Who had no room at the inn?

In preparing for a Christmas Eve service this year, I found myself re-reading Luke 2:7.

Now we have all heard stories of Mary and Joseph wandering around Bethlehem looking for a room... and finding none until a friendly innkeeper said "I don't have a room, but you can sleep with my animals!" Or something like that.

But the verse is much simpler.

scripture4all.org gives a very good literal translation of a Greek text, and I assume it's one of the accepted texts.

And/she-brought-forth (gave birth to)/the/son/of-her*/the/"firstborn"/and/swaddles/him/and/"cradles"/him/in/the/manger/"because-that"/not/"there-was"/to-them**/place/in/the/"caravansary"

Words in quotes are idioms, I think... "caravansary" is actually 'Down-loose' for example... sort of like 'fleabag' might be hard to translate...

But the two interesting things are marked with asterisks...

*of-her Why is this not 'of-them'? Perhaps it is reflecting the subject (her) or perhaps Joseph is not in the picture. Also, the possibility that it was not his firstborn child exists. (the/son/of-her*/the/"firstborn" = her firstborn son)

**to-them "For there was no place for them in the inn", or so we learned in church. But who is 'them'? I always assumed it was Joseph and Mary, but the previous verse says, essentially "while they were there", not "as they arrived." This implies that they had had space to stay already, rather than going door to door pleading.

If we make 'them' be Mary and Jesus, then there is another simple interpretation. There were no private rooms in those days, and a woman giving birth is not only noisy but also ritually unclean. Instead of staying in the (crowded) women's hall, making everyone ritually unclean, Mary and sympathetic women might have moved to the stables, where her screaming would not disturb folks (as much), and the blood etc. wouldn't get on people. Oh, maybe Joseph was there too... we don't know. I also don't know if there was a 'women's hall' in the inn... just a speculation.

So there may have been space at the inn, just no space "FOR THEM" inside... where "THEM" is a woman actively giving birth.

There is a tradition that Jesus never cried... (except in the verse where he wept) but there is no similar tradition that says "Mary gave birth silently." At least I don't know of that tradition.

We do know that Joseph and Mary worried about ritual cleanliness, see 2:22.

That's my observation for today!