Herod ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under. St. Matthew does not tell us if that order was carried out. He might have just been keeping this horrible action “off screen,” as it were. But perhaps the soldiers — or at least some of them — given this unjust order defied it. We know from history, such as during the Shoah or lynchings in the US, that ordinary people are capable of dreadful actions. Going along to get along — the “banality of evil” Hannah Arendt called it. But we also know of others who have a personal moral compass that points them toward justice which inspires them to act contrary to expectations or orders.