Matthew 2

Moffatt^{(i) 1} Now when Jesus was born at Bethlehem, belonging to Judaea, in the days of king Herod, magicians from the East arrived at Jerusalem, ² asking, "Where is the newly-born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him." ³ The news of this troubled king Herod and all Jerusalem as well; ⁴ so he gathered all the high priests and scribes of the people and made inquiries of them about where the messiah was to be born. ⁵ They told him, "In Bethlehem belonging to Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet: ⁶ And you Bethlehem, in Judah's land, You are not least among the rulers of Judah: For a ruler will come from you, Who will shepherd Israel my people." ⁷ Then Herod summoned the magicians in secret and ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance. ⁸ He also sent them to Bethlehem, telling them, "Go and make a careful search for the child, and when you have found him report to me, so that I may go and worship him too." ⁹ The magicians listened to the king and then went their way. And the star they had seen rise went in front of them till it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they caught sight of the star, they were intensely glad; ¹¹ on reaching the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, they fell down to worship him, and opening their caskets they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. ¹² Then, as they had been divinely warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by a different road. ¹³ After they had gone, there appeared an angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt; stay there till I tell you. For Herod is going to search for the child and destroy him." ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went off to Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had said by the prophet: I called my Son from Egypt. ¹⁶ Then Herod saw the magicians had trifled with him, and he was furiously angry; he sent and slew all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the neighbourhood who were two years old or under, calculating by the time he had ascertained from the magicians. ¹⁷ Then the saying was fulfilled which had been uttered by the prophet Jeremiah: ¹⁸ A cry was heard in Rama, weeping and sore lamentation — Rachel weeping for her children, and inconsolable because they are no more. ¹⁹ But when Herod died, there appeared an angel of the Lord in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, ²⁰ saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead." ²¹ So he rose, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel; ²² but on hearing that Archelaus reigned over Judaea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there and, by a divine injunction in a dream, withdrew to the region of Galilee. ²³ He went and settled in a town called Nazaret, so that what had been said by the prophets might be fulfilled: 'He shall be called a Nazarene.'