Why would soldiers be sent out to kill a child?

 

Why would soldiers be sent out to kill a child? 

Jeffrey Wattles, 11.17.18

An infant is celebrated as a liberator and as one who brings light to the world. Before long, he is pursued by soldiers who have been sent out to kill him. What is going on?

In this case, the infant is Jesus of Nazareth. Even his name is puzzling. “Jesus” is the way we say the name Joshua. Why was Jesus named Joshua? The name was not chosen by his parents; his mother Mary was told by the angel Gabriel what to name him. Why Joshua?

Could Jesus have been named after the prophet Joshua? If so, what could that mean? Joshua was the successor of Moses, who led the Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt. From place to place, for 40 years, he led them, teaching them about God and giving them laws and discipline. In this way, he formed them into a people who could endure on the stage of history as a small people, positioned in the neighborhood of major powers of the ancient world.

At the end of his life, Moses turned over the command of the Hebrews to Joshua, who attempted to take over the land of Canaan by military conquest. Canaan was located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This territory was, very roughly, what was called Palestine in Jesus’ day, and which is now, very roughly, Israel. It has been referred to as “the promised land,” because it was traditionally regarded as having been promised by God as a permanent homeland given to the descendants of Abraham. Political and military disputes over that territory continue to this day.

If Joshua was a political and military leader, and Jesus was neither of these, then what sense would it make for Jesus to be named after Joshua? Unless the truth of Jesus’ mission was to lead people into a spiritual promised land?

 

Why soldiers were sent out to kill Jesus

The historical setting explains the orders to the soldiers. The Jews had been ruled by a series of foreign conquerors, from Assyria, Babylon, and Persia to Macedonia and then Rome. In the year 63 BC, the Romans conquered the province of Judea in Palestine. During the times of Jesus, travel and trade flourished on Roman roads, and the peoples of the Mediterranean world lived in peace, as enforced by the Roman armies. But there was greater danger of violence in Palestine.

Rome had special reasons to suppress disturbances in the eastern Mediterranean. The seaports there were part of the network from which ships carried much of the grain that was sent to Rome, where citizens and slaves were dependent on the wheat that they were given. If Rome got hungry, unrest would shake the very center of the empire. In addition, Palestine served as a peaceful buffer between nations which, if they united, could threaten Rome. If revolt were to break out in Palestine, the consequence could be predicted: overwhelming retaliation from the Roman army.

Religious factors added to the tensions. The Roman rule was particularly intolerable for the Jews because, beginning with the reign of Caesar Augustus (27BC – AD 14), the Roman emperors demanded to be worshiped. Unlike other religions, Judaism was monotheistic, and the Jews took their religion very seriously. They searched their scriptures to find hope for this difficult time; and many of them looked for the coming of a “Messiah” or “Anointed one,” appointed and blessed by God. The Messiah was widely expected to lead an army to overthrow the Roman rule and to restore the kingdom of David, the monarchy of a thousand years earlier. The vision of a glorious future for the Jews centered on the temple in Jerusalem, from which God’s laws and truth were to go forth into the whole world to bring righteousness and peace.

To be sure, there were different ideas of the messiah. Would he be divine or human? Would he restore the monarchy of David, or bring about a cataclysmic end of the age? Most versions of the Messiah that people were discussing would have been threatening to the rulers of Palestine.

The Romans set up client kings to rule in Judea. From 37 BC to his death in 4 BC, that king was Herod. He had a Jewish upbringing, but it was understood that he was subordinate to Rome. He had a violent temper, was known for brutality, and was extremely concerned about any possible threat to his rule. And he came to regard the baby Jesus as a threat.

Herod’s fear of Jesus arose because of a rumor that Jesus was “the king of the Jews.” How did this politically provocative rumor start? We have no evidence that Jesus’ mother Mary said anything in public about her interpretation of what Gabriel had told her, for example, that her son would inaugurate a kingdom that would have no end. But Mary did share her news with her cousin (or kinswoman) Elizabeth. And Mary shared her joy in a way that was steeped in the tradition of thinking of God as one who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones.” A pious Jewish woman of that time and place would naturally associate in her mind the idea of the coming of a great leader with the idea of liberation from Roman rule. Because Herod was under the power of Rome, any threat to Rome was a threat to Herod.

When Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, came to present their child in the temple, two persons, Simeon and Anna, publicly proclaimed their belief in the extraordinary mission of Jesus. Simeon celebrated him as the one that the Jews had been hoping for and as a light of revelation to all other peoples. It is possible that reports of his speech may have reached Herod.

One definite source of Herod’s fear of Jesus was connected with the visit to Jerusalem by the so-called “magi.” Were they magicians of some sort? Astrologers? If we think of them merely as superstitious tricksters, we may not give enough consideration to the possibility that they were truth-seekers. They came to Jerusalem asking where they could find the child who had been born king of the Jews. Hearing about this would certainly have triggered Herod’s anxiety. He learned that Jesus was near Jerusalem in Bethlehem. After looking for the baby and not finding him, he became frustrated and sent out soldiers, who killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.

Joseph and Mary learned of the Herod’s plot to slaughter baby boys, and they fled with Jesus to Egypt, where they lived until 4 B.C., when Herod died, and they judged that it was safe to return to their home in Nazareth.

 

Who was Jesus?

This effort to establish facts makes another question urgent: What is the truth about who Jesus really was?

One answer comes from John, son of Zebedee, one of the twelve “apostles”—those whom Jesus sent out to preach and teach. He (or someone connected with him) writes:

 

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. All things came into being through him . . . . What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

 

According to John, Jesus is of divine nature; he came down from heaven. In a mystery that we can never understand, he incarnated—took on our human nature in a human body.

If this is correct, then the human Jesus grew up from infancy to adulthood like the rest of us do. But if he was also the Son of God, then the human Jesus came to recognize his divine nature. And, as John said, he empowered people to become the children of God.

If this idea of Jesus or something like it is true, it would certainly help us understand why Jesus was regarded as extraordinary. But then another question arises. What happens to persons of sincere faith who do not recognize this truth in this lifetime? Are they condemned by an angry God to be tortured forever in a fiery hell of punishment?

Other questions arise. Why should anyone believe this idea of Jesus’ combined nature? If it is true, does it become the main point, the center of Jesus’ religion? If not, why not?

For answers, let us get to know Jesus better and seek to understand his teachings about what it means to be a child of God.

 

Image credit: Gdansk Massacre of the Innocents, Wikimedia Commons (search terms: Herod soldiers)