First Soldiers of Christ Hail Their King
Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every
son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save
alive. (Exodus 1:22)
When the
Three Wise Men brought their gifts to the Divine Baby, they were warned by God
not to return to Herod but departed into their own country another way (Matthew
2:12). According to an unnamed interpreter of the distant past, it wasn’t
appropriate for the wise men, who had seen the Heavenly King and worshipped
him, to return to the earthly king and bow before him.
The
Gospel narrative goes as follows, Then
Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and
sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the
coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he
had diligently enquired of the wise men. (Matthew 2:16). This passage is
hard to read without feeling terrified and outraged. Herod was so scared of
losing his power! He was so afraid of the newborn baby whom the three wise men
had inquired about and became so insane as to commit this heinous crime. The
death toll of the babies is unknown. Blessed Jerome believes there were
thousands of the innocent babies slaughtered at the behest of the cruel king.
Syriac sources speak of sixty-four thousand babies. Some Western sources count
as many as 144 thousand massacred babies. Traditionally, the Orthodox Church
commemorates fourteen thousand Bethlehem babies. Regardless of how many
children were murdered on that day, this tragedy exceeds any description.
According
to some versions of Apostle Nathaniel’s biography, that disciple of Christ
almost died at the hands of Herod’s soldiers but his mother managed to hide him
under a fig tree. In that case, the Savior’s words Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I
saw thee (John 1:48) acquire a totally different angle. The future apostle
immediately recognizes Jesus as the Son of God because he must have remembered
his mother telling him how he was miraculously saved under the fig tree.
However, Saint John the Evangelist writes that Apostle Nathaniel hailed from
Cana of Galilee, a town next to the Sea of Galilee, that is, far from Bethlehem
and nearby villages. The testimony of the Lord’s beloved disciple should be
more trustworthy for us.
Many Holy
Fathers and exegetes of the Holy Scripture have attempted to explain why God
had allowed such an appalling act of terror to happen. Saint Peter Chrysologus,
Bishop of Ravenna (†450) expressed the general opinion of the Fathers:
What did Jesus do? He who foresaw the future
in advance and knew all secrets, He who judges intentions and supervises
thoughts, why did he abandon those who, as He knew, would be searched because
of him and then killed? The Newborn King, the King of Heaven, why did He
neglect his soldiers for his own safety? Why did He neglect the army of his
peers? Why did He abandon the guards, taken out of their beds, so that the
enemy, sent to find only the King, had to attack the entire army? Brethren,
Christ didn’t give up his soldiers; rather, He exalted them. He made it
possible for them to triumph before they even started to live; He allowed them
to gain victory without going into the battle; He granted them crowns before
they got their bodies. He let them skip vices and acquire the heavenly before
the earthly. Consequently, what Christ did was sending his troops in front of
him and not giving them up; He accepted command over his army, not refused it.
(Homilies 152.7)
Although
Bethlehem babies were crowned with glorious crowns of the first martyrs for
Christ and are now jubilant together with all saints in the heavenly abode, the
parents and families of those innocent martyrs had to endure immense suffering.
Holy Evangelist Matthew sees it as the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy, “A
voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for
her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.”
(Jeremiah 31:15; Matthew 2:18)
Shocked
by the crime of King Herod, we can’t help recalling a similar story, which had
happened long before but pointed at Christ like everything else in the Old
Testament. When Pharaoh saw that Jewish population had multiplied too much in
his land, he ordered his subjects to throw newborn Jewish boys into the Nile
and leave only girls alive. There was a Jewish mother who managed to keep her
male baby alive by putting him into a basket and leaving him on the riverbank.
The Pharaoh’s daughter found the baby and decided to adopt him. Like Moses,
Baby Jesus was rescued from deep water, i.e., the threat of a new Pharaoh who
was afraid to lose his power. Thousands of innocent children suffered both at
the times of Moses and the times of Christ. The Satan used the Pharaoh in an
attempt to kill the future leader of the Israeli people and Herod in an attempt
to kill Baby Jesus.
The dragon stood before the woman which was
ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she
brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and
her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into
the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed
her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. (Rev. 12:4-6)
As soon
as Jesus was born, the chthonic and ruthless ancient evil was agitated.
Massacre of thousands of innocent babies—that was how the world that lies in
darkness responded to the light that shone from the Heaven. Darkness had
prevailed in the world for centuries but thirty years from that moment, people
saw heaven open, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of man (John 1:51), the people that
walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the
shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. (Is. 9:2). Jesus Christ
appears and wields a mighty blow to the dark forces when He descends into the
water of the Jordan and, as the Orthodox Church sings, “The Lord, the King of
the ages, restoreth corrupted Adam with the streams of the Jordan and crusheth
the heads of the serpents who make their nest therein, for He hath been
glorified.” (Troparion of Ode 1 of the Theophany Matins Canon by St. Cosmas of
Maiuma). Now, the Light wins.
By John Nichiporuk,
a Bachelor of Theology,
specialized in Biblical Studies.
The Catalog of Good Deeds, 2019
