Born in Bethlehem
Author: Stan Guthrie
December 21, 2023
Second in a series.
During the prophetic ministry of Micah, around 700 B.C., tiny Judah was being threatened by the snarling and resurgent Assyrian empire. Israel, the Northern Kingdom, was already on Assyria’s chopping block. Was Judah next for King Sennacherib? The nation’s prospects, humanly speaking, were bleak.
Into this darkness, Micah shined a prophetic word both of judgment and of hope. The people had sinned, but they would be delivered. And only God would get the credit. Isaiah 36 and 37 tell the amazing story of how the Lord smote the blasphemous Assyrian army, delivering Jerusalem, the city founded by David, without human help. Yet Micah looks far beyond temporal victories to eternal realities.
Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops;
siege is laid against us;
with a rod they strike the judge of Israel
on the cheek.
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
from ancient days (Mic. 5:1-2).
Amid the very real military threats of the day, Micah turns his attention to Bethlehem, a small but strategic city outside Jerusalem. It sat atop a mountain 2,654 feet high, where Rachel was buried, Ruth was from, and David was born and anointed as king. Micah is careful to distinguish this Bethlehem from another one, near Nazareth (Ephrathah is the name of its Judean district).
He notes that Bethlehem, like Judah in the wider world, is insignificant. It is too small even to be considered a clan. A clan in ancient Israel included at least three generations and was “comprised of extended families which shared a common and recognizable lineage”—yet Bethlehem is too inconsequential even for this modest designation. It has long been the scene not of great world events, but of shepherds tending their sheep, as in David’s early career, in the lowly workers who were “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8), and even today.
Yet size and strength matter little in God’s economy. Tiny Bethlehem is to be the birthplace of a greater David, “one who is to be ruler in Israel,” whom first-century Jews knew to be the coming Messiah. A false king, Herod, “inquired of [the religious experts] where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet’” (Matt. 2:4-5).
It was a conviction they would hold for decades. Later, when the people were beginning to follow a certain Jew from the Galilean city of Nazareth, other Jewish leaders—apparently unaware that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem—dismissed him because he supposedly did not fit Micah’s prophecy. “Are you from Galilee too?” they sarcastically asked a sympathetic Nicodemus. “Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee” (John 7:52).
Contrary to human expectation but in accord with the ancient prophecy, an angel announces to Bethlehem’s shepherds, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Deliverance, now as then, depends upon God’s strength, not our own.
Stan Guthrie is minister of communications at New Covenant Church. This article is taken from his book, A Concise Guide to Bible Prophecy: 60 Predictions Everyone Should Know (Baker, 2013).
Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash.
1 Taylor, ESV Study Bible, note on Luke 2:3-4, 1947.
2 Elwell, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1:289-290.
3 “Organization of the Twelve Tribes of Israel,” http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/twelve-tribes-of-israel.html#%3Cb%3EThe%20Clan%3C/b%3E.
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