Matthew 2:1-6
He was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him
The question is asked publicly by foreigners. He gathers the chief priests and scribes and demands where Christ should be born, and they answer out of Micah without hesitating.
People of the Bible
Herod the Great
Rebuilt the temple on a scale nobody had seen since Solomon, and killed a village of children over a rumour.
Herod is king of Judea by appointment of Rome, a builder of harbours, fortresses and the temple itself, and a man who had already executed a wife and three of his own sons. When magi arrive from the east asking where the king of the Jews is born, he is troubled, and all Jerusalem with him, which is the more telling half of the sentence. He assembles the chief priests and scribes, gets the answer in one verse of Micah, and then meets the visitors privately to establish the date.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Herod the Great
- 01
- 02
Matthew 2:7-8
Enquired of them diligently
He calls the magi privately and asks one thing: what time the star appeared. Then he sends them on with an instruction to bring word again, that I may come and worship him also.
- 03
Matthew 2:12-15
Warned in a dream
The visitors leave for their own country another way, and the family leaves at night for Egypt. Both departures are prompted the same way, and neither is announced.
- 04
Matthew 2:16-18
From two years old and under
Exceeding wroth at being mocked, he works from the date he obtained. Matthew answers it with Jeremiah: Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Why it matters
Matthew puts the two scenes side by side without comment. Scholars who can find the right verse in seconds, and a king who acts on it immediately, and neither of them goes the five miles to look. The order is precise and gives away his method: all the children in Bethlehem and its coasts, from two years old and under, according to the time he had diligently enquired. The one detail he asked for is the one that decides how many die.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
