Jesus was born amid a world movement of international dimensions. One word from a pagan emperor in Rome, and, throughout his vast domains, people began to move. Caesar Augustus had called for the collection of a new tax (2:1–2).

It was the supreme good fortune of Caius Octavius to be Julius Caesar’s favored grandnephew. Octavius took the name “Caesar” by adoption and “Augustus” for good measure. The murder of Julius Caesar gave him the chance that he had sought to step forcibly onto center stage. The suicide of his greatest rival, Mark Anthony, cleared the way to supreme power. So Caesar Augustus he became, a god, no less, with his throne above the stars like Lucifer and his feet planted firmly on planet Earth.

What would he have said, we wonder, had he been told that in a despised provincial town in an obscure corner of his realm had been born One who was God indeed, God overall, blessed for evermore?

The tax to which Luke referred was imposed “when Cyrenius was governor of Syria” (2:2). Cyrenius was a man of humble birth, a soldier of fortune who rose to a position of great power. His Cilician victories won him a Roman triumph. His death was marked by a state funeral.

The tax that Caesar Augustus imposed required that every person go to the city where he was born to be registered. Joseph and Mary, married now, and the Babe who was soon to be born, had to return to Bethlehem, the ancestral home of David, Israel’s greatest king. Like it or not, Joseph and Mary set out on their journey, which must have been tiring and uncomfortable for Mary. That she should be left behind in her condition was unthinkable.

The hand of God was in the whole business. The journey put Mary in Bethlehem in time for the birth of her child—just where the prophet Micah had declared some six or seven hundred years earlier that Christ would be born (Mic. 5:2).

The journey took at least three days. The travelers arrived at Jerusalem and continued the five or six more miles south to Bethlehem. When they arrived there, the place was packed. Joseph pushed his way inside the inn to beg and plead for a room for by now the birth of Jesus was imminent. The inn itself had a long history. It was known as Chimham’s Inn (2 Sam. 19:38–40; Jer. 41:17) and was built by that loyal servant of David after he became a member of David’s inner circle. (Jeremiah had spent a night there when he was being abducted and taken to Egypt many years earlier.)

“No room!” That was the innkeeper’s last word. “We are full. You can see that for yourself. There’s not one room vacant.” Then, in a moment of compunction, he said, “But there’s the cattle shed. Maybe you could make do there

No indeed! Let these peasants with the Nazareth accent make do with the shed. The “cattle shed” of such an Eastern inn was often a cave, which seems to have been the case here.

So in a rough, cold cave attached to an ancient inn, the Son of God entered into human life. Oxen shook their shaggy heads, and camels looked around with disdain. The floor was unspeakably foul. Bats flew in and out. No hot water, sanitation, or midwife was available. In the nearby inn, paying guests called for food and drink and sang songs or sought their beds.

The awesome Child was born at last. Joseph knocked some boards together to make a manger and lined it with straw, and the wondrous Child slept, wrapped in swaddling clothes. The word Luke used for “swaddling” is one of his medical terms. It means “bandages,” so even in the midst of newborn life is a hint of death.