We don’t know much about Joseph.

Jesus’ dad, Joseph, that is. The earthly father of the Messiah. The one whose fiancé came up to him one day and said, “Hey, by the way, I’m pregnant. But don’t worry, I’m still a virgin.”

Joseph is probably one of the most significance characters in all of Scripture—God literally chose this man of all men to be the earthly up-bringer of His one and only Son—yet the information we have about him is fairly sparse: He was a descendant of King David and the son of a man named Jacob, and according to Matthew he was “a just man” (Mt 1:19a), a statement proven by the fact that he originally planned on merely divorcing Mary quietly when she announced her pregnancy despite the fact that virgin pregnancies are, by any natural means and purposes, physically impossible. Despite believing that his betrothed was blatantly lying to him, he was “unwilling to put her to shame” (Mt 1:19b), and such a righteous and kind man was he that he was simply going to separate from her without drawing any attention to her perceived iniquity. He could have had her punished in the courts of law for infidelity, but he had no interest in doing such a thing.