Matthew 1:18-25
Minded to put her away privately
A just man looking for the least damaging way out. The dream reverses the decision, gives him the name to use, and he rises from sleep and does as the angel had bidden him.
People of the Bible
Joseph of Nazareth
Not one recorded word, four dreams, and three moves that kept a child alive.
Joseph is a carpenter in Nazareth engaged to Mary, and he is described as a just man who did not want to make her a public example. He is planning a quiet divorce when he is told in a dream to take her, and he wakes and does it. Every appearance he makes is the same shape: a dream, then a departure. Take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt. Take them and go into the land of Israel. Warned again, he turns aside into Galilee. He is never quoted, and he is last seen looking for a twelve year old in Jerusalem.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Joseph of Nazareth
- 01
- 02
Matthew 2:13-15
Flee into Egypt
He is told at night and leaves at night, with no indication of how long. The instruction ends be there until I bring you word, which is an open ticket and no itinerary.
- 03
Matthew 2:19-23
Turned aside into Galilee
Told the danger has died, he starts for Judea and then hears who is reigning. Warned again in a dream, he takes the family north to a town nobody expected anything from.
- 04
Luke 2:41-50
Your father and I have sought you
Three days of searching in Jerusalem. It is Mary who speaks, and the answer she gets is about another father, and the text says they did not understand it.
Why it matters
Matthew gives him the legal line, a genealogy through David that makes the child an heir, and Joseph supplies the name he was told to use. His character is entirely in what he does not do: he does not shame her, does not argue, does not explain himself to anyone. The last thing we hear about him is in a question from the neighbours years later, is not this the carpenter’s son, which is a whole life summed up by people who thought they knew.
8 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
