[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2022]
At this time of the year the words that Phillips Brooks wrote in 1868 become part of our seasonal repertoire:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
Does familiarity with these words mean that we lose some of their impact? Where is Bethlehem, what is its significance? Bethlehem is an administrative centre some 6 miles south of Jerusalem and dates from around 1340BC. A number of prophecies and contemporary reports give Bethlehem as the location for the birth of Jesus Christ.
Imagine if we could access the archives of one of the local newspapers in first century Israel, the Bethlehem Daily Star. As we leaf through the pages there would be some headlines that would cause us to pause and explore further.
In the obituaries section in 1903BC is a record of the death in childbirth of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. Her tomb became a local landmark; it was there that Saul learnt that his lost donkeys had been found.
In 1140BC a local reporter noted the return of a well-known local family. Some ten years earlier, Elimelek and his wife Naomi, with their two sons, had left Bethlehem to live in the country of Moab. Now Naomi returned, accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, both widows. In due course Ruth married a prominent local landowner named Boaz. Soon, the Births, Marriages and Deaths section records the birth of a son to Boaz and Ruth, named Obed.
Obed’s grandson grew up as a young shepherd boy in the area around Bethlehem. In the pasturelands near the town he learned to care for his sheep and ward off their predators. Later, David the local shepherd boy became a musician in the royal court.
In 1024BC the archives record the visit of Samuel, the nation’s spiritual leader, to Bethlehem. Samuel anointed David to be the future king of Israel. However, his succession to the throne was not easy; he had to contend with family, friends and foes but no doubt his prior experience with sheep proved valuable.
In 6BC there was a public announcement that Caesar Augustus commanded all his subjects in the Roman Empire to return to their ancestral city for a census. Many families descended from David came to Bethlehem, to the point that there was not enough room to accommodate them all.
Around about the same time the archives record the scandalous story of a young woman, obviously pregnant yet claiming to still be a virgin – it aroused much scepticism and gossip. Other unusual events surrounded the eventual birth of her son; shepherds left their flocks in the countryside and came into town to see the baby, there was a strange resonance in the sky that some described as being like angels’ voices and then some wealthy foreigners turned up with a caravan of camels.
After 4BC the town receives no further mention in the Bible but the town still exists. Its principal economic focus is that of catering for visitors wanting the see the place of Christ’s birth. Surely a question of much greater importance is ‘where is he now?’
Now that we know a bit more about Bethlehem we can return to the words of the carol and sing them with more meaning:
O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel!
Resources:
[1] www.biblegateway.com search ‘Bethlehem’
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem
[3] https://biblehub.com/timeline/
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Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
Completely agree, the timing of the miracles is usually what makes them miraculous
Stephen. What about the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter about this time? (it has been calculated it was about this time) and the 2 planets’ lights would have combined so that some observers would have thought them to be a new star and when they moved away their lights would have dimmed to normal! Bernard.
Sometimes the most miraculous aspect of an event is not so much in the physical event itself but in its timing. Biblical narratives are, by necessity, written in the language of the day and as modern science uncovers aspects of creation that were not known previously we can have a ‘better’ understanding of how things might have happened. This in turn puts more emphasis on timing as a major component of a miracle.