Verses 16-17
§ 13. SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS, AND RETURN FROM EGYPT, 16-23.
16. Mocked Slighted and deceived. Wroth Angry. Slew Herod believed the prophecy, for he ordered the sacred records to be consulted, with the expectation that they would tell, and tell truly, where the Messiah would be born. He believed the Scripture; he believed in the Messiah. But what a believer! He imagined that he could kill the predicted Messiah, and so defeat the God of ages! Such idiots may the most crafty men make of themselves, when blinded by ambition. All the children Male children. Many imagine that the number was immense; but the number of male children under two years old in a small village and its adjacent country borders could not be large. Coasts The original word signifies not sea coasts, but suburbs, land borders.
There is no force in the modern objection to the truth of the history of the massacre of the infants, derived from the fact that no secular historian of that day mentions it. Amid the enormous slaughters perpetrated by this monster, the killing of a few children in a country village would hardly be thought worthy of notice by any pagan author. See our remarks on Herod in our notes upon Matthew 2:1.
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