Unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem. — St. Luke’s way of speaking of the town agrees with that in John 7:42. It would appear to have been common. It had never ceased to glory in the fact that it had been David’s city.
Of the house and lineage of David. — Others also as, for example, Hillel, the great scribe — boasted of such a descent. What, on one hypothesis, was the special prerogative of Joseph was that the two lines of natural descent and inheritance — that through Nathan and that through Solomon — met in him. (See, however, Note on Luke 3:23.) It is possible that the two nearly synonymous words, “house” and “lineage,” may have been used as referring to this union.