Herod slays male children
Life of Jesus · Draft · BSB
Content revision: c8b7708cf0f7c95f · No editorial review date recorded
Date: Birth and childhood. A guided comparison of Gospel accounts, not a measured calendar or a claim that every parallel follows the same sequence.
Herod orders the killing of boys aged two and under in Bethlehem and its surroundings. Matthew places the bereavement beside Jeremiah’s image of Rachel weeping for her children.
The account describes violence by a ruler against families. Herod’s age threshold does not establish Jesus’s exact age, and Matthew gives no casualty total. The scene should retain the grief of those harmed.
Primary Scripture
2:16 When Herod saw that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was filled with rage. Sending orders, he put to death all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the Magi.
2:17 Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
2:18 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Related Scripture
Jeremiah’s lament is followed by hope; Matthew draws on the lament in this scene.
Location evidence
Matthew names Bethlehem and its surrounding district. The town marker does not delimit the district or identify every affected household.
Event map marker: Identified site; [longitude, latitude] = [35.21027, 31.70536]. This is a teaching marker, not an exact event venue.
Bethlehem: Identified site. Coordinates [longitude, latitude]: [35.21027, 31.70536]. Classification source: rule.
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
For the class
How does the lament keep these families from disappearing into the background?
Interpretation and reuse
Narrative order is a reading arrangement, not a proven chronology. Dates retain their stated uncertainty. An identified locality does not establish the exact venue or prove an event. Region extents and routes are illustrative, not surveyed boundaries or ancient roads. Draft material has not completed editorial review.
Record source: theographic (258)
Record source: editorial
Events and places adapted from Theographic Bible Metadata (github.com/robertrouse/theographic-bible-metadata), CC BY-SA 4.0. This adapted data is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Place coordinates from OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data, CC BY 4.0.
Teaching stops, summaries and regional extents are original editorial content of this atlas.
Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. https://berean.bible/licensing.htm