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Mat_2:15
But could it be pleasant to him to work with or for idolatrous Egyptians? Without inquiring how far this might have been a discomfort to him, it may suffice to mention that it was not needful that he should do so, or probable that he did so. It explains this and other points in the position of the holy family in Egypt, to understand that Jews were settled in great numbers, and were in the enjoyment of high privileges, in that part of Egypt nearest to Palestine, which was doubtless the quarter to which Joseph repaired. These would afford employment and support to a refugee from Palestine; and even if they had known that he fled from Herod, it would have been nothing to his detriment—for Herod had no authority in Egypt, and he and his were hated by the Egyptian Jews fully as much as by his native subjects—with this difference, that, being at a safe distance, they regarded him with a degree of scorn and contempt mixed with their hatred, which the terrible reality of his power in Judea did not permit to be entertained there.
In fact, the Jews were here so numerous, so privileged, and so free, that Joseph and Mary were, in Egypt, less alone among strangers than common readers may have supposed. The extraordinary monuments of ancient times—the great and still more ancient river, to which the largest streams they had ever before seen were but brooks—the exotic character of the vegetation—the persons and attire of the dusky Egyptians—all these must have struck them greatly, and the outer aspects of the most sensuous of idolatries must have shocked their eyes. But then, as now, Jews everywhere sought out Jews in foreign lands, and had no social intercourse, and little if any intercourse but that of trade, with the natives; and all beyond the circle of Jewish life was beheld vaguely as outer things, and passed before the eyes as a shadow or a dream.
Not only were the Jews at this time a numerous, prosperous, and privileged class in that which had been to their fathers the house of bondage, but they had there a temple and priesthood, after the model of that at Jerusalem.
It came about in this manner—
After the downfall of the Persian empire, to which, from the captivity; the Jewish nation had been subject, the Ptolemies, who were Alexander’s successors in Egypt, were for nearly two hundred years masters of Palestine; and during that period Egypt once more became a place of refuge for the Jews, and one which afforded, to such as were commercially inclined, opportunities of enrichment which their own country did not present. Alexandria had become, as its founder intended, what Tyre had been—the emporium of the world; and naturally attracted in large numbers the Jews who, during the captivity, acquired those commercial tastes and habits which they have ever since maintained, and which has always given them so large a share in the traffic of the world. The tried courage in warfare, the fidelity to their political and civic engagements, and the enterprise and probity in commerce, which had been manifested by this people from the time of the captivity, had given them a high character, as valuable citizens, in the eyes of the first Ptolemy and some of his successors; and their settlement in Egypt had been encouraged by the most distinguished privileges, religious immunities, and civic rights. All this they continued to enjoy at the time of the flight into Egypt, although that country was then a province of Rome, and Jews found themselves virtually under the same supreme dominion wherever they went—unless into the far East.
It was in the time of Ptolemy Philometor that the Jews in Egypt were enabled to obtain an ecclesiastical establishment of their own, which made them (although, indeed, schismatically) independent of that at Jerusalem. It was in the reign of that king that Onias, whose father, the third high-priest of that name, had been murdered, fled into Egypt, and soon rose into high favor with Ptolemy, and Cleopatra the Queen. The high-priesthood of the temple at Jerusalem, which belonged of right to his family, having passed from it to that of the Maccabees by the nomination of Jonathan to this office in 153 B.C., Onias used his influence with the court to procure the establishment of a temple and ritual in Egypt, which would accomplish a politically desirable object, like Jeroboam’s establishment at Dan and Bethel (bating the idolatry), of detaching the Egyptian Jews from their connection with, and dependence on, the temple at Jerusalem. This course might seem the more easy, as Onias in his own person represented the legal priesthood; and as the absence from the temple of Jerusalem of the distinguishing symbols of its ancient glory—the heaven-kindled fire, the ark, the divine radiance between the cherubim—rendered imitation more feasible, and seemingly less sacrilegious. Still it must have been felt as a doubtful course, by many even of the Egyptian Jews; but Onias soothed their apprehensions by citing Isa_19:18-19, as both a prediction and justification of this measure.
Having obtained the consent of all parties concerned, Onias looked about for a suitable site, and fixed upon a ruined temple of Bubastis, at Leontopolis, in the Heliopolitan nome, about twenty miles from Memphis; and under his energetic proceedings the place was ere long converted into a sort of miniature Jerusalem, with an altar in imitation of that of the temple. Onias of course failed not to make himself high-priest; and the king having assigned a tract of land for the maintenance of the worship at this temple (which subsisted till destroyed by Vespasian), the place soon became a center of Jewish population in Egypt, only inferior in numbers to that in Alexandria, and more exclusively Jewish. This we the rather notice, as it is very generally supposed, and is in itself highly probable, that the holy family repaired to, and remained in, this neighborhood.
The town here—this Egyptian Jerusalem—was called Onion, after the name of its founder. There are now at the place some scanty traces of an ancient site; and the natives still preserve the tradition of its ancient appropriation in the name of Jew’s Town, which they give to it.