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Mat_2:16-18
But since now his arrow could not be aimed definitely at the one infant in Bethlehem whose life he sought, the reckless tyrant, who was not accustomed to allow any considerations of human pity to stand for one moment in the way of his objects, determined to destroy all the infants there, at one fell swoop, that the one life he sought might perish in the massacre. This atrocious design was executed by the persons—soldiers probably—whom he sent with orders to kill all the children under two years old to be found in Bethlehem and its vicinity. “This execution was sad, cruel, and universal. No abatements were made for the dire shrieking of the mothers; no tender-hearted soldier was employed; no hard-hearted person was softened by the weeping eyes and pity-begging looks of those mothers, that wondered how it was possible that any person should hurt their pretty sucklings; no connivances there, no protections, or friendships, or considerations, or indulgences.” Note: Jeremy Taylor. Painters and poets have labored to depict the horrors of the scene; but nothing brings the result more vividly before the mind than the simple quotation from Jeremiah which the evangelist applies to the event. “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”
Exceptions have been taken to the account given of this transaction. Some of them are founded on misconceptions as to its nature—as if it amounted to the massacre of hundreds, or even thousands, of children. Indeed, “the murder of the innocents,” affords one remarkable example of the re-action of legendary extravagance upon the plain truth of the evangelical narrative. The Greek church canonized them as 14,000 innocents; Note: They are also canonized in the Romish church, which assigns a commemorative festival to them on December 28. They are canonized as martyrs, “because they lost their lives in the cause of Jesus Christ”—Les Vies des Saints, ii. 492. Paris, 1734. and another notion, founded upon a misconception of Rev_14:4, swelled the number to 144,000. This gross error has not escaped the notice of the various acute adversaries of Christianity, who, by impeaching this extravagant tale, sought to bring the gospel narrative into discredit. In truth, however, Bethlehem was at that time, as it has indeed always been, merely a village, in which the number of infants must have been very small; and it would be extravagant to suppose that more than 25 children perished on this occasion, and it is quite possible that they may have been somewhat fewer.
It has also been urged, that not even Herod was likely to commit such an atrocity as this. But it is easy to show, that it was not only likely that he should do so, but that this act of blind and senseless fury, worthy of in insane tyrant, is a trait perfectly and signally in unison with what we know of his character. Neander has stated this with great force and effect. “It was that Herod whose crimes, committed in violation of every natural feeling, ever urged him on to new deeds of cruelty; whose path to the throne, and whose throne itself, were stained with human blood; whose vengeance against conspirators, not satisfied with their own destruction, demanded that of their whole families; whose rage was hot, up to the very hour of his death, against his nearest kindred; whoso wife, Mariamne, and three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater, fell victims to his suspicions—the last just before his death; who, in a word, certainly deserved that the emperor Augustus should have said of him—Herodis mallem porcus esse, quam filius. Note: “It is better to be Herod’s hog than his son:”—“Because,” says Jeremy Taylor, “the custom of the nation did secure a hog from Herod’s knife; but no religion could secure his child.” It is curious that, by an anachronism of Macrobius (a writer of the fourth century), these words are applied to the massacre at Bethlehem; and it is, accordingly, stated on this authority by Jeremy Taylor, and many others, that Herod’s own son, Antipater, being at nurse in Bethlehem, was slain in the massacre. But Antipater, who was indeed slain about this time, so far from being a child, complains of his gray hairs—Josephus, War, i. 33. It was that Herod who, at the close of a blood-stained life of seventy years, goaded by the furies of an evil conscience, racked by a painful and incurable disease, waiting for death, but desiring life, raging against God and man, and maddened by the thought that the Jews, instead of bewailing his death, would rejoice over it as the greatest of blessings, commanded the worthies of the nation to be assembled in the circus, and issued a secret order, that, after his death, they should be slain together, so that their kindred at least might have cause to weep at his death. Can we deem the sacrificing a few children to his rage and blind suspicion too atrocious for such a monster?”
These considerations meet all that can be urged as to the improbability of the transaction. But it has still been remarked as a strange circumstance, that this signal atrocity is not mentioned by any contemporary writer. This does not amount to much; for the only writer who might be expected to mention it is Josephus, and very satisfactory reasons can be given for his silence. This historian, indeed, reports many great public atrocities of Herod; but he does not catalogue his crimes, he merely records them as involved in the course of his narrative, and the sequence of events. The massacre at Bethlehem was much of an isolated act, not involved in the chain of historical events, and which, as it could not be mentioned without explanatory particulars he would wish to avoid, would be easily passed over; and there were reasons for passing it over—just as some of the evangelists themselves sometimes pass over matters that others record. It might, besides, not seem to Josephus a matter of much importance in comparison with the great public atrocities of Herod’s career which he records; and as happening at an obscure place, and as unattended with apparent consequences, he would consider it needless to introduce it into his history.
Perhaps he did not know it. He was not a contemporary, and could not know every thing; and the event was probably one of which no public record existed. The orders of Herod were probably secretly given; and were executed as quietly as the nature of the case allowed. It was important in Christian history, and is therefore recorded by Matthew; but was not seemingly important in Jewish history, and is therefore not recorded by Josephus.
Besides, who is Josephus, that so much stress should be laid upon his silence? Inspiration apart, is not Matthew as fully entitled to credit as a historian as he? We should believe Matthew even if he contradicted Josephus, and much more when he only states what Josephus does not deny, and what he has rendered probable by what he does state concerning that character of the tyrant, to whom this black and bloody deed is ascribed in the evangelical narrative.