Herod Was Disturbed

In a palace on the hill, an old king stops pacing. A newborn king of the Jews? Not while he lives. He sends for the scholars. Tonight.

Strangers from the east have arrived in Jerusalem. They are magi, scholars who study the stars, and they have been going around the city asking a startling question: where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We have seen his star, they say, and we have come to worship him. News like that does not stay in the marketplace for long. Soon it reaches the palace of King Herod. And Herod is an old man by now, who has spent his whole reign watching for rivals.

Matthew says that when Herod the king heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod was troubled because he saw a threat. He was king because Rome had made him king, not because he was born into David's royal line. A child born king of the Jews would be a rival. And all Jerusalem was troubled with him. Why? Perhaps because people knew what Herod did when he felt threatened. When Herod was worried, everyone was in danger.

So Herod does something clever. He gathers all the chief priests and scribes of the people. These were the leaders of the temple and the experts in the scriptures, the people who knew the writings of Moses and the prophets best of all. And Herod asks them one question: where is the Christ, the Messiah, to be born? He does not ask, is it true? He does not ask, should we go and worship him too? He just wants the location. He wants to know where to look.

The scholars know the answer at once. In Bethlehem of Judea, they say. For thus it is written by the prophet. And they quote Micah. “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” Micah had spoken those words about seven hundred years earlier, when Judah was small and frightened, threatened by the great empire of Assyria. He promised that from tiny Bethlehem, David's hometown, God would raise up a new ruler, a shepherd for his people. The scholars knew exactly where to look. But Matthew never tells us that any of them went.

Herod's suspicion was famous. The Jewish historian Josephus records that Herod had several members of his own family put to death, including his wife Mariamne and three of his sons, because he feared they were plotting against him. A Roman writer named Macrobius, centuries later, passed on a joke said to be from the emperor Augustus: that it was better to be Herod's pig than Herod's son.

Herod's troubled question is in Matthew chapter two, verses three to six. A frightened king, scholars who knew the right answer, and foreigners who were willing to travel to find the child. Christians have long read Micah's words as pointing to Jesus. So here is a question to carry with you. Is it enough just to know the right answers about Jesus, or do we need to go and find him for ourselves?