Ma-thi-ơ 2

The magi visit the child

¹When Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem ²with a question: “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?^a We saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him.”^{bc 3}When King Herod heard this, he was shaken, and so was all Jerusalem. ⁴He called together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people and asked them where the Christ was to be born. ⁵“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they told him, “because this is what the prophet wrote: ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are far from the least among the leading towns of Judah, for from you will come a leader who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’”

⁷Herod then summoned the magi in private and questioned them to learn the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸He sent them on to Bethlehem with these words: “Go and find out all you can about the child. When you have found him, send word back to me, so that I may come and worship him as well.” ⁹They listened to the king and set out. And there was the star they had seen at its rising, going ahead of them, until it came and stood over the place where the child was. ¹⁰The sight of the star filled them with a very great joy. ¹¹Entering the house, they found the child with Mary his mother. They fell to the ground and worshiped him, and they opened their chests of treasure and offered him gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹²And since they had been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they went home to their own country by a different road.

The escape to Egypt

¹³When the magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him, “Get up and flee to Egypt with the child and his mother. Remain there until I give you word, for Herod means to hunt for the child and destroy him.” ¹⁴Joseph got up, took the child and his mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. ¹⁵He stayed there until Herod died, so that the word the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Herod kills the boys of Bethlehem

¹⁶When Herod saw that the magi had made a fool of him, he was furious. He sent soldiers and killed all the boys in Bethlehem and the area around it who were two years old or younger, in keeping with the time he had found out from the magi. ¹⁷Then the word spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ¹⁸“A sound was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud wailing: Rachel crying for her children and refusing all comfort, because they are gone.”

The return to Nazareth

¹⁹After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go back to the land of Israel, because those who wanted the child dead have died.” ²¹Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went into the land of Israel. ²²But when he heard that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as ruler of Judea, he was afraid to go there. Warned in a dream, he went instead to the region of Galilee ²³and made his home in a town called Nazareth. This was so that what the prophets had said would be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.^d