Matthew’s rehearsal of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus twice employs the Greek term lathra, meaning ‘secretly’ or ‘privately’. Given that the word is used only four times in the entire New Testament and in a context in which the evangelist suggests that important activity is occurring behind the scenes, the word brings to hand a conspiratorial tone.
It is not clear, on the surface of things, what Matthew’s characters are up to.
Joseph, who has already undertaken the formal arrangements that will lead to his marriage to Mary, becomes aware of the awkward fact of the young woman’s pregnancy.
His mental process is patient of more than one interpretation:
Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
It is not clear in the Greek statement whether Joseph’s righteous character required that he divorce Mary. By this light, his commitment to Torah and tradition make it impossible to countenance further dalliance with an adulterer. He must send her away.
An alternative is to understand Joseph’s righteousness as explaining the fact that he chooses to divorce her quietly, sparing her all possible shame. From this angle of view, he is righteous because he acts as mercifully as circumstances allow whereas a lesser man might have publicly denounced and humiliated Mary.
Either way, Joseph acts secretly in order to restrict knowledge of this unwelcome pregnancy to as tight a circle as possible. Only the angel’s intervention leads him to step outside of clandestine mode and to embrace the dignity of Mary’s condition and the destiny toward which it thrusts her, Joseph himself, and the remarkable child who will soon make his entrance upon this troubled scene.
‘King’ Herod—the title might well have been pronounced by some with a sneer—acts secretly as well. Confronted by a further unwelcome bit of news, he responds to the potential of a rival king with perhaps superior credentials than his own, by summoning Jerusalem’s odd, Eastern visitors and attempting to draw them into his confidence via a conversation to which respectable folks will do better not to become privy.
Unlike Joseph, righteousness is not Herod’s motive. Self-preservation and an instinct for murder takes the space that in Joseph’s soul is occupied by a humble, even self-sacrificing, nobility.
Both men—the good one and his cynical counterpart—will see their secret actions trumped by a private design to which one of the faith’s earliest apostles will pin the label ‘mystery revealed’. Israel’s Lord is at work behind the same scenes that threaten Joseph and Herod with unmasking consequences.
His method of clandestinity is more subtle and forceful than that of either named man. He will change history via the birth of a child in whom he will choose to locate his powerful presence. Yet many—most?—will see only the superficial circumstances. Such is the potency of his subterfuge, such the apparent risk of his method, such the inscrutable intentionality behind his project.
Private things are afoot, secretly.
Smart, cunning men—quite capable in other spheres—are powerless to keep up with it.
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