Well, good afternoon. We are going to be talking about the book of Matthew again from the Historic Faith Commentary on Matthew. Today, we're going to be looking at chapter two, which deals with King Herod and the Magi and the birth of Jesus Christ. We're going to start off. We're not going to be looking at every verse or even most of them in this second chapter of Matthew. I'm going to just hit the same highlights like I did in the first chapter of Matthew.
We're just going to be looking at some highlights, some things that might be new to you as a Bible reader. Almost all of these things that I'll be talking about were new to me when I read the early Christian writings. I had not ever heard them before, despite the fact I had read lots of commentaries, sat through lots of adult Bible study classes, Sunday school, that sort of thing. So first, I want to talk a little bit about the magi.
The King James calls him the wise men, and that translation has sort of stuck with us. It's not really a good translation, although these particular men were actually wise. But the magi in general were not wise. They were priests of the Zoroastrian religion. And so they were heavy into divination and into astrology. In fact, other than in this passage, uniformly in the Bible, the term magi has a negative connotation. These were among the ones who couldn't interpret the dream for Nebuchadnezzar.
Think of Simon Magus. I mean, the same word, Simon, the magician. And so to the early Christians, it's remarkable that Magi would be coming to faith in Jesus Christ because like I say, they're looked at as evil people. In fact, they see this as having prophetic significance that by God sending these magi because certainly God's hand was in this. It didn't just happen. It wasn't happenstance.
God basically, you might say, invited them to come to be there either near the time of his birth, or we're going to talk about it. It could have been a year or so later, that this was showing the triumph that Jesus would be having over the forces of darkness, over the demons, over Satan, his entire principalities that Jesus was going to be victorious. And God foretells this by having among the very first ones to meet the new Messiah to be these magi. Now, Matthew just says that they were from the east.
So we don't know what country. More than likely they would have been from the Persian Empire because this was the national religion of Persia at that time. And so they would have been priests, like I say, of the Zoroastrian religion. Now, it says when they came, they told Herod, " For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. " Now, there's a lot of significance when they say we saw his star in the east.
In fact, it seems counterintuitive because if they were in the east and they saw his star, you'd think they'd say we saw his star in the west because they would have been traveling from east to west. But no, they say we saw his star in the east.
Now, something I had never been taught, didn't find out until I read the early Christian writings, that the early Christians, and probably before them, the Jews, saw the East as the domain of good, the domain of God, and the West and we're talking symbolic here as representing evil, the domain of Satan. And God helps us to look at things that way because the sun comes up every day in the east. Light comes from the east every day, and the light disappears in the west.
So logically, they look at the east as the realm of light, of goodness, of everything from God, and the west as the realm of darkness. So, of course, the star for the Messiah is going to be seen in the East, not in the West. And there's several Messianic prophecies concerning this that I had never read about because they turn on the language of the Septuagint, either that or there's something the early Christians noted, and most Christians today don't take any notice of.
Now, the one that turns on the Septuagint is Zechariah 6:12, which says this, " Behold a man, the East is His name. " So the early Christians all point to this, that the name of Jesus, it says prophetically, is the East. Because again, this is the realm of light, the realm of God, the realm of goodness. So, of course, this star would appear in the east. And then likewise, in numbers, this was actually one of the prophecies of Balaam, but it was a true prophecy given by God.
It says, " There will arise a star out of Jacob and a man will rise up out of Israel. " So this is one of those Hebrew parallel thoughts using Jacob and Israel in a parallel sense. But one says there will be a star that arises out of Jacob and the other one a man. And so the early Christians believe that the star could likely be talking about this very star that's often called the star of Bethlehem that the Magi followed that brought them to Jesus. And of course, the man is Jesus himself.
Now, it could be interpreted that the star is talking about Jesus as well, that he's being referred to as both a star and a man since he's a supernatural being. Ah, the nature of the star. And this actually started with Kepler, the astronomer, that he felt the star was a natural thing in the sky, that it was the concourse of two of the planets. Now, the planets that he thought about is today, they say, " No, that would not have happened during the possibilities when Jesus was born.
" But it's still a common view today that this was a convergence of two of the planets that would have shone brightly, would have looked like a star. Although the ancients knew the difference between stars and planets. I mean, they studied the sky because it was so important to everything they did, to when they planted crops, to navigation, that sort of thing.
So they were much more versed in astronomy than the average person would be today, even though they didn't have the level of knowledge that our astronomers have. I'm talking about just the common man. But the odd thing is, if this was just something natural, how would it work that way? And I'm not going to say it couldn't have been that, but how would it work that it led them first to Jerusalem?
I mean, we know about those planets converging, and we don't know of any case of anybody, an astrologer through the years, following them, those planets took them to Jerusalem, and then from there took them to Bethlehem, which would have been going back the opposite direction, back towards the east. That doesn't seem at all very likely, and that it pointed out the very dwelling that Jesus was in. I mean, John Chrysostom points this out, and he says, " This couldn't be a star or any kind of natural thing in the sky.
" Origen says the same thing, that this is most likely an angel, some kind of supernatural being who is in the sky would look like a star, but could move this way to bring them exactly to Jerusalem. Because we know when you follow a normal heavenly body, whether it's a star or a planet, or it's the moon, you know if you're driving or something, you look up and you see it. Well, as you think, you know when you get over this hill, well, the star is right there.
But no, when you get to that hill, then it's further on because it's you know millions of miles out in space. So a star would hardly bring you to a specific city, whether it's two planets or a natural star, let alone to an actual house or dwelling place. So they believed it was a supernatural being that was taking on the form of a star, and I tend to support them in that. Now, Herod, of course, was very troubled because he was a ruler, but only through the power of Rome. He was not a descendant of King David.
In fact, he was not even a Jew. He was an Edomite. They're called in Greek the Idumeans. It's just a corruption of or a Greek translation, transliteration of Edom. And during the time of the Maccabees, I think it was under John Hyrcanus, if I remember my history correctly, he conquered or maybe it was Alexander Jannaeus, one of the Maccabean rulers. Anyway, he conquered Idumea and he forced them.
He gave them the choice of either they had to leave the land and go off somewhere else, become exiles, or they had to convert to Judaism, accept circumcision, living by the law, the whole thing. And they decided they would live by the law. Now, since Esau would have come under the covenant of circumcision, they may have already practiced that. I don't know, but they wouldn't have followed the Sabbath and the other things given to Moses. So they became Jewish proselytes.
And so Herod was a Jew by religion, but not by genetic descent. So he had no right to be king. He was only king because the Romans put him in that position and they backed him up. Otherwise, the Jews would have thrown him out. So of course, he was troubled that the king of the Jews is born. Uh-oh, who is this? I'm in trouble. What about my sons? What's going to happen to them? But it says, " All of Jerusalem was troubled as well, probably because they were afraid of what would Herod do?
Would he fly into a rage and that sort of thing? " But it's also very sad that they all seem to understand this was the Messiah who had been born. Now, the Jews had been waiting for centuries for the Messiah. Now he's born, and they're particularly now wanting the Messiah to help them or lead them against the Romans to overthrow the Romans. And he is born. They get the news. And instead of being rejoicing, they're troubled by it.
I think it foretells what happened later, that these same Jews in Jerusalem are the ones who put him to death and said, " Let his blood be upon our heads and upon our children. " So this might be a prophetic foretaste of that. I don't know. But the Magi rejoiced when they saw the star again and they followed it. And this time, it took them to right where Jesus was. Now, again, totally new to me. So let's talk a moment about where Jesus was born. We know it was in Bethlehem.
I think all Christians and probably a lot of non-Christians know that. But the picture we always see if you've gone by a nativity scene in front of a church or in somebody's house or on a greeting card, something like that. It's always this little wooden shed, and it shows Jesus in a manger. A manger is a trough that you would feed animals from like hay, something like that. And so I never questioned that. I was very surprised to read in Justin Martyr that Jesus was born in a cave.
And I think Justin Martyr mentions it. And Origen mentions, yeah, in his day, you could go to Bethlehem and they would point out the cave where he was born. Now, normally, I can't think of any reason why if Jesus was born in a wooden stable, why would you invent about His being born in a cave? I mean, Christians would have no reason to make that up if it wasn't something that was historic.
And like I say, Justin Martyr mentions it, it is already an accepted fact in his day, which is just 50 years after the apostle John died. So I don't think we have any valid reason to question it. And it was still what was believed at the time when they built, in the fourth century, the Church of the Nativity, it's built over the cave where he was evidently born, or at least the one they were pointing out at that time.
And one reason we don't think in those terms is most of the caves I've known, I've visited a lot of caves in my lifetime. And here in the United States, they're always dripping water and they're damp. You wouldn't want to take refuge if you could avoid it. But the caves around Bethlehem and in much of the Holy Land, I mean, they're bone dry. Jerome, just out of, I think, an ascetic spirit, he came down to Bethlehem. Well, he came to Bethlehem to learn Hebrew, to study with Jewish Christians the Hebrew language.
But I think out of an ascetic spirit, he decided to live in a cave like what Jesus was born in. He didn't live in the same one, but one near there. So you know a person could live in it. So it would be very easy for a baby to be born in it and that people living there would put their cattle in it. Why build something when you have all of these natural caves all around Bethlehem? Now, this is total trivia. It doesn't make any difference in our Christian faith, but it's a point of interest.
It's not totally without signification since everything happening at the time of Jesus ' birth has historical significance. This is a real happening and the magi were real people. So one of the questions is, when did they arrive? Well, another one is how many were there? Everybody here today there were three wise men because it mentions three gifts. But as I'm sure most of you know, we don't know how many Magi there were, just that they brought three gifts. But when did they arrive?
Again, the greeting cards and the nativity scenes show the shepherds who arrived on the night of his birth. No doubt on that. But they show often the wise men out there as well. So when did they arrive? The truth is, we don't know. It doesn't specify when they arrived. It would have taken them a long time, certainly a number of months to travel from Persia to Jerusalem, but we don't know when the star first appeared. It might have appeared to them before Jesus was born.
So it's possible they could have arrived on the night of his birth or very close to it. Matthew just doesn't say. Now, one of the clues that people point to, it says that they visited him, that Jesus well, in most translations, it says that he visited him in a house. And they say, " Okay, so he's no longer in the stable, whether it's a cave or a wooden stable, that he's now in a house. " And that might be true.
The Greek word, though, that is used there is oikos, which is the word for house, but it means any kind of dwelling. Even a bird's nest is referred to as an oikos. And a tent, there's examples looking at the Septuagint in the Old Testament, a tent is referred to as an Oikos. So if they were still living in the cave, well, that would have been an Oikos. So it doesn't prove that they were no longer there, but it might indicate that.
The other thing people point out is it refers to Jesus not as an infant, but by the Greek word paidion, which is usually translated child. And so they say, " Okay, he's no longer an infant. He's now at least a toddler, so this is maybe a couple of years later. " And again, that's not an invalid point, but it's not definitive because paidion can actually refer to an infant.
Because in the Septuagint, when Abraham was given the commandment, God says, and that is eight days old, he shall be circumcised among you, every male child in your generations. And the word there for male child is paidion. Again, and we're talking about an eight-day-old infant as a paidion. So yes, it is possible from the account that Matthew gives that this was very close to the time of Jesus ' birth. Probably not the night of it, but he might have still been an infant. He might have still been in the manger.
We don't know. But he could have been, yeah, a good bit older than that. Now, the interesting thing is that the Magi come and worship him. Now, that word can mean the worship of proskyneo that we give to God, but it could also mean the worship that people gave to kings. In fact, just this week, I've been reading an ancient account of the life of Alexander the Great, just to kind of bone up on his life.
And they make a big deal of the fact that the Persians would prostrate themselves before the rulers, that the Greeks didn't do, and it really irritated Alexander's soldiers that once he conquered Persia, that the Persians would come up to him and prostrate themselves before him as their king. And the Greeks didn't want to do this. And Alexander wanted them to do it. And yeah, that made them begin to not like Alexander, that he was adopting that custom.
So we don't know if they understood divinity or they certainly understood him to be the king, and they would have bowed down for that reason. The three gifts are interesting. They are myrrh, gold, and frankincense, and the early Christians see significance in this. Myrrh was used to anoint a body in burial. So they see this for telling that Jesus was going to die as a man, his mortality as a human, and that he would die and be buried. Gold was a gift that you would give a king.
It was one of the most valued commodities in ancient times. And then frankincense was used in worship. This would be basically one of the ingredients in incense that was used there in the temple. So it points to Jesus ' humanity and his sacrificial death, to his being a king, and to his being divine, him being the Son of God, somebody that we worship. So all of these are pointed out in these three gifts. All right, now let's talk about the flight to Egypt.
Of course, Herod had already asked the Magi when the star appeared because he was already calculating he was going to put Jesus to death. And he had asked him to come back and show him where the infant was. And then, of course, he could just put him to death. But he must have you know when you're sly and wicked, you kind of figure other people might do something sly to you. So he maybe thought even though they said they would return, for some reason, maybe they wouldn't.
So he found out that the star had appeared well, we don't know what they told him. He decided to put to death all the male boys two years and under. So they may have said one year and he wanted to just be on the safe side or something like that or even six months. We don't know it. Other than that, based on what they told him, he put to death all the male babies and toddlers two years and under. Now, of course, this is one of the sad passages in the Bible.
There are many, but certainly this is one of the saddest that Herod slaughters these poor, innocent baby boys two years and under who knew neither good nor bad, and they die. And you know all of my life, this has always just been a source of sadness when I read over that passage. And it is terrible. It is tragic. It shows just how wicked Herod was, but he did so many other wicked things that this was just one in a long list.
But the early Christians, they look at this a little different where we look at it as this tragic event. They lived at a time when on a regular basis, they were being put to death for the name of Christ. So being a martyr for Christ was something to look up for. I mean, not that you wanted to, and you certainly wouldn't go out and try to be a martyr. That was taught against by the church. But it was an honor if you could die as a martyr for Christ if that happened.
Again, you weren't to seek it and you were to flee. But if you were caught, if you couldn't avoid it, then to die for Christ was certainly the best possible death you could have. And so to them, they look at these infants dying. They see them as the very first martyrs for Jesus Christ. And it's always touching. It's hard for me to talk about without getting choked up, but that these poor innocent children, of course, unknowing on their part, but God gave them that privilege that they could die for Christ.
Now, more than that, all of the other martyrs, there have been many you know tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands through history who have died for Jesus Christ. But no one else except for those infants died in place of Jesus. Herod killed them thinking he was killing Jesus. Jesus died for us, but these infants died for Jesus.
Not that they didn't need to be redeemed by him, but it was such a marvelous thought I had never thought about that the early Christians saw that these children were given an enormous blessing out of a tragedy to be the first martyrs and to actually, through all eternity, to be able to say we died in place of Jesus Christ and that no doubt they were among the first to meet Jesus when he went down into Hades after he died on the cross.
God had warned the Magi in a dream not to go back to Herod, and so they went home a different route. And then he warned Joseph to take Jesus and his mother and flee to Egypt, and that's what they did. And again, we see Joseph obeying. And why Egypt? You might wonder. Well, there were only a few neighboring countries, so that would have been you know one of the logical choices. Even though Egypt was part of the Roman Empire, Herod would have had very little influence in Egypt.
So he would have been fairly safe there. Probably even more importantly, Egypt had a huge Jewish population. Alexandria, I don't remember the exact figure, but it was probably 100,000 or more Jews. There were so many Jews in Alexandria, which was the second largest city in the Roman Empire, that they had their own administrative people pretty well lived by their own laws, and they had their own judges, that sort of thing. Again, under Roman power, but they made up that big of a section of the city of Alexandria.
So Joseph and Mary and Jesus could go there and they would be lost. No one would ever find them. But of course, Herod assumed he had killed them, and so he didn't worry about it anyway. He didn't go down to Egypt looking for them. And then once Herod died, then God told Joseph in a dream, and he returned. As we know, he ended up in Nazareth. Now, it's interesting that each time God speaks to Joseph in a dream.
As I've mentioned, as far as between Mary and Joseph, Mary plays the major role in the incarnation because Jesus was born through her. He's a genetic descendant of Mary, not of Joseph. And she's the one who carried Jesus for nine months. And so it would have been easy for her to have taken the ascendancy in the marriage. Look, I gave birth to God's son. And so God is careful to uphold the headship of Joseph. And so the angel appears to Joseph and tells him to flee to Egypt.
Again, appears to Joseph and tells him to return. Again appears to Joseph and says for him not to go into Judea, he would have to pass through it, but to go up to Galilee there because Herod's son was sitting on the throne in Judea. So I thought that was just an interesting point of how God works there to uphold his own laws. Now, we're going to close on just one thought here. I think most of us know the history there of what the Bible teaches about he settled in Nazareth.
But one of the puzzling verses Matthew writes that he says, " And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets that he will be called a Nazarene. " Now, all of my life, I've wondered, well, where does it say that he will be called a Nazarene? I actually asked that question when I was a boy. I looked it up. And you know I remember someone made up an answer. It was in a Bible dictionary, and I accepted it that, " Oh, it's from the root word naser.
" And it comes from a prophecy of Jesus being from the root of Jesse, something like that. Well, yeah, the early Christians, none of them gave that as an explanation. I forget when that first was made up. And people have thrown out all kinds of explanations through the centuries. And a very common thing you see today in commentaries is there's nothing in the Old Testament. We don't know what this is. This might be a lost part of the Bible or something like that.
And of course, it would be a little disturbing to think that a messianic prophecy would actually be missing or lost from our Bibles. And Jerome, who if you're one of my listeners, you know, he's not one of my favorite Christians in history because he's the one who first translated the Old Testament from the Masoretic text instead of from the Septuagint. But his commentary on Matthew, really, I can find very little fault with it. He does a good job with it.
And he points out that in all of the other places, when Matthew is giving a prophecy and he gives many Messianic prophecies, he either gives the name of the prophet or he says as the prophet stated, something like that. But in this one, he doesn't say that. He says that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets plural. So he is not purporting to be talking about a specific prophecy, or he would have said prophet singular. When he says the prophets, he's talking about something general.
And what throws us off today is that when we look at it in our Bibles, whether it's the new King James or any of them, it will put that in quotation marks. That which was spoken by the prophets, and then it'll put in quotation marks, " He will be called the Nazarene. " So, oh, there's a specific prophecy. It's in quotation marks. And that's why modern commentators often say, " Well, this is just missing from our Bible. " But in ancient Greek and New Testament Greek, there were no quotation marks.
In fact, they didn't become common in usage until like the 17 and 1800s in the English language. So they're a fairly recent thing. They're very handy, but a Bible translator has to decide where to stick them in and not stick them in. And they shouldn't stick it in here since there's no prophecy that says that. But like I say, they typically do that. And so people are looking for a specific prophecy.
The early Christians, I mean, Jerome points out about the plural prophets, but they all point out that the similarity between the word Nazarene and Nazarite. And in Greek, they're even closer in similarity than in English. They're close in English, but in Greek, there's just one letter difference between the two words, Nazarite and Nazarene. And a Nazarite was someone separated apart to be holy. And so they see this applying to the term that Matthew uses there that he would be called a Nazarene.
In their mind, that's the same thing as a Nazarite. So all of the prophecies dealing with him that he would be without sin, et cetera, et cetera, that the prophecies by all the prophets are pointing to someone who would be separate from the rest of mankind, who would live a holy life. And that's what Matthew is talking about here. So that sums up the thoughts that I had on the second chapter of Matthew. Now, there's a lot more that happens there.
A lot of riddles that I didn't go into this afternoon that I hope you'll read because some of these were also puzzles to the early Christians, and they offer some very interesting solutions to some of these problems that we see in the Bible.