The Slaughter of the Innocents

Nineteenth Day of Advent

Matthew 2:16-18 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

"A voice is heard in Ramah ,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."

We Jews steer clear of magi and whatever they can know from staring at a palm or the innards of a dog. And we do not read the stars; it is forbidden. But we remember when these magi came. Common spell and potion peddlers from the East, but with a difference. They were looking for a king. They claimed they’d seen his natal star, and were no more discreet than if they had been looking for a blacksmith or a bakery. What were they thinking? We told them about the baby who’d created such a stir at census time, and sent them off to see him at the edge of town. We were afraid. No king wants a rival, and Herod was worse than most. They left as quickly as they’d come, without their customary nonsense, pestering and show. And then the nice young couple with their little “king” also disappeared. At first we were relieved they got away, but later not so much.

Soon others came asking about the magi and the king. We told them what had happened but they were not satisfied until they’d questioned every family and entered every home. We asked each other, “Why so thorough?”, and “What are they really looking for?” And all too soon we knew.

It happened in an instant, in the dark of night. We heard them in the street and my husband went to see. But suddenly men crashed through the door, men we didn’t know and wouldn’t recognize today. They beat him, broke his arm, ransacked our home and fled into the night. I rushed to my husband, and we began to gather up the children… all but one. My little Moysha they had killed. And then, above our cries we heard our neighbours cries. Fifteen families, wailing like the families of Egypt, but my Moysha had no basket, no Nile, no Pharaoh’s daughter to rescue him. Just a little grave with fourteen other little graves.

At first we thought that these were bandits, come to rob us, but there were no demands for money and almost nothing taken. And then we thought it must be faction fighting and retaliation, but we were not political. And when there is retaliation it’s the men who die, and they make sure you know who did this thing and why. And slowly every family came to understand.

We didn’t talk about it, but we knew what we all knew. All the baby boys in Bethlehem, so soon after they’d inquired at every house; entered every home, pretending to be looking for the magi and the baby king. – I should mention that there was a little girl who also died, mistaken for her brother, we supposed. Her brother is alive today; a Zealot.

I’m an old woman now, and I say that it was Herod, right out loud. He’s lying in his jeweled sarcophagus at Herodium like the Pagan-Roman-Greek he was, and I am almost gone. My children are all grown now, and I have little left to fear. Time has eased my sorrows. I cannot have my baby back, and Herod is beyond my reach.

Kings do not confess their crimes, and most of them go unrecorded. Who remembers a few babies in a little town like Bethlehem? And, this is the only sorrow that remains. How I wish that this might be remembered. O, that God would write it down somehow, somewhere, and bring it out and show the generations yet to come what Herod did to us, and all the Herods like him do to all the little ones like us, in every age, in all the earth. He has his monuments; we have no evidence at all. But, if just one could tell the future what he did, the future would be wiser about kings and everyone who bears the title “Great”. There is no one “Great” but God. All others are impostors. And the illusion is maintained at such a cost.