Journey to Bethlehem

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.  This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.  And all went to be registered, each to his own town.  And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.” –Luke 2:1-5.

The prophecy of Micah 2:2-3 came to pass in God’s timing, with the events of history in place so that the journey to Bethlehem for the holy birth was made by Joseph and Mary.  Who would have dreamed that a pagan ruler like Augustus Caesar would have been the human instrument to bring this about?  But he was. Who would have thought that such a despised ruling as an order to register for taxation could have been in God’s plans for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem?  But that was the happening that took Joseph and Mary to the town of his lineage, again at the right time.  We can agree with the statement that “history is His story,” or with President James A. Garfield’s appraisal that history is “the unrolled scroll of prophecy.”

Questions exist about the actual time in years when Quirinius served as governor of Syria.  Did he serve twice, or was there a mis-translation of a Greek word “when” and “before,” or, to consider another possibility, was Quirinius assigned as the military administrator of a troublesome province at that time?.  So “in those days” has been set at 7 or 6 B. C.  This should not trouble our minds too much.  What was important was that the Roman rulers allowed the Jews to return to their tribal homeplaces for the registration.  And therefore, near the time for Jesus’ birth, and so He would be born in the place where prophecy placed His birth, Mary and Joseph made an eighty mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Artists’ pictures of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem often show Mary riding a donkey and Joseph leading it.  They are the only two pictured in the travel scene.  It could have been that they made the long journey by themselves.  At twenty miles per day it would have taken at least four days to accomplish.  But since all the men of David’s lineage in Galilee near Nazareth would have had to go, as Joseph did, to Bethlehem to register, the couple may have joined a traveling caravan.  There would have been more safety in numbers and this is a reasonable assumption.  On the way, they probably had food they would have packed for the journey before they left Nazareth:  bread, cheese, fruits and vegetables, with a supply of water carried in flasks of skin and replenished as they came to wells along the journey.  Or perhaps they were taken in by friendly people along the way and given food and the night’s lodging.  If not, the ground would have been their bed at night and the stars overhead their assurance, as a poet has aptly stated, “God’s in His heaven.”

After a long and arduous journey, beset by dangers and threaded with tiredness, especially for Mary who was well into her pregnancy, they arrived in Bethlehem, a teeming, crowded city with people from all the provinces there to register in David’s town.  The journey was completed, but challenges still lay ahead for Joseph who was entrusted as the guardian of the Son of God.  Mary, soon to give birth, was now in Bethlehem, the town prophesied as the Lord’s birthplace.  The journey’s end was about to see the culmination of years of God’s preparation fulfilled.

Prayer.  Lord, in some of the journeys of life we are asked to make, help us to see Your hand at work, unscrolling prophecy and the fulfillment of Your Word.  Let us take courage from the determined journey of Mary and Joseph who were in God’s will as they had Bethlehem as their destination.  Amen.