O Little Town of Bethlehem
Bethlehem is Hamas Country. It is also a place of destiny, visited again and again by a fateful fortune over thousands of years.
“Oh little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above they deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight”
“Oh little town of Bethlehem . . . . The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight.” Traditionally, Christmas is a season of hope and we wish it were in this New Year of Our Lord 2024 as well. But I fear that fear dominates instead.
Three months ago, Palestinian raiders breached the walls that separate Gaza from Israel in a surprise attack. They killed, raped, mutilated and looted on a broad scale. They took nearly 250 hostages. They killed and raped with intent to brutalize, to shock to terrorize. Perhaps most tragic were the infants found butchered, beheaded.
In the aftermath of events, words like unprecedented were used to describe the horror. Perhaps this was simply click bait, or maybe just reflected the insular nature of today’s journalists as well as their audience, or just the myopia of the Christian West’s navel gazers today. Such events are not unknown in history, in recent history, in the world today outside the Christian West. In point of fact they are so common as to be almost banal, almost an everyday occurrence for Christians in Nigeria.
Perhaps the decapitated babies along the Gaza/Israeli wall give a special poignance to the birth of that special baby in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. For Bethlehem today, as was then was Israel, but not Israel. Today Bethlehem is in the State of Palestine. Two thousand years ago it was in the Roman Province of Judea. Today, as then, innocence is hostage to zealots, innocence sacrificed to political calculation.
The song was written in the latter half of the 1860’s by an Episcopal clergyman, back when the Episcopal denomination believed in the hope of Bethlehem rather than hope in pride flags and personal pronouns, the fear of hell rather than the fear of social justice warriors on social media.
Today Bethlehem is located in Hamas Country, that area known as the West Bank. And the West Bank of 2023/24 is much more about the “fears of all the years” than hope. Bethlehem is separated from Israel by a high concrete wall, besmeared with garish graffiti, graffiti that engenders an atmosphere of neither hope nor goodwill.
Bethlehem is now controlled by Hamas, a shadow government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The events of Oct. 7 shocked a public grown complacent, cosseted in the relative safety of the Christian West, a bubble on the Earth’s surface painfully built over twenty centuries by the disciples of that child born in Bethlehem.
It is our special conceit that this relative oasis somewhat removed from the raw savagery of the human animal is a natural result of man’s evolution. It is said with straight faces by those in the ivory tower or in the hope peddling business that as the human race “evolves”, we will become more “human”. As those fond of quoting Martin Luther King often say; “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice”. H.G. Wells brilliantly satirized this line of thought in “The Time Machine”.
But Scripture has another explanation for this relative oasis. It is rather the result of salt’s presence. But for some time that salt in the Christian West has been losing its savor and “if the salt have lost its savor . . . it is good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men”. Perhaps Oct. 7 was a preview, a movie trailer if you will, of what it looks like when the salt is cast out and trodden under the feet of men.
It is not as if man’s innate evil has not been on display outside our little corner of the world, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, ISIS, Idi Amin’s Uganda and most of Africa anywhere anytime, etc. Instead we have carefully avoided any mirror which might reflect man’s true nature in our own neighborhoods by pretending “microaggressions” among the pampered are matters of serious concern. A crack in the curtain appeared in the Ukraine, but the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 opened it such that it could not be ignored.
Philip Brooks had seen behind the curtain as well. He had witnessed the carnage of America’s Civil War. The streets of Philadelphia were filled with young men missing arms or legs or empty shells crazed with what we would diagnose as acute PTSD. The sacristy of his church had held memorial services for too many of its sons. He wrote the words of the carol in the exhaustion of the war’s aftermath, hopeful for the future but fully aware of the downside.
He captured the essential truth of Bethlehem. For nearly four thousand years it has had a place on the world’s stage. It has always been a place where “the hopes and fears of all the years are met”. The first mention of Bethlehem is in 35th Chapter of The Book of Genesis.
The Patriarch Jacob and his family are traveling from Shechem to Bethel. One suspects it to be no leisurely journey, but a hurried exodus, perhaps little different from the Gaza residents fleeing the Israeli retaliation today. Earlier Jacob had purchased land near the town of Shechem. There he pitched his tent and built an altar. All the actions of a man meaning to settle in a place, to make it his home
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Shechem is a placeholder in the history of Israel. After God called Abraham forth from Ur of the Chaldeans, Shechem was the first place Abraham stopped at in Canaan. God reiterated his promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants here. When the body of Jacob’s son Joseph was carried in procession from Egypt back to Canaan, it was at Shechem where he was buried. Shechem was the epicenter of the great schism that led to the separation of Israel into Israel and Judah. Shechem was the location of Joshua’s farewell address to the people he led into the Promised Land. It was here Joshua told the Israelites, and us:
“choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river (Egypt), or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Unfortunately, time would reveal that the Israelites did choose neither wisely nor well. Our own choices invite a foreboding future.
It seems that Jacob meant to settle at Shechem permanently. Evidently his family, including his daughter Dinah, understood this as well. By now, Jacob had 11 sons and one daughter by four different women, two wives and their respective handmaidens.
Expanding on the sparse facts of the text supported by the frail scaffolding of human logic, we imagine Dinah to be a young teen, perhaps no older than 12. In any case Dinah is a young girl with no other girls in the family, living in a household of older boisterous brothers, brothers. Given the history of Jacob’s family, it is no great stretch of logic to presume a great amount of tension, rivalry and just generally bitchiness among the four women who mothered this brood, the four women Dinah spends most of her time with.
Jacob, the husband, makes no secret of the fact that Rachel is the only one he loves, but the other three women have given Jacob ten sons – the source of a father’s pride. Except for Rachel’s one son, Joseph, who again is the clear favorite of Jacob. And now Rachel is pregnant again. Imagine how this coming birth was received in the extended family, by the three unloved mothers. One expects his sons by these second class mothers to by turns be bitter, then in pathetic competition for the love of an unloving father.
Dinah probably longs for some kindred female companionship and maybe a bit of excitement. I have daughters and I have granddaughters. Spending many years living with teenage girls, I believe Cindy Lauper hit the nail on the head, capturing the heart of young girls, with her song – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. One only needs to be around teenage girls heading for a Taylor Swift concert to imagine Dinah after years of nomadic shepherd’s life looking out at her new home, the town of Shechem.
She believes Shechem is her new home and so she ventures out away from the family compound seeking – another teenage girl to talk to, a boy to flirt with, some shops with exciting new clothes?
And then she runs into the son of the man who sold the land to her father – by accident, or even maybe by intention. Interestingly enough this young man’s name is Shechem, the same name as the town. As the Book of Genesis describes their encounter:
“And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force.”
Well, Shechem was probably a very entitled young man, used to taking what he wanted by force or otherwise in the town that bore his name. There are inevitable echoes of #metoo in the story of Shechem and Dinah. But then . . . Dinah had eleven brothers. They confront Shechem and his father Hamor, telling them phrased in the dry and ironic wit common to Genesis – “for such a thing ought not be done”.
But the brothers masquerade as reasonable men. “We’re all adults here, these things happen, let’s come to some accommodation”. We have no idea what Dinah thought. The text is silent. There is a clear implication in the text that perhaps Dinah is not all that distressed about incident.
Maybe it’s not The Princess Bride or even Romeo and Juliet, but compared to what Dinah has at home – at least somebody loves her. Just reading the text leaves one to believe she might still be in residence with Shechem’s family, willing to marry him. Once more dipping into popular culture for a reference, Madonna’s plaintive “Papa Don’t Preach” may eloquently speak for Dinah.
The brothers seemingly acquiesce to a fait accompli, implying they’re willing to live and let live, perhaps marrying some of Shechem’s sisters themselves because after all, they’re going to be neighbors. The entire matter is treated as a dispute, almost commercial in nature.
But . . . and this is a big but, all these men in Shechem are going to have to be circumcised to close this deal, if this unhappy incident is to be forgotten. Non-negotiable!!! While we moderns recoil in disbelief at such a proposal, from Hamor and the other elders of Shechem’s vantage point, this is probably not outlandish perhaps reasonable, even a very positive offer. A cherished trope in the old movie westerns was the cut on the hand drawing blood and the handshake that mingles the blood signifying a coming together of two peoples.
Jacob’s family is obviously very rich, well off and with many sons who need wives. This all seems attractive, a profitable deal to Hamor and Shechem whose town it is, especially since Shechem is now in love with Dinah. It is probable that Dinah herself is with the program. So Hamor, Shechem and the other men in the town allow themselves to be circumcised.
It turns out that Dinah’s brothers are just kidding. Ha ha!! It was all a trick to avenge our sister’s honor. As Genesis puts the brothers’ words, “Should he treat our sister as a harlot?” It is all about the honor of the family, Dinah is simply a pawn. When next we meet Dinah at least twenty years later, she is an unmarried woman, a spinster possibly doting on her cats, still living with the family as it makes the fateful journey to Goshen in the land of Egypt.
When all the menfolk of Shechem are incapacitated because of the circumcision, two of Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, enter the town, killing Shechem, Hamor and every other able bodied male in the near vicinity. Then the other brothers who had refrained from getting blood on their hands join Simeon and Levi in looting Shechem, taking everything of value including the wives and children of the dead men.
Where has Jacob been all this time? Sometimes one must wonder – What is it that God sees in Jacob? But then, upon reflection, I am encouraged. The same question with jaundiced eye can be asked about me.
Good question about Jacob’s passive presence in his own family, but he understands all too well the consequences:
“You have brought trouble on me, by making me odious among the inhabitants of the land . . I shall be destroyed, I and my household.”
And now here they are, on their way to Bethlehem no doubt running before the wind. Genesis notes that God had visited “a great terror” on the neighboring towns such that Jacob was not pursued. But Jacob probably didn’t know that. This assemblage of Jacob’s household, including the captive wives and children of Shechem’s slain men, is on their way to Ephrath (Bethlehem) but not quite there yet. And another tragedy erupts in Jacob’s life:
“And when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and she suffered severe labor. . . . And it came about her as her soul was departing (for she died) that she named her new born son Ben-oni (Son of my Suffering); but his father named him Benjamin (Son of my Right Hand). So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (That is Bethlehem).”
And with Rachel’s burial there, Bethlehem will be forever linked to Jacob’s Rachel, a beautiful woman, a figure of Shakespearean tragedy.
Some five hundred years later, approximately 1340 BC, we have a record from Egypt that mentions Bethlehem. A number of clay tablets were excavated from the ruins of El Amarna, the Egyptian capital of the heretic Pharaoh Akhetaten. One of these tablets is a request from the Governor of Jerusalem for troops. It seems that the whole area is under attack from outsiders, towns being ravaged and held by the Apiru.
“Now even a town near Jerusalem, Bit-Lahmi (Bethlehem) by name, a village which once belonged to the pharaoh has fallen to the enemy (Apiru). . .. Let the pharaoh hear the words of your servant Abdi-Heba and send archers to restore the imperial lands . .”
These raiders from the north were the Apiru, a group of raiding nomads, perhaps not so different from Hamas. Whereas Hamas is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Apiru were proxies of the Hittite Empire located to the north in what is now modern day Turkey. Both Hamas and the Apiru are puppets in the hands of their remote paymasters seeking to wreak havoc on their enemies.
Interestingly enough, the Pharaoh Akhetaten, in whose palace the clay tablets were found, was the father of Tutankhamun, whose name and golden funeral mask became famous with Lord Carnarvon’s discovery of his intact tomb in 1922
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The Pharaoh Akhetaten was a unique and divisive figure in the history of Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was a polytheistic society, traditionally worshiping many gods. Their priesthoods the elite of Egyptian hierarchies. Their worship ingrained in the lives of the common people.
But Akhetaten abandoned tradition, banning old traditional gods and rites, instituting the monotheistic worship of a new god, Atun. This scandalized and outraged the tradition bound Egyptian priesthood, as well as unsettling the countryside. After his death, the Ancient Egyptian establishment rose up, reasserting themselves, restoring traditional religion. His tomb was destroyed and all mention of him chiseled off stone monuments. One might almost see the Pharaoh Akhetaten as a Donald Trump figure.
Another five hundred years pass and a young woman from Bethlehem is the victim of a series of tragedies. A famine in the land around Bethlehem drives her husband, Elimelech, to take she and her two sons in search of food. They wind up in the land of the Moabites, known as the descendants of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his two daughters.
Once in Moab, Elimelech dies and to make matters worse her two sons choose to remain in Moab. They then plunge a knife into their mother’s heart by marrying local women. As a widow, she has little choice but to remain with her sons and their non-Jewish wives in this foreign land. And then one son dies, followed by the other.
So there she is living in this foreign land along with her two widowed daughters in law, three women with no visible means of support. Taking stock of the situation, she tells her daughters in law to return to their own families. She will undertake the arduous journey back to her hometown of Bethlehem where she had heard the famine was over.
But one of these young women surprises her. In words freighted with emotion this young widow, Ruth by name, tells her:
“for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”
Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi return to Bethlehem, seeking to survive, to make a new life.
Though they are poor widows, they have a kinsman redeemer in Bethlehem by the name of Boaz. In time, Boaz and the still young Ruth marry and have a son named Obed, who is the father of Jesse, who is the father of David the future King of Israel.
Ruth lived in Bethlehem in the time of the Judges of Israel. As the final verse in The Book of Judges puts it –
“And in those days there was no king is Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Well, people being people, we talk a lot about freedom, but at the end of the day we really would like someone to tell us what to do, to care for us, to blame. Most probably in Ruth’s lifetime, things came to a head and the people cried out for a king. Even in the absence of social media there exists an echo chamber for the voices of those seeking to excuse their own failures.
God often teaches us by allowing us to have our own way and so He chooses a king, one Saul a Benjamite. God’s choice is a man after our own heart, a man that Hollywood would choose for the part, perhaps a Clint Eastwood or Dwayne Johnson figure. Saul looked every inch the king.
“Saul, a choice and handsome man, and there was not a more handsome person than he among the sons of Israel; from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people.”
Saul reigns for forty years, but he has a problematic relationship with God, falling victim to hubris. But then Saul had only done what God, speaking through the prophet Samuel, had told the people a king would do.
But God has a very soft heart for his people, even though they are a stiff-necked bunch. God calls Samuel to travel to Bethlehem and anoint Saul’s successor. And so Ruth’s grandson, Jesse, appears in Scripture.
As the Book of I Samuel puts it:
“Now the Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.””
It is David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons who is God’s choice as the next king of Israel.
In time David assumes the throne. As did Saul, David is a king doing what God had warned the people a king would do. But in contrast to Saul, David’s love for God is never in question. He burns with passion for God in word and deed. God establishes David’s throne for eternity. As recorded in the Book of II Samuel –
“Through Nathan the prophet, God promised David,
“When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Your house and your kingdom shall endure before you forever. Your throne shall be established forever.””
Time passes. It is on the order of another 200 years before we hear the mention of Bethlehem again. In that time Jerusalem, Bethlehem’s near neighbor, has become the City of David, the capital of Israel as well as the site of God’s Temple. But a united Israel then splits in two, the Northern Kingdom known as Israel and the Southern Kingdom known as Judea.
The Prophet Micah is called by God as a prophet to both kingdoms which are facing invasion from Assyria, perhaps the most ruthless and savage kingdom ever seen in the Mid-East. Any empire is faced with the need to maintain control, to avoid revolt. Various empires have taken various strategies to hold their empire together, to provide a glue. One might say that the American Empire uses the dollar, favorable trade terms and financial assistance. Assyria chose terror. They were so ruthless and vengeful that no one dared rebel. Assyria’s vengeance was so horrible that rebellion or resistance was unthinkable.
And it was under the shadow of Assyria’s invasion that Micah served in the office of Prophet, a contemporary of the Prophets Isaiah, Amos and Hosea. Like the other prophets Micah calls the two kingdoms to repentance. But amidst his message of destruction and doom, he also prophesies of a coming Messiah. And in those prophesies, he makes a specific prophesy as to where this coming Messiah will be born:
“But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Too little to be among the clans of Judah,
From you One will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel.
His goings forth are from long ago,
From the days of eternity.”
A century later, another prophet prophesying of judgment by another outside invader makes a veiled reference to Bethlehem. Just as Micah and the other prophets had foretold, Israel is no more. Assyria invaded and overran Israel, conquering the Northern Kingdom. Assyria then executed another of its strategies for controlling conquered peoples – wholesale deportation.
Assyria deported large numbers of the Jews living in Israel. As the Book of II Kings records the deportation:
“In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Harbor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”
This conquest and deportation did not happen in one fell swoop, but over a period of 15-20 years. The last bit of territory conquered and subsequent major deportation occurred in the reign of Sargon II in 716 BC. As noted on the walls of Sargon II’s palace –
“In the first year of my reign . . . the people of Samaria . . . to the number of 27290 . . I carried away. . . .
The city I rebuilt. I made it greater than it was before. People of the lands I had conquered I settled therein. My official I placed over them as governor.
Unlike the Jews of Judea deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar a century and a half later, there is no record of these Jews from Samaria being allowed to return, giving rise to the efforts of the conquistadores and others in the Age of Exploration to find the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. Interestingly enough, the river of Gozan is identified as the Amu Darya of Northern Afghanistan. Is it possible that the Taliban of today are the distant descendants of the ancient Israeli’s?
As noted on Sargon II’s palace wall, the deported Jews were replaced with other conquered peoples from elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. The West Bank of Israel today is mostly made up of ancient Samaria, the Northern Kingdom of Israel. When those earnest young people of today protest and riot for the Palestinians to regain the West Bank because the Palestinians were there first, one can only shake one’s head at the evident failures of our colleges and universities.
But in their own turn, Assyria fell and became dust, just as the prophets had foretold. Another power has arisen in the north and once more threatens Judah – the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar. The Prophet Jeremiah, remembered as the Weeping Prophet, begs the people of Judah to repent, turn to God to save themselves from Babylon.
In the Book of Jeremiah, 31:15, it says:
“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 no more.”
Just as God had many times lamented, Judah is a stiff necked people and they refuse to repent. In due time, Nebuchadnezzar overruns Judah and deports many of the people to Babylon, most notably the prophet Daniel.
The Ramah referred to in the prophesy of Jeremiah is a small town near Jerusalem. Ramah is the staging area where the Judean captives were assembled in chains, driven by whips in long lines of the enslaved back to Babylon. Before the birth of Christ, this assemblage of the broken people to be marched up to Babylon was seen as the fulfillment of the prophesy, even though there would seem to be no connection to Rachel and Ramah only a tentative identification. But a second more complete fulfillment was yet to be.
And then 750 years later, Caesar Augustus calls for a census of the Roman world. One of that Jewish widow Naomi’s descendants is a building contractor named Joseph living in the town of Nazareth, some 70 miles north of Bethlehem. But Joseph is of the royal lineage of David and he must return to Bethlehem for the purposes of the census. And so it is that Joseph and his pregnant wife make the trek from Nazareth down to Bethlehem
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And it is in a cave used to shelter livestock that a baby is born, that baby foretold in the Prophet Nathan’s prophesy to David some 900 years before. This baby grows up in Nazareth and becomes an itinerant rabbi in the Galilean countryside. One of his disciples, Levi a tax collector, writes an account of his life and he has this to say about the circumstances attending this baby’s birth –
“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying
“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him””.
What . ..? Magi from the east, saw a star and want to worship the King of the Jews born in Bethlehem? Where did this come from? Who are these Magi?
Everything we know about these Magi is contained in the Gospel of Mathew 2:1-12 and “magi from the east” is all it says about who and why. Further, these three men show up in Jerusalem following a star signaling the birth of a king of the Jews. But nobody in Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish intelligentsia, has a clue about either the star or a newborn king.
Given the fact that they were given an audience with King Herod and that they brought such valuable gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh – indicates that they were seen as VIP’s. At the risk of being accused of heresy, I sometimes imagine this as Al Gore and the editorial staff of The New York Times arriving in Stockholm in the early days of the 21st Century to pay homage to Greta Thunberg.
King Herod summons the chief priests and scribes, the Harvard faculty of 1st Century Jerusalem and asks – “What?” After a good bit of kicking the dirt and dissembling, the only thing these learned men could recall was the prophesy in Micah foretelling a great ruler of Israel to come from Bethlehem, a prophesy 700 years old.
But these few verses, pregnant with implication, have intrigued readers ever since the beginning. Come with me in imitation of Lewis Carrol’s Alice:
“The little girl just could not sleep because her thoughts were way too deep, her mind had gone out for a stroll and fallen down a rabbit hole.”
The magi are closely associated with Babylon. Study of the stars associated with foretelling the future is as old as humanity. It had always been a particularly pronounced characteristic of the quasi-religious/political State of Babylon and its sister cultures of the East. The Jewish tradition, such as it is, says that the Patriarch Abraham was himself a magi, a man studying/worshiping the stars, before God called him to “Go forth from your country”.
The Book of Daniel gives us some insight into this priesthood of the magi intertwined with both public worship and court politics. The obvious homeland of important “magi from the east” would be from Babylon. It is of some note that the Prophet Daniel, made to march from Ramah to Babylon as a boy and then castrated to serve as a eunuch in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, was “made the chief prefect over all the wise men (magi) of Babylon”.
At the time of Christ’s birth, Babylon and its surrounding areas was the heartland of the Parthian Empire, Rome’s great rival in the East. While Jerusalem and Judea were provinces of the Roman Empire now, only a short time before they had been provinces in Parthia rather than Rome.
Jerusalem and environs including Bethlehem had been a bone fought over by Rome, Parthia and the Hasmonean dynasty for seventy years. In fact the man before whom the magi stood, King Herod, had risen to notice in the Roman world by fighting well and commanding the defense in a previous siege of Jerusalem by Parthia. One of my older posts – We Three Kings of Orient Are – goes into 1st Century Rome, Parthia and the Magi in greater detail.
It is a speculation well-grounded in fact to claim that the star and its heralding of a king were the legacies of the Prophet Daniel. Daniel had been a magi, indeed the chief magi some 400 years earlier. Much of Daniel’s prophesy in the Book of Daniel concerns the coming Messiah. It is a reasonable supposition that Daniel left additional extra-biblical writings and prophesies that were source documents for the star of the magi and its meaning.In addition, it is very likely that these three magi were Jews themselves. After the 70 years of the Babylonian Captivity, not all of the Jews returned to Judea. The Book of Esther gives evidence that a great many Jews stayed in Babylon, even rising to positions of influence. It is the considered opinion of scholars that most of the Jews remained in Babylon where they were heavily represented in clerical/merchant/priest classes, those populations from which the magi were drawn.
But these three representatives of the magi come before Herod speaking of a new born king of the Jews. Herod is the king of the Jews, a paranoid old man who has ample reason to believe in threats to his position.
Interestingly enough, the magi knew enough to come to Jerusalem but they did not know the precise location of this new-born king they sought. Based upon Micah’s prophesy, Herod sends them to Bethlehem. He then asks the magi to return and tell him of this new born king’s exact location, that he, Herod, might go and worship him as well. Warned by God of Herod’s duplicity, the Magi leave Bethlehem in secret after they see the Baby Jesus.
Realizing they were on to him, Herod ponders what he should do. Never one to shrink from bloodshed, Herod acts. As the Gospel of Mathew recounts the scene:
“Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under, according to the time he had ascertained from the magi.”
And so the Gospel of Mathew goes on to say that Jeremiah’s prophesy of “Rachel weeping for her children” was fulfilled. In Christian history, this incident is remembered as “The Massacre of the Innocents”.
Did “The Massacre of the Innocents” really happen? Of course modern scholars doubt it, considering it just another myth. After all there is no other record of it, other than the Gospel of Mathew. But then this is 1st Century Judea and was it so exceptional that it would merit special attention?
Herod has probably been a victim for two thousand years of popular history dominated by Christianity’s appall at his attempt to murder Baby Jesus as well as a Christian focus on the events at Bethlehem. But considered dispassionately, Herod well deserved history’s recognition of him as Herod the Great. He navigated military defeat as well as backing the wrong side in Rome’s last civil war, political turmoil and ruthless dynastic bloodthirstiness, all the while building Jerusalem into a city to be marveled at. He built the magnificent Second Temple in Jerusalem, of which the Western Wailing Wall is the only remnant.
But Herod managed to survive by cunning, by a chameleon-like ability to be whatever the situation demanded. He ruled Judea only by the grace of the Roman Caesar. Judea was a small client kingdom, situated on a border between two imperial states frequently at war with each other. There were pretenders to his throne everywhere in his family and household, the streets were full of Zealots plotting revolution while assassinating “Roman sympathizers”. He survived by taking ruthless action against anyone or anything that might threaten his rule. He executed wives and children along with innumerable shirt tail relatives.
That Caesar Augustus who ordered the census taken knew Herod, knew him very well. Herod had been his enemy, fighting on the side of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the third and final act of the Roman Civil War. But Caesar Augustus recognized Herod’s competence and talent for sycophancy, granting him pardon, installing him as the King of Judea. But Augustus, knowing Herod to be an Idumean Jew as well as knowing of his murderous nature, quipped of Herod – “I would rather be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son”.
And so Bethlehem which had seen the birth of the Messiah was visited by soldiers intent on the execution of infants, babies, toddlers. A sudden descent by armed men, breaking down doors, rousting families, ripping apart homes. There is every reason to believe that they had been given orders to make an example.
Scripture records many such massacres. Scripture also documents the preferred method to kill babies and small children, not with a sword thrust, but by crushing their heads on doorposts, swinging them by the feet.
Bethlehem on that day was a horrifying scenario of terror, brutality and blood. I expect that this raid was not met passively, fathers, brothers and mothers fought back as they could. The soldiers were in the grip of blood lust. Their blood was up and they had been given the license to gratify their worst natures, indulging in gratuitous violence and rapine, looting, all of the savagery in their natures.
Was this scene any different than that in Gaza 2,030 years later? Adding to the horror of the day it must also be said that these soldiers killing Jewish babies were not Romans, but Jews. These were the soldiers of Herod. Fellow Jews.
Sports provides a microcosm where life writ large can be seen in miniature. There are certain players, certain teams or arenas, where destiny visits again and again. As a baseball fan, a Yankee fan, I watched way too many games in the Yankee dynasty run of 1996-2009. Derek Jeter, the Yankee shortstop on these teams, was one of these rare men, a player of destiny. Although he was considered too slow, with not enough range or a strong enough arm by scouts, again and again in moments of decision, in the game’s tipping point, the ball found Derek Jeter.
In sports this confluence of destiny brings these players, these venues, excitement, a desire by fans to be in attendance. In real life by contrast, one might well remember the apocryphal Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times”.
Bethlehem is an unexceptional place, 6 miles from Jerusalem. There is no reason for its recurrent presence on the world stage other than God’s will. Over the course of 2,000 years it has been the background for scenes of great moment, a place of destiny. As that Episcopal clergyman wrote, Bethlehem has repeatedly been where “the hopes and fears of all the years are met”.
But Bethlehem is also the place where the “fears of all the years” are finally laid to rest. Another Christmas carol puts words to the final victory of hope over fear in Bethlehem. This carol is one of my favorites. I often find my eyes misty, my voice broken when I hear it. It too speaks of hopes and fears, but hope stands triumphant. Fittingly, it is a carol with words written by an atheist, put to music by a Jew and edited by an abolitionist.
“O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.”