Exegesis:
kai eteken ‘and she bore,’ best taken as not dependent upon egeneto.
ton huion autēs ton prōtotokon ‘her first-born son’; ton prōtotokon is attributive to huion, and not in apposition to it.
prōtotokos ‘first-born,’ here in the literal sense as usually in the Old Testament; the word represents here the Hebrew bekor, ‘first-born’ (cf. Ex. 13.2; 34.19; Num. 18.15f), which belonged to the Lord and, in the case of the human male first-born, had to be redeemed, as is done with Jesus in vv. 22-24, but serves primarily to distinguish Jesus from Mary’s children that were born later (Plummer, Zahn, Klostermann).
kai esparganōsen auton ‘and wrapped him up,’ scil. in spargana ‘swaddling cloths’; this was a very natural procedure and the phrase suggests no special circumstances.
sparganoō (also v. 12) ‘to wrap up.’
kai aneklinen auton en phatnē ‘and she laid him in a manger.’
anaklinō ‘to lay down,’ ‘to cause to lie down,’ in the passive ‘to lie down,’ ‘to recline.’
phatnē ‘manger,’ ‘feeding trough,’ or ‘stall’ (cf. Moffatt), preferably the former.
ouk ēn autois topos ‘there was no room for them’; autois refers to Joseph and Mary.
topos here ‘place or room to stay or to live.’
en tō katalumati ‘in the inn’ or ‘in the lodging.’
kataluma (also 22.11) ‘a place to lodge,’ usually after a journey; in 22.11 the word clearly refers to a room, not to a house, and the usual word for ‘inn’ is not kataluma but pandocheion (cf. 10.34); on the other hand it seems improbable that kataluma refers here to the guest room of a private house; hence Klostermann thinks it indicates the common lodging-place of a caravanserai.
Translation:
Gave birth, cf. on 1.57.
Her first-born son. In languages where one has to say ‘male child,’ one must make clear that the word ‘first-born’ is not qualifying ‘child’ only, but ‘male child’; hence such shifts as, ‘her first(-born) child, a male-one’ (Tae’), ‘child male, her first child’ (Kituba). Some idiomatic renderings of first-born are, ‘first seen’ (Enxet), ‘he/she that opens the gown’ (in use in Batak Toba, because formerly a woman stopped wearing a gown and started using a bodice after the birth of her first child), ‘he/she that damages the stalk (i.e. the body)’ (Uab Meto). In some receptor languages the normal equivalent of “first-born”, e.g. ‘eldest’ (Balinese), implies that more children are expected to follow, or are known to have followed.
Wrapped him in swaddling cloths, or, ‘swaddled him,’ or more generically, ‘wrapped/enveloped him in pieces of cloth.’
Manger, or descriptive phrases like, ‘trough (for) grass’ (Thai), ‘place (for) animals’ grass’ (Low Malay), ‘box from which animals eat’ (Sinhala), ‘place where cared-for animals eat’ (Ekari), ‘place (where) they always put the food for the horse’ (Tboli, horses being the only domesticated animals kept in the area), ‘thing that animals use-to-eat their food’ (Kituba).
There was no place for them in the inn may be better stated affirmatively, ‘the inn was-crowded’ (cf. Ekari). The inn is usually best described as ‘guest place,’ ‘lodging place,’ ‘travellers place,’ ‘place to pass the night,’ which leaves room for the interpretation indicated in Exegesis.
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.