Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David;
which is called Bethlehem: the place where, according to Micah 5:2 the Messiah was to be born, and was born; and which signifies "the house of bread": a very fit place for Christ, the bread which came down from heaven, and gives life to the world, to appear first in. This place was, as a Jewish chronologer says g, a "parsa" and half, or six miles from Jerusalem; though another of their writers, an historian and traveller h, says, it was two "parsas", or eight miles; but Justin Martyr i says, it was but thirty five furlongs distant from it, which is not five miles; hither Joseph came from Galilee,