calls to mind, the cruel precautions of Eastern monarchs, in times past and present, in regard of possible competitors for their throne, often making an entire desolation, even of their own kindred round them, will see in this what many an Eastern monarch would have done, —— what certainly a Herod would not have shrunk from doing." His jealousy, which had been excited by the errand of the wise men, was changed to rage when he found that they had eluded, and, as he proudly considered it, "mocked” him. He determined therefore, in his wrath, to secure the destruction which he had designed for one of the children of Bethlehem by a summary act of vengeance on all. This was entirely in keeping with all that we know of Herod. "The man," says Trench, "who could put his wife and three of his own sons to death, who made a solitude round him by the slaughter of so many of his friends, who could kill, under semblance of sport, as he did, the youthful high-priest, Aristobulus; who, when he was himself dying by horrible and loathsome diseases, so far from being softened, or owning the hand of God, which every one else saw therein, could devise such a devilish wickedness as that narrated by Josephus, to secure weeping and lamentation at his death,* would have had little scruple in conceiving or carrying out an iniquity such as the sacred historian lays here to his charge." Nor would the crime be one of so remarkable a character that historians like Tacitus or Josephus would be unlikely to omit it in their * According to Josephus, Antiq., Lib. XVII. c. 6, s. 6-8, "It troubled him greatly to anticipate the joy which there would be among the Jews at his death; and with the purpose of turning this joy into weeping, he got together from every city the chief personages of the land, whom he shut up in the Hippodrome of Jericho, where he lay dying. He then obtained a promise from his sister Salome and her husband, that, the instant he expired, these all should be slain, so that, although none wept and lamented him, there should yet be abundant weeping and lamentation at his death. His intentions were not better fulfilled than those of tyrants after their deaths commonly are." imperfect catalogue of his crimes. The act was one of no political importance. The number of children murdered has been greatly exaggerated in the popular mind. "From two years old, and under," in the Jewish mode of reckoning, probably means, downward from those who have entered on their second year, or, as we should say, under one year old. In a small place like Bethlehem they could hardly have numbered more than ten or fifteen, and these might have been put out of the way without any public commotion by the practised and accomplished agents of a tyrant like Herod. QUOTATIONS FROM THE PROPHETS. 6. The references to the Old Testament in this chapter are worthy of notice. The quotation here from Micah v. 2 is given, not merely as an important historical fact in its relation to the inquiries of Herod, but as showing that the great Jewish council, or Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, composed of the chief priests and the men most learned in the law, had fixed on Bethlehem, where Jesus had just been born, as the birthplace of the Messiah. The ancient prophet, therefore, as interpreted by the highest religious authority recognized among the Jews, accorded with the writer as to the place of the Messiah's birth. This must at the outset have had great weight with those whose favorable attention Matthew wished particularly to gain. It is not his opinion of the application of the prophecy that is given, but the deliberately expressed opinion of those whom they looked up to as their authorized teachers in such matters. See John vii. 42. 15. The second quotation, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son," Hos. xi. 1, is given as one of the coincidences in language and in fact which could not but strike those who regarded both as sacred, and who thus through their religious associations would be led on in the narrative with less violent antipathies. Whether Israel, (whom God here calls his son,) coming up out of Egypt to receive and to perpetuate the knowledge of the true God through the laws. and institutions appointed by him, was or was not held forth by the prophet as a type of that greater Son of God now coming from Egypt, who was to exercise a yet mightier influence in the advancement of God's kingdom through the earth, is of little consequence, so far as the writer's purpose or the pertinency of the quotation is concerned. 17, 18. The third quotation is from Jeremiah xxxi. 15. Jerusalem had been taken and destroyed by Nebuzaradan. The Jewish nobles had been slain, and after the sons of the king, Zedekiah, had been murdered in his sight, his own eyes were put out. The people were gathered together in chains at Ramah, a city of Ephraim, probably about six miles northward from Jerusalem, whence they were to begin their wearisome and sorrowful journey towards Babylon, the land of their long captivity. The prophet Jeremiah, who had been one of the captives, and who is now predicting the joyful return of his people from their bondage, contrasts their future gladness with the feelings of that dismal day when they were taking their departure from Ramah with such lamentation and bitter weeping, that it seemed as if Rachel, the wife of their common ancestor, were there, as a mother, weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not. This striking and beautiful figure the Evangelist has transferred to Bethlehem, to represent the lamentation, weeping, and great mourning caused by the murder of the children. The image of Rachel rising from her tomb and weeping there is rendered more appropriate by the fact that her grave was near Bethlehem, in the midst of those who had been sacrificed by that barbarous act of cruelty. Whether Jeremiah used language which, besides describing the sorrows at Ramah and the joyful return of the Jews from Babylon, pointed on in prophetic vision to the sorrows of Bethlehem, and the more joyful deliverance which should thence ensue, is not clearly announced, though the chapter, taken as a whole, seems to abound in words expressive of a grandeur and magnificence too rich and vast to find their entire fulfilment in the restoration of the Jews from Babylon. There is nothing distinctly said in the Gospel beyond the application of the passage to the mourning at Bethlehem; but if the Jews regarded it as being in some sense one of their Messianic prophecies, the few words quoted might carry their minds unconsciously on, from the parallel between the sorrows at Ramah and at Bethlehem, to the higher coincidence between the joys of the deliverance from the captivity at Babylon and the grander deliverance for which they were looking forward to the Messiah. The force of such allusions comes through the fine but powerful associations which cannot be expressed in words, far more than through any direct or logical appeal to the understanding. Dr. W. M. Thomson, in his work on Palestine, says (Vol. II. p. 503) in regard to this quotation: "The poetic accommodation of Jeremiah was natural and beautiful. Of course it is accommodation. The prophet himself had no thought of Herod and the slaughter of the infants." That is, in his opinion (and the facts of the case, as far as known, certainly go to sustain him in it), the language of Jeremiah is here quoted, not as a prediction of this event, but merely as furnishing words which describe the sharpness of the sorrow caused by Herod's cruelty. 23. The fourth apparent quotation from the Old Testament is of a different kind. "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, 'He shall be called a Nazarene.' No such passage is to be found in the Old Testament. Dr. Palfrey supposes that the reference is to Judges xiii. 5, "He shall be a Nazarite." Tischendorf makes the reference to Isaiah xi. 1, where the word translated Branch is in Hebrew Netser or Nazer. But the term Nazarene was one of contempt and disgrace, as the place, and everything belonging to it, John i. 46, were despised among the Jews. When, therefore, St. Matthew speaks of Jesus as dwelling in Nazareth, and of course bearing the despised name of Nazarene, he would soften the prejudice thus awakened, by intimating, though in obscure terms, that even thus he was fulfilling in himself what had been spoken by the prophets of the Messiah, as one despised and rejected of men. The form of speech, "by the prophets," is unlike that which occurs anywhere else in the Gospels when a quotation is made from a particular writer, and of itself would seem to imply that an idea expressed by different prophets, rather than the specific language of any one writer, was what was referred to as fulfilled in Jesus, when he was called by that mean and offensive name. This is the interpretation given by Kuinoel, Olshausen, Trench, and others, and seems to us more natural than any other. But we are too far removed from the times and habits of the writer, and those for whom he wrote, to speak with certainty of allusions which appealed so delicately to their finer sensibilities through the associations growing out of their religious culture NOTES. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east 2 to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the 1. Herod the king] "Herod the Great, son of Antipater, an Idumæan by an Arabian mother, made king of Judæa on occasion of his having fled to Rome, being driven from his tetrarchy by the pretender Antigo nus, and confirmed in his office by Augustus Cæsar after the battle of Actium. He died miserably, five days after he had put to death his |