From the Pulpit...

For the second time, God spoke to Joseph in a dream through an angelic messenger demonstrating God's sovereign protection of His Son. As instructed, Joseph fled with his family to Egypt, whose border is about 75 miles to the south. They settled outside of Herod's control in a Roman province there, where Philo says about a million Jews lived. The quoted prophecy is from Jeremiah 31:15. Rachel, who was buried in Bethlehem, is pictured as weeping from her grave as Herod's edict to kill the male children is carried out. In the same symbolic manner, Rachel wept for her own children who were carried into captivity by the Babylonians 13 centuries after her death.