Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life.

People's New Testament

2:20 Arise... go into the land of Israel. Notice that Joseph is not required to return to Bethlehem or to Judea, but simply to the land of Israel.

They are dead which sought the young child's life. As they is plural, there must have been the death of more than one of those who sought the death of the Lord. Five days before the death of Herod he slew his son Antipater, a prince of dark, cruel, treacherous character, whom he expected to succeed him. Nothing could be more likely than that he had fully sympathized in the scheme of child-murder at Bethlehem. Now both, they that sought the young child's life, were dead.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel-not to the land of Judea, for he was afterward expressly warned not to settle there, nor to Galilee, for he only went thither when he found it unsafe to settle in Judea but to "the land of Israel," in its most general sense; meaning the Holy Land at large-the particular province being not as yet indicated. So Joseph and the Virgin had, like Abraham, to "go out, not knowing whither they went," till they should receive further direction.

for they are dead which sought the young child's life-a common expression in most languages where only one is meant, who here is Herod. But the words are taken from the strikingly analogous case in Ex 4:19, which probably suggested the plural here; and where the command is given to Moses to return to Egypt for the same reason that the greater than Moses was now ordered to be brought back from it-the death of him who sought his life. Herod died in the seventieth year of his age, and thirty-seventh of his reign.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:19-23 Egypt may serve to sojourn in, or take shelter in, for awhile, but not to abide in. Christ was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to them he must return. Did we but look upon the world as our Egypt, the place of our bondage and banishment, and heaven only as our Canaan, our home, our rest, we should as readily arise and depart thither, when we are called for, as Joseph did out of Egypt. The family must settle in Galilee. Nazareth was a place held in bad esteem, and Christ was crucified with this accusation, Jesus the Nazarene. Wherever Providence allots the bounds of our habitation, we must expect to share the reproach of Christ; yet we may glory in being called by his name, sure that if we suffer with him, we shall also be glorified with him.