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Since Joseph wanted to divorce Mary in Matthew 1:19 yet they were already betrothed, does that mean he did not trust her?
Matthew 1:19 NIV "Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[a] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly".
It was a matter of wisdom, not trust. Joseph must obey God above all things.
It is not wise to base decisions on a supernatural revelation given to someone else. So, whether Joseph wants to believe Mary's account of the angel or not, he should not make decisions based on it. Though sometimes forgotten today, this is a teaching in Scripture. For instance ...
Legitimate prophets received true warnings from God about the dangers Paul would experience when he went back to Jerusalem. Paul considered these revelations to be from the Holy Spirit ("in every city the Holy Spirit warns me" - Acts 20:23) yet he did not consider them God's guidance to change his plans.
Agabus dramatically told the warning the Holy Spirit had given him about Paul's impending capture, being believed by Luke and the others who pleaded with Paul to change his plans (Acts 21:12). But Paul, wisely, did not let that revelation change the plans he had made based on his mission from God and his understanding of Scripture.
Note that Paul would readily have changed his plans if God had given the revelation to him directly. The Holy Spirit had changed Paul's plans several times on his second missionary journey. See Acts 16:6-10 which culminates with the vision of a man saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." Paul obeyed God's leading and went to Macedonia.
Of course there are occasions when someone claims to receive revelation from God but did not. How can one know the false from the true? To follow such "guidance" is dangerous and unwise.
The old prophet in Bethel lied to the man of God from Judah in 1 Kings 13:18. The man of God took this message to be God's guidance and it resulted in a lion killing him (1 Kings 13:24).
In effect, I believe Joseph, being righteous, chose to end the betrothal, based on his best understanding of Scripture. Then, being righteous, he decided to make the divorce as painless for Mary as possible. Her story of the angel, whether she was telling the truth or not, could not be considered in his plans.
But when God sent the angel directly to Joseph, he instantly submitted to God's command.
According to Torah, if a betrothed bride is found to have been promiscuous, the punishment was clear:
Deut 22:21 - she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house, and there the men of her city will stone her to death. For she has committed an outrage in Israel by being promiscuous in her father’s house. So you must purge the evil from among you.
Since Joseph was a righteous man, he would have been within the law to have arranged such an execution for his betrothed bride, Mary. However, he was also a very compassionate man and wanted to divorce her quietly (ie, without stoning).
Ellicott puts it this way:
Being a just man. . . .—The glimpse given us into the character of Joseph is one of singular tenderness and beauty. To him, conscious of being of the house of David, and cherishing Messianic hopes, what he heard would seem to come as blighting those hopes. He dared not, as a “righteous” man, take to himself one who seemed thus to have sinned. But love and pity alike hindered him from pressing the law, which made death by stoning the punishment of such a sin (Deuteronomy 22:21), or even from publicly breaking off the marriage on the ground of the apparent guilt. There remained the alternative, which the growing frequency of divorce made easy, of availing himself of a “writ of divorcement,” which did not necessarily specify the ground of repudiation, except in vague language implying disagreement (Matthew 19:3). Thus the matter would be settled quietly without exposure. The “bill of divorcement” was as necessary for the betrothed as for those who were fully man and wife.
Thus, it was not a matter of trust, but simply of legal evidence. How quickly things changed after the visit of the angel (Matt 1:20-24) - Joseph did precisely as instructed and took Mary home as his wife - Jesus was born several month later.
There are two traditional interpretations:
Only when angelic apparition ensured him that the child was from God, he took upon his shoulders the mission of being a custodian of Mary and her divine child.
I think, given the complexity of human heart and mind, those two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, for Joseph could vacillate between the two.
It has already been well explained that the initial narration of the Gospel of Matthew qualifies Joseph as "Righteous" and any subject that goes against this prerogative will be completely inconsistent.
What did Isabel say about a pregnancy by Mary?
And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. Luke 1:45 KJV
It was at this time that Mary was found pregnant.
The entire narration of the pregnancy was given by the angel to Mary and uses the masculine article for the angel.
How was Mary's conception narrated by the male angelic being?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35 KJV
This verse sums up the whole story between Mary and the Angel:
And the angel departed from her. Luke 1:38 KJV
So in Matthew 1:19, the word απολυσαι takes on the meaning of "set free"; in Classical Armenian [1895 Bagratuni] արձակել "release". What does it means? I can leave my car in the service garage and this does not constitute abandoning it... Denying that Joseph did not know about the narration, when Isabel did, is somewhat inconsistent with all arguments.
If we consider that the angel goes to meet Joseph, declaring the Spirit as the generator of the embryo, a being of gender neutral in Greek and feminine in Hebrew, all this makes us think that Joseph preserved Mary from a possible adultery against the angel who would have generated the embryo through the cover of the narrated Almighty, however, when knowing that it was from the Spirit, adultery could no longer exist, Joseph decided to marry Mary.
This is all consistent with Joseph's justice. All heterosexual translations that use terms like "abandon", "send away", "divorce" are inconsistent with the word "Just" and with the neutral gender of the Spirit.
According to the law, what were the repercussions of claiming the child was his if Joseph followed through with the marriage as he did? Is it possible that this action would have caused the least trouble, but that he in fact didn’t trust her?
