The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced. (Matthew 1:16-19)
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Mary’s husband-to-be, Joseph, is described in this text with two words: chagrined and noble. And actually, it is not insignificant that the conjunction ‘but’ is between them. More on that in a moment.
Why was he chagrined? Chagrin is a word indicating “distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated” (from Oxford Languages). Upset due to circumstances is one simple way of defining this word.
He was clearly upset, distressed and embarrassed due to the fact that his fiancé, who had never been physically joined to a man—at least that’s what he thought!—was pregnant. I notice that the text says, “Joseph discovered that she was pregnant.” That’s a pretty big discovery! The text doesn’t say how he discovered it. Perhaps she quietly told him what the angel had told her? Or, she kept that to herself to see if the pregnancy was really happening, and one day he noticed that she was “showing.” Maybe he said something like, “Honey, are you gaining weight? I don’t know how that’s possible with our diet these days, but something looks different about you. In fact, now that I think about it, you haven’t been feeling well. Are you ok?” Maybe Mary looked down, then up, took a deep breath, and said, “Well, actually, I’m…” If “showing” was the way that he discovered it, then it had been some months after the angel’s announcement. It takes a while to manifest “showing.”
I don’t blame Joseph for being chagrined. It was a logical response, don’t you think? It takes two to tango, and he knew he hadn’t been the dance partner. The part of the definition I quoted for “chagrined” which references humiliation is certainly in play here. He obviously thought everything was on the up and up with his fiancé, but now he was down, and no doubt sinking lower. How could she have done this to him?! They were going to start their marriage with dishonesty plus scandal? Good grief, Charlie Brown.
I notice that Joseph’s response is the one in focus here, and Mary’s is absent. That silence does not mean that she didn’t respond, or try to explain things, or begin her defense with, “Well, actually, I was at home minding my own business, when this angel—named Gabriel, you may have heard of him?!—appeared to me…no, wait! Joseph! Hear me out!” None of that is recorded. We are left to imagine the tension, the anxiety, and the tears. Tears of confusion, tears of perhaps even anger from both of them.
From her perspective, she knew it sounded crazy; what virgin had ever suddenly lost her virginity by a conception enacted by the Holy Spirit?! (Huh? Say that again?) And, what man had ever had a conversation with his fiancé in which she announced that yes, she was pregnant, but not by ‘natural’ means, or at least by scientifically-engineered means? I’m getting a glimpse as to why Joseph was chagrined.
The next description of Joseph’s response is that he was noble. I notice that none of the following is described in tandem with being chagrined, though all of them could have logically happened:
Chagrined and angry,
Chagrined and judgmental,
Chagrined and destructive,
Chagrined and brutal towards Mary.
The text says he was “chagrined but noble.” What was the sign of his noble response, and what was extraordinary about it? A quick look at the practice of engagement in 1st century Israel is telling.
The engagement was like marriage in that it was a binding union. It usually lasted for a year or so. But the couple did not live together, much less sleep together. From history it seems that the engaged couple had very little privacy until marriage. New Testament scholar Craig Keener says that Matthew wanted his audience to know that they practiced sexual restraint with the words “before they came to the marriage bed”, and this was in line with their Jewish contemporaries. It was standard operating procedure to stay separate. So, they were united by declaration and intention, but not united in physical matters.
Since their engagement was as meaningful and solid as marriage, Joseph determined to “put her away quietly”, as the King James says. This meant that he would divorce her. Jewish, Greek and Roman law demanded that a man divorce his wife for infidelity. Though only engaged, they were as good as married, and thus she had obviously committed adultery, as the fruit of her womb was an undeniable indication. In that society, adultery on the part of the wife was not tolerated. But in Mary’s case, she wasn’t claiming rape or tearfully confessing that she had been with another man. She stuck by her story: the angel Gabriel had visited her.
So, Joseph did the noble thing: he was “determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.” He wanted to shield her from ridicule, and from being ostracized by the community, and from bringing unnecessary shame on her. Instead of making a big deal out of it—and sexual unfaithfulness by the woman in Jewish society was a really big deal, and could actually be punishable by death—he determined that he would not shine a light on it. He did this, even though he would be shamed by those who didn’t know him, and had just heard of what happened. His own reputation would be shot. As Keener points out: if he didn’t divorce her—doing so because she had obviously committed adultery—then publicly folks would think that Joseph must have been the one who had slept with her during their engagement. He was the cause of the obvious pregnancy. Shame, shame on him!
But no, he took the noble route. Someone will rightly ask, how was it noble to divorce her and just quietly move on? The answer at least in part is that he was shielding her from the legal system. He was not calling attention to any perceived infidelity. She had this story about the angel Gabriel visiting her. Whether she was crazy or just concocting a wild tale, or maybe he had this nagging suspicion that it really happened just as she said—it strikes me that Joseph couldn’t get his head around all of this. So, to his noble commendation, he took the high road. He took action to go back to zero, nullify the engagement, and give her back to her daddy (and maybe they would send her to another part of the country where no one knew her, and she could maybe tell people that yes, she was pregnant, but her husband had died?) They would go their separate ways, and they could all just start over.
As far as either she or he coming to grips with this angelic announcement of Holy Spirit-conception, well, getting professional help was probably not an option. There were actually no rabbis who had ever counseled anyone with that kind of dilemma, or I will take a long shot, none had ever been trained to do so. It would truly be a first. But that was mostly her problem, as he knew he was innocent of any wrong-doing. I’m confident, though, that his chagrin remained active.
Despite all of this, God had a different plan for the biological mother of Jesus. And for the man who was to be her husband.
“Father, our hearts are stirred when we think of the calamity, and confusion, and disruption of this young couple. Thank you for recording the details of their trials, and wonderment. We are blessed by their faith and by their commitment, and by their perseverance in the midst of uncertainty and chagrin. As we sometimes face being flabbergasted by the invasion of the Holy Spirit into our lives may we have your wisdom regarding what to do next.”
Freddy Boswell 