Those who know the Bible know how to imagine the Pharaoh of the Exodus: his heart hardened when he heard Moses and Aaron say: “Let my people go.” However, we don’t often think about how certain words spoken centuries later may have been even more repulsive to him:
There were shepherds in the fields, guarding their flock at night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. (Luke 2:8-9, ESV throughout)
Perhaps what we need to understand about the Christmas story is how it supposedly caused the pyramids to shake.
The Joseph we think of at this time of year is Joseph of Nazareth, the adoptive father of our Lord Jesus. But a much older Joseph lingers in the background of the familiar scene in Luke 2. In Genesis 46, this Joseph – a key figure in Pharaoh’s court – brought his long-lost and now-found family to Egypt to save her from starvation. Joseph said to them:
When Pharaoh calls you and says, “What is your occupation? » you will say, “Your servants have tended the livestock from our youth until now, we and our fathers,” so that you may dwell in the land of Goshen. (vv. 33-34)
Joseph seemed to be coaching them to reassure Pharaoh that they would not come to take over, but simply to carry out their occupations without disrupting Egyptian life. The Bible tells us why: “Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians” (v. 34).
This modest occupation, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, becomes a recurring theme in the biblical story. Later, Moses (who, like Joseph, had been an initiate in Pharaoh’s court) fled for his life and, before his encounter with God in the burning bush, spent much time tending to the flocks (Ex. 3:1). Only after becoming such an abomination to Egypt’s power culture could Moses become the human captain of God’s deliverance of his people from the grip of that empire.
Then he brought out his people like sheep
and he led them through the wilderness like a flock.
He led them to safety, so that they would not be afraid,
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. (Ps. 78:52-53)
And the Davidic throne that the baby Jesus was born to inherit came not from an aristocrat but from a shepherd (1 Sam. 16:11-13). In fact, the entire promise of salvation and renewal was described by Jesus in precisely these terms: a good shepherd gathering together a flock (John 10:11-18).
Reflection on the ideas of WH Auden For nowAlan Jacobs Remarks that the Magi’s search for the baby king upsets Herod precisely because they “do not seek to replace him on the throne of his kingdom, but to inaugurate an entirely new kingdom.” A shepherd does not lead by coercion and Darwinian force, but by his voice (John 10:1-5). God’s choice of shepherds to hear the angelic announcement (while Herod had to obtain the information second-hand from a foreign delegation) only strengthens the character of this new kingdom.
Just as shepherds were considered an abomination to the early Egyptians, the cross was an abomination to the Romans. Crucifixion was the means by which Caesar could dominate anyone who might challenge his rule, just as slavery was for the Pharaoh of old. The crucified were to be forgotten; their form of death was the kind of horror that people looked away from. And yet, “God has chosen what is vile and despised in the world, even what is not, to bring to nothing what is” (1 Cor. 1:28).
What endures far beyond human power is the power of which these “abominable” shepherds heard as the glory of God shone around them: “good news of great joy which shall be for all the people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11). What lasts is not the wrappings of the mummies but the one that was wrapped in swaddling clothes. The pyramids and the coliseums are collapsing. What the shepherds saw in the manger remains. Shepherds recognized a better shepherd’s voice when they heard it, not only in the song of angels but also in the cry of a baby.
Russell Moore is CT’s editor-in-chief.
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