Commentary on the Gospels

Joseph's Dream
Matthew 1:18-25

Exposition

Verse 18. The Gospel of Matthew begins with a listing of Jesus' ancestors, its purpose being to show that Jesus was the rightful successor to King David. In verse 18, which marks the transition from this detailed genealogy of Christ to the story of His birth, the author merely states what he is going to talk about next. His subject will be one of the most significant turning points in history, when the Son of God entered this world as Jesus, the son of a mere woman.

He informs us that Jesus was conceived in Mary while she was engaged to Joseph but before they came together. A modern reader unacquainted with ancient Jewish culture easily comes to the wrong conclusion. The account does not mean that Joseph made Mary pregnant before they were married. In the eyes of Jewish law, a couple entered marriage at the time of their engagement, even though their wedding had not yet taken place. Breaking their engagement would have required an actual divorce.¹ When the writer says, "before they came together," he is referring to that moment when a man took his wife to live with him and consummated the marriage that had begun at their betrothal. So, what verse 18 means is that Joseph discovered Mary to be pregnant before he had relations with her.

In the normal course of things, such a pregnancy out of wedlock was a sure sign of immorality. Therefore, the Gospel writer hastens to inform us that Mary was innocent. Her child was not the offspring of an illicit affair, but a creature supernaturally and miraculously made by God. To be precise, He was framed and given life by the Holy Spirit.

How did Joseph learn that she was carrying a child? As Mary pondered the danger in being found pregnant outside marriage, she probably decided that the best way to protect herself was to tell Joseph about her condition. She had no moral obligation to tell her parent or parents first, because under Jewish law, Joseph was already her husband. Besides, there were no social norms that prevented an engaged couple from coming together and sharing private conversation.² Mary trusted that Joseph was godly enough to seek and accept God's assurance that the child was conceived by the Holy Ghost and that he was loving enough to nurture the child as his own.

Verse 19. How did Joseph react to the news brought by Mary? As much as he loved and trusted his fiancée, her story must have seemed wholly incredible. A divinely conceived child was unheard of. There was no record in sacred history of any such child appearing on the face of the earth. Like most Jews, he probably did not understand Isaiah's announcement of a special child who would someday be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14). Also, since Joseph would be the head of the home where the child would be raised, he must have wondered why he first heard about Mary's miraculous pregnancy from Mary herself rather than from some form of divine revelation. Her story must therefore have cast him into both distress and doubt. What should he do? He must have decided that in the absence of any word from God, he had no alternative but to proceed as if Mary had committed a horrible sin.

As we said, in ancient Jewish culture, betrothal was considered equivalent to marriage. Thus, if a betrothed woman proved unfaithful to her prospective husband by committing fornication with another man, the law labeled her sin as adultery and treated it as an offense equal to adultery after marriage. The penalty provided by the law was death by stoning (Deut. 22:20). But the law was not biased against women. If a man discovered after he took a wife that she was not a virgin at the time when they came together, or if she was found pregnant before they came together, she alone was punished (Deut. 22:20-21). But if she was caught before marriage in the act of fornication, both she and her lover could be put to death (Deut. 22:23-24).

After AD 6, when Judea became a Roman province, the Roman rulers of Palestine did not allow the Jews to carry out capital punishment.³ They reserved its use for their own system of justice (John 18:31). It is therefore possible that capital punishment was still an option for Joseph when, in 6 BC, he discovered that Mary was pregnant. But Joseph was a good man who wished to do right. Therefore, brutal vengeance was not an option for him. However devastating her unfaithfulness had been to his happiness both now and in the future, he was too kind and merciful to retaliate by making her "a publick example"; that is, by bringing her before the priests who served as judges and demanding her trial and execution.⁴ Yet he could not go on with his life as if he and Mary had never been betrothed, for in the eyes of the law, they were already married. So, he had two remaining options. Either he could ignore her offense and proceed with their wedding, or he could divorce her. But to wed a girl who had been utterly dishonest in professing love for him would turn his life into a nightmare. Therefore, the only acceptable path that he saw lying before him was to proceed with divorce. Yet, because he had a good heart, he decided to divorce her quietly, for no stated reason, instead of bringing charges against her. The law permitted a man to divorce any wife that he found to be seriously flawed (Deut. 24:1–2).

The severe penalty that the law of Moses prescribed for adultery had two purposes. First, it showed the enormity of the sin. Second, it provided for controlled violence within the law to relieve the victim’s feelings of anger and revenge lest he be tempted to express these outside the law. God was sparing him from any temptation to commit murder, perhaps leading to blood feuds between families such as were common in the ancient world. But from Scripture's commendation of how Joseph treated Mary, we infer that God did not intend every violator of the Seventh Commandment to be killed. Rather, He wanted judges to exercise discretion and extend mercy. The Old Testament teaches that mercy wherever appropriate is God’s perfect will (2 Sam. 22:26; Hos. 6:6).

Scripture's verdict on Joseph's decision concerning Mary is to call him "just," a word that can be translated "righteous" or "good."⁵ We might call him loving or merciful, but it is doubtful that "just" would be the first word that came to our minds. Yet in God’s sight, one expression of justice and righteousness is to be loving and merciful (Ps. 37:21).

Application

Instead of exploding in anger when Mary told him that she was pregnant, Joseph listened carefully to everything she had to say and then reserved judgment while he “thought on these things” (v. 20). Undoubtedly as he pondered what to do, he also fervently sought God’s leading through the heartbreaking crisis that had now de¬scended upon his life.

Likewise when we go through a hard time, we must rein in our emotions and seek wisdom. It is helpful to remember whatever les¬sons we learned in the past. It is likewise helpful to seek advice from people of good judgment. But the best way to find a real solution is by conversation with God, which we achieve by reading His Word, praying, and listening attentively to the Holy Spirit.

Application

Why is it just to be merciful? Because, according to Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount, each of us has violated at least the spirit if not the letter of every commandment whose violation was punishable by death. If we have not actually committed adultery, we have fallen into lust (Matt. 5:27–29). As Jesus said to those ready to stone the woman taken in adultery, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7). Thus, we have broken the Seventh Commandment. If we have not committed murder, we have been angry without cause. Thus, we have broken the Sixth Commandment (Matt. 5:21–22). We are all capital offenders, and we all deserve to die. We all depend on God to treat us in mercy rather than according to what we deserve. Therefore, if we live by the mercy of God, it is only just and fair that we should grant mercy to others.

Incidentally, one mark of spiritual growth is an increasing awareness of the sin in your own heart, until with Paul we come to see ourselves as the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). I have in the past talked with many older saints at the end of their fruitfulness in God’s service. I have asked some of them if they still had sin in their lives. They have always answered, "Yes." But if you looked at their lives, you would say, "Where’s the sin?" Each exhibited a godly life devoted to serving others. But that’s not the point. Each realized that they were wholly dependent on the grace of God operating through the Holy Spirit to have victory over sin. They knew that apart from grace, even after all those years of Christian experience, they were capable of the worst sins. For them to take any other view of themselves would have been Pharisaism. As the self-satisfied Pharisee prayed in the Temple, "I thank thee that I am not as other men." Jesus had no patience with this man’s spiritual pride. It is essential to see ourselves as sinners if we are to show mercy to others. Otherwise, we will be quick to write them off and deal with them harshly.

Exposition

Verse 20. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and explained why Mary was pregnant. He said that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. In other words, He had no human father, but was created in Mary’s body from her own tissue and DNA. No seed of a man made any contribution to His makeup. Thus, He was the offspring of one parent only, a woman who was a virgin. Yet He was not a mere clone or carbon copy of His mother. He was not a woman but a man, and in His characteristics He was no doubt unlike His mother in many ways. His genetic heritage was refashioned by God Himself, starting with a maternal reproductive cell yet transcending its limitations and producing a man who was wholly new and unique in His attributes.

The angel reassured Joseph that he need not fear to take Mary as his wife. Why was it fear that stopped him? Because he was afraid that Mary had been false to him and would prove false in the future. The foundation of love between man and woman is trust, but he was afraid to trust her—to commit his happiness to a woman who had proved unfaithful. The angel addressed his fear directly by affirming that Mary was a good woman who could be trusted—so good that God had chosen her for the privilege of bearing a very special child. The angel then proceeded to tell who this child was.

In Bible times it was common for God to speak through dreams, but it is uncommon today. We have the great advantage of possessing the completed Word of God, which is our main source of guidance. On rare occasions, the Holy Spirit may still use a dream to stir up conviction of sin or to encourage a longing for the truth in Christ. Yet for two reasons we should never simply assume that a dream is divine revelation. 1) Most represent our unconscious imagination at work, compounding deep desires and fears into bizarre fantasies of what might happen in the future. In other words, they show our own mind rather than the mind of God. 2) Even if they seem to come from God, they might be the work of a demonic agency seeking to deceive us. Even the devil can present himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). Yet the dream of Joseph was notably different from an ordinary dream. As we will see, God designed it so that Joseph could test and verify its validity.

Verse 21. The angel gave Joseph two commands: 1) he should take Mary as his wife, and 2) he should name the child Jesus. This name is the English form of the name Yeshua, which is translated as Joshua in the Old Testament. It is a compound of two Hebrew roots. The Ye- comes from the first syllable of Yahweh, the name of God that our English Bibles translate as Jehovah. The last portion, -shua, derives from the word meaning "to save."⁶ The origin of the name Yeshua therefore allows various interpretations. It can be taken to mean "God saves," or "God is Savior," or "God is salvation."

The angel himself drew a connection between the name and the role that the child would fulfill. The name was appropriate because the child would "save his people from their sins." It is indeed hard for skeptics to explain why the man known to history as the Savior was called "Savior" from his birth. The name Jesus was one of many hundreds His parents might have chosen, but they zeroed in on the single name that tells exactly who He was. The coincidence is too unlikely to be accidental. We see rather the hand of God in shaping the child’s identity and life so that we might recognize Him.

Verses 22-23. Having just told us that Jesus was carried before birth in the womb of a virgin, Matthew now seeks to allay our doubts. What is scientifically impossible nevertheless happened because God made it happen, and He made it happen to fulfill promises that He had given long ago. That the coming Savior would be virgin-born is predicted more than once in the Old Testament. For example, the first promise of a coming victor over sin and Satan identifies Him as the seed of "the woman" (Gen. 3:15), whereas it was customary to think of a child as his father's seed (Gen. 13:16; 35:12; 2 Sam. 22:51; etc.). The reason for the unusual wording is that He would lack a father. Being virgin born, His only human parent would be a mother. The clearest and most famous prophecy of Jesus' virgin birth comes from the Book of Isaiah (Isa. 7:14), the very same prophecy that the angel quoted to Joseph. Without actually naming the prophet, the Gospel of Matthew, which was written in Greek, quotes Isaiah's words almost exactly as they appear in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.⁷ Perhaps the angel also quoted the same translation, because Joseph may have been among those Galileans who spoke Greek as well as Aramaic. Hebrew seldom entered everyday conversation except among rabbis.⁸ Isaiah said, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." In the words of Matthew's Gospel, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel." The discrepancy between this name and the name actually given the child, the name Jesus, demands an explanation, and the Gospel writer supplies it. Indeed as he informs us, Immanuel (or, Emmanuel) means "God with us."⁹ In other words, Immanuel is not the name He would use among men, but the name describing His essential nature. He would be God in the flesh.

Isaiah introduced the name Immanuel so that we would understand that the coming virgin-born child was the same as the child who would someday rule the world in righteousness (Isa. 9:6). Both are divine. Therefore, since God is one, they are the same person. Incidentally, the same passage in Isaiah provides more strong evidence that the child named Emmanuel would not have a human father. It speaks of a son who would be given. Any reference to a son is very unusual if the context does not name or suggest at least one parent or ancestor. What do we find in the context of Isaiah’s reference to a future son? A few words later the prophet does speak of a father, namely the father who is everlasting. The inescapable implication is that the coming son who will rule the world would be no less than the Son of God. Although the prophet's declaration that He would be born clearly affirms that He would have a human mother, He would be supernaturally conceived by God Himself.

Skeptics deny that Isaiah foresaw a virgin birth. They argue that the word translated "virgin" in the authorized English translations of Isaiah 7:14 just means "young woman." We cannot rehearse the entire case in favor of the translation "virgin," but we can assure you that the case is conclusive. The Septuagint, which is the source of Matthew’s quotation, was compiled several hundred years before Christ by Hebrew scholars living in Egypt. When in their rendering of Isaiah 7:14 they came to the Hebrew word in question, they chose the Greek word parthenos,¹⁰ the same word employed in Matthew's translation.¹¹ The meaning of parthenos is indisputably "virgin," nothing else.¹² Surely, those ancient scholars were in a better position than we are to judge the meaning of the word that Isaiah used for the child’s mother. They may not have fully understood the significance of their translation, but under God's leading they chose it as the best.

Verse 24. Joseph did not have any doubt that the dream came from God. The verse states that as soon as he arose, he obeyed the angel's instruction to take Mary as His wife. The wording certainly suggests that he married her the very next day. After all, the sooner they came together, the less likely anyone would be to suspect that her pregnancy preceded marriage. A certain minimum interval between engagement and marriage was normally expected,¹³ but likely they had waited long enough. Also, the usual time for a wedding was on a Wednesday after three days of preparation.¹⁴ Yet we do not know all the circumstances in their case. It is very possible that with Mary's eager cooperation, Joseph was able to marry her immediately. That was especially feasible if her father was deceased and if otherwise she had few close relatives. Even if they had to wait until the next Wednesday, it was not long after the dream.

The custom was to have a simple ceremony before the groom took his bride from her father's house and conducted her to her new home. Then on the next day he hosted a wedding feast. Joseph's haste in taking Mary suggests that in their wedding, he dispensed with much of the usual ceremony and celebration. But their marriage was legal nonetheless because, in the eyes of Jewish law, a betrothed couple were already husband and wife.

Joseph's confidence in the dream perhaps on the night before their wedding was well founded. God gave him two strong reasons to view it as a divine message. 1) Everything the angel said about the child was consistent with Scripture. As a devout Jew, Joseph knew from Old Testament prophecy that God intended to send a Savior into the world (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 53:6), and thanks to the angel's message, he now could be certain that according to Scripture (Isa. 7:14), the Savior would indeed be born of a virgin. 2) The supernatural source of the dream was confirmed by the fact that an angel had already appeared to Mary with the same message (Luke 1:30-37). One message substantiated the other. If Joseph’s dream was not a natural product of his own mind but a supernatural intrusion from beyond himself, and if it was altogether in keeping with prophetic truth, he could not reasonably doubt that it came from God. Anything from Satan is tarnished by lies.

Joseph’s instant obedience reminds us of Abraham’s promptness in obeying God’s command to take Isaac to a far mountain and offer him as a sacrifice (Gen. 22:1-3). There is a strong parallel between the stories. Both Abraham and Joseph chose to make sacrifices. Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son; Joseph, his reputation, for he was taking a woman who might come under a cloud of suspicion. Yet both reaped a wonderful reward. Because Abraham was willing to give up his son, his only son, God promised that He would give Abraham a male offspring that would be a source of blessing to the whole world (Gen. 22:16–18). This prophecy referred to Christ. Joseph’s reward was not only to gain a wonderful wife, but also to win the privilege of serving as Christ’s earthly father and mentor.

Joseph’s haste to wed Mary no doubt reflected his desire to put as much time as possible between their marriage and the birth of the child. He wanted to squelch scandal, if possible. Yet also we can imagine that once he knew Mary was innocent, he was quick to marry her simply because he loved her deeply and wished to enjoy her daily companionship.

The news of her pregnancy had no doubt cast him into great agony of heart. The wound was probably deep and raw. Yet as soon as he knew for sure that she had not betrayed him, relief swept away his pain and joy took its place. He leaped from the darkness of despair to the light of hope, and he rushed to her side with a lightness of step and a gladness of countenance that, a few hours earlier, he thought would never return.

Verse 25. Although Joseph went through the formalities of marrying his betrothed bride, he did not seek right away to consummate the marriage. He "knew her not"—that is, he did not have sexual relations with her—until after the child was born. There was one overriding reason for this. Joseph now understood from Scripture that the mother of the child was to be a virgin even at His birth. Notice Isaiah’s wording. "A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son" (Isa. 7:14). In other words, at the time she bore the son, she would still be a virgin. Despite his love for Mary, Joseph did not wish to challenge the eternal counsels of God. Moreover, he undoubtedly sensed how wrong it would be for him to violate a woman’s body that God had set apart as a sacred vessel to carry a holy child, a child unlike all others in being absolutely pure and spotless. Therefore, Joseph postponed relations until the right time. This decision shows that he was a mature man equal to the great responsibility that God entrusted to him.

The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches teach that Mary was a perpetual virgin—that she and Joseph never consummated their marriage. This teaching is, of course, a travesty of what Scripture actually teaches. Right here in this verse we find double proof that Mary was not a perpetual virgin. 1) It says that Joseph knew her not "until" the child was born. The "until" (present in Greek as in English¹⁵) clearly limits the preceding assertion. Only until the child was born did Joseph refrain from relations with his wife. To say that he refrained until then would be pointless unless in fact they had relations afterward. 2) The verse informs us that Jesus was her "firstborn" son. The translation exactly states what the word means.¹⁶ "First" clearly implies other sons. Again, unless she in fact had others, to say that Jesus was the first is another pointless detail. Later in the Gospel story we find that Jesus had four brothers, whose names were James, Joses (Joseph), Simon, and Judas (Matt. 13:55).

When at last the miraculous child was born, Joseph completed his obedience to the angel’s command by calling him Jesus. Never do we read that Joseph disappointed God or strayed from God’s direction. He is one of the few characters in Scripture whose story is told without criticism. The ultimate source of the written Word is, of course, the Living Word, Christ Himself. As He is the subject of all Scripture, so He is its source, for "without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). Jesus’ role in the Godhead is primarily to reveal the Father, and His instrument for revealing the Father is primarily Scripture. If Scripture comes from Jesus, His omission of anything negative about Joseph, his earthly father, is no coincidence. It is a demonstration of Jesus’ perfect obedience to the law, which demands that we give honor to our father and mother (Exod. 20:12). The firstborn son of Joseph according to the law has honored His earthly father by giving an entirely sympathetic and respectful account of Joseph’s role in bringing the promise of a Savior to fulfillment.