Biblical genealogies rarely get people excited. We kind of find our own family tree interesting, but the family background of other people is considerably less exciting. We might have some interest in a famous person, maybe, but ancient genealogies full of people we’ve never heard of and don’t particularly care to know, what’s the point right? Yet, Matthew thinks Jesus’ genealogy is so important he includes it right at the front end of his gospel.
Matthew tells in 1:1 exactly why he sees it as so important. He wants to show us that Jesus is both Son of David and Son of Abraham and thus fulfils the ancestral criteria to be named the Christ. He even curates the list so that there are 14 generations in each block so that, using gematria, the generations all equate to the same value as the letters in David’s name. Matthew is labouring the point that Jesus meets the legal criteria to be called the Messiah.
Bearing in mind, at this point, God hasn’t spoken to his people for 400 years, Matthew seems particularly keen – especially after the exile – to show that Abraham and David’s lines have not been completely wiped out. God has preserved these lines so that the promise of a longed for Messiah can be fulfilled. Indeed, it is being fulfilled in the coming of Jesus.
Some other interesting features of this genealogy are the inclusion of certain key names. For example, in v2 we read Abraham fathered Jacob. Whilst Jacob was a patriarch, he nevertheless deceived his father into claiming claiming his blessing. We have a deceiver written in to the family line of Jesus. In v5 we read ‘Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab’. At least three things are worth noting about that, but we’ll observe only one here: Rahab was a prostitute and yet was an ancestor of Jesus, so more evident sinners baked into the family tree. In v6 we read ‘David fathered Solomon by Uriah’s wife’. That is, with Bathsheba. That is to say, baked into the genealogy of the Lord Jesus is King David’s serious sins of abusing his power and authority, enforced adultery and murder.
Perhaps most surprising of all, Matthew doesn’t seem remotely embarrassed to include these things. Most people would be a little uneasy at being found to descend from known liars, prostitutes and murders. Yet here is Jesus being associated with exactly that ancestry. It speaks, I think, into the reality of why Jesus came. A marred world in which sin pervades everything – even the very family tree of the Messiah – was exactly what Jesus came to fix. He came to bring grace to sinners, to save those who have sinned and cannot save themselves, to mend what had been broken by such sin. Jesus’ own family tree speaks specifically into why he came.
To that end, there is something else worth noticing. Rahab was not ethnically Israelite and yet she is included here in the family line of Jesus. Boaz – her son – married Ruth who was a Moabite and not originally from Israel either. Not only does this show us that Israel always included the nations, but Jesus own family line shows that he came for both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus’ own family tree includes those who were not ethnically Jewish and yet the Messiah who came into the world to save the world includes people drawn from other nations. Again, Jesus family tree speaks to why he came – he came to save the nations.
Similarly notable are the inclusion of various female names. Tamar gets a mention in v3. We have already seen Rahab in v5 along with Ruth. Though only tangentially mentioned, there is Bathsheba. It was not usual to include the names of women in the genealogies and yet, again, Matthew does. In a seriously patriarchal society, we see that Jesus did not only come for men, but for both men and women alike. Jesus esteemed women.
Finally, it seems worth noting that he came for the downtrodden. Tamar, mentioned in v3, was involved in a hot mess as a widowed woman and ended up pregnant to Judah, her father-in-law, because he solicited her as a prostitute without recognising her. Whatever we make of the whole episode, Tamar was poorly treated (even if she didn’t entirely act brilliantly). Ruth was similarly widowed and, though not ill treated in that kind of way, was clearly very poor and destitute until she married Boaz. Bathsheba was certainly mistreated by David, her husband was murdered and she lost her first child because of David’s sin. But all of these are written into the family line of Jesus. He came specifically for the poor and down trodden.
There is much else we could say about these names but what is telling about them is what they tell us about the saviour who came. Jesus entered the brokenness of the world and associated with broken people – even relating himself directly to them – so that the world might be saved through him. The sin of such people, the brokenness, the ill-treatment and the pervasiveness of sin was not something foreign to Jesus, but something he came to associate with in the mess of the world – without succumbing to it himself – in order that the world might be saved through him.