The King Nobody Wanted | Page 5

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 God. God 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. God 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 nobody knew that anything strange had happened at all.
Nobody there had heard of the shepherds and the Wise Men, and
nobody knew what Simeon had said in the Temple. Nobody knew why
it was that so many babies in Bethlehem had been murdered. Nobody
in Nazareth thought that the Messiah had come.
[Illustration]

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