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Chapter 2: Where Is The Baby King?



Now this Jesus was born in Bethlehem when Herod was king.

"Where is the baby king?" inquired ambassadors from the east. "We saw his star back in our homeland and came a long way to worship him."

By the time Herod heard of the ambassadors and their question, all Jerusalem buzzed with trouble, and Herod burned with jealousy. He called a meeting of the priests and press and demanded, "Where is this messiah supposed to be born?"

"Bethlehem, Sir," they answer. "The prophecies indicate Bethlehem."

Then Herod dismissed the priests and the press and called the ambassadors. "Talk to me," he said. "Tell me exactly when this mysterious star appeared."

They told him.

"No go to Bethlehem," Herod said. "Search well for the child king. When you have found him let me know and I will come and worship him also."

They heard him and left. The star they had seen in their homeland moved ahead of them and then stood still over one of the houses in Bethlehem. Once they entered the house and came upon this child and his mother Mary, they dropped down and worshiped him. They opened their treasure bags and gave him very expensive gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

That night as they slept, one of them had a dream. "Do not return to Herod," the Lord in the dream said. So they slipped away quietly to their homeland by another route.

Then Joseph, the father of this child, had a dream. "Get up, Joseph," God said. "Take the child and his mother to Egypt and stay there until I tell you differently. Herod will try to kill your boy." Joseph remembered the prophecy that said, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

When Herod reckoned he'd been blocked by the ambassadors, he was very angry. He calculated the age of the child by what the ambassadors had told him about the first appearance of the star. Then he sent soldiers with orders to kill all children in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under. Maybe he didn't know the prophet had written that there would be "lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, women weeping for their children and refusing to be comforted, because the children are dead."

When Herod had died, Joseph had another dream in Egypt. "Go back to Israel, Joseph," the angel said. "Take the child and his mother because those who wanted to kill him are dead."

Joseph packed them up and brought the child and his mother back to Israel. Then he heard that Herod's son was king in Judea and he was afraid to go there. So in another dream God sent him into Galilee. He settled in Nazareth, and then remembered that the prophets had said, "He will be called a Nazarene."

Apparently this child's birth and childhood attracted some amount of attention and speculation--angels, dreams, foreign ambassadors to worship him, the king bent on killing him, and prophecies. The one question not answered by my investigation so far was why all this attention? Who was this child anyway?