A King Sought, a Child Hunted

Herod the Great ruled Judea as a client king of Rome from 37 to 4 BC, so Jesus was born before 4 BC; the monk who set our calendar in the sixth century miscalculated. The magi were a Persian priestly caste known for interpreting dreams and stars; Daniel was made chief “over all the wise men of Babylon” (Daniel 2:48).

“King of the Jews” does not appear again in Matthew until the trial, where Pilate asks it (27:11) and nails it over the cross (27:37). Balaam, a seer from “the mountains of the east” (Numbers 23:7), had foretold that “there shall come a Star out of Jacob” (Numbers 24:17). “In the east” can also mean at its rising.

Herod had executed his wife Mariamne and, over the years, three of his sons for plotting against him. Augustus is reported to have joked that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son, a pun in Greek, hus and huios, since a Jewish king would not eat pork. The city knew what his fear usually led to.

The same two groups, chief priests and scribes, later plot the death of Jesus (Matthew 16:21; 20:18). “Chief priests” is plural because Herod appointed and deposed high priests at will, and former holders of the office kept the title. Herod asks about the Christ by title: he understands what the magi’s question means.

“Bethlehem of Judaea” distinguishes it from a second Bethlehem in Zebulun (Joshua 19:15), a few miles from Nazareth. The prophet is Micah, though the scholars do not name him. Bethlehem lay about six miles south of Jerusalem, the town of Ruth, Boaz and David.

Micah 5:2 has “though thou be little among the thousands of Judah”; Matthew reverses it, “art not the least”, for Bethlehem is little no longer. The Hebrew consonants for “thousands”, clans, can also be read as “chiefs”, which gives Matthew’s “princes”. The quotation closes with David’s commission from 2 Samuel 5:2.

“Privily” is the word used of Joseph’s plan to divorce Mary quietly (1:19). Joseph’s secrecy was meant to protect; Herod’s is meant to kill. “Enquired diligently” means found out exactly, and the exact answer is what sets the age limit in verse 16.

Worship is the chapter’s key verb: the magi come to worship (verse 2), Herod claims he will worship (here), and the magi worship when they arrive (verse 11). The Greek word means to bow down or prostrate oneself before a king or a god. Herod uses the right word for the wrong purpose.

The star “went before them”, as the pillar of cloud went before Israel by day to lead the way (Exodus 13:21). Bethlehem lies south of Jerusalem, while the star was first seen in the east, so the guidance takes a new direction for the last few miles.

The Greek piles up its joy: literally they rejoiced a great joy exceedingly, a noun matching its verb and two intensifiers on top. After the anxiety of verse 3, where king and city were troubled, the chapter gives the foreigners the strongest joy in the Gospel so far.

The family is now in a house, not a stable, and Jesus is called a “young child”, not a newborn. Frankincense and myrrh are resins tapped from trees in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa and carried north by caravan. Myrrh was used for anointing the dead, and was brought for the burial of Jesus (John 19:39).

“Warned of God” is a verb used of receiving a divine answer or oracle, and it returns in verse 22 for Joseph. “Another way” means a road that avoided Jerusalem, perhaps east by way of Jericho, or south of the Dead Sea. The magi disappear from the Gospel with this verse.

Egypt had a large Jewish population, especially in Alexandria, and was the old refuge from a hostile king: Jeroboam fled there from Solomon, “unto Shishak king of Egypt”, when Solomon “sought therefore to kill” him (1 Kings 11:40). The border lay some eighty miles from Bethlehem, beyond Herod’s reach.

“By night” shows how fast the command is carried out: Joseph leaves the same night he receives it. The verse repeats the angel’s words almost exactly, arise, take, depart, so the obedience can be checked against the command word by word.

Matthew follows the Hebrew of Hosea 11:1, “my son”, not the Greek translation, which reads “his children”. Exodus 4:22 is the root of the phrase: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” Jesus stays in Egypt until Herod dies, perhaps no more than a year or two.

“Mocked” is the verb Matthew later uses for the soldiers who mock Jesus before the crucifixion (27:29, 31); here it means tricked. The King James “coasts” means borders or districts, not seashore. Pharaoh’s order to kill Israel’s newborn sons (Exodus 1:22) lies behind the scene, with a king of Judea in Pharaoh’s part.

The formula changes. Elsewhere Matthew writes “that it might be fulfilled”; here he writes “then was fulfilled”, as he does again only when Judas’s silver buys the potter’s field (27:9). He does not say the children died in order that Scripture might be fulfilled.

Rama lay five miles north of Jerusalem, where Jeremiah was found in chains among the captives assembled for deportation to Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1). Rachel died giving birth on the road to Bethlehem and was buried there (Genesis 35:19). Jeremiah’s next line is “Refrain thy voice from weeping… there is hope in thine end” (Jeremiah 31:16–17).

Herod died at Jericho in 4 BC of a long and painful illness that Josephus describes in detail. By his account, Herod ordered leading men to be shut in the hippodrome and killed at his death, so that there would be mourning when he died; the order was not carried out.

The angel’s words echo what the LORD said to Moses in Midian: “Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life” (Exodus 4:19). The plural, “they are dead”, fits that source better than the single death of Herod. Moses returned to Egypt; Jesus returns from it.

“The land of Israel” occurs in the New Testament only here and in verse 20. The obedience is again reported in the command’s own words, arose, took, came, the third time in the Gospel that Joseph does exactly what a dream has told him.

Archelaus, Herod’s son, began his rule by killing some three thousand people in the temple courts at Passover, according to Josephus, and Rome deposed him in AD 6 after complaints from Judea and Samaria. Galilee was under his brother Antipas, the Herod who later beheads John the Baptist.

Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament, in Josephus or in the Talmud; it was a small hill village of perhaps a few hundred people. Nathanael’s question, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46), shows how little it counted. It lay in the hills of lower Galilee, about four miles from the city of Sepphoris.