Luke 2:4
Ver. 4. And Joseph also went up from Galilee,.... Where he now lived, and worked at the trade of a carpenter; having for some reasons, and by one providence or another, removed hither from his native place:
out of the city of Nazareth; which was in Galilee, where he and Mary lived; and where he had espoused her, and she had conceived of the Holy Ghost:
into Judea; which lay higher than Galilee, and therefore he is said to go up to it:
unto the city of David; not what was built by him, but where he was born and lived; see 1Sa 17:12.
which is called Bethlehem: the place where, according to Mic 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,
because he was of the house and lineage of David; he was of his family, and lineally descended from him, though he was so poor and mean; and this is the reason of his coming to Bethlehem, David's city.
{g} Ganz. Tzemach David, par. 2. fol. 14. 2. {h} R. Benjamin Itin. p. 47. {i} Apolog. 2. p. 75.