Matthew 2:13-18

The following are text excerpts from Volume I, chapters 7: “From Bethlehem to Nazareth: A Transitional Journey,” pp. 139-149.

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✞ MATTHEW 2:13–23
The Flight into Egypt, the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents, and the Journey to Nazareth
13Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

“Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
16When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more.”

19When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said,

20“Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.”

21Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”

When we were last with Saint Matthew, he told us of wise men from the East having journeyed to see the Christ Child. They followed their astrological arts to the limit of their distance, and, near the end, also needed the guidance of Scripture. Upon completion of their journey, they were warned to go home by another route so that Herod would not know the child’s location, and so that the baby would avoid the reprisals Herod intended to inflict on the one who would be king. They followed the counsel of their dreams, and went home without reporting to Herod. Now we will see what is left in the wake of their departure.

  1. The wise men have not betrayed the location of the baby to Herod. The Holy Family escapes when Joseph responds to a dream. But those left in Bethlehem reap the whirlwind. What is the meaning of this troubling passage?
  2. We have seen how both Joseph and the wise men respond to dreams. Do we take dreams seriously today? Why (not)?
  3. The text implies that Joseph had lived in Bethlehem, and only moved to “the district of Galilee,” where he “made his home in a town called Nazareth” after being warned. How does this differ from Luke’s version? What significance (if any) do those differences hold for our current belief systems?
  4. This passage contains three examples of Matthew’s prophecy/fulfillment pattern. We will see in the commentary section how these hold together more firmly from a literary rather than a literal perspective. You may wish to keep such an interpreta-tion in mind when reading these texts.

In the World of a Tyrant

Joseph again heeds the message of a dream. He is told to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt in order to avoid the coming violence. The conflict-of-kingdoms theme that Professor Boring describes is brought to a sharp point here, as the powerful persecute the weak in order to maintain their privileges and priorities.

Herod the Great feeds a dark wrath that leads to mass infanticide. If we chalk his behavior up to simply being the result of an evil and depraved heart, we can miss a direct warning to us. Before jumping to simple characterizations, let us first read this segment against the context of his life as a whole. At times, Herod had been a wise and prudent ruler who protected his people from economic and other distress, and brought order out of chaos. Herod emerged victorious out of a struggle for the throne, and thereafter maintained the peace. According to various commentators on Matthew, he often ruled wisely, expanding and renovating the temple, remitting taxes when times were difficult, and melting his own gold to fund the growth of his people’s crops.

Yet, he was also a case study in the corrosive effects of power. Herod became a paranoid personality who desperately grasped at, and held onto, power by whatever means necessary. On more than one occasion, he caused the deaths of scores of his own people, mostly the Jewish leadership. He ordered the murder of the Sanhedrin—the highest judicial body—and, at the end of his life, killed many of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Herod also killed his wife, and two of his sons, leading Augustus to observe that it was safer to be his pig than a member of his family.6

While there is no historical record outside Matthew for Herod having killed all children under the age of two in a particular locale, a gap of this nature in the record is not surprising. Brutes through the ages have inflicted their will on the weak; it has not always been con-sidered “newsworthy.” Moreover, the frequency and extent of Herod’s vindictive measures and cruelty leave little room to doubt that Herod was ready, willing and able to take this type of action in order to maintain his grip, and the grip of his surviving family members, on the throne. Even those scholars who view the account of Herod slaughtering the Holy Innocents, not as an historical fact, but as a literary composition echoing the story of Pharaoh killing the Hebrew children, do not question his capacity for this sort of atrocity.7 It was beyond dispute.

A point of the story is that, despite the barriers the wicked may put in the way, God’s will perseveres. We see this idea confirmed in Matthew’s citations to the Old Testament references, which can be read almost as a commentary on the events Matthew describes. Though much agony is inflicted, Herod’s plot does not work. Joseph, who faithfully responds to a dream, takes Mary and the child to Egypt. As in the OT story of Moses, God continues to work his purposes out, even in the face of fierce opposition.

In the 1,200–1,300 years that passed between scholarly estimates of the date of the Hebrews’ escape from Pharaoh’s kingdom and the birth of Christ, Egypt, that great civilization west of the Red Sea, had become a more hospitable place for Israelites. The city of Alexandria served as a place of retreat for Jews in distress. It has been estimated that as many as one million Jews lived in Alexandria at around the time of Jesus; they had left other areas to seek refuge there. It is to this haven that Joseph takes his family.

Connections to the Past, According to Matthew

The story of the flight into Egypt, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, and the return, form part of Matthew’s literary pattern. In it, we find a number of citations to the OT that serve better as symbolic references than as a concrete prophecy/fulfillment link. In one case, the citations are actually non-existent. Matthew borrows liberally from Old Testament descriptions of past events, interpreting them as Messianic prophecies that are fulfilled by Jesus. This serves to connect his Jewish Christian community to the old ways.

The first Old Testament reference in this section—that of God calling his son out of Egypt—is chapter 11 of the book Hosea. This passage describes, in the past tense, how God had already delivered Israel from slavery and bondage in Egypt. Yet, she rebelled and followed the pagan god and idol, Baal. In this way, Hosea describes how Israel’s emergence from Egypt is followed by the desertion of her own religion—the opposite of what we associate with the coming of the Messiah. This passage of Hosea was not generally considered to be a Messianic prophecy. Matthew has chosen it to employ his favored literary device of the echo effect,8 an approach in keeping with the Rabbinic practice of midrash.

The citation to the OT passage about Rachel weeping over her children is also a connection with past events, and becomes a prophecy of the Messianic era by the memories it evokes. Found in Jeremiah 31, the passage speaks to the Babylonian exile, where the image is given of Rachel, long dead, now weeping over her exiled children. In Jeremiah’s context, it is not a prophecy about a future slaughter in Bethlehem, but about the events of his own time. Matthew, like Jeremiah before him, uses Rachel as an image from the past, but now to mourn the murdered children of Bethlehem. There is a little glimmer of hope in Jeremiah, though, as the return of her children to the Holy Land is promised. A return is also found in Matthew’s story.

Finally, Matthew makes reference to a prophecy about Joseph taking the family—not back to Bethlehem, where the text implies he had lived—but to Nazareth, a new place, in order to fulfill the promise that the Messiah will be called a “Nazorean.” The explanation is that the family needed to avoid the Judaic reign of Herod’s son, Archelaus.9 If nothing else, this passage suggests that Joseph had great good sense. Archelaus possessed all his father’s brutality, and none of his competence. He killed 3,000 influential Israelites upon his ascent to power. Rome removed him from his position because of that brutality and incompetence, and resumed direct rule over Judea. There is ample historical justification for steering clear of such a powerful, incompetent and vicious man, and for staying away from Judea itself. After the death of Herod the Great, Judea became enmeshed in civil unrest. And, we shall see, when we look more closely at life in what Matthew calls “the district of Galilee,” it was as good a place to go as any.

Beyond the historical conditions we have described, we also see Matthew make a specific con-nection to Nazareth. He fashions a prophecy/fulfillment link to it, just as he has to Bethlehem—but it takes some creative work. The principal reason is that no scholars studying the Bible over the last 1,900 years have found any reference to Nazareth, or to a Nazorean, in the OT. It appears either that Matthew has made a mistake (not having the benefit of the printing press; a bound Bible divided into books, chapters and verses; a concordance; or a CD-ROM); or, perhaps, he has made a play on words. The similar-sounding OT term “Nazarite” refers not to a person from a particular locality, but to one who is set apart, as Samson and Samuel were. We see in the life of Jesus someone set aside, consecrated for a particular mission. This could be what Matthew means. Alternatively, the similar-sounding OT term “Nezer” does not refer to a place, but means “branch.” It is sometimes used to pertain to the branch of Jesse, the father of David. If Jesse is the root, then, through his son, David, Jesse has many familial branches, including the one where we find the Messiah. Matthew, who has already declared Jesus to be the Son of David, may very well be using a play on words to identify Jesus with the great OT tradition that included Nazarites and Nezer.

With this knowledge about how Matthew has used the Old Testament, we have several choices. Option A is to fret over the uses Matthew makes of Scripture because he is not as literal-minded and clear as we would like him to be. Option B is to set it all aside and pay no attention to Matthew’s ideas of prophecy and fulfillment on the grounds of historical unreliability. Option C is to stick our heads in the sand, pretend that the problems don’t exist, and insist on a literal understanding of this segment even though it is not compatible with basic intellectual honesty. Option D is to interpret these particular passages, not in a literal way, but rather in a literary way as a connection between the Old Testament and the New Covenant in Jesus. With Option D, the memories of the Old Testament carry forth. Their echo effect can help us to hear the story of Jesus more clearly.

A Theological Problem with Matthew’s Story

Some commentators believe that there is a latent problem with the theology of the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. The issue is framed in this way: If Joseph were warned in a dream to leave, but many other families were left behind for their children to be slaughtered, then what does that say about God? Does it make him single-minded, lacking compassion toward the families of Bethlehem? Does it make him powerless to stop the slaying of the others? Or, does it even make him complicit in the murder of the children left behind because he intervened on behalf of one, but not on behalf of the rest, when he had the ability to do so? Does this problem of what appears to be selective beneficence hold true whenever one person receives some form of divine grace, while others similarly situated do not?

Professor Boring addresses this issue articulately and thoroughly in his New Interpreter’s Bible commentary on Matthew, even telling a story from the perspective of the other families of Bethlehem to force us to confront the problem. In the spirit of that work, let us first eliminate the shallow rationalizations Boring identifies. Some would rationalize that, had all the people of Bethlehem been warned in a dream and fled, Herod would have discerned a mass movement of people and hunted them all down. Another rationalization is that the other people did receive a warning, but only Joseph heeded it. A particularly troubling corollary to this second approach is that the infant children—whose parents may have received a warning, but not heeded it, and who were of such tender years as to have utterly no control over their own destinies—suffered the extreme penalty for their parents’ deafness. This notion is completely at odds with the Old Testament tradition, embodied in the latter prophets, particularly Ezekiel 18:1–4:

The word of the Lord came to me: 2What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”? 3As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. 4Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die.

The idea that innocent babes died due to the deafness of their parents would flout Ezekiel.

Both of these rationalizations are ultimately unsatisfying. They may help us get out of the moment, but they do not resolve the problem. As to the first, there is no indication that Herod would have been able to track every family down and have his orders executed to the same degree as could occur with all of them remaining present in Bethlehem. Moreover, this rationalization would take us entirely into the field of imagination, speculating about the breadth and length of Herod’s reach as he chased down families in flight.10

The implications of the second rationalization are downright alarming. It assumes that all people received a similar warning and that the faithless failed to respond to it. Therefore, we blame the victims and make them responsible for their own suffering, all the while letting the world know that God did his doggone best. Is this the sort of piety we wish to cultivate? And what does it suggest about God’s own competence?

If we look closely, we see how Matthew himself struggles with the issue. The prophecy/ fulfillment patterns in the other parts of the pericope involve events occurring either to fulfill the word of the Lord, or what the prophets have said. The idea seems to be that these events come to pass as part of a divine plan. However, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents reads a little differently. The explanatory language says, “Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah.” It is passive; it does not make God, or his word, the initiator.

Having identified the problems, let us now look at a few alternatives to answer these difficult theological questions. One is that this story is not based on historical fact, but is an example of the echo effect. Over 1,200 years earlier, Pharaoh had slaughtered children to avoid a challenge to his reign, which was embodied in Moses. Now, Herod does the same. Therefore, the connection is literary, not literal. This interpretation gains considerable weight in our estimation if we closely examine the idea of Jesus as the new Moses, a theme developed more fully in the next chapter.

Another possibility (again, relying on Professor Boring), is that the story uses confessional language, not an objective report of what has actually occurred. God acted through Joseph to preserve Jesus for his future work, which was fundamental to the restoration of Israel and the redemption of humanity. The point of the story is not to ponder a report of events as if given by a detached and objective observer. The point is for the Matthean community to embrace an authentic faith in God’s redemptive purposes, which are inevitably going forward despite the most desperate and depraved opposition.

And a third possibility for responsible interpretation may be to gain a sense of grace out of tragedy. Divine signs had led the wise men to Bethlehem, unwittingly putting Herod on notice of a “rival.” Herod, willful and wicked, upon learning of that “rival,” would never begin to understand the nature of the kingdom he was to establish. Herod retained a God-given freedom to respond in whatever way he chose—and his response was unspeakably evil.

Joseph, too, was free. He could respond to the threats around him by fight, flight, or freezing in denial. Perhaps lying down to sleep with a sense of impending danger, he had a premonition, a foreboding embodied in a dream. He had no way of “knowing” that this was a message from God; he could have written it off as the nightmare of an anxious new father. But, acting on faith, he paid attention to the language that God was speaking to him, and led his family to safety.
One family is plucked out of the death march of human evil; others are not. But the family that escapes for now will be subjected to evil again later, as another generation of the powerful attempts to crush the hope of the weak. And, at the heart of the gospel story, that final confrontation will be transformed into true liberty.

On the Place of Dreams in Scripture

In Matthew, God communicates with Joseph and the wise men through a dream state. This form of communication is more difficult for us to internalize and accept than it was for people of antiquity. In ancient times, it was widely believed that God spoke to people through dreams. Joseph, the son of the great Old Testament figure Jacob, was reviled by his brothers but highly valued by the incumbent Pharaoh for his ability to experience and interpret prophetic dreams. The prophet Daniel earned the trust of the Babylonian ruler for his ability to interpret dreams; he also experienced his own dreams as God’s revelation. The power of dreams was assumed; the ability to interpret them was honored. It is a tradition repeated in the New Testament, not only in Matthew, but also in Acts and Revelation.

Then, sadly, within a few hundred years after the birth of Christ, St. Jerome changed all of this.11 While he made the Scriptures themselves more accessible to Roman citizens by translating them from Greek into Latin, the “vulgar” tongue (his translation became known as The Vulgate), St. Jerome also erected barriers that prevented the faithful from completely participating in the life of the church and the experience of the holy. He effectively eliminated dreams as a theologically acceptable means of communion with God by declaring that they were the result of evil influences. Jerome thereby strengthened the Pope’s hand as the mediator between God and humankind, and as the authoritative interpreter of the will of God.

In later years, the Ecclesiastical authorities took their exclusive powers as intermediaries a step further by still using The Vulgate long after Latin was no longer the spoken tongue. Speaking Latin in the liturgy, while the laity spoke only the colloquial language, became a control system, eventually abandoned by Pope John XXIII in the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965. It is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the spiritual cost the world has incurred as a result of certain domineering clerics telling their flocks what are the “right” and “wrong” ways to experience God. Rather than trusting in the good and true emerging out of the free marketplace of ideas, the Church has often assumed the role of censor, establishing hierarchies to protect the positions of the powerful, and to perpetuate their own centrality to the experience of the Divine.

Some professionals with expertise in depth psychology urge a reconsideration of dreams as a means of communication with God. It is even argued that all dreams are messages from God, or at least reveal something of that aspect of the Divine that dwells deep within us and moves us toward the true selves we are called to be. Whether we accept this proposition or not is a function of our own knowledge and understanding, and, like Joseph, of our own free will.
If we are willing to live with the possibility that our dreams can somehow move us in the direction of the Spirit, we can look to Joseph and the wise men as role models. We also have the balance of the biblical witness, there being no better example than Joel 2:28–29:

28Then afterward
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
29Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

Let us be open to the places where God might speak to us. Joseph, for example, was attuned to the world of dreams as a place where he might hear, deep within himself, the call of God. That call took him to great lengths, returning even to the land of ancestral bondage, but this time for the protection of those in his care.

  1. We have seen how Herod the Great took his promise and ability and turned them toward unfathomable evil. Do we do better to attribute this solely to his bad character, or to consider its implications for our lives? Can our gifts be brought to bear, either in service to the kingdom of God or against it? Where in your life do you experience these challenges?
  2. According to Matthew, the wise men innocently created the circumstances leading to destruction. Even in much less dramatic circumstances, how do we cope with those times when our well-intentioned actions lead to ill results?
  3. Matthew’s interpretation of Scripture, largely using the echo effect embodied in midrash, does not fit neatly into the cause-effect mentality of a scientific age. Does this difference affect our appreciation of what Matthew is trying to say? If so, how can we change to benefit from the message it contains?
  4. This section argues against shallow rationalizations, and for a literary—rather than a literal—interpretation of many passages of Scripture. Is that approach itself a rationalization? Is it a byproduct of bringing modern mental disciplines to bear when considering ancient works? Or, is it likely that Matthew himself intended a literary, rather than a literal, understanding of his words? Lest we assume our forebears were too “unsophisticated” for this type of composition, let us remember that not only the Bible, but also such works as The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Greek comedies and tragedies, and The Aeneid, came out of this and earlier periods.
6The implication is that, with Jewish prohibitions against eating swine, a pig was safe, but a family member might easily be slaughtered.
7A substantial body of scholarly thought views Matthew’s story through the OT lens of the story of Moses. Using this approach, Matthew’s Jesus is regarded as the new Moses, leading the covenant community toward its destiny in the same way that the original Moses led Israel out of bondage in Egypt. This approach to Matthew’s gospel is discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
8See the section on The Rabbi’s Journey, chapter 2, at p. 31, supra.
9As we saw in the last chapter, a common position among mainline scholars is that the family was originally from Nazareth, and that the Bethlehem nativities were composed to make a connection to Micah’s prophecy of the Messianic era. Luke has Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. In Matthew, it seems, they already lived in Bethlehem, and the child was born at home. Having acknowledged that point, we focus here more on the story as told.
10The point of this statement is not to restrict our theological ponderings to the literal words of the Bible, unaided by history, tradition, reason, or imagination. Imagination plays a powerful role in faith life. After all, what was Jesus doing when telling parables, if not appealing to the imagination? The point is that when we conjure up inadequate rationalizations for a difficult text, we create a straw man to accept our burdens and carry them away so we don’t have to deal with them, instead of trying to address the deeper theological questions that the text raises.
11For the following information about dreams generally, and the actions of St. Jerome particularly, I am indebted to Steve Davis, PhD., of Asheville, who shared this information with my adult Christian Education class.