“Engaged to a man named Joseph”

Luke simply told readers that Mary was “engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David’s house.” We will learn more about Joseph in next week’s GPS from the gospel of Matthew. But we need to know something about Mary’s fiancé to grasp her story. She lived in the tiny village of Nazareth, but the slender evidence in the gospels suggests that Bethlehem was Joseph’s home town (cf. Luke 2:1-4). If so, their families probably arranged the marriage (a fuller study of evidence for that is in Pastor Hamilton’s The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem).

• In Israelite culture, an engagement was as binding as marriage. Mary was pregnant? People (like Joseph at first) “knew” some other man was to blame. Some later implied that Jesus’ father was unknown (cf. John 8:39-41). Mary might even have been stoned to death (cf. Deuteronomy 22:20-24, John 8:3-5). But Matthew 1:19 said, “Joseph her husband was a righteous man.” He wanted Mary safe even if she’d let him down. How have you learned to face distress in a measured way like Joseph’s?
• A Bible translators’ handbook said, “‘Carpenter’ may refer to one who builds with wood or stone. Wood is somewhat rare in Palestine, and houses are most frequently constructed with stone.”* Joseph worked with his hands. The scorn in Matthew 13’s story hinted they did not value workers like Joseph very highly. Does our culture properly value “workers” who lack prestige or corner offices? What was it about Joseph that made him “great” by Jesus’ standards (cf. Mark 10:43)?

The Journey: A Season of Reflections

Today’s Insights was chapter 7, “Joseph the Carpenter” from The Journey: A Season of Reflections, by Adam Hamilton. Copyright © 2011 by Abingdon Press, and available on our website for 24 hours by permission of Abingdon Press. If you’d like to buy the entire book of reflections, you can click here for a direct link to the Cokesbury sale page, as well as other Journey resources.