Section VIII

the flight into Egypt

(Matt. 2)

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.⁴

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.⁵ 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.

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Notes

1. The passages, Mat 1:22; Mat 2:5; Mat 2:16; Mat 2:18; Mat 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.

1) ‘That such an arrangement of matters (i.e., as Matthew relates) would with difficulty be comprehended by the crafty Herod, has long ago been remarked, &c.—Stranss, i, 254. It has also been long ago remarked, that the Gospel history cannot be held responsible for the folly with which craft is usually conquered in its antichristian attacks. Moreover, Herod would have been in the highest degree inconsistent with his known character, if he had detained the Magi at Jerusalem, and had meanwhile sought out and put the child to death, or had taken such other means of getting rid of Him as the critic considers advisable. He who had in every possible manner flattered the religious feelings of the nation, would thus have let his hatred to the Messiah be rumoured in Judea. The history knows his character better than such criticism does. His chief concern was to conceal his enmity against the realization of the Messianic hopes of the Jews, and it was this, motive which guided his actions.

2) Compare Wieseler, p. 148. [This, however, seems to be considered by travellers in Palestine to be an uncertain ground for supposing that the birth of our Lord did not happen in December. hey tell us that during December ‘the earth is fully clothed with verdure,’ And even though it be not customary for flocks to be in the fields at night during that month, the unusual concourse of strangers at this time in Bethlehem might induce the shepherds to betake themselves to the fields and make room in the town.—ED.]

3) Wieseler, p. 155, supposes that the appointment, that a woman should remain at home forty days after her delivery, opposes the view that the ceremony of Mary’s purification did not take place till the return from Egypt. This appointment, however, could scarcely forbid or hinder a flight from mortal peril. ‘The same remark applies to the duty of a Jewish female, to make herself ceremonially clean by presenting a thank-offering in the appointed manner, after the accomplishment of her purification, or after forty days. ‘This appointment could naturally only forbid the purification taking place before the forty days were accomplished, and it is in this sense that Luke ii. 21 is to be understood. In how many cases might a woman be prevented from observing the day when her purification was accomplished! Nor did the idea of the law of purification involve the necessity of considering a delay beyond the appointed time an illegality. Wieseler himself remarks of the flight into Egypt (p. 157): ‘From Bethlehem, which was situate in the south of Palestine, the Egyptian border at Rhinokolura might easily be reached in three or four days, and the parents of Jesus would, in their flight, have travelled as speedily as possible.’ Since, then, Joseph, in returning from Egypt, must have made a very long circuit if he had not travelled through Judea, the realm of Archelaus, we cannot but suppose that he was already in this region when he heard of Archelaus, and feared to go thither, I cannot, however, understand, as Hug does, the striking words, ἐφοβήθη ἐκεῖ ἀπελθεῖν, to mean, he went thither with a fearful heart, but, he feared to betake himself thither, or to settle there. The expression ἀνεχώρησεν, &c., also accords with this, after the analogy of Matt. iv. 12, xii. 15, xiv, 18, . It denotes a fugitive, timid, or hasty departure of the subject from the place in which he then finds himself. The Evangelist could not have used the word in this sense, however, unless he were impressed with the notion that Joseph was already in Judea.

4) [The order of events followed by the best recent authorities is, that the presentation took place on the fortieth day; that a very few days after this, the visit of the Magi occurred ; and immediately succeeding that, the flight into Egypt—ED.]

5) Our view fully-explains why Josephus could not know that this event was a measure of Herod’s. He must have been a Christian, and initiated into the mysteries of the history of Christ’s childhood, for the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem to have any political or historical significance in his eyes. It needs no explanation, that Herod, the murderer of his wife Mariamne, and of several of his sons (Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater), a despot, who, when his death drew near, caused the chief men of his kingdom to be imprisoned in the circus at Jericho, with the purpose of killing them at his death, that there might be a great mourning throughout the land, and concerning whom Augustus declared, that he would rather be the swine of Herod than his son—that so cruel a man should have been capable of the deed mentioned by the Evangelist. ‘The passage in the heathen author Macrobius, confusing the history of the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem—which this author, who wrote at the end of the fourth century, might well have derived from Christian tradition with the well-known political occurrence of the execution of Antipater, Herod’s son, is, partly on account of this confusion, partly on account of the late date of the narrative, not calculated to be regarded as a testimony to this event. [On the silence of Josephus regarding the events of the Gospel narratives, see the judicious remarks of Ewald (Christus, 119, &.), and the entirely satisfactory account of Mill (Myth. Inter. 289, &c.) The same author's criticism of the passage of Macrobius must be regarded as establishing, that the bon mot of Augustus is genuine, was uttered on the occasion of the massacre of Bethlehem, did not confound that massacre with the death of Antipater, which was ratified by the Emperor himself, and thus attests by independent heathen tradition the truth of the Gospel history. And even though Macrobius obtained his idea of the occasion and purport of the Emperor's jest from Christian tradition (which is most improbable), yet even thus it would be manifest that the massacre was accepted as historic fact.—ED.]