Today: Joseph. Let's unwrap his story!

Joseph's name was a proud name, recalling the ancient Jewish name of one of the twelve patriarchs, Joseph the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into Egypt and who later became second to Pharaoh in power over all Egypt, saving his family from famine (Genesis 30-50). His name means "to add."

Joseph the Husband

Joseph was no doubt older than Mary. While girls were married by 13 or 14 -- old enough at that age to bear children -- husbands on the other hand needed to be established enough to support a wife before they could enter into marriage. They were legally obligated to provide with food, clothing, and shelter.

Joseph the Carpenter

Carpentry was Joseph's world, and the world that Jesus grew up in. He played in the wood shavings on the floor of his father's shop. Carpentry was Joseph's trade and the trade he taught his son. Jesus learned from Joseph to saw and plane, drill and smooth. He watched his father -- the local contractor -- make business contracts and deal with customers. Jesus saw it all.

Joseph's decision

Joseph was probably deeply embarrassed by the whole incident. But he alone knows that he is not the father.

Mary's pregnancy had placed her at considerable risk in this society...Joseph know this:

Husband. Her betrothed husband would reject her. Her pregnancy would embarrass him and reflect on his character. She couldn't expect him to understand or accept her condition.

Penalty. At worst she could be stoned. The law provided in cases like this for possible stoning (Deuteronomy 22:13-30), especially if the man and married woman are caught in the act of adultery. Stoning for adultery still took place in first century Palestine.6

Shunning. At best, her family would allow her to live at home, though her supposed adultery would hurt their standing in the community. She and her bastard child would be shunned.

Remarriage. No upstanding man would ever marry her, since the stigma of her supposed adultery would remain with her and taint the reputation of any husband.

No where to go. She couldn't go to the city and be lost in its anonymity. Single women just didn't live alone. This was a family-centered culture where a woman's work centered around home and family. There was no work for single women, except perhaps as a housekeeper in a wealthy home -- or prostitution.

Joseph, the Righteous Man (1:19)

Matthew says that he was "a righteous man." "Righteous" (NIV, NRSV) or "just" (KJV) is dikaios, "pertaining to being in accordance with high standards of integrity, upright, just, fair," here probably, "interested in doing the right thing, honorable, just, good."7

"Righteous" meant that Joseph carefully observed the law and valued his own reputation. According to the customs of that time, adultery would make her unmarriageable to either her betrothed husband or a paramour, if one had been discovered. By marrying her, Joseph would compromise himself in the eyes of the law. But his righteousness went deeper than a mere external righteousness before Jewish law. He was honorable and wanted to do the right thing.

The wrong thing, he decided, was to demand prosecuting her for adultery. "Expose to public disgrace" (NIV, NRSV) or "make a public example" (KJV) is deigmatizō, "expose, make an example of, disgrace."8 He couldn't marry her, of course, since he knew that her baby was not his. But instead of a messy public trial, he had decided to divorce9 her quietly.10 He would simply write out a certificate of divorce and present it to her in the presence of two witnesses, as required by law.11 And to avoid the accusation of adultery as the reason for the divorce, Joseph could have offered less serious grounds, acknowledged by Pharisees of the school of Hillel. Brown suggests that "to divorce quietly" may mean to divorce leniently.12

And so Joseph decided to divorce Mary, but to do it in such a way as to protect her as much as he could, given the situation. We see in Joseph a gentleness and maturity. A righteous man, but not a man full of himself. Joseph was a man seeking to do the right thing.

***Take away: Sometimes the RIGHT decision is also to the HARD decision