Biblion Bible Commentary
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Shepherds in the Fields
Luke 2:8-20
8 There were shepherds in the same country staying in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock. · WEB
The birth is announced to night-shift laborers, and the sign they are given is that there is nothing to see.
There were shepherds in the same country staying in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock Luke 2:8.
The announcement goes to men working nights. Shepherding was low, rough, unsettled work — the sort of occupation that kept a man away from the synagogue and left him on the edge of respectable society. The chapter has just named the emperor, a governor and the house of David; the first people told are men in a field.
The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified Luke 2:9. The glory is the presence that filled the tabernacle and the temple Exodus 40:34 1 Kings 8:11, and it turns up over a sheep pasture.
"Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people" Luke 2:10. Every word of that sentence is aimed. Good news was the word for an imperial announcement — a victory, an accession, an emperor's birthday. It is being used about a baby, to shepherds, in a field.
"For there is born to you today, in David's city, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" Luke 2:11. Three titles in one breath, and Savior was among the honors the emperor's inscriptions carried. Nothing here is accidental: the announcement is framed exactly like the announcements coming out of Rome, and it is made about someone else.
"This is the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feeding trough" Luke 2:12.
The sign is the strangest part. A sign is normally something extraordinary that confirms a claim; this one is a normally wrapped infant in an abnormal place. There is nothing to see — no glow, no attendants, nothing that would tell a stranger anything. The only thing distinguishing him is the feeding trough, which is to say his poverty. They are told to look for the ordinariness.
"Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men" Luke 2:14. The song has two directions, upward and downward, and the English translations divide over the last phrase — whether the peace rests on people of good will, that is on those God has favored, or whether good will toward people is itself the second gift. Either way the two halves stand: God is glorified in heaven, and something arrives on the ground.
"Let's go to Bethlehem, now, and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us" Luke 2:15. They go and check. It is the same instinct the book's preface described and the same one that sent Mary into the hill country.
When they saw it, they publicized widely the saying which was spoken to them Luke 2:17. The first preachers of the birth are shepherds, and what they spread is not what they saw — a poor family in a crowded house — but the saying which was spoken to them. They are witnesses to a message they were trusted with.
But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart Luke 2:19. One line, and it is probably the reason the chapter exists. Somebody told the man who wrote this book what happened, and the account keeps saying who was in a position to remember.
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