The King Nobody Wanted Part 2

It was very different from Herod's palace.

There the three Wise Men fell down on their knees as they would before a king. They opened their treasures and put their gifts in front of the baby. One brought gold. The others brought sweet-smelling ointments, frankincense and myrrh.

"Hail, Messiah!" they murmured in adoration. "Hail, Christ! Hail, King of the Jews!"

When they were once more outside on the road, one of them spoke:

"I think," he said, "that it would be well for us not to see anything of Herod again. I had a dream...."

The others agreed with him quickly. They had had a dream too.

"G.o.d sent that dream to warn us that Herod is dangerous," they said.

"Herod means to harm the child. Let us find some other road back home."

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The days went by, and soon the baby was given his name. He was to be called Jesus.

One day, when Jesus was about six weeks old, Joseph said to Mary:

"Now that we have a child, we must go up to the Temple in Jerusalem and give an offering to the Lord. We cannot afford a lamb. But we can at least take pigeons or a pair of turtledoves."

So Joseph and Mary left Bethlehem, and carried Jesus with them to Jerusalem, five miles away.

An old man came up to them in the Temple.

"My name is Simeon," he said. "I have been waiting for you a long time. All my life I have been waiting to see the Messiah. And now the day has come."

He took Jesus from his mother's arms, and as he held the baby he began to pray.

"Lord, let me now die in peace," he prayed. "For I have seen the Messiah, the Saviour of all nations and the glory of the Jewish people."

Simeon turned back to Joseph and Mary, who were looking at him in wonder.

"Mary," he said, "this child of yours is going to break your heart. He will make enemies, and cause great trouble in this country. He will suffer, and others will suffer too, because of him. But also he will give joy, and bring many people to G.o.d. G.o.d bless you now."

With these words the old man handed the baby back to Mary, and turned away. Joseph and Mary never saw him again, but they remembered his words forever after.

They took Jesus, and started on their walk back to Bethlehem. There was so much for them to think about.

First there was the story of the shepherds. Then the Wise Men had come with their wonderful gifts. And now there was this old man with his strange words of blessing and warning.

Everything seemed to tell them that Jesus was the Messiah. They should be happier than anyone in the world. And yet they were not happy. There was trouble in the air. Their baby was going to be King of the Jews. Why should there be any trouble about it? They could not understand.

Trouble was not long in coming. One night Joseph had a dream. When he awoke he called to his wife, and told her that they must leave Bethlehem at once. G.o.d had sent the dream as a warning for them to get out of the country. They did not dare to stay there any longer. So Joseph and Mary packed up their belongings, and set out for the far country of Egypt where they would be safe.

They left Bethlehem none too soon. For Herod was exceedingly angry when the Wise Men did not come back. Now he was sure that the Messiah really had been born! He was afraid that soon there would be a new king in Palestine to take his throne away from him.

When Herod was afraid, he never wasted any time. Somewhere in Bethlehem was a child whom he feared, and somehow that child must be killed. But he did not know which child it was. How could he be sure to find the right one? He thought of a simple plan.

He called his army officers together, and gave them their orders.

"Send your soldiers to Bethlehem," he told them, "and have them kill every boy in the place who is two years old or younger."

The officers sent their men to Bethlehem, and all the little boys they could find there were put to death. No matter who they were they had to die. It did not take the soldiers very long.

In a few hours they were back in Jerusalem. Herod breathed more easily.

_That's a good thing_, he thought. _If every little boy in Bethlehem is dead, the Messiah must be dead along with the rest._

Herod did not know that the baby whom he feared was gone from Bethlehem before the soldiers got there. While the fathers and mothers of Bethlehem were crying because their little ones were dead, Joseph and Mary and Jesus were safely on their way to Egypt.

Herod did not live long enough to find out his mistake. After he died, the little family in Egypt learned that it was safe to go home again.

But this time they did not go back to Bethlehem. They went straight to the town of Nazareth in Galilee, where Joseph had worked before Jesus was born. There they settled down as though nothing unusual had happened.

In Galilee n.o.body knew that anything strange had happened at all.

n.o.body there had heard of the shepherds and the Wise Men, and n.o.body knew what Simeon had said in the Temple. n.o.body knew why it was that so many babies in Bethlehem had been murdered. n.o.body in Nazareth thought that the Messiah had come.

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In Nazareth people only said, "I hear the carpenter has a son." When Jesus began to walk perhaps they said, "Joseph's son is strong for his age." And later they said, "The carpenter's lad is doing well at school."

But there were more interesting things to talk about in Nazareth than the carpenter's family. There was the Messiah to talk about. "When will he come?" the people asked each other.

n.o.body in Nazareth had heard the angels sing.

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3. Growing

When boys in Nazareth were about six years old, it was time for them to go to school. No girls were there, for the girls stayed home with their mothers. But every day except the Sabbath, the boys went to the school and sat on the floor with their legs crossed, and there the teacher taught them many things that every Jewish boy would need to know.

He taught them their A B C's in the Hebrew language. Instead of A, he showed them how to make a mark like this: [Hebrew: a]. Instead of B, they learned to make this letter: [Hebrew: b]; and so on, through all the alphabet. Then when they knew their letters, they could learn to read. And every Jewish boy had first of all to read the Scriptures.

The teacher taught them what was in the Scriptures. Over and over they said their lessons aloud, talking all at once, until they knew everything they were supposed to know by heart.

The teacher taught them psalms which had been sung for many years in the Temple of Jerusalem.

He taught them also about the prophets. The prophets were preachers whose words had long ago been written down in the sacred Scriptures.

These books were long pieces of skin, which were kept rolled up when no one was reading them. There were many prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Malachi, and many others. Little by little the boys began to discover what these preachers had said.