Luke 2:6-10

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Questions

Verses 8-20

Though Matthew shows us Christ’s birth (or at least his infancy—the wise men may have come some time after he was born) as it relates to the rich and powerful, Luke shows us the birth in relation to the poor. Why do you think Luke tells the story this way?

Verse 9

Why is it significant that, from among the many poor people living around Bethlehem, the angel appears to the shepherds? What symbolic significance could that have? What was David the king’s occupation? How is Jesus sometimes described?

Lexical notes

• The Greek word translated "accomplished" (pimplaemi) in verse 6 could also have been translated “fulfilled.” Luke uses that Greek word, “fulfilled,” eight times in chapters one and two. Why?

• In verse 7, the Greek word translated as "inn" ("inns" in the Joseph Smith Translation) is kataluma. One possible meaning of the word is the traditional one, referring to a lodging place where strangers could stay. During this time period, such inns would have likely been very small and crude by today's standards, and often used for animals as well as people. Another possible translation of the word is to refer to the room of a house, often the dining room but sometimes a guestroom. Bible scholars who have intepreted the word this way in this verse believe that Mary and Joseph may have wanted to stay at the home of relatives, but found that there was no room there (perhaps because of so many people coming for the census). Kataluma is used two other times in the New Testament, Mark 14:14 and Luke 22:11, where the King James Version uses the word "guestchamber" to refer to the place of the Last Supper.
• In verse 7, the word (phatne) translated as "manger" could also be translated as "feeding trough" or "animal stall."
• In verse 7, the word (sparganoo) translated as "swaddling clothes" refers to strips of cloth that were commonly used for newborn babies.

Exegesis

Verse 7

The description of the birth itself lays all the emphasis on Mary, while the journey to Bethlehem seems to lay the burden on Joseph. In verses 4-5, Mary is a tagalong, but here the birth is entirely her business. That shift in focus is important: this baby is "her firstborn son," but not Joseph's. That is, though Joseph is explicitly of "the house and lineage of David," Jesus is Mary's, original with her and with whatever secrets she has in her bosom: Joseph stands quite at the side of things. This is doubly significant in light of the fact that Joseph is not mentioned again in regards to the adoration of the Baby in the whole following passage. While shepherds come to worship, Joseph simply disappears from the narrative. Joseph is, ultimately, set up as a sort of background to the story, made a sort of backdrop to how Mary arrives in Bethlehem, but that is it.

We all know that Christ was not born in December. To back this up, in verse 8 we see shepherds in the field tending their flocks. This would not happen in the middle of December. This would be something they would and could do in the Spring. Also, the fact that the inns were all full suggests that there were a lot of people in the area. This would be in line with the Passover (April) in which thousands and thousands of pilgrims went to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration.

Verse 8

That the angels come to shepherds is significant on a few levels. Certainly, there is a powerful contrast betweeen the highhanded political issues of the first verses of the chapter and the angelic message to these humble shepherds. But there is more as well: David had been a shepherd "in the same country" where these are, and hints of the Davidic themes of Luke are present here.

Verse 9

The angel appears and with him or her is "the glory of the Lord," a phrase with quite a particular meaning in that era. As spelled out in Ezekiel, the "glory of the Lord" was something like the physical reality of God's presence, the thing that registers with the physical senses when the Lord is near. Ezekiel sees the glory come to and go from the house of the Lord, and the word in Hebrew (as well as Greek) translated "glory" means quite literally "weight." This emergence of the angel from heaven with the glory of the Lord is phrased ultimately in terms of the Day of Atonement, where the angelic high priest would emerge from the temple bearing "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people," clothed in the robes that made him represent the Lord Himself. This emergence on the Day of Atonement was understood to be the coming of judgment, the great Day of the Lord, and it is significant then that the shepherds "were sore afraid." They should have been: they knew what such an appearance meant, and they were frightened by the coming Day.

Verse 10

It is in light of this fear and of the apocalyptic overtones of the visitation that the angel's first words are "Fear not." The Day of the Lord was to be fearful indeed, but not to the poor and trodden down: they were to be saved at the last on the great Day of the Lord, according to the prophets. That the angel goes on to extend these "good tidings of great joy" to "all people" is significant as well: from the very start, Luke has the vision of the Gentile missions to come. One should note that "good tidings" is a translation of the Greek euangelion, what is usually translated "gospel": this is the first announcement of the gospel, the arrival of the good message to be brought by the angels. It is to the shepherds, of all people, that the announcement comes (does this perpetuate the acceptation of Abel in the earliest stories of the Bible?).

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