Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east[a] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
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." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 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."[b]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. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
"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."[c]
Footnotes:
- Matthew 2:9 Or seen when it rose
- Matthew 2:15 Hosea 11:1
- Matthew 2:18 Jer. 31:15
Reading this (and hearing it being read from biblegateway cos I'm still not sure how to pronounce Ramah :b), it occurred to me what a gamut of emotions we encounter in this passage. Herod is disturbed (ok that's before this passage), then sneaky, the Magi are overjoyed, worshipful, in awe, Joseph and Mary are silent but definitely not without emotion... Herod is furious, and his anger falls on the children, and there is weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more... this is a bit like life... when God walks into our world it is in a situation like this, with the worshipful and the cunning and the insecure and the obedient all together, the divine still divine amidst tragedy.
and so God gave His Son into a world like that, so that we might live through Him.
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