when Jeremiah’s sermon was fulfilled:
A sound was heard in Ramah,
weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
dead and buried
December 14th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
This might be a bit out of context, but I recently read an article written by a female Rabbi about womanhood in the Jewish Bible (aka the Old Testament). She used a version of the original Jeremiah 31 quote which ended with Rachel weeping for her children ‘because they are not’ as a comfort to women who are childless (for whatever reason- not only because their children have died) and as an extension of an idea that women do not have as their sole raison d’etre, motherhood. I don’t know if this resonates with anyone else (it did with me)? Apologies that this probably isn’t very ‘Christmas-spirity’ (family time, children time etc etc)…
December 14th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
I’m very used to this passage and so I guess desensitized, but the horror hit home a little today.
I can’t handle media stories about kids suffering violence/abuse/starving etc, I just can’t handle them… and here we read of Herod murdering every little boy under two in the region.
That’s a hell of a lot of pain to take in around our lovely romantic Christmas story!
December 14th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
We like it to be all lovely at Christmas, don’t we, and yet so much of the Christmas story isn’t lovely - long journey heavily pregnant, nowhere to stay, and then Herod and his lies and murdering. But I’m realising, particularly being here now in Bootle, that Christmas is a really difficult time for so many people.
Massive pressure to provide presents and big meals that people simply can’t afford, and so many families that have fallen out, so people will be on their own on Christmas Day.
I can’t remember the source of the quote “when we idolise success, we create the inadequate”, but that comes back into my mind now.
Herod certainly felt inadequate, in the face of a new king who looked like fulfillling all those prophecies that he never could, and his reaction was to hit out - at innocent victims.
I’m worrying less about serving a perfect Christmas dinner this year, and more about whether someone I’ve got to know recently will make it through a lonely Christmas without harming herself…
December 14th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
I too cannot cope too well with hearing about kid’s suffering. Adults normally end up hurting kid’s due to their own inadequacies and feeling under threat…it is often easier to lash out at someone else rather than confront stuff in our inner-self when we feel threatened….now I’m not saying we’re all quite as extreme as herod(hope not anyway!) but if we’re really honest is there not a bit of a tendancy for us all to be herod-like at times?
‘Tis the season to be jolly’?……..Is ’tis the season to be honest and real’ not a better option?
December 14th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Cor, the murdering of all 2 year olds or younger really is quite shocking. Difficult that the Christmas story, the telling of the birth of our saviour, involves this mass child genocide (a ‘detail’ that i admit i’d pushed out of the picture). I guess it’s representative of how often it is the innocent average-joes in civilisation, and not the authorities or other main characters, who so often lose out in conflicts or bad governments. Goes without saying that it’s a good job Jesus wasn’t around when Herod ordered this. But the fact it happenned because of Jesus birth (albeit indirectly, cos a power-crazy dictator threw his toys out of the pram big-time)….yep, very difficult.
Also, i wonder why around verse 17 Matthew decides to include the detail of Herod getting his information from the scholars. I can’t remember the Bible giving such exact explanations to how events came to place very often, so seems that it has significance. Perhaps shows how even with the best intentions, our attempts at glorifying God can sometimes be used against Him and us by those with evil intentions?
….although i’ve just thought- if Herod hadn’t had this information from the Wise men, would he have still made the murder command but just included ALL young children? looked at in this way, the wise men’s information would have slightly reduced the severity of Herod’s actions. probably reading way too much into it!
December 14th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
I agree with all the above comments - this part of the Christmas story is incredibly disturbing.
Apparently there is an old story to the effect that when Herod’s soldiers arrived in the vicinity of Bethlehem to kill all the boys two years and under, there weren’t any. According to this story God had seen to it that Jesus was the only boy born in Bethlehem during that time. A lovely story! An attempt to keep the Christmas story nice. But, unfortunately it appears this has no basis in fact. It seems Herod did send his soldiers to Bethlehem. And they did kill all the boys two years old and under.
I believe poets, painters, and theologians call this story “the slaughter of the innocents.” And yes, they were innocent – innocent of being any threat to Herod, innocent of any crime against the Roman powers. Yet they still died by the sword and the spear - killed by a blood-thirsty and paranoid dictator. I agree with Josh - very difficult.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Personally, I can’t believe that I forgot about Herod’s orders - just read this passage and realised how much I have forgotten about Jesus’ birth. I guess I just take it for granted that I know the story inside out…..
March 15th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Very nice site!