Spying in the Bible 25 - 2 BC to AD 29

The birth, life, ministry, and death of Jesus all involved cases of espionage and spying. Jesus was born when Herod the Great was the local king and tetrarch of the Promised Land and Caesar Augustus (born Octavius) had solidified his power to form the Roman Empire, which replaced the Roman Republic. To get a handle on his new realm, Caesar Augustus had a census taken. To do so, every man was required go to his hometown. A Jewish man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David lived in Galilee, which was in the far north of the former country of Israel. Joseph and his pregnant wife, Mary, then traveled south to Judaea, to the town of Bethlehem, where David’s descendants were ordered to go (Luke 2:1-5).

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judaea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

While Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem to be counted in the Roman census, Mary had her child, a boy named Jesus, who was the Son of God, the Messiah, and the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies and Old Testament. Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecy of the coming messiah through his birth is celebrated by Christians in modern times in December as Christmas, which is during the same time the Jews celebrate Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the festival of lights, while Christmas celebrates the Light of the World coming into the world. When Jesus was born, Magi from the East went to find him and asked Herod in Jerusalem where the new king who was just born was. Herod, being an intelligent, but paranoid ruler, saw this as a threat, so he began gathering intelligence about it (Matthew 2:1-5a).

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judaea,” they replied.

Herod knew from the prophecies and from the fact that the baby was born in Bethlehem during the Roman census, that Jesus, the Messiah, was a descendant of David, and therefore, a royally legitimate heir to the throne in Jerusalem, unlike Herod, who was ethnically an Edomite, or Idumean.

Herod, therefore, sent the Magi as co-opted spies to gather intelligence on Jesus’ exact location. It may seem strange that the Magi got that far and did not know the exact location, but Bethlehem was only five or six miles away from Jerusalem, so it was close to their destination. It would have been logical for them to assume that the new king would be in the capital, and if not, it would still have polite, and maybe required, to tell the current king why they were in his country (Matthew 2:7-8).

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

As soon as the Jewish priests had given Herod intelligence of the place of the Messiah's birth, he called for the Magi in private. Herod was a very good spy master and new that spies should be sent out in secret and report back only to him. As foreigners, they were also ideal spies because they held no loyalties to the Jews. Another reason he called for them in private was because the Jewish priests would have been looking forward to the coming Messiah and not wanted him killed. While talking with the Magi, Herod got as much intelligence from them as he could by asking for details of the exact timing that the star appeared. After getting all of the intelligence out of them that he could, he told them where the priests had told him to find the Messiah and gave a cover story that he wanted to worship the new king as well, when in fact, he wanted to kill him. However, the Magi received intelligence of their own from God through an angel, who told them what Herod’s plans were. They then went back a different way to avoid Herod (Matthew 2:9-12).

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

An angel also gave Mary and Joseph intelligence about Herod’s plans and told them to go to Egypt to hide from him. Egypt would have been a perfect place for them to go because it was still in the Roman Empire, so they could move there freely, but it was not in Herod’s jurisdiction (Matthew 2:13-15).

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, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Of course Herod had his own spies everywhere aw well and sent them to keep track of the Magi. When his spies reported back to him that the Magi left by a different route, he knew they were on to his plan. He therefore, used the intelligence he had gathered from the Magi earlier about when the star appeared to figure out how old Jesus would have been. He used that information to order children under two years old in Bethlehem be killed. This infanticide is known as the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16).

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Seven years later, in c. AD 6, Judaea, Samaria, and Edom were combined to form the new Roman Judaea, which was put under direct Roman rule, so Herod Archelaus was no longer tetrarch. After that, with Archelaus no longer in control, it would have been safe for Jesus and his family to travel to the Temple in Jerusalem after that, which they did yearly for the Passover Festival. It was on one of these trips in c. AD 11 when the Bible tells of the twelve year old Jesus in the temple before the elders. Three years later, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (Octavian) died and his stepson Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus became emperor of Rome.