The Family That Had to Run

By the time the sun was up, the wise men were far down a different road, heading home without a single stop at Herod's palace.

Herod did not know that. He sat in his palace in Jerusalem, waiting for them to come back and tell him where the new king was. (He had told them he wanted to worship the child too. Herod had never worshiped anyone but Herod.)

In Bethlehem, Joseph was asleep when an angel of the Lord came to him in a dream.

"Get up," the angel said. "Take the child and his mother and run to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."

Joseph sat up in the dark and shook Mary's shoulder. "Mary. Wake up. We have to go."

"Now? It's the middle of the night!"

"Now."

They tied up their bundles, lifted Jesus out of bed still asleep, and slipped through the dark streets before a single rooster crowed. Egypt was many days away on foot. (The wise men's gold may have bought a good deal of bread on that road.)

In Jerusalem, Herod finally understood that the wise men were never coming back.

"They tricked me!" he roared.

The wise men had told him when the star first appeared, so he worked out how old the child could be, and he gave an order. His soldiers went to Bethlehem and killed every boy two years old and younger, in the town and all the country around it.

That day the mothers of Bethlehem cried for their sons, and no one could comfort them. Hundreds of years earlier the prophet Jeremiah had heard crying like this: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and wailing. Rachel is crying for her children, and she will not be comforted, because they are gone." (Rachel was Jacob's wife, and she was buried beside the road to Bethlehem.)

In Egypt the family was safe. They stayed there until Herod died.

Then the angel came to Joseph in another dream. "Get up," he said. "Take the child and his mother and go back to the land of Israel. The ones who wanted to kill the child are dead."

So back they went. (Every time God spoke to Joseph in a dream, he woke up and did exactly what he was told.)

On the road, Joseph heard that Herod's son Archelaus was king in Judea now, and he was afraid to go there. God warned him in another dream, so he took them north to Galilee, to a hill town called Nazareth. There Jesus grew up a Nazarene, a boy from Nazareth, just as the prophets had said.

Matthew, who wrote this story down, remembered words God spoke through the prophet Hosea: "Out of Egypt I called my son." Hosea meant Israel. God had brought his people out of Egypt long ago, and they grumbled through forty years in the wilderness and broke his laws again and again. Now God's own Son had gone down to Egypt and come out again. He would walk Israel's road and keep every one of God's laws.

Joseph carried him away from Herod's soldiers. But one day, grown up, Jesus would stop running. He would walk into Jerusalem on purpose, and another ruler would hand him over to soldiers to be killed.

In Jeremiah, God's next words were: "Stop your weeping. Your children will come home." The boy Herod could not catch would rise from the dead first, and lead God's children home.