The wise men were dreamers and thinkers. They had a very particular calling. They looked at the skies and observed God’s creation; they tried to discern what God was saying as stars and planets moved and glowed and shot across the sky. What did it all mean? Did the events in the heavens say something about the events happening below on earth, especially about thrones and powers and dominations? So they examined the heavens, and they examined the nations around them and their politics, and they tried to draw conclusions about what God might be doing in history. (In something of the same way, John of Revelation read his times and wondered if some cosmic battle between God and the Evil One was affecting his world.)
So these men were scholars. They might be more comfortable with the stars than with other people. (We all know studious people who are most happy on their own with their studies than with other people.) When it came to dealing with Herod, the wise men don’t seem very savvy at all. They took what he said at face value; he said he wanted to know where the newborn king was so that he could worship him. By Matthew’s account, it appears as though the wise men would have dutifully gone back to Herod to tell him how to find the baby! They did not pick up on his evil intent, though Matthew tells us that all Jerusalem was troubled by Herod’s mood. They passed through Jerusalem, oblivious. Our stargazers needed a special message from God by way of a dream to make them wise to Herod’s intent. Only then did they go home to their own country by another way.
Later in Matthew, Jesus will tell his disciples who are to go out into the world to be ‘as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) That’s the way the wise men end up: wise to the stars but also to the wicked ways of humans like Herod. They flew past him as innocent as doves and went home having seen and protected the Messiah.