02.055. Section VIII

Section VIII the flight into egypt (Matthew 2:1-23)

During those critical moments in which the life of the world’s new-born Redeemer was endangered, the providence of God, in the centre of operations, co-operated by extraordinary dealings with the highly wrought emotions of the faithful human hearts who surrounded the Holy Child with their reverence and care. The art of the calculating despot had been defeated by the subtlety of presentiment with which God had enlightened noble minds.¹ The mind of Joseph was meditating on the impressions of the day during the silence of the night. The angel of the Lord alarmed him by an anxious dream. He showed him the danger impending over the child, and commanded him to flee with Him and His mother to Egypt. At the birth of Jesus, the shepherds were already in the fields with their flocks. Hence spring must have begun. At all events, the rainy season of November and December, and the winterly January, must have been over.² Since, however, the death of Herod probably took place in the early part of April, in the year 750 a.u.c., and the slaughter of the innocents preceded his death, the presentation of Jesus in the temple could scarcely have happened before the flight into Egypt.³ Unless we make the period of at least forty days, which must have intervened between the birth of Jesus and His presentation in the temple, extend so far over the March of that year as to reach April, and occupy a part of February, so that the shepherds were sent into the fields directly after the wintry season, we must suppose that the presentation took place after the return of the holy family from Egypt. We should, at all events, need a longer interval than forty days, if we transpose the presentation in the temple, the return to Bethlehem, the heavenly warning, which did not take place till then, and the subsequent slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, to a time prior to the beginning of April. All the statements of the Evangelists are most easily connected by the view, that the flight into Egypt took place soon, perhaps within a few weeks, after the birth of Jesus.¹

Herod had by this time become certain that the Magi would not return to him. This must have much exasperated a man of his disposition, and have driven him to extremities in his fear of the Messianic Child. He probably, however, formed his designs in secret, as it was in secret also that he had dealt with the Magi. He was too politic a man openly to express his criminal hatred of the promised Son of David.

Terrible things then took place in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood. Our notions of the occurrence take the following form. It was spring, and the parents were, for the most part, occupied in the fields. Soon, however, first one, then another, missed one of their children. One disappeared; another was found suffocated, poisoned, or stabbed, and bathed in its blood. In these mysterious and dreadful events, however, one strange feature of resemblance uniformly prevailed; viz., that only boys were slain; and, moreover, only boys of the tenderest age, none over two years old. The number of these unfortunates could not be great; but the suffering and fear were terribly increased by the mystery and inevitable nature of the danger.

Whence these terrible assassinations arose, no political writer, and no Jew except the hired murderers, could know. But Christian feeling, which had been warned against the attempts of the tyrant, and knew the meaning of the circumstance, that the slain children were two years old and under, could say with certainty: Herod is the originator of this deed. As Peter by the spirit of prophecy announced the secret of Ananias, so probably did Mary that of Herod, from which this slaughter proceeded.² Then arose a bitter lamentation upon the heights of Bethlehem. It was as though Rachel, the ancestress of Israel, who was buried at Rama, not far from Bethlehem, had risen from her grave to bewail the woes of her children. As soon as Herod was dead, and therefore not long after the flight into Egypt, Joseph was warned in a dream to return home again. The mental life of this remarkable man had been progressively perfecting in a peculiar manner, since he had come into the singular relation in which he stood to the most important facts and most glorious persons of the world’s history. The noblest reverence for Mary, that ministering to her to which the providence of God had called him, anxious solicitude for the Holy Child entrusted to his protection, filled his heart with a tender awe when he was resting from the toils of the day during the hours of darkness, and made the night-side of his mental life a camera obscura for those divine directions which protected the life of the Holy Child. Through his fidelity to his trust, his character rose to the height of true Christian geniality, he became the night-watcher before the tent of the new-born Prince of mankind. That the angel of the Lord spoke to him only in dreams, is characteristic. But that these dreams were multiplied makes his character not improbable, but remarkable. And why should not even Joseph appear as a remarkable man in such a circle, under the impulse of such events? Even if not naturally such, he could not but become one. And when once he had entered upon such a course, how likely it was that many of the turning-points of his life should be reflected on and decided during the night-season! The Holy Child was the light of his midnights. But why, asks criticism, did not the angel of the Lord, at least, blend the two last prophetic dreams into one?

Psychologists, however, assert that prophetic dreams are never dialectic, but often rhythmical.

Scarcely, then, had the fugitives arrived in Egypt, than the danger was over, and the call to them to return went forth. They accordingly came again into the land of Israel. notes

1. The passages, Matthew 1:22; Matthew 2:5; Matthew 2:16; Matthew 2:18; Matthew 2:23, in which Matthew speaks of strange fulfilments of Old Testament sayings, will be spoken of in their proper connection. But the remark already made by others, that the facts of the Gospel history are entirely independent of the exegesis of the Evangelist, must be made here. Or does criticism really assume that the Evangelist could not but be an infallible exeget? It is only when criticism makes such an assumption sincerely, and at the same time considers her own exegesis infallible in the points in which it differs from that of the Evangelist, that she can find that exegetical difficulties in such passages can cast a doubt upon historical facts. [The exegesis of Matthew is very thoroughly justified by Mill, p. 317, &c.-Ed.]

2. Tradition has fixed the sojourn of the parents of Jesus in Egypt as near to Israel as possible. The Israelite temple of Onias was at Leontopolis, and the fugitives are said to have dwelt at Matara in its neighbourhood. The statement of the actual history is not affected by this tradition; it is rather the political extent of Egypt towards Palestine at the time of Christ, which should be considered in reviewing this event.