Herod the Horrid - (Part 2)

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 (Matthew 2:16).


If Joseph is the model of goodness and mercy in the Christmas story, Herod is certainly the model of evil and cruelty.

It was a brutal world into which the little baby Jesus was born.


Some challenging thoughts from Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey:


"Those who lived in the Middle East across the second half of the twentieth century (including this author) experienced frequent warfare.

"In Lebanon, particularly, there were seven wars in a thirty-five year period. One lasted for seventeen years. Others were quick yet brutal. People saw friends and family killed by bullets and explosives and all the other horrors of modern war.

"How do people retain their faith under such conditions? One answer is that they remember both the Christmas story and the cross.

"A mindless, bloody atrocity took place at the birth of Jesus. After reading that story, the reader is not caught unawares by the human potential for terror that shows its ugly face again, on the cross.

"At the beginning of the Gospel and at its conclusion, Matthew presents pictures of the depth of evil that Jesus came to redeem.

"This story heightened the reader's awareness of the willingness on the part of God to expose Himself to the total vulnerability which is at the heart of the Incarnation.

"If the Gospel can flourish in a world that produces the slaughter of the innocents and the cross, the Gospel can flourish anywhere.

"From this awareness the readers of the Gospel in any age can take heart."