Matt. 2:1-12, Why Did News of Messiah Trouble All Jerusalem?

Mt. 2:3: When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.  We can understand why Herod was troubled; he was the current king and this would be a challenge to his rule.  But why what “all Jerusalem” troubled?

First, we can see the truth of John 1:10-12 in this.  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him (1:10).  Herod, though he proclaimed himself to be a Jew, was, of course, an Idumean (Edomite).  They had been forced to be Jews.  But Herod was as much a “man of the world,” in the 1 John 2:15-17 sense (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life), as anyone. 

He came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him (1:11).  The people of Jerusalem were not alone in Judea in rejecting Messiah.  Perhaps they feared this King of the Jews would lead them into war.  Or He would restrain their lusts.  Certainly, He would be a challenge to their own powerful positions.  In the end, they would have “no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name (1:12).  There were exceptions to the rule in Jerusalem, namely those who were waiting for the consolation of Israel (Lk. 2:25).  Among those were Simeon and Anna.  And just outside of Jerusalem, on the hills around Bethlehem, there were Jewish shepherds who had glorified and praised God for all the things that they had heard and seen the night Jesus was born (Lk. 2:20).

But those had all occurred around the time of the birth; it was now perhaps pushing 2 years later.  What troubled Herod and all Jerusalem were the words of “wise men from the east” following “His star.”  The Jewish shepherds got an angel; the Persian wise men got a star.  God spoke to each in their own language.

It’s interesting that they knew the star was a sign of the Messiah.  They already knew about “the King of the Jews” being the Messiah.  It makes you wonder.  Was this evidence of the influence of Daniel some 500 years earlier?  Daniel gave very straightforward prophecies of this.  …One like the Son of Man … came to the Ancient of Days … to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion … (Dan. 7:13-14). 

Given the fact that the Jews knew Micah 5:2, that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, it is quite likely they also knew of the “70 Weeks of Daniel” in Daniel 9:24-27 and the fact that the time was coming for the culmination of that prophecy.  It was no different than the birth of Moses, whose parents saw something special in him (Ex. 2:2) at a time when observant descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should have begun to expect a deliverer (Gen. 15:13, nearing 400 years of servitude in Egypt).  Or Daniel, who knew Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years, praying for deliverance from the Babylonian captivity (Dan. 9:2). 

The answer is, therefore, that there were many reasons for all Jerusalem to be troubled, given that they were not interested in the arrival of Messiah and all that that would do to their proud and selfish lives.  Oh that in these days we might not be those people, but will stand with the wise men who searched out, and found, and worshiped the King.  Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near (Isa. 55:6).