The Jewish marriage custom, is a bit different from what we are familiar with today. From what we know, one can only call a lady his wife, and be capable of divorcing her, after the marriage ceremony proper. This was not the case for the Jews. It has been noted that there are about three stages to the Jewish wedding; first, the engagement; second, the betrothal, and third the marriage proper (1). The engagement was often an agreement between the families when those involved were still children. The betrothal takes place a year before the wedding proper. Immediately after the betrothal, though the couple will have to live separately for a year after the betrothal, technically, a man and woman were already married. The year apart allowed the couples to mature, and helped the families to get to know each other better. After the betrothal, if the man died, the lady was looked upon as a widow (“virgin widow”).

It was after such betrothal, before the marriage proper (when the bride will ceremoniously be led to the house of the groom) that Joseph discovered, to his dismay that Mary was with child. Were it not for the timely intervention of an angel, Mary would have suffered terrible embarrassment, humiliation, castigation and possibly a death sentence for infidelity. A black joke has it that if Mary lived in this generation, Jesus may have ended up being aborted.