‘While in Jerusalem they had been consulted by the Romans’ puppet, the monster Herod’
settle the tavern bill – and much more besides. They stayed for some time, then returned to the tavern. My boy stayed with them, though as they spoke in Persian to each other he could only understand when they broke into Aramaic. Then they slept. When they woke, they summoned Shmuel and demanded the bill. It seemed they had all had a dream, the same one, and they were in a hurry to leave.
THAT was the clue, that damned dream. They called it a vision and described it to Shmuel. My son overheard them. There were clues, oh Lord there were clues and 40 years later I kick myself that I did not pay more attention, think more deeply.
I had failed to notice that they had come out of the north, not the east, though that is the direction of Persia.They had travelled via Jerusalem and while there had been consulted by the Romans’ puppet king, the monster Herod.
They told him all about their visions, their mad predictions that a future king of the Jews would be born in Judea.
Herod showed great interest, lavished them with hospitality and urged them, when they had found this baby, to hasten back to his palace to tell him where the child was to be found, so that he too could pay homage. But their dream in Bethlehem was quite different, or so they told Shmuel as they paid him in gold.
Each had been visited by a spirit who warned them that Judea’s evil king wanted only to slaughter the newborn child and that they too should flee for their lives. So this they duly did, being gone by midday and in three different directions. I still do not know whether they ever made it back to Persia, but they never came again to Bethlehem.
But the soldiers did.Three days later. Some rat, seeking reward, had watched them leave then hastened to Jerusalem to tell all to Herod. Realising he had been tricked, he sent soldiers.
The couple from Galilee, with their baby, had also left, to join a wellarmed caravan heading for Egypt. They now had money to pay for their passage. In vain did Shmuel tell all this and plead with Herod’s armed killers. The brutish captain in charge insisted his orders could not be disobeyed. They surrounded the village, then they smashed their way into the hundred or so houses and slaughtered every male baby under two years old. None was successfully hidden, none spared.
I was 30 back then and my wife was 25. Our first-born was 10, but Ezekiel, our second-born, was aged just one. I was still on wolf-watch in the hills. Rachel tried to hide our baby son as Herod’s killers rampaged through the village, but the child wailed in fear and they found him.
Now I sit alone with all my family gone. Rachel faded away and the Lord took her five years later. My older boy grew up but left the village to go to the big city.
He had a talent for money, though where he got it from who knows? He became a money-lender and prospered. Then he became involved with some cult or other, became their treasurer, fell out with them and in his mid-40s took his own life.
Life is empty now save only for the questions.Why did the couple from Galilee have to come to my village when there are so many scattered across Judea? Why did the Persian astronomers have to pause in Jerusalem and tell the odious Herod that a rival to himself was about to be born? Why could not Jehovah grant that at least my second son could grow up to follow his father as a shepherd, like generations of Iscariots before him?
Because, I suppose, it was all written. But that is no comfort to a sad old man.