Midmorning on the sixth day of their travels up narrow roads that were little more than rocky, rutted, dirt paths through the winding hills, she spied Bethlehem. It was the day of preparation for Shabbat. If she were home, she’d have been cooking and cleaning all day in preparation for the observance. Maybe. At least, she would have tried.
As it was, Yosef walked beside and slightly behind her as she rode this smelly jack ass, jostled by every step of the stubborn beast of burden. His son Yaacov led the beast. Yosef’s brother, Halphai, and Halphai’s family, walked in front of them.
For the last few hours, it had become obvious to her that this baby would be born soon. The village midwife, Chaya, had told her there was a period of pains that grew closer together prior to the birth of the child. But these muscle tightenings weren’t anything she would have called pain. They were simply noticeable.
Still, it was clear to her this baby was coming. Probably before morning. She hadn’t told Yosef, yet. She didn’t want to worry him. One of them being worried was more than enough.
He would find them someplace to rest. Then this baby could be born. As for Shabbat, well, surely someone would offer them hospitality. Yosef had relatives in this town.
Riding through the gates of town, Miriam turned to Yosef and said, “Husband, this child is to be born today.”
The look on his face would have made her laugh, if she hadn’t just felt another muscle contraction.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“This child is becoming quite insistent to come into the world, and soon at that. He presses me.”
“The Inn is up here. Surely, they’ll have a room for us,” Yosef said.
“We can only hope. Are the streets of this town always this busy?” Miriam asked.
Yosef shook his head from side to side. “No. I’ve never seen this many people here before. I’m certain it is because of the census. But come. Let’s get you settled.”
“I’m sorry, Yosef.”
He smiled at her. “Babies come when they’re good and ready to come. This will be fine, Miriam, my dearest.”
Stopping before an inn, Yosef tied off the donkey and helped her down from the animal’s back.
The innkeeper met them just inside the door. He carried a pitcher of wine and was on his way to a table. “I have no more room in the house,” he told them, his voice harried. “No room at all. I can’t help you.”
“Please, friend, my wife is about to give birth. For the love of the Holy One, tell me where might we find shelter?” Yosef said.
The man stopped, looked at Miriam for a long moment, looked at Yosef again. He sighed and appeared to be thinking. “Town’s full to the brim between those money hungry Romans and the House of David members come here to be taxed by them...The only place I have left is the stables in the cave beneath this house. You can muck out one of the stalls, spread fresh straw, and sleep there, if you wish. I’ll send you down a blanket or two. It’s the most I can offer. I doubt there will be anywhere else available in town. People are sleeping on the streets. At least, I can keep you out of the rain that is coming.”
“Husband!” Miriam said. “This child is not going to wait much longer. Better the rough shelter of a cave than have this child born on the street.”
“Very well, Wife. I’m so sorry about this.”
“What can’t be changed must be dealt with,” she said as another contraction happened. “This child is coming, soon. He’s becoming quite insistent on seeing the world.”
“Are you in pain?” Yosef asked.
“He presses me, our son. But it’s not pain. We need to find that cave, soon.”
Shortly after reaching the stables, Yosef, Halphai, and the boys left the cave, leaving the women to tend entirely to the business of childbirth. Halphai’s wife helped Miriam prepare for the birth, bustling around the cave, building a makeshift birthing stool from a pile of mud bricks she had found outside a stall, and singing a mizmor, psalm, at a higher than moderate volume as she worked.
Yet, Miriam’s thoughts were not entirely about the child who was soon to come into the world, but also centered on Yosef, whom she knew, from what she could hear of his conversation just outside the stables, needed the support of her prayers at the moment.
Halphai’s Miriam stood back a few minutes later and looked at her handiwork. Miriam watched her. “Those bricks have been a godsend. A real birthing stool would have been better, but this will do. The structure will support your legs and bottom, while allowing the child to be born without obstruction. They must have used something similar when our people were in Egypt,” Halphai’s Miriam said. “Remember when Pharoah told the midwives to examine the newborns upon the bricks and to kill all boys?”
Miriam, wife of Yosef, nodded, as she strained to listen to Yosef’s conversation and tried to silently pray. “I remember, Sister. Shifrah and Puah were the names of the midwives. Some people say the pair were really Moshe’s mother and sister; Yochebed and Miriam.”
Halpai’s wife, the other Miriam, nodded. “I have heard that as well, but I discount it… You are young and strong, my sister. You will have no problem with this child.”
“From your mouth to the ear of Avinu Malkeinu, my sister,” Miriam said as another strong contraction happened. The muscle contractions still weren’t painful, but they were definitely coming much closer together.
When the muscle contractions were coming so closely together that they were nearly continuous, Halphai’s Miriam helped her to move to take her place on the makeshift birthing stool. As soon as she was in position, the cave filled with a bright cloud.
She could feel Halpai’s wife’s hand tighten on her shoulder in fear.
“Everything is well, my sister,” Miriam said. “Just stand there. Rub my shoulders and back. Sing to me from the mizmorim,” the psalms. “This child is to be born into the hands of the holy angels.”
Yosef rushed into the cave a few minutes later. “Miriam! Where are you? Are you safe?”
The panic in his voice touched her heart.
“Here, Husband. I’m safe. Rest easy. The child is coming into the world, now.”
“I have found a young midwife in town. You really need two women with you, this being your firstborn.”
“I have all the aid I need, Yosef, my dear,” Miriam said.
The cloud dissipated, replaced by an intensely bright light, a blinding light.
Moments later, Miriam, naked baby boy in her arms, sat on the straw beside the makeshift birthing stool, the bricks at her back as support. She offered her breast to the baby who latched on strongly without hesitation and began to suckle.
The light eventually faded. But she didn’t look up from the nursing child until Yosef knelt beside her and spoke, “Miriam, my dearest...”
“Just look at him, Yosef. Isn’t he wonderful?” she asked, lifting her mantle to reveal the nursing child as she heard a rustling behind her within the makeshift brick structure.
Her sister-in-law and the midwife Yosef had brought with him were both examining the placenta, to make sure it was whole. She heard them talking among themselves.
“You did a fine job of delivering that baby,” she heard the midwife, Salome, tell her sister-in-law, the other Miriam. “I’ve never seen afterbirth look better.”
“Sister did it all. I did nothing except stand there and hold her as she brought forth the child,” Miriam, the wife of Halphai, said.
The baby stopped sucking. Keeping herself covered with her mantle, she offered the other breast to the baby.
“How is he sucking?” the midwife asked.
“Strongly. That has to be a good sign,” Miriam said.
“Yes. It is. Let him suckle. When he’s done, I want to look at the cord and examine you, just to be sure both of you have come through the delivery well. But don’t hurry. Giving the child the first milk is very important for both of you. His sucking is good for both of you.”
“We’re well,” Miriam said.
“Then what can it matter if I take a look at the pair of you?” the midwife replied.
Ten minutes later, after having nursed the baby to sleep, Miriam gave her sleeping son into the arms of the midwife.
“Beautiful boy. He looks extremely healthy. Excellent job on that cord. It should heal well,” the midwife said as she handed the sleeping boy back to his mother.
Miriam wrapped her son in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger which her sister-in-law had earlier filled with both fresh, sweet, hay and a blanket in preparation for using the stone feeding trough as a bed for the child.
“Now, let me look at you, young Miriam,” the midwife said.
Yosef excused himself rapidly, “I’ll leave you, now. I’ll be just outside if you need me.”
The midwife examined Miriam with an embarrassing degree of thoroughness. The midwife stepped back and walked over to look at the child, asleep on the hay, in the manger. Then she came back to Miriam. “Miriam, you absolutely astound me. You have clearly brought forth a child, and yet, you remain a virgin. You want to tell me how this is possible?”
Yosef’s sister-in-law, the other Miriam, gasped.
“It is the work of Avinu Malkeinu,” Miriam, the new mother, replied. “All of this is marvelous in my eyes.”
“Marvelous indeed! Yes, I would say that was an understatement,” the midwife said in a low voice. “I will leave you now.”
“I beg you, do not discuss this with anyone else, apart from this family. It is not anyone else’s concern,” Miriam, the mother of Yehoshua, pleaded. “For the safety of the child, keep this to yourself.”
The midwife sighed. “This is a remarkable event. People will want to know.”
A voice came, as though from heaven, “Tell not these strange things you have seen until the child enters Yerushalayim.”
Then the midwife, obviously shaken by the heavenly voice, left the cave without another word.
Halphai and his sons returned to the cave with supplies for the celebration of Shabbat just as the midwife left. The innkeeper had been only too happy to sell them wine, freshly baked bread, smoked fish, cheese, onions, dill, radishes, and garden greens. They still had brined olives, dates, and figs among the food they’d brought with them. This Shabbat dinner would be cold. It was the best they could do in the circumstances.
The meal proved to be a joyous time. Like most Shabbat dinners, this was a leisurely meal, with much conversation, song, and laughter, lasting many hours.
Halphai spoke, “I spoke with our kinswoman Sarah. By noon on the first day of the week, she says she’ll have room for us in her house. But right now, until some of the relatives who have come for the census leave after Shabbat, she’s wall to wall with people without room to even walk through her own home. Your Miriam will not be able to travel easily for a while, and you really should stay close to Yerushalayim until this, her firstborn, child is redeemed in the Temple after your Miriam’s purification. It would be physically difficult for Miriam and the baby, to go home and then to have to make the long walk back to the Temple within a period of a few weeks. We’re only two hour’s walk from the Temple. It would be better to stay here.”
“Forty days in Bethlehem. I don’t have the money to be this long from home,” Yosef said.
“Sarah said she can find work for us, Abba,” Yaacov said. “There is plenty of carpentry work here for you and Halphai. Sarah says she can loan you both tools and a workshop that belonged to her father-in-law, of blessed memory. And she says she can find work for us boys, too.”
Miriam saw Yosef look at her before he asked, “Wife, what do you think?”
“It is probably for the best,” she allowed.
“Then we’ll stay in Bethlehem until after Miriam makes her thanksgiving and I redeem our boy in the Temple,” Yosef said.
They had just sang the birkat ha-mazon, at the end of the meal, when a group of men came, unannounced, into the cave.
Miriam felt a frisson of fear dance along her spine. These were rough, dirty, men, perhaps capable of anything. They were shepherds, clearly, by the look, and the strong smell, of them. People tended to mistrust shepherds as those who tended sheep as hirelings often only did so as they were too young, too dull of sense, or simply too untrustworthy to do other work.
“Shabbat Shalom, brothers,” Yosef said, his voice kind, as he rose to his feet. “I’m afraid you’re late to share our Shabbat dinner. But you’re welcome to whatever food we have, if you’re hungry. We have only cold food, tonight, I’m afraid. But we will gladly share what we have with you.”
The first shepherd nodded, dismissing the offer. “Shabbat Shalom. Sorry to intrude on you, good people. This is going to sound exceedingly strange. But, we’ve come to see the baby. The angels appeared to us and told us the Moshiach has been born and that we would find him here lying in a manger. We’ve come to see this wondrous thing.”
“He’s asleep right now, but you can certainly see him,” Miriam said, rising from the cloth that served as a table.
“Then there is a baby here, asleep in a manger?” one of the shepherds asked, beginning to speak as soon as Miriam said the child was asleep, awe and wonder warring with disbelief in his voice.
“The Moshiach?” Halphai’s Yaacov asked, at the same time Miriam and the shepherd spoke, the boy’s voice both hopeful and confused. “Abba, Emma, could Miriam and Yosef’s son be the promised Moshiach, the one who will free our people?”
Miriam saw Halphai’s wife take her husband’s hand in hers and squeeze it tightly. Yosef’s brother nodded once tightly. “Stranger things have happened, my son. All great men were innocent babes at one time.”
“I’d say this was quite likely, even, that this child will do great things,” Halphai’s wife, Miriam, told her son. “We are seeing HaShem at work in the world as the children of Yisra’el have never before seen Him work. It is an amazing time to be alive.”
Yosef questioned the shepherds, “Tell me exactly what the angel said to you.”
“There were many angels who appeared to us,” another of the shepherds answered.
The rest of the group of shepherds nodded. Another said, “I’d always heard about the heavenly host. But now, having seen them, I believe. I will never get their music out of my head. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
The rest of the group of shepherds nodded again, in agreement.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Yosef said.
The first shepherd said, “An angel appeared to us in a bright light. The light at night terrified us, but the angel said we should not be afraid, that he brought to us good news of great joy that should be to us and to all people, that today there was born the Moshiach, Adonai, in Bethlehem. He said that we should find the child, swaddled and laying in a manger.”
“Which we have now done,” another said.
“Proving what the angel said to be true,” a third shepherd said.
A fourth shepherd said, “There were hundreds, maybe thousands, or more, angels with the first one, all of them singing praises to HaShem.”
“What was their song?” Yosef asked.
“I cannot sing it,” the first shepherd said. “It’s beyond my ability. But the words were, ‘Glory to El Elyon, and on earth peace, the good will of Elohim, among men.’”
“It was something like that,” another shepherd said. “I’m still trying to make sense of all of it. All we knew was that we had to come to seek you out and see if this is true. Your Shabbat singing brought us to you.”
Miriam went to the manger and picked up the child who was awake. She brought her son over to show him to the shepherds.
“Blessed be HaShem!” one of the shepherds exclaimed as he fell to his knees before the child.
“Glory to El Elyon!” the first said.
All of the shepherds knelt before the infant and His mother.
“He’s smiling at us!” one of the shepherds said in awe, after he’d risen.
Miriam was overwhelmed with happiness. She filed away all these things the shepherds had said to think about later.
Shortly afterwards, the shepherds left, praises of God on their lips as they made their way back to their herds they had left in the care of others.
Late that night, Miriam lay beside her son. Yosef lay on the other side of the manger/improvised crib. Given the level of snoring, everyone else seemed to be soundly asleep.
The baby loudly moved his bowels. Both she and Yosef rose at the same time to clean him.
“Go to sleep, Yosef. I’ll clean him up and feed him.”
“Can’t sleep. Keep thinking about everything that’s happened today.”
“You want to tell me who you were talking to outside the cave earlier today, when you went to get the midwife?”
Yosef sighed. “You heard that?”
“Enough to know you needed the support of my prayers. So I prayed.”
“Thank you. Do you think Halphai’s Miriam could hear any of that?”
“No, she was singing as she worked. Why? Who were you talking to?”
He sighed again. “As odd as it sounds, I suspect it was ha-satan,” the adversary, “sent to tempt me. He came in the form of an old man clothed in goatskin and leaning on a gnarled walking staff.”
“What did he say?”
“You heard him.”
“Only partially.”
“I won’t forget his words. He said, ‘You don’t really believe any of this nonsense, do you? A virgin with child? It’s not possible. Why don’t you do the sensible thing and just walk away from this disaster? No one would blame you for totally walking away from this. Divorce her. Have her stoned for her adultery. Kill her and that mamzer she bears, before it is too late for you to do anything about her. After all, you’d be within your rights as the child is not yours. Do you really want to raise another man’s child as your own? You have enough sons of your own.’”
Yosef continued, pain in his voice, “His words were quite familiar to me, similar thoughts having passed through my mind.”
Miriam continued to clean her son, trying not to let Yosef know how much that admission disturbed her. “And what did you say?”
“I told him I chose to believe the angel Gavriel who told me this child was holy and that I was to protect Miriam and the boy,” Yosef said. “And I told him to go away and not to bother me again. An ugly, wrathful, expression passed over his face. ‘Holy, indeed!’ he practically spat at me. ‘How can a mamzer be in any way holy?’ he demanded. ‘You know better than this. Use the brain you’ve been given, Man! Don’t rely on a dream and the lies of an adulterous woman-child. Are you a man who can look at things rationally or a child who can be lead by wishful, magical, thinking? You don’t really believe Elohim reveals His will through dreams, do you? That’s simply mad. It is not the way He works.’”
Miriam finished cleaning the boy and began nursing him back to sleep.
“And I answered, ‘On the contrary, He has revealed His will consistently through the years in the forms of dreams. In Egypt, Yosef, son of Yaacov, was positioned to save the Hebrew nation because of his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams. Many prophets throughout time have been spoken to through dreams. It is not that unusual for the Holy One to speak through dreams.’”
“’So now, you hold yourself to be a prophet?’ ha-satan demanded, scorn in his voice. ‘Deluded and prideful, aren’t you? I don’t know which of you are more mad, your Miriam who claims to be a virgin even though she now is almost ready to deliver a child or you who believe that you have received a private revelation from an angel. The two of you are quite a pair.’”
“I answered him, ‘Go away, Deceiver. I will not hear you. I chose to trust the messenger of the Holy One.’”
“Then ha-satan said, ‘Do you really think that if this child was truly divine, he would be born in the way of humans? Why would the Holy One of Yisra’el want to limit Himself by becoming human? It makes no sense.’”
“I told him, ‘We often don’t know what makes sense or not until we look backwards on it and see the Holy One’s hand in it.’”
“He said to me, ‘You are a fool, Yosef of Natsarat.’”
Yosef yawned. “I retorted, ‘Better a fool than a devil. Go away. I must now find a midwife for Miriam.’ And then he was gone, vanished, as though he had never been there. Strange.”
“Sleep now, Husband. It has been a long day. You need your rest,” Miriam said.
“I’m not the one who just brought this amazing boy into the world. You need to rest more than I do.”
“We both need our sleep.”