Home by Another Way

Somewhere near Bethlehem, the travellers are asleep, their empty treasure boxes stacked beside them. And in the stillness, God speaks to them in a dream. Do not go back to Herod.

The magi have done what they came to do. They followed a star from the east. They found the young child with Mary his mother. They fell down and worshipped him, and they gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. Now, the plan was to go back to Jerusalem, a few miles north, and report to King Herod, just as he had asked. Find the child, he had said, and bring me word, so that I can come and worship him too. It sounded so reasonable. But God knew what was in Herod's heart.

Matthew tells it in one sentence. “And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” Warned of God. This was not a vague feeling or a lucky guess. God himself warned them. And he did it in a dream, the same way he had spoken to Joseph before. Matthew does not tell us what the dream looked like. He only tells us the message: not Herod. Do not go back to him.

Imagine waking up after a dream like that. Maybe they looked at each other over breakfast and realised they had all been warned. Maybe one of them shared the dream, and the others knew it was true. Either way, they had a choice. Herod was a powerful king, and they were foreigners in his land. Disobeying him was risky. But they had come all this way to worship the true King. And now the true King's Father was speaking to them. They chose to listen to God.

So they departed into their own country another way. Matthew does not say which road. Perhaps they went east, down toward the Jordan valley, or south around the Dead Sea, avoiding Jerusalem altogether. Whichever way they went, they slipped out of Herod's reach, and his plan to use them as spies fell apart. They went home to their own people with an extraordinary story. They had seen the King. And somewhere behind them, in a small house in Bethlehem, God was already preparing to protect his Son again.

Herod's presence was hard to escape near Bethlehem. Just a few miles to the southeast, he had built a great fortress palace on a hilltop, called the Herodium, and named it after himself. The historian Josephus describes it, and says Herod was later buried there. Its cone-shaped hill can still be seen from the Bethlehem area today. Leaving another way meant keeping clear of a king whose power was close at hand.

The magi's journey home is in Matthew chapter two, verse twelve. They came seeking a King, they found him, and they left listening to God rather than to a king who wanted to harm him. In the very next verses, God will warn Joseph to take the child to safety too. So here is a question to carry with you. After meeting Jesus, how might God be leading you to go another way?