When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. (Matthew 2:3)
When foreigners begin to ask around the capital city about a new king’s birth the present king, Herod, becomes unsettled, because he doesn’t expect it. He has multiple wives, many sons, and many daughters, and he has plans for certain sons to take his place when he dies. But a newborn son? It isn’t part of Herod’s equation.
The verse of scripture above indicates that “all Jerusalem” is disturbed, too. I wonder what that means. Do the citizens know there is “hell to pay” whenever Herod becomes suspicious? The king eventually has one of his wives and three of his sons put to death for treason—real or imagined. Jerusalem’s inhabitants might well imagine a paranoid Herod threatening their own safety.
Are they distressed by a messianic hope signaled in the birth of this “new” king? Or are there other reasons why all Jerusalem becomes jittery at the appearance and activity of the sages from the East?
Christians accept that Messiah has come and is coming again to Planet Earth. How disturbed are we with that news?
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