Mt 2:13-18
13When [the magi] had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” 14Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. 15He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
16When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. 17Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: 18“A voice was heard in Ramah,/ sobbing and loud lamentation;/ Rachel weeping for her children,/ and she would not be consoled,/ since they were no more.”
Reflection
He became furious: Jewish historian Josephus recorded the final years of King Herod, who reigned in Palestine and Judea from 37 to 4 BC, as being marked by brutality and horror. The king had moments of uncontrollable anger, in one of which he had three of his children killed. There is no report about a massacre of children. Yet it was possible that he did order something as bloody and irrational as the killing of unsuspecting infants. Herod was known to have ordered the murder of all known political prisoners when he died, “so that all Judea and every household weep for me, whether they wish it or not,” according to Josephus. This would find an echo in today’s passage about Jeremiah’s prophecy, that Rachel, the wife of Jacob, father of Israel, would mourn for her children (v 18; Jer 3:15).
Herod’s evil intentions toward Jesus are revealed to Joseph by an angel (v 13), who commands him to seek refuge in Egypt. Matthew points out that Herod’s order (v 16) fulfills two Old Testament prophecies (vv 15, 17-18) on the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation. The boys, massacred solely because they were born around the same time as Jesus, become mute witnesses to Jesus as a sign of contradiction (Lk 2:34).