• Resurrected—“Each In His Own Proper Place”
    The Watchtower—1979 | June 15

    • 11, 12. How did King Herod the Great fail in his cruel efforts to kill the recently born “king of the Jews”?

      11 Even the dead infants and unresponsible young children will be favored with a return to new opportunities for growing up to eternal youth on a paradise earth. In that way the death-dealing work of King Herod the Great will be reversed. He sent the inquiring astrologers from the East to Bethlehem, to locate for him the recently born “king of the Jews.” He schemed to kill Jesus, the son of the Jewish virgin Mary. After being foiled in his crafty efforts to learn the whereabouts of the prospective “king of the Jews,” Herod sent and had his soldiers kill off all the young children two years old and younger. The mourning of the bereaved mothers in and around Bethlehem was foretold in Bible prophecy, along with words of comfort about the resurrection.

      12 The Gospel writer Matthew tells us: “Then that was fulfilled which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and much wailing; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and she was unwilling to take comfort, because they are no more.’” (Matt. 2:1-18) But Mary was not among the mothers weeping and wailing, as she had escaped with the boy Jesus and had gone down to Egypt to stay there till Herod died.

      13. According to Matthew’s application of Jeremiah’s prophecy, what was the “land of the enemy” from which the slaughtered innocent young children will return?

      13 However, for those bereaved mothers the case was not altogether hopeless. The prophecy of Jeremiah from which Matthew made his quotation went on to say: “This is what Jehovah has said: ‘“Hold back your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there exists a reward for your activity,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “and they will certainly return from the land of the enemy.”’” (Jer. 31:15, 16) According to the way in which Jeremiah’s prophecy was applied by Matthew under inspiration, the “land of the enemy” would not be ancient Babylon of Jeremiah’s day. It would be the land to which the enemy, Herod the Great, had prematurely consigned his innocent victims, the land of death. Death also is spoken of as an “enemy,” for 1 Corinthians 15:26 says: “As the last enemy, death is to be brought to nothing.”

      14. (a) How did the land of Babylon prove to be a place of death for Israelites in Jeremiah’s day? (b) How will the innocent babes of Bethlehem “return,” and on what day?

      14 The land of pre-Christian Babylonia proved to be the land where the deported Jews were “appointed to death” by their captors. Many of such deportees did die there as aliens. (Ps. 79:11; 102:20; Isa. 14:17) During and after 537 B.C.E. thousands of Jewish “prisoners” did “return” from the land of the enemy Babylon. The return of the innocent babes of Bethlehem is yet future. It will be by a resurrection on “the last day” mentioned by Martha of Bethany, which “last day” begins after “the war of the great day of God the Almighty” at Har–Magedon and after the binding and abyssing of Satan the Devil and his demon angels.​—Rev. 20:1-3, 11-15.