No room in the inn

 

kai eteken ton huion autēs ton prōtokon kai esparganōsen auton kai aneklinen auton en phatnē dioto ouk ēn autois topos en tō katalymati.

And she brought forth the son of her, the firstborn, and wrapped in swaddling cloths him, and laid him in a manger, because not there was for them a place in the inn.

Luke 2:7

When Mary brought forth her firstborn son, she wrapped him and laid him in a manger, because there was no topos for them in the katalymati.

A topos is a place, a region or terrain, from which we get the word topography, the recording of the forms and features of place. But there is more to the meaning. The topos is the place assigned by God to any given creature to inhabit: the oceans, with their mountains and canyons, where the great creatures of the deep migrate; the sky for the birds (though we do not chart this topos in quite the same way); the land in all its diversity, the polar caps for bears or flightless birds, the great plains for herds of cattle beyond number, the forests for the tiger, the mountain gorilla, the smaller elephants. In Genesis 1, we see God create a topos for all life, and bring forth the firstborn of every kind.

The katalymati was (not a commercial inn, but) the place set aside for the stranger passing through on their journey and in need of hospitality for the night. In the place where Jesus was born, families lived in one shared common room, with a place set aside for such travellers. It could be a small room beyond the main space, or even a curtain at one end, providing some privacy. It could be a room, or even a canopy, on the flat roof, accessed by steps on the outside of the house (the upper room where Jesus would celebrate the Passover with his disciples on the night he was betrayed was a katalymati).

When Mary brought forth her firstborn son, she wrapped him and laid him in a manger, because there was no topos for them in the katalymati. There was no place assigned to them by God within the provision for those who were only passing through. Instead, Jesus is laid in a manger. In the main room, shared by the whole family, and, at night, by their peasant animals—perhaps a small cow, perhaps a donkey, perhaps a family of goats, the body heat of the animals providing warmth for the humans. There is no manger out on the hills where shepherds watch over larger flocks of sheep. There is certainly no manger in the stable of a commercial inn.

There was no place assigned to them by God within the provision for those who were only passing through. The topos God assigns to the young mother and her firstborn son is in the heart of the family who are descended from David.

There will come a time, soon enough, when they will need to flee the hot anger of Herod. They won’t need a lodging for the night because they will travel by night, the better to slip away unnoticed. But they shall return, to claim the topos assigned by God, a kingdom that shall endure for ever.