1:18-25 The Conception of Jesus:

Take note of the fact that pretty well everything in chapter one comes from the narrator to us, it is privileged information. The narrator tells us about the conception of Jesus in a way that reflects the assumptions of the author's world, not ours. Let’s look at some of these.

• There are two stages of marriage. “When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together.” The first stage, the betrothal, was the part where they actually, contractually became married. It involved the formal exchange of assent and happened when the girl was between 12 and 13 years old. Following this marriage, the two were legally married: the young man had rights over the woman, the infringement of which would constitute adultery. Yet the young women continued to live in her own family home The second stage involved the taking of the wife to her husband’s family home. This would happen about a year after the marriage. We could therefore re-express the original sentence as “When his mother Mary had been married to Joseph, but before they lived together.”
• Were “sleep overs” allowed? Not in Galilee, maybe in Judea. Verse 25 clarifies that for the purposes of this story, no intercourse had taken place; “but Joseph had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son”.
• It became apparent that she was pregnant. Not as a result of the snooping of a busybody but as the natural result of pregnancy: she “began to show”.
• Her husband Joseph was a righteous man. He was law-observant and hence would feel constrained to withdraw out of the marriage in the face of what would have naturally been construed as adultery. He doesn’t yet know what we know! He was not willing to make public accusation of adultery against Mary. He would set the tone by a lenient divorce; soon, her pregnancy would be “a matter of public record”, she “would begin to show” and people could draw their own conclusions.
• The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Not the dreams of his namesake Joseph with the amazing technicolour dreamcoat, the type of dream that required an interpretation. Our Joseph will have four dreams, and the magi one, at key stages of the birth story. These dreams provide the context for passing on of key information to Joseph: the child is by the Holy Spirit; flee to Egypt; go to Israel as the one seeking the child’s life is dead; go to Galilee. The magi are warned in a dream to return home, bypassing Jerusalem.
• The angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph. The divine messenger (which is what “angel of the Lord” means) does not necessarily imply a spiritual being intermediate between God and man (Brown, p. 129). We have just finished reading the ending of the story where an “angel of the Lord” appeared in the resurrection story, sitting in the empty tomb. In a moment we will encounter another example of an echoing between the beginning and ending of the story: “God with us”.
• The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. There is no suggestion here that the Spirit provides the male element in the birth process. There is no suggestion of any sexual process here; the Spirit is the Spirit that hovers over the deeps in the creation story. A new creation is about to happen.
• Do not fear. Do not hold back out of fear.
• You are to name him “Jesus.” Joseph, who is a son of David (without implying a close royal lineage), by exercising the father’s (non-exclusive) right to name the child, acknowledges Jesus and thus become the legal father of the child (Brown, 139).
• Jesus for he will save his people. “Jesus” is the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name “Joshua”, meaning “Yahweh helps” (from shwy to help). There was another etymology, or explanation, which derived the meaning of Joshua from ishy “to save.”
• A virgin shall conceive and bear a son. This is how early Christian reflection understood Isaiah 7:14. In its context in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah is saying to King Ahaz that somewhere close by, there is a child who is just about to be born to a young woman. This imminent birth will illustrate God’s providential care for his people. He is not prophesying that in some 700 years time there will be a virginal conception. He is talking about a young woman of marriageable age who, as he speaks, is alive and well and very pregnant – by the normal, time-honored process.
• Which means “God is with us” God is with us at the beginning of Matthew’s story and Jesus is with us at the end of the story “to the end of the age” (28:20).