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This is strange. Had the like happened elsewhere, in Babylon, or Rome, or Egypt,—it would not have surprised us. Or had these been “troubled,” it would have been natural enough. But it is Jerusalem! She is troubled! Nay, it is “all Jerusalem.” Troubled at the news of her King’s arrival! Not excited, or agitated, but “troubled.” Had it been said, “rejoiced,” we could have understood it, but “troubled,“—how strange! Let us inquire into Jerusalem’s trouble and its causes. The simple visible cause was the statement of the wise men that one had been born King of the Jews. And how this could trouble Jerusalem is not easy to see. For,—It contained nothing alarming. It was but of a babe that the wise men spoke; only the birth of a babe,—no more. They did not come to tell that some Eastern King had espoused the cause of this babe, and was on his way, with an army, to secure a throne for him. Their question simply pertained to a babe whom they desired to worship. It was a religious act entirely that they had come to perform. The name they gave the babe, “King of the Jews,” might trouble Herod; but surely there was nothing to alarm Jerusalem. Herod was a tyrant,—a foreign tyrant, moreover,—only indirectly a Jew; he might be troubled; but it ought not to have awakened fear in any Jew, especially in any citizen of the royal city.