Twelth night on January 6th is called ‘Epiphany’ meaning the revealing of Christ to the Gentile wise men sometime after the visit of the Jewish shepherds.

Recently I was pleased to see a children’s nativity play where it was shown that the wise men came at least a year after the shepherds. To emphasise this they had a tiny baby in the manger scene but then an older child in a Bethlehem house where he actually ran about a bit as the wise men worshipped! So let’s look at this story in more detail.

Probably the wise men travelled from Ethiopia where they observed the unique star God had put in orbit. By special revelation they knew it meant the birth of the King of the Jews. Being well educated they would know that the palace of the Jewish King Herod would be in Jerusalem so they travelled along the well worn caravan route to Israel’s capital city. At this part of the journey they needed no guiding star.

When they arrived in Jerusalem Herod was greatly troubled when he heard about these strangers looking for a newly born King of the Jews! He asked the Jewish religious leaders where Messiah was to be born and they correctly told him it would be Bethlehem as foretold by the Prophet. [ Micah 5:2 ] On hearing this Herod secretly called the wise men and checked up the exact time the star appeared then sent them to Bethlehem to find the child, then let him know so that he could also worship him. Later of course he ordered all baby boys up to two years old to be killed. [ Matthew 2 ]

As the wise men left the palace they were overjoyed to see the star overhead that they’d not seen since they left home! Soon they were offering their gifts to Jesus who may have been running about.