Day 276 (Matthew 2) - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble (0:01)

Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

Yesterday, we read Luke's account of the birth of Jesus, and today we get more information from Matthew's account. Jesus is born in a village called Bethlehem, in a kingdom called Judea. At the time he's born, all of Judea is under Roman rule and occupation. Imagine a large and powerful country takes over the country where you live, stations soldiers in every major city, is involved with every level of your government, and makes you pay taxes to support that occupying army. That's what's happening here. Rome is in charge of things, and they put a guy named Herod the Great in charge of Judea. Herod is a great builder, making port cities and aqueducts and even renovating the Second Temple complex so that it's much bigger and more magnificent. For a while, he's even the president of the Olympics. But in his later years, he becomes jealous and paranoid. For instance, he spends six years building a massive fortress in the middle of the desert in case enemies attack, and never spends a single night there. He kills his sons so they won't take over his throne, and he even kills his favorite wife, then mummifies her in honey when he later regrets it. He is driven by fear, which prompts him to try to control everything around him, which is where we find ourselves today.

We're at Herod's Palace, and some foreign wise men show up on his doorstep and say, hey, we're here to see the new king. We saw a sign in the sky that let us know he's been born and we want to worship him. Can you type his address into Google Maps for us?

Herod puts them on ice while he tries to figure out a plan. Then he calls them back in and says, now that you mention it, I'm just as curious as you are. So when you find him, drop a pen and send it to me because I want to go worship him too. But it turns out they don't need to use their GPS because God sends the star again to help them out. And it leads them to Jesus. Hooray!

Now let's stop and look at a few of the details more closely. First, what is a wise man? Are they kings like the Christmas Carol says? Do they wear crowns? We don't have any evidence of that. Most scholars think they were probably astrologers who worked in the court of a king. If you were with us on days 256 and 257 in the Old Testament, these wise men might be kind of like the guys in the Book of Daniel who are on King Nebby's dream team. Second, are there three of them? Probably not. There are three gifts, but there are probably lots of wise men. And their names are never given in scripture. Third, where is the east? We don't know. The commentaries I read give rational support for multiple options. Iran, Babylon and even Turkey despite the fact that it's north. Most estimates have the wise men traveling anywhere from 500 to 2000 miles. But since it doesn't matter enough for scripture to specify, we'll leave this open-ended.

Fourth, what's the astronomical phenomenon they saw? They call it a star. I've heard people say it's a comet. If it is a comet, it definitely isn't a normal one, because over the course of this passage, it appears, disappears, reappears and moves, then rests in one spot. There is a theory I find interesting, but that I definitely hold with an open hand. Astronomers in the east recorded a major astronomical phenomenon in 6 BC, which is one of the most probable years Jesus was born, along with 5 BC and 4 BC. And this phenomenon occurred on June 17th, in the summer. Maybe that's the star they saw, so maybe that's Jesus' birthday? Who knows? By the way, if you want a detailed timeline of everything that happened surrounding the birth of Christ and the first few years of his life, check out the timeline overview we've linked to in the show notes today.

So, the wise men set out from the east because they see a sign in the sky and they begin their long 5,000 to 2,000-mile journey to Judea from wherever. It probably takes several months, which means, I'm sorry to say, that unlike the shepherds, neither the wise men nor the star are at the cave on the night Jesus is born. In fact, verse 11 says they come to his house to see him, and it calls him a child, not a baby. So he's back at home by the time they arrive. Feel free to adjust your nativities accordingly if you're so inclined. They worship him and give him gifts, and Mary stands off to the side with her chin on the floor. Then before they leave, God warns them in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they take another route. Herod is furious when they don't come back. They don't even send a text, so he makes an order to kill all the children aged two and under in the whole region, because apparently the wise men had tipped him off that the new king would be about two years old by now. But God sends Joseph a message in a dream, warning him about all this. So they pack up and move to Egypt, which is outside Herod's jurisdiction. Not long after this, in 4 BC, Herod dies and God gives Joseph another dream. They head home, but when they find out that Herod's son has replaced him, Joseph decides they should just start over in a new town. They've had a lot happen in the past few years. The fear and shock of an unplanned pregnancy, the shame from the locals, marriage, a large group of unexpected foreign house guests, death threats, moving countries twice, not to mention finding out that they're the parents of the Messiah.