Encore Post: King Herod the Great is a figure that the Jews have mixed feelings about. He was not Jewish, although his family converted to Judaism and he was raised in that faith. He ruled because the Romans appointed him King of the Jews. He adopted a Graeco-Roman life style. In many ways, he represented everything they hated.
Yet Herod built many things that improved the lives of the Jews greatly, including its only Mediterranean port — Caesarea Maritima. His most important project was the rebuilding of the temple into its most glorious form. He was also ruthless. He killed anyone he even imagined threatened his throne, including his sons and favorite wife. A joke going around Rome at the time was that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son. It takes little imagination to believe that he killed all of the young males in Bethlehem.
It is no wonder, then, that the arrival of the wise men from Persia upset Jerusalem, asking for the newborn king of the Jews. The talk of the Messiah was a real problem for him. This kind of thing could provide a focus for those who would rebel against him and Rome. His offer to worship the young child rings hollow to anyone who knew him.
Matthew tells us that the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod. Ancient wisdom valued dreams and so they paid attention to it. For Joseph, a man named after the most famous interpreter of dreams in the Bible, the appearance of an angel in a dream for a second time moved him to act. He quickly took his family to Egypt.
A Jewish family moving to Egypt was not unusual. For centuries the Greek rulers of Egypt were patrons of the Jewish people. Legend tells us that the second such king had commissioned the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Bible used by Jesus and his disciples. A larger population of Jews lived in Alexandria at that time than in Jerusalem. As it turned out, they didn’t have to stay long. Herod died just a few months after he killed the innocent boys of Bethlehem. Matthew tells us the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt fulfilled the prophecy that Jesus’ life would repeat the history of the people of Israel in one person.
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