The escape to Egypt
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.. 17Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
Bethlehem was about a two-hour journey from Jerusalem. So we may assume that the Magi arrived there on the same day they had spoken to Herod. It is possible that they left Bethlehem that same night, just as Joseph and Mary and the Christ Child departed before morning. So in the morning the Magi and Joseph’s little family were simply gone. No one in Bethlehem could tell where they were because no one knew.
After all the trouble and suffering the Israelites had endured in Egypt before the Exodus, it might seem like a strange place for Joseph and Mary to go with the Christ
Child. But it was not strange at all. First of all, we need to realize that Egypt had been a traditional place of refuge. Abraham had gone to Egypt during a time of famine (Genesis 12:10). Jacob and his family of 70 souls took refuge in Egypt for the same reason (Genesis 46), and they became a mighty nation there. They remained in Egypt until God led them out under Moses some four hundred years later. Jeroboam fled to Egypt when Solomon tried to kill him (1 Kings 11:40), and Uriah also fled to Egypt (Jeremiah 26:21-23).
There were many Jews in Egypt at this time, so Mary and Joseph could feel quite at home and secure there. They probably used the costly gifts from the Magi to finance their journey and their stay in Egypt.
Furthermore, Matthew informs us that the flight to Egypt (and the return to the land of Israel) fulfilled a prophecy of Hosea (11:1). God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and their exodus foreshadowed the calling of God’s Son from Egypt. Matthew directly states that Hosea was not only recording an event in Israel’s history; he was also foretelling an event in the life of God’s Son, the Messiah.
When King Herod realized that the Magi were not coming back, he reacted in a way typical of his murderous reign. According to the report of the Magi concerning the time they first saw the special star, Herod calculated how old the Christ Child might be. Six months or so seems reasonable, although
it is impossible to be certain about his age. At any rate, Herod gave himself plenty of leeway when he commanded his soldiers to kill all the baby boys in and around Bethlehem up to two years old. Since Bethlehem was a small town, we may estimate that the total number slain was about 15 or 20.
These victims of Herod are often called the innocents (not that they were sinless, but they surely had not committed any crime worthy of death).
Herod’s heinous crime reminds us of the ongoing deliberate and systematic destruction of thousands upon thousands of unborn children by abortion in our own day. Is this not an even greater crime? Herod perceived a real threat to his own authority when he committed his crime, and he may have reasoned that it would be better to sacrifice 15 or 20 children than to permit a bloody revolution to take place when this “newborn king” would attempt to seize the throne some years later. Many of our fellow citizens murder their unborn children as a matter of convenience, and the laws of our country permit it. They insist that they are being kinder and more considerate to their children than they would be if they allowed the birth of unwanted children or children for whose needs they might not be able to provide.
Selfishness can make murder seem like a good deed.
The slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem was also the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15. Ramah was five miles north of Jerusalem, on the border between ancient Judah and ancient Israell. It was the place where Jewish captives had been assembled for deportation to Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1). Rachel was Jacob’s favorite wife, childless for years, finally the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She died in childbirth. Rachel weeping for her children represented all the Jewish mothers who wept over Israel’s tragedy in the days of Jeremiah. She also typifies the grieving mothers at Bethlehem,
as Matthew points out.
The return to Nazareth
19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
It may have been only a matter of a few months that Joseph and Mary and the Christ Child remained in Egypt. Herod died about Easter time 4 B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus in his Antiquities reports that Herod “died of . . . ulcerated entrails, putrefied and maggot-filled organs, constant convulsions, foul breath, and neither physician nor warm baths led to recovery.” So Joseph could safely take his family home. When he heard that Archelaus ruled in place of his father Herod, he went back to Nazareth in Galilee.
We cannot point to any specific passage in the Old Testament prophets calling the Messiah a Nazarene. Yet Matthew clearly states that certain of the prophets had foretold this. The most natural explanation would seem to be that more than one prophet had made such a statement, and this was common knowledge among the Jews, even if this was not directly recorded anywhere in the Old Testament Scriptures.
To be called a Nazarene was not a compliment among the Jews. Nazareth was an undistinguished place. When Philip found Nathanael and told him that they had found the Messiah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael’s response was, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46). Nathanael was familiar with Nazareth. He was from Cana, a few miles south of there. The fact that Jesus was called a Nazarene is an indication of his lowliness and humiliation. Pontius Pilate also intended it as sarcasm when he composed the superscription for Jesus’ cross: “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS” (John 19:19).