The Great Christ Comet (10 page)

The Star's Ushering of the Magi to Bethlehem and Jesus

In Matthew 2:9b–10 we read, “And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising went before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.”

Traveling around Sunset.
From what Matthew writes, it would seem that, on that day, the Star was not visible prior to the Magi's meeting with Herod but became visible during their journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Therefore it is likely that they traveled in the evening, when the stars were emerging around the time of the Sun's setting.
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The text is not explicit regarding when precisely during their journey to Bethlehem the Star appeared, but the implication seems to be that it accompanied them for the majority of their short trip. Therefore they probably saw the Star near the start of their trek southward. Travel by night in Judea was uncommon, but a relatively short journey by camel caravan in the evening would have been safe. Certainly the Magi would not have wished to delay the fulfillment of their urgent mission. Accordingly, the Magi's meeting with Herod most likely occurred in the late afternoon.
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Going ahead of the Magi to Bethlehem.
The Star went before the Magi until it pinpointed the very house where baby Jesus was. Strictly speaking, of course, the Star's guidance was not needed to get the Magi to Bethlehem (Herod presumably informed the Magi where the town was), but only to direct them within Bethlehem. However, it seems that the Star ushered them to the town of David before pinpointing the particular house where the Messiah and his mother were.
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The Star's going “before” or “ahead of” them (ESV; NIV) need not entail movement within the backdrop of the fixed stars and constellations. Most celestial entities (other than meteors, and comets very close to Earth), of course, have a natural daily westward course through the heavens.

Descending.
Having reached Bethlehem within a couple of hours, the Magi would have seen the Star in the now-dark sky. At this point the Star is described as “coming” (“came”; v. 9). Since the Star had just led them to Bethlehem in the south and hence was at its highest point in the sky (its “culmination” at the meridian [the great imaginary circle that
passes through the zenith, the celestial poles, and the horizon's north and south]) and was now straight in front of them, its “coming” must refer to the Star's drop in altitude as it moved on its course toward the western horizon. The Star was preparing to point out for the Magi the place where the messianic baby was located.

Standing over the House.
The text is rather clear in its description: from the perspective of the Magi, the Star eventually came to “stand”
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over the place where the messianic child was. Many scholars, often in a bid to rescue the account from sheer implausibility, have insisted that the place over which the Star stood was the town of Bethlehem as a whole. Carson, for example, comments, “The Greek text does not imply that the star pointed out the house where Jesus was . . . ; it may simply have hovered over Bethlehem as the Magi approached it. They would then have found the exact house through discrete inquiry. . . .”
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Hagner claims that verse 9 renders “difficult” any attempted explanation of the Star in terms of an astronomical phen­omenon.
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Appreciating that the verse is the chief stumbling block for many Bethlehem Star hypotheses, Hughes maintains that verse 9 was not intended to be taken at face value or literally, as though the Star guided them as they went from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and then pinpointed the particular dwelling where Mary and Jesus were. According to Hughes, if Matthew's description is in accord with reality to any extent, the Star's leading could only have been general.
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However, it is surely preferable to revise or abandon one's hypothesis rather than resort to special pleading in order to escape the natural force of the single most important description of the Star's behavior in Matthew's account.

The Magi did not need help finding Bethlehem. As verse 8 (“Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him . . .”) makes abundantly clear, the challenge was in locating the infant within Bethlehem. R. T. France put it well:

They already knew from Herod that Bethlehem (a mere five or six miles from Jerusalem) was their destination, so that they did not need the star to tell them that; their extravagantly expressed joy . . . is hard to explain unless the star somehow indicated the actual house rather than just the village as a whole. It seems, then, that the star's movement gave them the final supernatural direction they needed to the specific house “where the child was.”
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That the Star stood over the individual building where the infant was is clearly implied in verse 11: “And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.” The “house” here most naturally picks up on verse 9b's “place where the child was.”

The suggestion that no astronomical entity could pinpoint a house
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is inaccurate. It could, depending on what it looks like, where the observers are located, and where the house is relative to the visible horizon. If a house is located on the visible horizon, an astronomical entity that is notably bright and large can seem to onlookers to be standing over it.

In having the Star go before the Magi to the very house where the infant Messiah was, God was, Matthew implies, intervening to confirm them in their sacred mission and enable them to complete it. The star's presence at this point in the Magi's journey makes for beautiful symmetry. Just as the Star had marked the start of their mission, so it also marked its conclusion. More than this, the Star itself was now pointing out the precise whereabouts on the earth of the child whose birth it had earlier announced in the heavens.

Three Phases of the Star's Ushering.
It is important to appreciate that there is a fundamental continuity between the Star's guidance of the Magi to Bethlehem and its standing over the house: “The star . . . went before them until, having come,
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it stood over the place where the child was” (v. 9). This indicates that the Star guided them first to Bethlehem and then, after coming (that is, down in altitude, toward the horizon), to the very house where baby Jesus was. The Star, then, did three things that night: (a) It seemed to travel toward Bethlehem ahead of the Magi. (b) After the Star had led them to Bethlehem, the Star then entered a phase of descending in altitude. (c) As the Star descended to just above the visible horizon that night, it “stood” over the place where the Messiah was. From what Matthew writes, we can deduce the following: having left their homeland shortly after the completion of the sign in the eastern sky, and having traveled some 28–37 days (the length of a camel caravan trip from Bab­ylon to Jerusalem) to Judea, the Magi saw the Star appear in the south-southeastern sky in the evening and then, along with the rest of the stars, over a couple of hours move to the south-southwest (the direction of Bethlehem from Jerusalem). From that point it descended toward the horizon and finally “stood.”

The Magi's Joy.
Verse 10 is somewhat ambiguous and could be interpreted in one of two ways: as revealing the response of the Magi to the appearance of the Star as they traveled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem,
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or as indicating their reaction to the standing of the Star over one particular house.
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The former interpretation fits with the “behold” of verse 9 but interrupts the narrative flow and would make verse 10 parenthetical. It would probably imply that the Magi had assumed that the Star, having guided them to Jerusalem, would not reappear. The latter interpretation fits the sequence of the story better—verse 9 has just climaxed with the Star standing over the particular location where the baby Messiah is, and verse 11 reports that they entered the house. I suggest that verse 10 is referring to the Magi's great joy at seeing the Star standing over the house at the culmination of their long trek to worship the messianic baby. The Magi certainly felt a sense of wonder at seeing the Star as they journeyed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem—that is conveyed by “behold” in verse 9. But they were even more astonished and overjoyed when they realized that the Star was pinpointing an exact location, which they interpreted to be where the Messiah was. Evidently they perceived the celestial marvel to be a divine confirmation and vindication of their journey. The Star had, as it were, intervened to ensure that their pilgrimage came to a successful conclusion.

Astonishingly, that night the Star had appeared to be making the same journey as the Magi. It had led them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and right to the house where the messianic baby was staying. Indeed the Star evidently looked like it was about to enter
the house. In the wake of this spectacular phenomenon, there could be no doubt that the newborn baby in this house was the one whose birth had been proclaimed previously in the eastern sky (cf. v. 2).

The Magi Meet the Messiah

Matthew 2:11 recounts what happened in the aftermath of the Magi's observation of the Star standing over the place where the infant Messiah was: “And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.”

A House.
Having been guided by the Star to the very place where the messianic child was located, the Magi made their way to the building and went inside. We discover in this verse that Jesus was in a “house.” Wherever Jesus was born, whether in a stable, a cave, or the part of a house normally used by animals, he was certainly in a house by the time the Magi arrived on the scene. Presumably, as soon as the census was over and the population of Bethlehem had returned to normal levels, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus moved into living quarters more suitable for human habitation and remained there until they eventually fled from Bethlehem to Egypt (v. 14).

The Child and His Mother.
It is striking that the Magi see inside the house “the child with Mary his mother” (v. 11). The celestial phenomenon that the Magi had seen in the eastern sky back in their homeland had been divinely orchestrated to get them to see this very sight: the recently born holy child with his mother. Now, finally, the Magi could feel joy and relief at having fulfilled their divinely appointed mission to welcome the Messiah to the earth.

The absence of Joseph, Jesus's legal father, from the description is notable. It reinforces the impression that the focus of the Magi was on the Virgin Mary and her holy child. As Luz points out, the description here recalls 1:18–25, where Matthew narrates that Jesus was born to a virgin in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.
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It is fitting that this quiet allusion to Jesus's divine parentage is followed by the statement that the Magi fell down prostrate to worship him.

Falling down to Worship.
Falling down on one's face before another is a powerful gesture of acknowledgement of higher status. It is particularly appropriate when one is expressing one's submission to and worship and fear of the divine. In this connection, Davies and Allison rightly comment that in Jewish circles prostration was regarded as something that should be directed only toward God.
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The religious significance of the word used here (
pipt
ō
) is present elsewhere in Matthew (4:9; 17:6; 26:39). Here, where it is accompanied by worship (cf. 4:9; 1 Cor. 14:25; Rev. 4:10; 7:11; 22:8), the religious nature of the prostration is clear. The heartfelt worship of Jesus offered by these Gentile astrologers from the east can be explained only if the celestial sign they had seen had been perceived by them directly and/or indirectly to disclose the divine nature of the newborn King.

Gifts.
The Magi then offered Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The choice of these particular gifts naturally brings to mind Isaiah 60:6, where Yahweh spoke inspiringly of the eschatological restoration, when Jerusalem and its temple would be the center of the earth and the focus of the nations' pilgrimages: “Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of Yahweh” (NIV). It is impossible to
believe that Matthew did not think of this text when he mentioned the gifts brought by the Magi. Indeed it is difficult to think that the Magi's choice of gifts was not influenced by Isaiah's eschatological oracle. Certainly the Magi had some knowledge of Jewish messianic expectations. In bringing their gifts, however, the Magi could hardly have been imagining that they were completely fulfilling Isaiah 60:6. They would presumably have felt that they were anticipating the fulfillment of this prophecy, looking forward to the period when the Messiah would reign over the whole earth.

Gold, according to Haggai 2:8, belongs to Yahweh, the Sovereign over all. Gold was used extensively in the building of the tabernacle and its vessels and furniture, most notably the ark of the covenant (Exodus 25), and the high priest's accoutrements (his crown, breastplate, and ephod) were made of it (Exodus 39). It was imported by Solomon for lavish use in the construction of the temple of God, most notably the Most Holy Place and the royal palace (1 Kings 6 and 10). Gold, then, was especially appropriate as a gift to God and to a king.

Like gold, frankincense and myrrh were expensive, luxury items. Frankincense is a yellowy white gum tapped from the frankincense tree, genus
Boswellia
, in the southern Arabian Peninsula or the Horn of Africa, which gives off a sweet, balsamic odor when burned or heated. Pure frankincense was widely used in the ancient Near East for cultic purposes.
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In Israelite religion it was placed alongside the showbread in the tabernacle and then temple (Lev. 24:7), accompanied the cereal offerings (Lev. 2:1–2, 14–16; 6:14–18), and was the key ingredient in the sacred incense that was placed before the ark in the Most Holy Place (Ex. 30:34–36). The offering of frankincense to the messianic infant probably implied that the Magi were acknowledging his priestly and/or divine status.