If Mary were about to have her baby, traveling would be a strange thing to do. It would make more sense, even if Joseph had been called out of town, for Mary to stay at home, surrounded by her family, perhaps being helped by her own mother. So Mary and Joseph may have planned to relocate to Bethlehem for good—to raise Jesus there, in the same place where their ancestor David had grown up. The family, of course, does return to Nazareth, and Jesus grows up there in Galilee.
Did you catch that? Joseph and Mary had planned to go back to Judea—not to Nazareth—when they returned home from Egypt. Their original trip to the City of David for the census, it seems, was supposed to have been a permanent move. But at last the couple finds someone willing to let them hunker down in a stable, or perhaps a cave, so that Mary, now well into her labor, can give birth to the Son of God and place him in a manger. But if the couple were planning on staying in Bethlehem for the duration, it only seems right that they would have made better travel arrangements.
And even if moving to Bethlehem was only an afterthought dreamed up by Joseph while in Egypt, nowhere does the Bible suggest that Mary went into labor the night she and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem. They may have arrived a day, a week—or even several months—before it was time for Mary to have her baby. Some will object that since the couple tries to find lodging at an inn, they must have just arrived in Bethlehem as Mary started to feel contractions—and the use of a manger for a makeshift cradle shows that Jesus was born in a stable or a cave, surrounded by animals.
Mary and Joseph were not hoping to make last-minute hotel reservations. But because so many people were in town for the census and the guest room was otherwise occupied, Mary was given the lower room in the small house in which to labor. It would have been the place where animals bedded down on cold nights though there is no mention of animals being housed there that night but also the most comfortable and private room in an otherwise crowded house.
Such a room would have been a common feature for houses in Israel during the first century. The night Jesus entered this world, God provided abundantly—in ways we may not have previously realized. Despite being far from home in a strange, new city, Mary had a place to stay, a husband to care for her, and a healthy birth.
When God calls us, he equips us. But the greatest way he rescued Mary that night was not by giving her a roof over her head or safety during childbirth. God gave Mary that which we all desperately need: a Savior. That first Christmas night he was given to all who would receive him, but Mary alone was afforded the honor of laying his head down to rest inside a straw-filled manger.
The wise men follow a star in the east and travel to Bethlehem to find the King of the Jews, but they make an appearance only in Matthew. Angels burst through the nighttime sky to tell shepherds in the fields about the birth of the Messiah, but their scene plays out only in Luke. The two groups of unexpected worshipers never meet.
The shepherds, according to Luke, seek out Jesus on the night He was born , This may be the case, as it fits the timeline the wise men gave to Herod concerning the star that appeared in the sky; they said it showed up two years prior to their coming Matthew If the wise men really did arrive when the Lord was a toddler, then we should not be surprised to find the family still living in Judea.
But what are we to do with Luke, who seems to have Joseph, Mary, and Jesus leaving the region much sooner? For those who could afford to do so, the law commanded a lamb to be sacrificed, but Mary and Joseph could opt only for the birds. We know this because if these men had arrived, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Mary and Joseph would have no longer qualified to give the offering of the poor.
They would have had the money to purchase and sacrifice a lamb. That Luke leaves out such a large chunk of the story can be problematic for readers today, but we must remember that Matthew and Luke wrote with different purposes in mind and to distinct audiences. Perhaps he is a recent convert to Christianity but someone with the means to support Luke in the writing of his gospel narrative.
While the gospel writers are selective in the material they present, they do not distort the basic facts. So if Matthew says the star that the wise men followed had been lighting up the sky for a full two years, we should be in no hurry to usher Joseph, Mary, and Jesus back to Nazareth anytime sooner. Jesus is King at every moment in time, and those who can recognize him as such bow down in worship.
Gold was being mined in Arabia at the time. Frankincense, a resin extracted from the Boswellia sacra tree, and myrrh, derived from the Comminphora tree, are both products from the southern shores of Arabia. Both were valuable commodities used in perfumes, incense and medical treatments. Instead, hoping to evade him, they found a different route for their homeward journey.
In a rage, Herod, insanely jealous of any potential threat to his rule, ordered the murder of every male child in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. The historicity of such an outrage may never be verified, but the tempestuous Herod was not above ordering infanticide or much of anything else. Like many political leaders, past and present, with age he slipped into megalomania. He once ordered that two of his favorite sons be strangled to death. He had the favorite of his ten wives, Mariamne, killed because of suspected political disloyalty.
Afterward, he would roam the palace by night, demanding that his servants bring her to him, and then order them beaten when they failed to do so. When a group of Pharisees expressed opposition to his argument that he was actually the long-awaited Messiah, he ordered the lot of them executed.
As an old man, Herod recognized that he was hated and feared by the populace and that there would be rejoicing at the time of his death. He ordered the arrest of every prominent subject and demanded their execution upon news of his death, so that there would be mourning in the land.
The executions were not carried out. Given the sparse population of the region at the time, 20 would be more accurate. Almost none of the warm, fuzzy Christmas stories make mention of the horrendous fate of the Holy Infant. Joseph, warned in a dream, spared his young family this horrendous fate by setting out for the Egyptian seaport city of Alexandria, where there lived a large expatriate Jewish community.
Prior to their departure, Jesus was presented at the Temple in Jerusalem to the venerable Simeon, who prophesied that the infant was set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and warned Mary that a sword would someday pierce through her soul—dire portents.
The shadow of the cross looms over the manger scene. Yet, the darkness of Good Friday is followed by the promise of Easter. The stories underlying the popular scenes of Christmas should remind us that Jesus entered a world of deprivation and violence, that he arrived in poverty and later departed in poverty, that he was to suffer hardship, rejection, condemnation, torture and execution; that even as an infant, he was a refugee in a strange land.
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