Flight by Night: The Escape to Egypt

Darkness. A hand on a shoulder. “Mary. Wake up. We have to go. Now.” No lamp. No goodbyes. Just a donkey, a bundle of belongings, and a small child asleep in his mother's arms.

The wise men from the East had come and gone. They had followed a star to Bethlehem, knelt before the child Jesus, and opened their treasures: gold, frankincense and myrrh. King Herod had asked them to come back and tell him where the child was, so that he could worship him too. But that was a lie. And God had warned the wise men in a dream not to return to Herod. So they went home by another road. Now, in a small house in Bethlehem, Joseph is asleep. And he is about to have a dream of his own.

An angel of the Lord appears to him. “Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph does not wait for morning. Matthew says he got up, took the child and his mother by night, and left for Egypt. Think about that journey. Days of walking, south and west, out of the hill country, across dry land toward a foreign country with a different language. Joseph, Mary and Jesus have become refugees. They have no home. Only a promise. Stay there until I tell you.

Back in Jerusalem, Herod realises the wise men have outwitted him. He is furious. And he does something terrible. He gives orders that all the boys in and around Bethlehem who are two years old and under are to be killed. Matthew does not dwell on it, and neither will we. But he remembers the words of the prophet Jeremiah, about a voice heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. The Bible does not pretend that the world is safe or that evil rulers are harmless. It names the grief. And God's people have grieved alongside those mothers ever since.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the family waits. We do not know how long. Then Herod dies. And once more, an angel comes to Joseph in a dream. “Get up. Take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to take the child's life are dead.” Matthew sees an old word coming true. Long ago, the prophet Hosea had heard God say, out of Egypt I called my son. Once, God brought the whole people of Israel up out of Egypt. Now Israel's Messiah makes the same journey home.

So Joseph sets out again. But on the way he hears news. Herod's son Archelaus is now ruling Judea in his father's place. Joseph is afraid to go there. And, warned in another dream, he turns north to the region of Galilee. They settle in a little town called Nazareth. That is where Jesus will grow up, far from palaces, in an ordinary village, the son of a carpenter. And Matthew notes that this, too, fits what the prophets had said: he would be called a Nazarene.

Joseph's fear of Archelaus was well founded. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing later in the first century, describes Archelaus as a harsh and violent ruler. His reign was so brutal that leading Jews and Samaritans sent complaints about him to Rome. In the end the emperor Augustus removed him from power and banished him to Gaul, in what is now France. Galilee, by contrast, was ruled by his brother Herod Antipas. It was there, in quiet Nazareth, that the family made their home.

The flight to Egypt. You'll find it in Matthew chapter two, verses thirteen to twenty-three. Three times Joseph had a dream, and three times he got up and obeyed. Not knowing the whole plan. Just the next step. So here is something to think about. What next step might God be asking you to take, even before you can see the whole road?