Mary is Five Months Pregnant

School has just started back up, Summer, alas, has come to a near end and Autumn is moving in far too quickly for any of us to like. Are any of you thinking of Christmas? I am, for several reasons. First, I am a great planner and to-do list writer. I am already figuring out gifts for family and friends, and planning when and where to take the family photo that shall be delivered to friends and family at Christmas.  But I am also thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The caveat to this post is that Jesus was most likely not born on December 25^th. December 25^th used to be the pagan holiday Sol Invictus, which celebrated the birthday of the Roman sun god. During the 4^th century AD, the holiday began to be used to celebrate the birth of the son of God. There is other scriptural evidence that Jesus was not born in the winter too. However, as we celebrate our Lord and Savior’s birth on December 25^th, I will be writing this post in light of that date.

Now, it is August 29, and Mary would have been in her 2^nd trimester. Jesus was already on earth and being formed in Mary’s womb! But what else is going on? John the Baptist was born a few months back, and not long after that Mary was discovered to be pregnant—and not by Joseph her betrothed. Matthew 1:18-19 tells us that when Joseph found out about her pregnancy, he decided to put her away secretly, so that she might live, rather than subject her to the law,

Deuteronomy 22:23-24 outlines what was to happen to an engaged girl who is found to be pregnant with another man’s child: “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge evil from your midst.” The verb for “meets her” in the first line is metsa-ah. The ah part on the end of the verb indicates that the object of the verb is her. The man is the one doing the meeting, the instigating, etc. This is not a mutual meeting. However, if the woman does not cry out, she becomes an accessory to the crime. Thus she welcomed it. This is the light Mary was being painted in. She had become an adulterer, because she was impregnated in Jerusalem while she was there to visit her cousin, Elizabeth. She was not immediately stoned though, because the man who impregnated her could not be found. So Mary falls into a loop hole in the Law. To human eyes, she was apparently guilty of sinning. However, unless her husband to be (whose jurisdiction she falls under), demanded her death for her sin, nothing would be done.

Joseph was a righteous man, and like many righteous men in the Bible, he found himself in an interesting predicament. His honor was at stake. An engagement contract merely meant that the marriage had yet to be consummated. So in the eyes of the Jews, Joseph and Mary were as good as married, just without the sex part. Imagine the humiliation and betrayal he must have felt when he found out that Mary was pregnant, by God. Very funny Mary, everyone’s laughing. The fact that he does not immediately call for her to be stoned, as Judah did with Tamar (Genesis 38:24), would seem to indicate that Joseph did love her. He loved her enough to not call for her death, or as Scripture put it, “not put her to shame”, but to divorce her quietly and send her away.

However, an angel appeared to Joseph and explained what was going on, and Joseph’s role in it all. I always wonder if Joseph then understood how Hosea must have felt when God told him to take an adulterous woman for a wife (Hosea 1:2-3). Joseph, like Hosea, obeyed the Lord though, despite the shame they would bear for it. Matthew 1:24 tells us that when Joseph awoke from the dream, he took Mary as his wife, but they did not consummate their marriage until after she had given birth to Jesus.

So, when Mary was five months pregnant, she was living with Joseph, as his wife. Joseph was tending to her, and providing for her and for the baby in her womb, who was from God. We tend to get very excited about Christmas and about celebrating the birth of our Lord after Thanksgiving, but the truth is that months before we decorate a tree, begin our Christmas shopping, or hang lights outside our house, our salvation was already beginning. The word had already become flesh (John 1:14). Praise God for Joseph and Mary’s faithfulness and obedience!