Five Days to Bethlehem

They would have been departing from Jezreel today.  Yesterday, Mary and Joseph would have made the journey from Nazareth to Jezreel, from their obscure little village in the outer Jezreel Valley inland to the capital. That is where they would the cash out their lives.

They are on their way to Bethlehem, by order of the Emperor.  Everything they had in Nazareth was essentially illegal, because they were in the wrong place.  You live where your ancestors come from, unless you are privileged, which Mary and Joseph were not.  It is the way of Empire. 

So his business, their home, just set up, all is gone, converted to currency to take them to the ‘old country’.  Unless they already owned a donkey, probably not in a carpenter’s business, they would have picked up one in Jezreel.  It was a necessity.  In addition to whatever worldly possessions they carried, it would carry Mary-very pregnant.

Well into her third trimester, probably somewhere past week thirty six, eighty miles was far too far.  As the crow flies, the distance is about half that, but the highways did not run straight north-south.  They couldn’t.  The country south of the Jezreel Valley was all hills and valleys, as far as Jerusalem. 

More than one army had gotten lost in those badlands.  No, for the couple, it was traveling east to Jezreel and the Jordan Valley, then south, almost to the Dead Sea.  From there, they would climb the ridge on which Jerusalem sat, but south, where they would arrive at Bethlehem.

From Jezreel, they could expect the journey to take about four days.  They should arrive around about December 25 according to the modern calendar.