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Their departure had not been too soon. Perceiving that the strange visitors to his capital had not returned, and that his design against the young Child’s life had been frustrated, with a reckless ferocity, which, we have seen, he too often displayed, Herod sent and slew every male child in Bethlehem from two years old and under, to make sure that he had included the Object of his terrible vengeance. His cruel edict was carried out, and filled many a home in Bethlehem with sorrow and mourning206. The voice of lamentation and weeping arose in Ramah, of which an inspired Prophet (Jer. xxxi.15) had spoken 400 years before, and which the Jewish historian Josephus does not record, even if he knew of it, as though it was a matter of little moment compared with other atrocities207 of the same monarch, who could butcher on one occasion well-nigh every member of the Sanhedrin208, and on the very eve of his death meditate the wholesale slaughter of the chiefs of the Jews in the Hippodrome209 at Jericho.