NATIVITY By Mike Herron

thousand Passover celebrants.’ 10 After hearing this news, he was afraid and open to further guidance from the Lord.

Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. We can assume this fourth and final dream of Joseph was like the first three. He has total trust in the angelic guidance and is led by degrees from Egypt to Israel. He then goes to Judah, to Galilee and finally Nazareth, ‘a village probably smaller than Bethlehem with a maximum of about 480 people at the beginning of the 1 st century A.D.’ 11 When Matthew refers to ‘the prophets’ he is ‘providing not a quotation of a specific passage but rather a theme of prophecy.’ 12 The term ‘called a Nazarene’ was not in reference to ‘Nazarites,’ the Old Testament ascetics who consecrated themselves by certain vows of abstinence from wine and touching dead persons. It was an abusive term referring to the despised region of Galilee, filled with ignorant, crude people and its most obscure village. Nathanael, one of Jesus’ earliest disciples, exclaimed; ‘Can any good thing come from Nazareth?’ (Jn 1:46, NLT) ‘Called a Nazarene’ was alluding to all the prophetic passages that foretold the rejection that Christ was going to experience; ‘He was despised and rejected–a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.’ (Isa 53:3 NLT) So now, a baby whose legitimacy of birth is in question, from the most disregarded village and region of Israel, not conforming to the nation’s expectations of a triumphant Messiah, will be forever called ‘a Nazarene.’ Jesus shuns all privilege and identifies himself with the despised and disadvantaged people of the world.