Their departure had not been too soon. Perceiving that the strange visitors to his capital had not returned, and that his design against the young Child’s life had been frustrated, with a reckless ferocity, which, we have seen, he too often displayed, Herod sent and slew every male child in Bethlehem _from two years old and under_, to make sure that he had included the Object of his terrible vengeance. His cruel edict was carried out, and filled many a home in Bethlehem with sorrow and mourning[206]. The voice of lamentation and weeping arose in Ramah, of which an inspired Prophet (Jer. xxxi. 15) had spoken 400 years before, and which the Jewish historian Josephus does not record, even if he knew of it, as though it was a matter of little moment compared with other atrocities[207] of the same monarch, who could butcher on one occasion well-nigh every member of the Sanhedrin[208], and on the very eve of his death meditate the wholesale slaughter of the chiefs of the Jews in the Hippodrome[209] at Jericho. CHAPTER III. _THE SAVIOUR’S EARLY LIFE AT NAZARETH._ B.C. 4‒A.D. 27. THIS ferocious action was one of the last crimes in the bloodthirsty career of this guilty monarch. Very shortly afterwards he died under circumstances already related[210] at Jericho A.U.C 750. This event was made known to Joseph by an Angel in a dream (Mtt. ii. 19), and he was bidden to arise and return with the young Child and His mother into the land of Israel. Accordingly he set out, but hearing that the tyrant’s son Archelaus[211], who enjoyed a reputation worthy of his father, was reigning in his stead, he was afraid to continue his journey, and was only encouraged to proceed by another supernatural intimation. The place whither he was to go had not before been distinctly specified, and he might have supposed that Bethlehem, the city of David, was the proper place to rear the Son of David, so near to Jerusalem, the most religious, the most sacred part of Palestine[212]. But now he was directed to repair to the safer obscurity of his former residence in Galilee, and accordingly went down from the highlands of Judæa to Nazareth, and there the Holy Child _grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him_ (Lk. ii. 40). From this time till the commencement of His public ministry a thick veil conceals from us all details of the Saviour’s life. The Evangelists pass this period by with a solemn reserve. One event, and one only, emerges from the obscurity that enshrouds it.