Verses 1-23
Chapter 2
2:1-2 When
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea, in the days of Herod the King,
behold there came to Jerusalem wise men from the East. "Where," they
said, "is the newly born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in
its rising and we have come to worship him."
It was in Bethlehem that Jesus was born. Bethlehem was quite a
little town six miles to the south of Jerusalem. In the olden days it
had been called Ephrath or Ephratah. The name Bethlehem means The House
of Bread, and Bethlehem stood in a fertile countryside, which made its
name a fitting name. It stood high up on a grey limestone ridge more
than two thousand five hundred feet in height. The ridge had a summit at
each end, and a hollow like a saddle between them. So, from its
position, Bethlehem looked like a town set in an amphitheatre of hills.
Bethlehem had a long history. It was there that Jacob had buried
Rachel, and had set up a pillar of memory beside her grave (Genesis 48:7; Genesis 35:20). It was there that Ruth had lived when she married Boaz (Ruth 1:22),
and from Bethlehem Ruth could see the land of Moab, her native land,
across the Jordan valley. But above all Bethlehem was the home and the
city of David (1 Samuel 16:1; 1 Samuel 17:12; 1 Samuel 20:6); and it was for the water of the well of Bethlehem that David longed when he was a hunted fugitive upon the hills (2 Samuel 23:14-15).
In later days we read that Rehoboam fortified the town of Bethlehem (2 Chronicles 11:6).
But in the history of Israel, and to the minds of the people, Bethlehem
was uniquely the city of David. It was from the line of David that God
was to send the great deliverer of his people. As the prophet Micah had
it: "O Bethlehem Ephratah, who are little to be among the clans of
Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in
Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2).
It was in Bethlehem, David's city, that the Jews expected great
David's greater Son to be born; it was there that they expected God's
Anointed One to come into the world. And it was so.
The picture of the stable and the manger as the birthplace of
Jesus is a picture indelibly etched in our minds; but it may well be
that that picture is not altogether correct. Justin Martyr, one of the
greatest of the early fathers, who lived about A.D. 150, and who came
from the district near Bethlehem, tells us that Jesus was born in a cave
near the village of Bethlehem (Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, 78,
304); and it may well be that Justin's information is correct. The
houses in Bethlehem are built on the slope of the limestone ridge; and
it is very common for them to have a cave-like stable hollowed out in
the limestone rock below the house itself, and very likely it was in
such a cave-stable that Jesus was born.
To this day such a cave is shown in Bethlehem as the birthplace
of Jesus and above it the Church of the Nativity has been built. For
very long that cave has been shown as the birthplace of Jesus. It was so
in the days of the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, for Hadrian, in a deliberate
attempt to desecrate the place, erected a shrine to the heathen god
Adonis above it. When the Roman Empire became Christian, early in the
fourth century, the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, built a great
church there, and that church, much altered and often restored, still
stands.
H. V. Morton tells how he visited the Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem. He came to a great wall, and in the wall there was a door so
low that he had to stoop to enter it; and through the door, and on the
other side of the wall, there was the church. Beneath the high altar of
the church is the eave, and when the pilgrim descends into it he finds a
little cavern about fourteen yards tong and four yards wide, lit by
silver lamps. In the floor there is a star, and round it a Latin
inscription: "Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary."
When the Lord of Glory came to this earth, he was born in a cave
where men sheltered the beasts. The cave in the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem may be that same cave, or it may not be. That we will never
know for certain. But there is something beautiful in the symbolism
that the church where the cave is has a door so low that all must stoop
to enter. It is supremely fitting that every man should approach the
infant Jesus upon his knees.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem there came to do him homage wise men
from the East. The name given to these men is Magi, and that is a word
which is difficult to translate. Herodotus (1: 101,132) has certain
information about the Magi. He says that they were originally a Median
tribe. The Medes were part of the Empire of the Persians. They tried to
overthrow the Persians and substitute the power of the Medes. The
attempt failed. From that time the Magi ceased to have any ambitions for
power or prestige, and became a tribe of priests. They became in Persia
almost exactly what the Levites were in Israel. They became the
teachers and instructors of the Persian kings. In Persia no sacrifice
could be offered unless one of the Magi was present. They became men of
holiness and wisdom.
These Magi were men who were skilled in philosophy, medicine and
natural science. They were soothsayers and interpreters of dreams. In
later times the word Magus developed a much lower meaning, and came to
mean little more than a fortune-teller, a sorcerer, a magician, and a
charlatan. Such was Elymas, the sorcerer (Acts 13:6; Acts 13:8), and Simon who is commonly called Simon Magus (Acts 8:9; Acts 8:11). But at their best the Magi were good and holy men, who sought for truth.
In those ancient days all men believed in astrology. They
believed that they could foretell the future from the stars, and they
believed that a man's destiny was settled by the star under which he was
born. It is not difficult to see how that belief arose. The stars
pursue their unvarying courses; they represent the order of the
universe. If then there suddenly appeared some brilliant star, if the
unvarying order of the heavens was broken by some special phenomenon, it
did look as if God was breaking into his own order, and announcing some
special thing.
We do not know what brilliant star those ancient Magi saw. Many
suggestions have been made. About 11 B.C. Halley's comet was visible
shooting brilliantly across the skies. About 7 B.C. there was a
brilliant conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. In the years 5 to 2 B.C.
there was an unusual astronomical phenomenon. In those years, on the
first day of the Egyptian month, Mesori, Sirius, the dog star, rose
helically, that is at sunrise, and shone with extraordinary brilliance.
Now the name Mesori means the birth of a prince, and to those ancient
astrologers such a star would undoubtedly mean the birth of some great
king. We cannot tell what star the Magi saw; but it was their profession
to watch the heavens, and some heavenly brilliance spoke to them of the
entry of a king into the world.
It may seem to us extraordinary that those men should set out
from the East to find a king, but the strange thing is that, just about
the time Jesus was born, there was in the world a strange feeling of
expectation of the coming of a king. Even the Roman historians knew
about this. Not so very much later than this Suetonius could write,
"There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief,
that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the
world" (Suetonius: Life of Vespasian, 4: 5). Tacitus tells of the same
belief that "there was a firm persuasion ... that at this very time the
East was to grow powerful, and rulers coming from Judaea were to acquire
universal empire" (Tacitus: Histories, 5: 13). The Jews had the belief
that "about that time one from their country should become governor of
the habitable earth" (Josephus: Wars of the Jews, 6: 5, 4). At a
slightly later time we find Tiridates, King of Armenia, visiting Nero at
Rome with his Magi along with him (Suetonius: Life of Nero, 13: 1). We
find the Magi in Athens sacrificing to the memory of Plato (Seneca:
Epistles, 58: 3 1). Almost at the same time as Jesus was born we find
Augustus, the Roman Emperor, being hailed as the Saviour of the World,
and Virgil, the Roman poet, writing his Fourth Eclogue, which is known
as the Messianic Eclogue, about the golden days to come.
There is not the slightest need to think that the story of the
coming of the Magi to the cradle of Christ is only a lovely legend. It
is exactly the kind of thing that could easily have happened in that
ancient world. When Jesus Christ came the world was in an eagerness of
expectation. Men were waiting for God and the desire for God was in
their hearts. They had discovered that they could not build the golden
age without God. It was to a waiting world that Jesus came; and, when he
came, the ends of the earth were gathered at his cradle. It was the
first sign and symbol of the world conquest of Christ.
2:3-9 When
Herod the king heard or this he was disturbed, and so was all Jerusalem
with him. So he collected all the chief priests and scribes of the
people, and asked them where the Anointed One of God was to be born.
They said to him, "In Bethlehem in Judaea. For so it stands written
through the prophets, 'And you Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means
the least among the leaders of Judah. For there shall come forth from
you the leader, who will be a shepherd to my people Israel.'" Then Herod
secretly summoned the wise men, and carefully questioned them about the
time when the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem. "Go," he said,
"and make every effort to find out about the little child. And, when you
have found him, send news to me, that I, too, may come and worship
him." When they had listened to the king they went on their way.
It came to the ears of Herod that tile wise men had come from
the East, and that they were searching for the little child who had been
born to be King of the Jews. Any king would have been worried at the
report that a child had been born who was to occupy his throne. But
Herod was doubly disturbed.
Herod was half Jew and half Idumaean. There was Edomite blood in
his veins. He had made himself useful to the Romans in the wars and
civil wars of Palestine, and they trusted him. He had been appointed
governor in 47 B.C.; in 40 B.C. he had received the title of king; and
he was to reign until 4 B.C. He had wielded power for long. He was
called Herod the Great, and in many ways he deserved the title. He was
the only ruler of Palestine who ever succeeded in keeping the peace and
in bringing order into disorder. He was a great builder; he was indeed
the builder of the Temple in Jerusalem. He could be generous. In times
of difficulty he remitted the taxes to make things easier for the
people; and in the famine of 25 B.C. he had actually melted down his own
gold plate to buy corn for the starving people.
But Herod had one terrible flaw in his character. He was almost
insanely suspicious. He had always been suspicious, and the older he
became the more suspicious he grew, until, in his old age, he was, as
someone said, "a murderous old man." If he suspected anyone as a rival
to his power, that person was promptly eliminated. He murdered his wife
Mariamne and her mother Alexandra. His eldest son, Antipater, and two
other sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, were all assassinated by him.
Augustus, the Roman Emperor, had said, bitterly, that it was safer to be
Herod's pig than Herod's son. (The saying is even more epigrammatic in
Greek, for in Greek hus (Greek #5300) is the word for a pig, and huios (Greek #5207) is the word for a son).
Something of Herod's savage, bitter, warped nature can be seen
from the provisions he made when death came near. When lie was seventy
he knew that he must die. He retired to Jericho, the loveliest of all
his cities. He gave orders that a collection of the most distinguished
citizens of Jerusalem should be arrested on trumped-up charges and
imprisoned. And he ordered that the moment he died, they should all be
killed. He said grimly that he was well aware that no one would mourn
for his death, and that he was determined that some tears should be shed
when he died.
It is clear how such a man would feel when news reached him that
a child was born who was destined to be king. Herod was troubled, and
Jerusalem was troubled, too, for Jerusalem well knew the steps that
Herod would take to pin down this story and to eliminate this child.
Jerusalem knew Herod, and Jerusalem shivered as it waited for his
inevitable reaction.
Herod summoned the chief priests and the scribes. The scribes
were the experts in scripture and in the law. The chief priests
consisted of two kinds of people. They consisted of ex-high priests. The
high priesthood was confined to a very few families. They were the
priestly aristocracy, and the members of these select families were
called the chief priests. So Herod summoned the religious aristocracy
and the theological scholars of his day, and asked them where, according
to the scriptures, the Anointed One of God should be born. They quoted
the text in Micah 5:2
to him. Herod sent for the wise men, and despatched them to make
diligent search for the little child who had been born. He said that he,
too, wished to come and worship the child; but his one desire was to
murder the child born to be king.
No sooner was Jesus born than we see men grouping themselves
into the three groups in which men are always to be found in regard to
Jesus Christ. Let us look at the three reactions.
(i) There was the reaction of Herod, the reaction of hatred and
hostility. Herod was afraid that this little child was going to
interfere with his life, his place, his power, his influence, and
therefore his first instinct was to destroy him.
There are still those who would gladly destroy Jesus Christ,
because they see in him the one who interferes with their lives. They
wish to do what they like, and Christ will not let them do what they
like; and so they would kill him. The man whose one desire is to do what
he likes has never any use for Jesus Christ. The Christian is the man
who has ceased to do what he likes, and has dedicated his life to do as
Christ likes.
(ii) There was the reaction of the chief priests and scribes,
the reaction of complete indifference. It did not make the slightest
difference to them. They were so engrossed in their Temple ritual and
their legal discussions that they completely disregarded Jesus. He meant
nothing to them.
There are still those who are so interested in their own affairs
that Jesus Christ means nothing to them. The prophet's poignant
question can still be asked: "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass
by?" (Lamentations 1:12).
(iii) There was the reaction of the wise men, the reaction of
adoring worship, the desire to lay at the feet of Jesus Christ the
noblest gifts which they could bring.
Surely, when any man realizes the love of God in Jesus Christ, he, too, should be lost in wonder, love and praise.
2:9-12 And,
behold, the star, which they had seen in its rising, led them on until
it came and stood over the place where the little child was. When they
saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. When they came
into the house, they saw the little child with Mary, his mother, and
they fell down and worshipped him; and they opened their treasures, and
offered to him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. And because a
message from God came to them in a dream, telling them not to go back to
Herod, they returned to their own country by another way.
So the wise men found their way to Bethlehem. We need not think
that the star literally moved like a guide across the sky. There is
poetry here, and we must not turn lovely poetry into crude and lifeless
prose. But over Bethlehem the star was shining. There is a lovely legend
which tells how the star, its work of guidance completed, fell into the
well at Bethlehem, and that it is still there and can still be seen
sometimes by those whose hearts are pure.
Later legends have been busy with the wise men. In the early
days eastern tradition said that there were twelve of them. But now the
tradition that there were three is almost universal. The New Testament
does not say that there were three, but the idea that there were three
no doubt arose from the threefold gift which they brought.
Later legend made them kings. And still later legend gave them
names, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Still later legend assigned to
each a personal description, and distinguished the gift which each of
them gave to Jesus. Melchior was an old man, grey haired, and with a
long beard, and it was he who brought the gift of gold. Caspar was young
and beardless, and ruddy in countenance, and it was he who brought the
gift of frankincense. Balthasar was swarthy, with the beard newly grown
upon him, and it was he who brought the gift of myrrh.
From very early times men have seen a peculiar fitness in the
gifts the wise men brought. They have seen in each gift something which
specially matched some characteristic of Jesus and his work.
(i) Gold is the gift for a king. Seneca tells us that in Parthia
it was the custom that no one could ever approach the king without a
gift. And gold, the king of metals, is the fit gift for a king of men.
So then Jesus was "the Man born to be King." But he was to
reign, not by force, but by love; and he was to rule over men's hearts,
not from a throne, but from a Cross.
We do well to remember that Jesus Christ is King. We can never
meet Jesus on an equality. We must always meet him on terms of complete
submission. Nelson, the great admiral, always treated his vanquished
opponent?, with the greatest kindness and courtesy. After one of his
naval victories, the defeated admiral was brought aboard Nelson's
flagship and on to Nelson's quarter-deck. Knowing Nelson's reputation
for courtesy, and thinking to trade upon it, he advanced across the
quarter-deck with hand outstretched as if he was advancing to shake
hands with an equal. Nelson's hand remained by hi.' side. "Your sword
first," he said, "and then your hand." Before we must be friends with
Christ, we must submit to Christ.
(ii) Frankincense is the gift for a priest. It was in the Temple
worship and at the Temple sacrifices that the sweet perfume of
frankincense was used. The function of a priest is to open the way to
God for men. The Latin word for priest is pontifex, which means a
bridge-builder. The priest is the man who builds a bridge between men
and God.
That is what Jesus did. He opened the way to God; he made it possible for men to enter into the very presence of God.
(iii) Myrrh is the gift for one who is to die. Myrrh was used to embalm the bodies of the dead.
Jesus came into the world to die. Holman Hunt has a famous
picture of Jesus. It shows Jesus at the door of the carpenter's shop in
Nazareth. He is still only a boy and has come to the door to stretch his
limbs which had grown cramped over the bench. He stands there in the
doorway with arms outstretched, and behind him, on the wall, the setting
sun throws his shadow, and it is the shadow of a cross. In the
background there stands Mary, and as she sees that shadow there is the
fear of coming tragedy in her eyes.
Jesus came into the world to live for men, and, in the end, to
die for men. He came to give for men his life and his death.
Gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, myrrh for one who
was to die--these were the gifts of the wise men, and, even at the
cradle of Christ, they foretold that he was to be the true King, the
perfect High Priest, and in the end the supreme Saviour of men.
2:13-15 When
they had gone away, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to
Joseph. "Rise," he said, "and take the little child and his mother, and
flee into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is about to
search for the little child, in order to kill him." So he arose and took
the little child and his mother by night and went away into Egypt, and
he remained there until the death of Herod. This happened that the word
spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: "Out of Egypt
have I called my son."
The ancient world had no doubt that God sent his messages to
men in dreams. So Joseph was warned in a dream to flee into Egypt to
escape Herod's murderous intentions. The flight into Egypt was entirely
natural. Often, throughout the troubled centuries before Jesus came,
when some peril and some tyranny and some persecution made life
intolerable for the Jews, they sought refuge in Egypt. The result was
that every city in Egypt had its colony of Jews; and in the city of
Alexandria there were actually more than a million Jews, and certain
districts of the city were entirely handed over to them. Joseph in his
hour of peril was doing what many a Jew had done before; and when Joseph
and Mary reached Egypt they would not find themselves altogether amidst
strangers, for in every town and city they would find Jews who had
sought refuge there.
It is an interesting fact that in after days the foes of
Christianity and the enemies of Jesus used the stay in Egypt as a peg to
attach their slanders to him. Egypt was proverbially the land of
sorcery, of witchcraft and of magic. The Talmud says, "Ten measures of
sorcery descended into the world; Egypt received nine, the rest of the
world one". So the enemies of Jesus declared that it was in Egypt that
Jesus had learned a magic and a sorcery which made him able to work
miracles, and to deceive men.
When the pagan philosopher, Celsus, directed his attack against
Christianity in the third century, that attack which Origen met and
defeated, he said that Jesus was brought up as an illegitimate child,
that he served for hire in Egypt, that he came to the knowledge of
certain miraculous powers, and returned to his own country and used
these powers to proclaim himself God (Origen: Contra Celsum 1: 38). A
certain Rabbi, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, said that Jesus had the necessary
magical formulae tattooed upon his body so that he would not forget
them. Such were the slanders that twisted minds connected with the
flight to Egypt; but they are obviously false, for it was as a little
baby that Jesus was taken to Egypt, and it was as a little child that he
was brought back.
Two of the loveliest New Testament legends are connected with
the flight into Egypt. The first is about the penitent thief. Legend
calls the penitent thief Dismas, and tells that he did not meet Jesus
for the first time when they both hung on their crosses on Calvary. The
story runs like this. When Joseph and Mary were on their way to Egypt,
they were waylaid by robbers. One of the robber chiefs wished to murder
them at once and to steal their little store of goods. But something
about the baby Jesus went straight to Dismas' heart, for Dismas was one
of these robbers. He refused to allow any harm to come to Jesus or his
parents. He looked at Jesus and said, "O most blessed of children, if
ever there come a time for having mercy on me, then remember me, and
forget not this hour". So, the legend says, Jesus and Dismas met again
at Calvary, and Dismas on the cross found forgiveness and mercy for his
soul.
The other legend is a child's story, but it is very lovely. When
Joseph and Mary and Jesus were on their way to Egypt, the story runs,
as the evening came they were weary, and they sought refuge in a cave.
It was very cold, so cold that the ground was white with hoar frost. A
little spider saw the little baby Jesus, and he wished so much that he
could do something to keep him warm in the cold night. He decided to do
the only thing he could and spin his web across the entrance of the
cave, to make, as it were, a curtain there.
Along the path came a detachment of Herod's soldiers, seeking
for children to kill to carry out Herod's bloodthirsty order. When they
came to the cave they were about to burst in to search it, but their
captain noticed the spider's web, covered with the white hoar frost and
stretched right across the entrance to the eave. "Look," he said, "at
the spider's web there. It is quite unbroken and there cannot possibly
be anyone in the cave, for anyone entering would certainly have torn the
web."
So the soldiers passed on, and left the holy family in peace,
because a little spider had spun his web across the entrance to the
cave. And that, so they say, is why to this day we put tinsel on our
Christmas trees, for the glittering tinsel streamers stand for the
spider's web, white with the hoar frost, stretched across the entrance
of the cave on the way to Egypt. It is a lovely story, and this much, at
least, is true, that no gift which Jesus receives is ever forgotten.
The last words of this passage introduce us to a custom which is
characteristic of Matthew. He sees in the flight to Egypt a fulfilment
of the word spoken by Hosea. He quotes it in the form: Out of Egypt have
I called my son. That is a quotation from Hosea 11:1, which reads: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son".
It can be seen at once that in its original form this saying of
Hosea had nothing to do with Jesus, and nothing to do with the flight to
Egypt It was nothing more than a simple statement of now God had
delivered the nation of Israel from slavery and from bondage in the land
of Egypt.
We shall see, again and again, that this is typical of Matthew's
use of the Old Testament. He is prepared to use as a prophecy about
Jesus any text at all which can be made verbally to fit, even although
originally it had nothing to do with the question in hand, and was never
meant to have anything to do with it. Matthew knew that almost the only
way to convince the Jews that Jesus was the promised Anointed One of
God was to prove that he was the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
And in his eagerness to do that he finds prophecies in the Old Testament
where no prophecies were ever meant. When we read a passage like this
we must remember that, though it seems strange and unconvincing to us,
it would appeal to those Jews for whom Matthew was writing.
2:16-18 The
Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, and he sent and slew
all the children in Bethlehem, and in all the districts near by. He
slew every child of two years and under, reckoning from the time when he
had made his inquiries from the wise men. Then the word which was
spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: "A voice was heard in
Rama, weeping and much lamenting, Rachel weeping for her children, and
she refused to be comforted, for they were no more."
We have already seen that Herod was a past master in the art of
assassination. He had no sooner come to the throne than he began by
annihilating the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews. Later he
slaughtered three hundred court officers out of hand. Later he murdered
his wife Mariamne, and her mother Alexandra, his eldest son Antipater,
and two other sons, Alexander and Aristobulus. And in the hour of his
death he arranged for the slaughter of the notable men of Jerusalem.
It was not to be expected that Herod would calmly accept the
news that a child had been born who was going to be king. We have read
how he had carefully enquired of the wise men when they had seen the
star. Even then he was craftily working out the age of the child so that
he might take steps towards murder, and now he put his plans into swift
and savage action. He gave orders that every child under two years of
age in Bethlehem and the surrounding district should be slaughtered.
There are two things which we must note. Bethlehem was not a
large town, and the number of the children would not exceed from twenty
to thirty babies. We must not think in terms of hundreds. It is true
that this does not make Herod's crime any the less terrible, but we must
get the picture right.
Secondly, there are certain critics who hold that this slaughter
cannot have taken place because there is no mention of it in any writer
outside this one passage of the New Testament. The Jewish historian
Josephus, for instance, does not mention it. There are two things to be
said. First, as we have just seen, Bethlehem was a comparatively small
place, and in a land where murder was so widespread the slaughter of
twenty or thirty babies would cause little stir, and would mean very
little except to the broken-hearted mothers of Bethlehem. Second, Carr
notes that Macaulay, in his history, points out that Evelyn, the famous
diarist, who was a most assiduous and voluminous recorder of
contemporary events, never mentions the massacre of Glencoe. The fact
that a thing is not mentioned, even in the places where one might expect
it to be mentioned, is no proof at all that it did not happen. The
whole incident is so typical of Herod that we need not doubt that
Matthew is passing the truth down to us.
Here is a terrible illustration of what men will do to get rid
of Jesus Christ. If a man is set on his own way, if he sees in Christ
someone who is liable to interfere with his ambitions and rebuke his
ways, his one desire is to eliminate Christ; and then he is driven to
the most terrible things, for if he does not break men's bodies, he will
break their hearts.
Again, at the end of this passage, we see Matthew's characteristic way of using the Old Testament. He quotes Jeremiah 31:15,
"Thus says the Lord: a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter
weeping; Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted
for her children, because they are not."
The verse in Jeremiah has no connection with Herod's slaughter
of the children: the picture in Jeremiah was this. Jeremiah was
picturing the people of Jerusalem being led away in exile. In their sad
way to an alien land they pass Ramah, and Ramah was the place where
Rachel lay buried (1 Samuel 10:2); and Jeremiah pictures Rachel weeping, even in the tomb, for the fate that had befallen the people.
Matthew is doing what he so often did. In his eagerness he is
finding a prophecy where no prophecy is. But, again, we must remind
ourselves that what seems strange to us seemed in no way strange to
those for whom Matthew was writing in his day.
2:19-23 When
Herod died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph
in Egypt. "Rise," he said, "and take the little child and his mother,
and go into the land of Israel. For those who seek the little child's
life are dead." So he rose and took the little child and his mother, and
went into the land of Israel. When he heard that Archelaus was king in
Judaea instead of Herod, his father, he was afraid to go there. So,
when, he had received a message from God in a dream, he withdrew to the
districts of Galilee, and he came and settled in a town called Nazareth.
This happened so that the word spoken through the prophets might be
fulfilled-- "He shall be called a Nazarene."
In due time Herod died, and when Herod died the whole kingdom
over which he had ruled was split up. The Romans had trusted Herod, and
they had allowed him to reign over a very considerable territory, but
Herod well knew that none of his sons would be allowed a like power. So
he had divided his kingdom into three, and in his will he had left a
part to each of three of his sons. He had left Judaea to Archelaus;
Galilee to Herod Antipas; and the region away to the northeast and
beyond Jordan to Philip.
But the death of Herod did not solve the problem. Archelaus was a
bad king, and he was not to last long upon the throne. In fact he had
begun his reign with an attempt to out-Herod Herod, for he had opened
his rule with the deliberate slaughter of three thousand of the most
influential people in the country. Clearly, even now that Herod was
dead, it was still unsafe to return to Judaea with the savage and
reckless Archelaus on the throne. So Joseph was guided to go to Galilee
where Herod Antipas, a much better king, reigned.
It was in Nazareth that Joseph settled, and it was in Nazareth
that Jesus was brought up. It must not be thought that Nazareth was a
little quiet backwater, quite out of touch with life and with events.
Nazareth lay in a hollow in the hills in the south of Galilee.
But a lad had only to climb the hills for half tile world to be at his
door. He could look west and the waters of the Mediterranean, blue in
the distance, would meet his eyes; and he would see the ships going out
to the ends of the earth. He had only to look at the plain which skirted
the coast, and he would see, slipping round the foot of the very hill
on which he stood, the road from Damascus to Egypt, the land bride to
Africa. It was one of the greatest caravan routes in the world.
It was the road by which centuries before Joseph had been sold
down into Egypt as a slave. It was the road that, three hundred years
before, Alexander the Great and his legions had followed. It was the
road by which centuries later Napoleon was to march. It was the road
which in the twentieth century Allenby was to take. Sometimes it was
called The Way of the South, and sometimes the Road of the Sea. On it
Jesus would see all kinds of travellers from all kinds, of nations on
all kinds of errands, coming, and going from the ends of the earth.
But there was another road. There was the road which left the
sea coast at Acre or Ptolemais and went out to the East. It was the Road
of the East. It went out to the eastern bounds and frontiers of the
Roman Empire. Once again the cavalcade of the caravans and their silks
and spices would be continually on it, and on it also the Roman legions
clanked out to the frontiers.
Nazareth indeed was no backwater. Jesus was brought up in a town
where the ends of the earth passed the foot of the hilltop. From his
boyhood days he was confronted with scenes which must have spoken to him
of a world for God.
We have seen how Matthew clinches each event in the early life
of Jesus with a passage from the Old Testament which he regards as a
prophecy. Here Matthew cites a prophecy: "He shall be called a
Nazarene"; and here Matthew has set us an insoluble problem, for there
is no such text in the Old Testament. In fact Nazareth is never
mentioned in the Old Testament. No one has ever satisfactorily solved
the problem of what part of the Old Testament Matthew has in mind.
The ancient writers liked puns and plays on words. It has been suggested that Matthew is playing on the words of Isaiah in Isaiah 11:1
: "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch
shall grow out of his roots." The word for branch is netser (Hebrew #5342); and it is just possible that Matthew is playing on the word Nazarene and the word Netser (Hebrew #5342); and that he is saying at one and the same time that Jesus was from Nazareth and that Jesus was the Netser (Hebrew #5342),
the promised Branch from the stock of Jesse, the descendant of David,
the promised Anointed King of God. No one can tell. What prophecy
Matthew had in mind must remain a mystery.
So now the stage is set; Matthew has brought Jesus to Nazareth
and in a very real sense Nazareth was the gateway to the world.
The Years Between
Before we move on to the third chapter of Matthew's gospel there is
something at which we would do well to look. The second chapter of the
gospel closes with Jesus as a little child; the third chapter of the
gospel opens with Jesus as a man of thirty (compare Luke 3:23).
That is to say, between the two chapters there are thirty silent years.
Why should it have been so? What was happening in those silent years?
Jesus came into the world to be the Saviour of the world, and for thirty
years he never moved beyond the bounds of Palestine, except to the
Passover at Jerusalem. He died when he was thirty-three, and of these
thirty-three years thirty were spent without record in Nazareth. To put
it in another way, ten-elevenths of Jesus' life were spent in Nazareth.
What was happening then?
(i) Jesus was growing up to boyhood, and then to manhood, in a
good home; and there can be no greater start to life than that. J. S.
Blackie, the famous Edinburgh professor, once said in public, "I desire
to thank God for the good stock-in-trade, so to speak, which I inherited
from my parents for the business of life." George Herbert once said, "A
good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters." So for Jesus the years
passed, silently but mouldingly, in the circle of a good home.
(ii) Jesus was fulfilling the duties of an eldest son. It seems
most likely that Joseph died before the family had grown up. Maybe he
was already much older than Mary when they married. In the story of the
Wedding Feast at Cana of Galilee there is no mention of Joseph, although
Mary is there, and it is natural to suppose that Joseph had died.
So Jesus became the village craftsman of Nazareth to support his
mother and his younger brothers and sisters. A world was calling him,
and yet he first fulfilled his duty to his mother and to his own folks
and to his own home. When his mother died, Sir James Barrie could write,
"I can look back, and I cannot see the smallest thing undone." There
lies happiness. It is on those who faithfully and ungrudgingly accept
the simple duties that the world is built.
One of the great examples of that is the great doctor, Sir James
Y. Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. He came from a poor home. One
day his mother took him on her knee and began to darn his stockings.
When she had finished, she looked at her neat handiwork. "My, Jamie,"
she said. "mind when your mither's away that she was a grand darner."
Jamie was the "wise wean, the little box of brains," and his family knew
it. They had their dreams for him. His brother Sandy said, "I aye felt
he would be great some day." And so, without jealousy and willingly, his
brothers worked in the bakeshop and at their jobs that the lad might
have his college education and his chance. There would have been no Sir
James Simpson had there not been simple folk willing to do simple things
and to deny themselves so that the brilliant lad might have his chance.
Jesus is the great example of one who accepted the simple duties of the home.
(iii) Jesus was learning what it was like to be a working man.
He was learning what it was like to have to earn a living, to save to
buy food and clothes, and maybe sometimes a little pleasure; to meet the
dissatisfied and the critical customer, and the customer who would not
pay his debts. If Jesus was to help men, he must first know what men's
lives were like. He did not come into a protected cushioned life; he
came into the life that any man must live. He had to do that, if he was
ever to understand the life of ordinary people.
There is a famous story of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of
France, in the days when the storm of the French Revolution was brooding
over the country before it broke. Men were starving; the mob was
rioting. The Queen asked what all the uproar was about. She was told:
"They have no bread." "If they have no bread," she said, "let them eat
cake." The idea of a life without plenty was an idea which did not come
within her horizon. She did not understand.
Jesus worked in Nazareth for all the silent years in order that
he might know what our life was like, and that, understanding, he might
be able to help.
(iv) Jesus was faithfully performing the lesser task before the
greater task was given to him to do. The great fact is that, if Jesus
had failed in the smaller duties, the mighty task of being the Saviour
of the world could never have been given to him to do. He was faithful
in little that he might become master of much. It is a thing never to be
forgotten that in the everyday duties of life we make or mar a destiny,
and we win or lose a crown.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)