The Innkeepers Story

Let us reimagine the scene surrounding the birth of Christ from the perspective of the anonymous Innkeeper. Well just refer to him as the owner of the Bethlehem Inn.

We also should look at the story from Joesph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem in need of place to stay so Mary can give birth to her firstborn child Jesus.

The Bethlehem Innkeeper for many centuries has been ridiculed in the birth story of Jesus with these words as recorded in the King James Version “There was no room for them in the Inn” (Luke 2:7). The name of the Innkeeper is not mentioned in the story. We have no profile, no dossier, and no biography to know whether he is married with a family or is he the owner of the Inn or was he employed as “Innkeeper.”

Perhaps it really doesn’t matter. What is most important is that the role of Bethlehem Innkeeper is pivotal to the revelation of God in the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s vision statement in Isaiah 9:6 that says,

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

Some 700 years later, the prophecy is happening in small town near Jerusalem called Bethlehem.

Let us examine what lead to the Bethlehem Inn being book with hotel guest and now the hotel signs reads “NO VACACY.”

The story begins with politics with the deree from Caesar Augustus waging taxes because Cyrenius (KJV) or Quirinius (NIV). The purpose was to have a census taken of everyone from the own hometown.

The New International Version. (2011). (Is 9:6). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.