Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents
After the Birth of the Messiah, a second angelic dream warns Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and the Christ Child as Herod orders a slaughter of the Innocents.
December 28, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Editor’s Note: The following is the second of a special two-part Biblical Christmas Season post. Part one, which appeared here two weeks ago was “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah.”
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In the proclamation of the Gospel Matthew (2:13-18) on the day this is posted, the Church recalls in just six verses an account of the Visit of the Magi, Joseph’s second dream of an Angel of the Lord, the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, and the wrath of Herod as he orders the slaughter of all male children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem. As a priest, I have read this account over forty-one consecutive Christmas seasons, but never before was it overshadowed by such tragic realism.
Our safe, emotional buffer zone from that 2,000 year old account is gone now. The sense of personal distance is lost. A dark cloud still hangs over America since the shocking and senseless deaths of 19 young children in a small Texas city called Uvalde. I first wrote of this midway through the year in June, 2022 in “Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing.”
A lot of soul searching has gone into a quest for what could have spawned such a horrific event, how it developed, how it might have been prevented, and what should have been done differently by responding police. The tragedy was devastating. I can only imagine the heartache of the parents of Uvalde as they faced this Christmas with broken hearts and shattered dreams.
Then it happened again — this time in Thailand, and this time the killer was not a crazed teenager, but a drug addicted police officer. The story devastated the Kingdom of Thailand. On October 6, 2022 the recently fired police officer brought a 9mm handgun and a knife into a preschool daycare center in the village of Uthai Sawan. It was near where Pornchai Moontri lived as a small child. With no known motive, the former officer murdered 24 children ages two to five. Then he killed his wife and his own child before turning his gun on himself.
I could not bring myself to write that story, but Pornchai Moontri bravely took it up. Several readers told me that they did not read it because they knew it would be terribly painful. It was and still is. But there is much more to it than sorrow. There is hope there as well. “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand” was Pornchai’s faith-filled gift to his Homeland and to us. It is a most unusual post that I highly recommend. We will link to it again at the end of this one.
The Magi Take the Long Way Home
I am painfully aware that on the day this is posted, the Church honors those first Christian Martyrs, the innocent male children of Bethlehem who were subjected to the selfish wrath of King Herod. They became collateral damage in the first demonic attempt to rid the world of Christ. The explosive account is told with blunt force in the Gospel According to Matthew:
“Now when the Wise Men had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise! 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.’
“And Joseph arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the Prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, he was in a furious rage. He sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and all that region who were two years old and under according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah:
“‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.’”
— Matthew 2:13-20
In the first installment of this two-part post, I described the unique attributes of Joseph’s three dreams in Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. Dreams are an important element of the story. As I wrote in “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah”:
“There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. But the dreams of Joseph are unique in the Biblical literature. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here.
“‘Onar’ in Greek refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs. Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” then the scene takes on a sense of great urgency when compared with a multitude of other angelic messages conveyed through dreams.”
In this second of Joseph’s dreams, the urgent intervention is God’s foresight that Herod is enraged, believing that he was tricked by the Magi. Herod plots to kill the child. He had asked the Magi to return from Bethlehem to reveal the location of this Christ-child with a false promise that he, too, would pay him homage. After a dream premonition not to return to Herod, the Magi left by another route. I wrote about the Magi in a popular Christmas post linked again at the end of this one: “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”
There is an important element of the Magi story that I omitted when I first wrote that post. The Magi were traditionally associated with astrologers and astral religion, a fact seen as scandalous to some early Christians who did not want to accept this aspect of Matthew’s account. In later Christian tradition, they became not Magi, but kings, a likely reflection on Psalm 72:10 — “May the kings of Tarshish and of the Isles bring him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.”
The Star of Bethlehem is a popular element of the story, but it, too, was a scandal among some in the early Church. Some of the people of the Ancient Near East were drawn to astral religion because it brought a sense of surety in the midst of social chaos. But over time, astrology became oppressive, making people feel hopeless against the tyranny of “fate” when their destinies seemed dictated by the cold movement of the stars.
In contrast, however, the Star of Bethlehem served only God’s purpose. That, and the presence of astrologers who came to worship Christ, broke the power of astral religion and its belief in fate. But history repeats itself. As our culture again becomes socially chaotic, many are once again drawn into nature religions such as astrology, Wicca, and druidism for a false sense of determinism guided by practitioners claiming to interpret and control destiny. I recently saw a TV commercial selling fifteen minute intervals with a California seer. G.K. Chesterton once famously said that people without faith do not believe in nothing. They believe in anything.
Tragedy in Thailand | Photo courtesy of Reuters
Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents
There are four rulers named Herod appearing in New Testament Scripture: Herod the Great reigned in Palestine from 37 B.C. until shortly after the Birth of Jesus. His son, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, ordered the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14) and sent Jesus to trial before Pilate (Luke 23:7-15). His son, Herod Agrippa, imprisoned the Apostle Peter (Acts 12); and his son, Herod Agrippa II, attended the trial of Saint Paul (Acts 25:13).
Herod the Great was part of a non-Jewish Edomite family from a territory east and south of the Dead Sea. They were descendants of Esau, the elder brother of Jacob (Genesis 25:30). Herod was given the title, “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate and ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 B.C. as a vassal king appointed by Caesar Augustus. Centuries-old adjustments to the Roman calendar place the birth of Jesus near the end of Herod’s life between six and four B.C.
Herod the Great (“Great” by Roman standards only) appears in Scripture only during the events surrounding the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1:5). He ruled Palestine with brutality and paranoia. It is ironic that Herod took such violent steps to end the life of Jesus just prior to the undocumented end of his own life. He took great umbrage at the Magi’s revelation that the Star of Bethlehem was an omen for one who is born King of the Jews, a title Rome had bestowed upon Herod.
But Herod’s paranoia ran deeper than that. The Star of Bethlehem innocently described by the Magi recalled for Herod and his Hebrew advisors the ancient Fourth Oracle of Balaam in the Book of Numbers. The oracle predicted a future messiah and the end of Edom’s power. From the Oracle of Balaam (Numbers 24:17-19):
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. It shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites. Edom will become a possession of its enemies, while Israel thrives valiantly. One out of Jacob shall rule.”
Being a descendant of the Edomites, Herod “was greatly troubled” (Matthew 2:3). So he summoned the Magi to ascertain exactly when the Star appeared. He sent them on to Bethlehem after securing a promise that they would return with the exact location of this newborn Child-King. When the Magi failed to return, Herod flew into a rage. He ordered his forces to find and kill all male children under two years of age in Bethlehem.
This event also has an echo from a much older time in Salvation History. Jesus is presented as the New Moses, one who will lead God’s people out of bondage. The first Moses led Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, but Pharaoh was immovable until the Tenth Plague struck down the firstborn sons of Pharaoh and all of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-31).
The Evangelist, Matthew, captures with a quote from the Prophet Jeremiah the devastation that Herod left behind. In the Eighth Century B.C. the Assyrians devastated Northern Israel when their army swept through the city of Ramah about five miles north of Jerusalem. Ramah became equated with Israel’s great depth of sorrow left behind by the evil of tyranny. So it is of Ramah that is recalled in the face of Herod’s evil:
“A voice heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because her children were no more.”
— Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 3:15
Jesus, the New Moses would lead God’s People from the bondage of sin and death. Herod believed that the murder of the Children of Bethlehem was the last word, but it was not the last word. Then Herod the Great somehow became Herod the Dead. Scripture does not describe how, when, or where. God knows. The narrative of the Birth of the Messiah ends with the third dream of Joseph from an Angel of the Lord:
“Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead. And [Joseph] rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Herod’s son reigned in his place, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.”
— Matthew 2:19-23
Thus concludes Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. It was not the end of tyranny, but it was the beginning of all hope.
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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts cited here:
Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah
Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men were Missing
Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand
Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear
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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. Today the Chapel has a real-time live feed for a most beautiful adoration chapel where people around the world can spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. We invite you to come and spend some quiet time this Christmas celebrating the rebirth of the Messiah in your own life.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”