NO ROOM IN THE GUEST ROOM

LUKE 2:6–7

Both Matthew and Luke write that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:1; Luke 2:1–7). This detail is significant because that is exactly where God promised the Messiah would be born (Mic. 5:2). But Luke considers it just as important to tell us where Jesus was not born. He was not born in a palace, hotel, or even a guest room (Luke 2:7). We will explore both the language Luke uses to describe where Jesus was born and the reason there was no room in the guest room for Mary and Joseph.

A Bethlehem home was commonly built over a cave and had only two rooms, each with distinctive functions. The larger room was the family’s daily living space where they cooked their meals and rolled out their sleeping mats. The smaller room (Greek, kataluma) was a storage room that could be made available to accommodate family or friends who visited overnight.27 Necessary livestock was kept in the cave below the home. Luke reports that when Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem there was no room in the guest room (kataluma; Luke 2:7), so they ended up in the basement-cave of the house.

In first-century Bethlehem, houses such as this one were constructed with limestone.

In first-century Bethlehem, homes were usually built over a basement-cave, with sleeping, cooking, storage, and a guest room on the top level.

Some might wonder, “What happened to the inn?” Many Christians have grown up with a Bible translation that says, “There was no room for them in the inn.” It is unlikely, however, that this is what Luke intends when the Greek text of the Gospels and the Hebrew culture of first-century Judea are considered. The Greek word for a traveler’s inn is pandocheion. Luke uses this word later when he describes the inn where the Good Samaritan took the injured man (Luke 10:34). But this is not the word Luke uses for the place in Bethlehem that had no room for Joseph and Mary.

He writes that there was no room in the kataluma—a word that describes the guest room of a house. Cultural expectations point to the likelihood that when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, they would have gone to the home of an extended family member or village patriarch and asked to use their guest room for the night.

Since Luke does not tell us why there was no room in the guest room, we are curious to inspect the circumstances to explain why Mary and Joseph were staying in the place livestock were kept. First, there must have been others in Bethlehem from out of town because the Romans had demanded everyone go to “his own town” for the census (Luke 2:3; see vv. 1–3). Therefore, one possibility for denying them the guest room was that Bethlehem was already crowded with those coming to register their family property. Thus the guest rooms may have been claimed already by other families.28

Another option can be found in the culture of first-century Judaism. Leviticus 12:1–4 makes it clear that when a baby was born the mother became ritually unclean. Her status of ritual impurity also put the condition of the house and its contents at risk of becoming ritually unclean. The stone cave under the house, however, functioned as a screen against the transmission of ritual uncleanness.29 Therefore, remaining in the basement-cave may have been Mary and Joseph’s decision in order to prevent ritual impurity from affecting the entire house.

Possible Route to Bethlehem

The guest room (Greek, kataluma) of a Judean house.