The Flight into Egypt and the Holy Innocents

Continuing with Fouard's Life of Christ: II. The Flight into Egypt and the Holy Innocents

Matt. ii. 12-23

This their pious duty being discharged, the Magi were relieved from the fulfilment of their promise to Herod; for God, Who had been leading them thus far, would still take care for their return.  Being warned in dreams not to appear again before the king, they returned to their own country by another road.

As soon as the Magi had departed, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph while sleeping.

The flight into Egypt. J-J Tissot

"Arise," he said to him; "take the Child and His Mother, and flee into Egypt.  There you will dwell until such time as I shall declare to you, for Herod is searching for the Child to destroy Him."

It was still night; Joseph, rising up, took the Child and His Mother, and set forth.1

Egypt has ever been the refuge for those unfortunates whom persecution and famine have driven forth from the land of Israel.  From the mountains of Juda it only takes a journey of three days to reach Rhinocolura.  Beyond that valley, with its narrow water courses, Herod had no further power; it was Egypt.  To all fugitives it offered safety and an assured asylum; and for this reason the Jews of the Dispersion had once spread their colonies throughout all the land of Mizraïm, the ancient abode of their fathers.

The Gospel tells us nothing concerning this flight of Jesus; doubtless this is because nothing occurred worthy of remark.  The long stretches of the Desert alone witnessed the passage of the Holy Family; some unknown dwelling sheltered them; while there was nothing of any note about them to betray their own unparalleled distinction.  The design of God in sinking these early days in the shadow was thereby to throw out in high relief the future splendour of the Divine Life, and not to dazzle the gaze by such wonders as are found only in the apocryphal gospels.

All in vain have the great painters of Italy immortalised these legends: the dragons of the desert couchant before their Lord; the lions and tigers bounding forward to adore Him; beneath His feet the sand grows green and flowering as the Field of the Roses of Jericho; while the palm trees bowed down their fronded crests, disclosing their fruits to the Fugitives.  All these lovely pictures are but reveries born of a fanciful devotion.

Certain local traditions merit perhaps more consideration.  To the east of Cairo a sycamore his venerated as having once overshadowed the Holy Family; and nearby there bubbles up a stream whose waters (or so say the Copts), were sweetened beneath the touch of Jesus.  This legend points out Heliopolis, the ancient On, as the abode of the Saviour in Egypt; but they cannot tell us what possible reason Joseph could have had for conducting the Mother and the Child so far away, when he might have found a secure a shelter on the frontier.  Indeed the time of their exile was so short that it was probably here, on the border, that the fugitives remained.

The Massacre of the Holy Innocents. J-J Tissot

The precipitate departure of the Magi upset all Herod’s plans.  The morbid jealousy of the tyrant, little used to finding himself thwarted, vented itself in savage fury.  Lacking any precise information, but only recalling what the Magi had said about the time of the Star's appearance, he concluded from this that the young King must be yet unweaned; and as it is the custom with Jewish mothers to nurse their babies for two years, he ordered the slaughter of all the children of that age and under in Bethlehem and the outlying territory.

This cruel order was executed at once, with a brutality which wrought most horrid anguish in those mothers’ breasts; for Saint Matthew tells us of the shrill screams re-echoing round about the mountains.  Rachel herself awakes from the tomb, where she sleeps at the foot of Bethlehem, to mingle her mournful cries with those of the afflicted women.  Then was accomplished that which had been foretold by the prophet Jeremy, "A voice has been heard upon the heights, great weeping and an unceasing wail of lamentation: Rachel mourning her children, and she will not be comforted, because they are not."

Certainly, if we take these words in their sense, it was over the Jews made captives under Nabuzardan and collected at Rama to go together into exile, — it was over these wretched ones the Judea laments with the voice of Rachel, the beloved spouse of Jacob; but, most reasonably, Saint Matthew sees in this passage a portent of the tears which should be shared over the Holy Innocents.  Indeed, nothing had ever occurred to the Israelites which had not some secret reference to the Messiah; sufferings and joys, humiliations and triumphs, each after their own manner, were for a figure of that which should be perfectly fulfilled in Jesus.  The bereavement celebrated by Jeremy was thus in reality a prophecy of the moanings and wails which would rise over the first fruits of our martyrs.

This massacre made little stir in Judea; and Rama alone hearkened to the piercing shrieks of the mothers.  In those days what mattered the sacrifice of a few little children to a monarch's caprice?  Antiquity has small respect for babyhood; furthermore, the reign, now just at its close, had been nothing but a tissue of murders, tortures, and atrocious cruelties; so that, according to the address of the Jewish ambassadors to Augustus, "the living coveted the lot of the victims." Under such circumstances one can conceive how easily profane historians might pass over a deed so unimportant in their eyes.

Nevertheless, Augustus seems to have had some knowledge of the fact, for Macrobius has preserved this characteristic speech of his: "Upon the news that Herod had sacrificed his own son, among the children of two years of age butchered by him in Syria, ‘It were far pleasanter,’ quoth the Emperor, to be Herod’s sow than his son." This imperial pun supposes a confusion as to the facts, — quite natural on the part of Augustus, who must have learned of this massacre as coincident with the news of the murder of Antipater, who had been a fomenter of revolt against his father.  It could not have been invented later on, in the Christian centuries; for then the immolation of these first martyrs had attained an unparalleled importance in all minds.  At all events, this sally of Augustus is not simply a valuable witness of the fact as recounted by Saint Matthew, but it even enables us to fix the date also, since it was but five days before his death that Herod delivered his son into the hands of the executioner.

Not that God had delayed His visitation of the tyrant until this moment.  A horrid disease which Heaven seems to reserve for persecutors, had been corroding and consuming his body, little by little.  Our pen would refuse to copy the picture drawn by Josephus; it is enough to say that the corruption of the tomb devoured him during life itself.  A prey to insupportable agonies, he sought some relief in the warm baths of Callirhoë; but he was forced to return to his superb palace, overshadowed by the palm trees of Jericho, and there stretch himself upon a bed of torture.  Vexatious tidings found their way there to irritate his frenzied spirit.  A rumour of his death had reached Jerusalem, and a golden eagle placed by him over the gate of the Temple, had been torn down.  The culprits were two famous scribes, Judas and Mathias.  After being dragged to Jericho, with forty of their disciples, they were burned alive; but their death only added to Herod’s hideous terrors.  Succumbing at last to the extremity of his sufferings, he attempted to shorten their duration, and thereafter recovered consciousness only long enough to order that horrible execution of his son.  His last thought was worthy of such a life; he was determined that tears should be shed at his funeral, and knowing it was impossible to expect those of affection, he collected into the Hippodrome of Jericho the Chiefs of the great Jewish Families, that he might have them butchered at the hour of his death.  The order was not executed; but it is well to recall it just here, as it enables us to comprehend how the massacre of the Holy Innocents would be passed over almost unnoticed in the midst of the torrents of blood which the tyrants spilled in the delirium of his last days.

Herod’s end was so impatiently awaited that the news must have been carried, far and wide, in a short space; but the Angel of the Lord anticipated its arrival in Egypt.
He appeared to Joseph during his sleep, and said to him: "Arise, take the Child and the Mother, and return to the land of Israel, for they are dead who sought the life of the Child."

The Return from Egypt. J-J Tissot

Joseph rose up immediately, and set out toward Judea.  Saint Matthew, always intent upon setting forth the accomplishment of the prophecies in Jesus, upon this event refers to that line from Osee: "I have called My Son out of Egypt," whose terms applied both to the Exodus of Israel and to the return of the Child-Jesus.  It was a habit with the Jewish people to consider their very existence and their history as the outlines of the coming Messiah; and this made the connection very striking for the first readers of this Gospel.

Joseph's intention was to settle in Bethlehem; his thoughts often recurred thither; and, more than all else, was it not expedient that the Child, Who was destined to rule over the world, should dwell near to Jerusalem and His Temple?  But on the road the Holy Family learned that Archelaus reined in the place of his father.  Judea had only changed the person of her tyrant; for, as his first essay in infamy, the son of Herod had already put to the sword, within the Temple walls, 3000 of his subjects.  Joseph dared not expose the Treasure confided to him to such perils.  He lifted his eyes heavenwards, and Heaven made answer, in a dream, that he should retire into Galilee.  At his death Herod had bequeathed this province to another of his sons, Herod Antipas.  Under this ruler, of a corrupt but careless character, the Divine Child would incur fewer dangers; for this reason Joseph returned to dwell in Nazareth; and thus was fulfilled what had been said by the Prophets, — "that Jesus should be called a Nazarene."

This was not so much any particular prediction (as Saint Matthew refers to it), as it was a thought often uttered by the Prophets; the Messiah was to be "The Netzer," that is to say, the Flower, that shall crown the rod of Jesse.  On its side, Nazareth took its name from the same stem, in allusion to the beauty of its site — for "it was the flower of Galilee." We do not know how this word, which from its origin could evoke none but the sweetest reminiscences, in the end lost all loveliness in their eyes; indeed, for the Jews, "the Nazarene" was unmistakably a term of contempt, and apparently it was in order to upraise it to a new dignity that Saint Matthew recalls how Jesus once dwelt in Nazareth, was hailed by its name, and was thus the Flower of Israel.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam