Found this on X translated from Turkish.
Everyone knows that Jesus Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem and that his first visitors were shepherds. But when you add the historical detail of “Ephrathah,” that familiar nativity scene takes on an entirely different and spine-tingling meaning.
In the Old Testament, the prophet Micah (Micah 5:2), when announcing where the Messiah would be born, does not simply say Bethlehem; he specifically uses its ancient name: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are small among the clans of Judah; yet from you will come One who will rule Israel.”
So why specifically Bethlehem Ephrathah, and why were the shepherds there the first to receive the good news?
The Bethlehem Ephrathah area was only a few kilometers from the Jerusalem Temple. According to Jewish oral tradition (the Mishnah), the sheep grazing in the fields of Ephrathah and around the “Migdal Eder” (Tower of the Flock) there were not ordinary animals destined for slaughter. They were “perfect temple lambs,” specially raised to be sacrificed as sin offerings at the Jerusalem Temple during the Passover (Pesach) festival.
The shepherds said in Luke 2:8 to be watching their flocks in the fields at night were not ordinary shepherds either, but temple shepherds responsible for ensuring that the lambs born to be sacrificed at the temple were perfect and unblemished. When a lamb destined for sacrifice was born, these shepherds would take it to the cave beneath the Tower of the Flock, swaddle the newborn lamb in clean cloths to keep it from bumping into things and getting hurt, and lay it in a stone manger so that it would remain unblemished.
Now read again what the angel told the shepherds in Luke 2:12:
“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
The angel did not give the shepherds directions to any particular place. Because “being wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger” was exactly what those shepherds did every day to the temple lambs destined for sacrifice! The moment they heard the sign, they knew exactly where to look and which cave to go to.
Years later, when John the Baptist saw Jesus and cried out, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), this magnificent picture lay behind those words. The true Lamb of God, who would be sacrificed for the sin of the world, had not come into the world by chance in a stable; he had been born in the very place where the temple lambs were born, wrapped in the same kind of cloths they were wrapped in and laid in the same kind of manger they were laid in.