Matthew 2:16–23

Herod Slaughters Children

¹⁶Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by ^athe magi, he became very enraged, and sent and ^bslew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had carefully determined from the magi.

¹⁷Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying,

¹⁸“^aA voice was heard in Ramah,

Weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children;

And she was refusing to be comforted,

Because they were no more.”

¹⁹But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the ¹Lord ^*aappeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying,

²⁰“Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.”

²¹So ¹Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel.

²²But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being ^awarned by God in a dream, he departed for the district of Galilee,

²³and came and lived in a city called ^aNazareth, so that what was spoken through the prophets would be fulfilled: “He shall be called a ^bNazarene.”