1:19
Joseph was a righteous man. Given the customs and arranged marriages of the time it is possible that he didn’t even know Mary that well at the time. He would have been within his rights to divorce her publically, and in so doing would have possibly gained financially. For if he had paid a bride’s price, he would then have been entitled to a refund for Mary’s apparent infidelity. He would also have been entitled to keep any money that Mary’s father had given him as part of the marriage agreement. (As an aside, we are often quick to mock or criticise anything that smacks of arranged marriage. Before we do this we should consider the fact that arrangements in our own society are not exactly wonderfully successful! We should take the log out of our own eye first.) So in seeking to do things privately and quietly Joseph is seeking to protect Mary and her family as much as possible.
1:20
God did not allow Joseph to make a mistake. Joseph was acting out of righteousness and out of a merciful heart. Micah 6:8 tells us to “love mercy, act justly and to walk humbly with our God”. With the mercy and justice part we can, for the most part, work these things out from Scripture and our character being molded by the Holy Spirit. However, we do not and cannot know everything, and God knows this! But we can trust the Lord, and if there is something unusual that we need to know God is quite capable of informing us. He did this here by sending an angel to Joseph, and informed Joseph that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
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