Fleeing to the Oppressor

i was reading a portion of scripture last nite in the book of matthew, and i came across something in the second chapter that had never really occurred to me. (don’t you love when you discover something new in a text you have read a ton of times…?)

matthew 2:13-14
“When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt”

i find it very interesting that here, Jesus and his family are forced to flee ‘the promise land” back to the place from where the hebrew people had to flee generations prior, egypt.  what a strange turn of events; that what was once a place of slavery for the people to whom Jesus was born, was now a refuge for Him.

this is in a strange sort of way, very symbolic of what the presence of Jesus can do… it turns places of slavery into redemptive places of refuge.  just a late nite, not very well thought through observation…

ps. i shared this with one of my roommates and they said, that it was actually a very common phenomenon even today- that once oppressed people, often end up flocking to the oppressing land- and that it is especially prevalent in the colonial world (ie: the population of indian people living in london)

*hasler