Luke 2:3

“And it came to pass in those days” is a familiar opening in biblical narrative, and Luke uses it to move from the births and announcements of chapter 1 to the birth of Jesus. Its verb, gínomai, means to become, to come into being or to happen, and here it introduces the next great event in the story.

Luke ties this birth to a named ruler and a real decree. He promised Theophilus an account set down “in order” (Luke 1:3), so that he might know the certainty of the things he had been taught (Luke 1:4), and he wrote Acts with the same care (Acts 1:1). The birth of Jesus happened in a known reign, under a known governor, in a known town, and Luke’s readers could set it beside the history of their own world. It is history, and it is God’s work in that history.

Caesar Augustus was Octavian, the first Roman emperor, who took the title Augustus in 27 BC and reigned until AD 14. His reign brought the Pax Romana, a long peace across the empire, and those settled conditions later helped the gospel spread. His command is a dógma, a word from a root meaning to seem or to think, used for an official ordinance that binds everyone under it. It was the order of the most powerful man in the world, and it moved a carpenter and his wife across the country.

“All the world” translates oikouménē, the inhabited earth. In the speech of the time it meant the civilized world as Rome knew and governed it, the Roman Empire. Luke uses it as his readers did, for the whole empire, and it tells us how wide the decree reached and how many people it moved.

“Taxed” translates apográphō, to write down a copy or a list, and so to enroll. The noun in the next verse, apographē, means an enrollment and, by implication, an assessment. The decree was a registration of people and their property, a census. Registration commonly went with taxation, which is why the KJV says “taxed”, and the more exact sense is “enrolled” or “registered”. Censuses were common in the empire, though they were carried out differently from province to province, and Augustus held more than one during his reign. This one is set apart by its requirement that people go to their own towns to register.

Verse 2 is Luke’s own aside, set in brackets in the KJV: “this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.” Cyrenius is the Greek form of the Roman name Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, who served as Rome’s legate, or governor, in Syria. “Was governor” is hēgemoneúō, to act as ruler, and it names his office and authority. Syria was an important Roman province, and Judea was at this time a client kingdom under Roman oversight, later made a full province.

This verse raises the best-known historical question in the passage. Records from the period, Josephus among them, describe a major census under Quirinius in AD 6–7, which stirred up a Jewish revolt led by Judas the Galilean. Gamaliel recalls that revolt in Acts: “After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing” (Acts 5:37). Jesus, though, was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC.

Luke’s word prōtos matters here. It means foremost in time, place, order or importance, and Luke’s Greek, hautē apographē prōtē egeneto, calls this the first enrollment. Luke clearly knew of the later census, since he records the revolt it caused, and he marks this one off from it. Believers explain the details in more than one way. Some hold that Quirinius had an earlier and less prominent administrative role in Syria during Herod’s reign. Others hold that “first” points to an earlier registration, a preliminary enrollment or one of a different kind, which came before the later and better-known taxation. Whichever reconstruction is right, Luke gives a real historical marker, and the historical claims of the New Testament, including those of Luke’s own preface (Luke 1:1–4), are generally supported by outside evidence, even where a detail needs careful reconciling.

“And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.” Pâs, all, every, the whole, means that everyone under the decree was bound by it, and “every one” (hékastos) makes it each person’s own duty. Each went to his own pólis, a town, properly a walled one of any size. Here it means a person’s ancestral or registered hometown. Sending people there was a way to keep the records accurate, and for Jews it often meant going back to the town of their tribe or family line. Such journeys were often long and hard, and they show how far Roman authority reached into ordinary life under occupation.

Joseph and Mary obeyed a pagan ruler’s order at real cost to themselves. Paul later teaches believers to be subject to the governing authorities, because “the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1–7). Their obedience to Caesar turned out to be obedience to God’s plan as well.

Verse 4 traces the road from Galilee, out of Nazareth, into Judaea, to Bethlehem. Nazareth was Joseph’s home, and the word “also” puts him among everyone else going to register. The journey was some 70 to 90 miles, a hard trek for anyone and far harder for a woman near her time. “Went up” is anabaínō, to go up or ascend, and it fits the land, because Bethlehem stands in the Judean hills, higher than Galilee.

Luke calls Bethlehem “the city of David”, the town of King David’s birth, and then gives the reason Joseph went there: “because he was of the house and lineage of David.” Oîkos, house, means a dwelling and also a household or family line. Patriá, from the word for father, means descent through the father, a family group or a tribe. Together the two words leave the reader certain that Joseph belonged to David’s family. So the registration was more than a civic duty for Joseph. It took him back to the town of his royal ancestor.

“Espoused” is mnēsteúō, to give an engagement present, and so to betroth. In Jewish custom betrothal was the first stage of marriage, a legally binding bond far more serious than an engagement today, and it could be ended only by divorce. Before they lived together, a betrothed couple were already husband and wife in the eyes of the law and the community. So Luke can call Mary both espoused and gynḗ, which means a woman and especially a wife. She belonged to Joseph’s household, and that is why she went with him and why her registration belonged with his.

The same bond explains Joseph’s distress earlier, when he learned that Mary was with child before they came together. It looked like a breach of the betrothal until an angel told him in a dream that what was conceived in her was of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 1:18–25, Matthew 1:20). Matthew ties that conception to Isaiah’s word, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son” (Isaiah 7:14).

“Great with child” is énkyos, swelling inside, pregnant, and Luke means that Mary was far along. A journey of several days through hill country was hard and even dangerous for her, and it meant giving birth away from the home, family and midwives a woman would expect to have around her. To travel so publicly, visibly pregnant before the marriage was completed, took faith. Mary had already answered the angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38), and she kept walking in that trust. The mighty emperor and this young woman stand side by side in Luke’s account, and she is the one at the centre of God’s plan.

“And so it was” is Luke’s familiar egeneto de, the same gínomai as in verse 1. “While they were there”, in Bethlehem, “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” Plḗthō means to fill or to complete, and Luke’s eplēsthēsan hēmerai means “the days were filled up”. Mary’s pregnancy reached its full term. Tíktō, to produce, bear or bring forth, is the ordinary word for giving birth, and it comes again in the next verse.

The timing is God’s. Paul writes, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Everything before this, Micah’s prophecy, the emperor’s decree and the long road south, had brought Mary to Bethlehem in the very days her child was due. The decree is usually dated around 6 to 4 BC, though the exact date of the census is debated. Hebrews speaks of the Son’s coming into the world as obedience to the Father that led to his sacrifice (Hebrews 10:5–7), and that obedience begins here. Luke tells the greatest arrival in history in one quiet sentence.

The child about to be born is the eternal Word who “was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), the Son through whom all things were created (Colossians 1:15–17). God, who spoke in time past by the prophets, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). In Bethlehem that Son took on human flesh.

Verse 7 tells the birth in three plain actions: Mary brought forth her son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. It is the climax of the journey, and it leads straight into the angels’ announcement to the shepherds (Luke 2:8–14).

Luke sets the emperor who ruled the known world beside a newborn in a borrowed manger. Augustus counted his subjects to strengthen his hold on an earthly empire. The child born under his decree is the King whose kingdom lasts for ever, who said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). He is “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16), and his reign outlasts every empire and every decree. The census, a tool of imperial control, brought him to the city of David, and from there the good news went out to all people. The angel soon tells the shepherds, “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10–11).

The manger is the first step of the humility Paul describes. Christ Jesus, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Philippians 2:6–7), “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).

The crowded inn also points ahead. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:10). “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). In his ministry he said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20), and later “he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), where he would die. The child in the manger came to be “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and it is through this self-giving that he saves us.

The decree that moved Joseph and Mary was an inconvenience laid on them by a distant ruler, and it was the road God had prepared. The same God governs the politics, paperwork and disruptions of our own day, and he weaves them into his purposes. When your plans are interrupted or someone else’s decision sends you on a hard road, you can trust that his timing is exact, as it was when “the days were accomplished.”

Joseph and Mary obeyed the authority over them and went on in faith, and God met them at the end of the road. The manger shows us what greatness is in God’s kingdom. The Son of God came among the lowly and served, and those who follow him learn to honour the overlooked and to serve others as he did. There was “no room for them in the inn” that night, and we can gladly give him first place in our homes, our time and our hearts.