Mary's Pregnancy and Joseph's Response

MATTHEW 1

In our day the Bible is considered spiritual and the law of the land is political. We differentiate between the two. Judah did not make such a division; the Law of Moses was both spiritual and political. Roman law was not inherent to Judah, it came out of another culture and was forced upon Judah. Some from Judah no doubt prefered Roman law, but many such as Joseph still held on to Moses' Law for spiritual and political direction in life.

Mary was very young when she and Joseph were engaged...probably around 13 years old. Shortly afterward she became pregnant from somebody other than Joseph. At least that's what it looked like to Joseph for he had no clue that the child was the Holy Spirit's.

Before Joseph was told by God in a dream that the child was from the Holy Spirit he was faced with a dilemma. The Law stated that she and whoever got her pregnant should be put to death, but Matthew stated that Joseph did not want to do this because he was a righteous man.

Joseph was very liberal with the Law. He did not contemplate how to put Mary to death, but how to put her away quietly, thus removing her from the consequences that breaking the Law demanded. For this action, the Bible called Joseph a righteous man.

So, Joseph sought ways to disobey the Law in order to protect Mary who had supposedly betrayed him, and for this disobedience he was called righteous. So how did that work?

Throughout the Old Testament God sought mercy over judgment, but how much mercy should be given and how much was Judah to follow the Law without mercy? Although the Bible does not seem to give us clear rules when mercy should be used over judgment, we have a few examples in the gospels such as breaking the Sabbath and letting a woman caught in adultry go with a message of forgiveness. These will be addressed in future blogs.