Matthew 1:12-16

‘And after the carrying away to Babylon, Jechoniah begat Shealtiel; and Shealtiel begat Zerubbabel; and Zerubbabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; and Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.'

We now have the final list of fourteen names from the Exile to Jesus the Christ. Israel had descended to its lowest point in the Exile and the way could now begin for the raising up of the Messiah. But apart from a brief flurry under Zerubbabel (Zechariah 4:6; Haggai 2:21) the names now descend into insignificance. Time passes them by. It is a time of waiting, and of hoping.

Jechoniah is required in the list in order to make up fourteen names. Alternately Matthew may have intended us to ignore Jechoniah and distinguish between Jesus while on earth, and Jesus risen as the Christ. His idea may have been to draw attention to Jesus the man, and then to the eschatological nature of the Christ. On the other hand Matthew may in fact not have been too concerned about the mathematics and the consistency as long as there were fourteen names on the list. He was more interested in getting over his point, which the fact that there were fourteen names in the list achieves whether the names were mentioned before or not. Perhaps he was not as pedantic as we can sometimes be. He understood what illustrations were all about. This last list disagrees with that in Luke 3:23, but that is probably because Luke shows the line of actual blood descent, while Matthew shows the line of royal descent in terms of the heirs to the throne, the latter including switches to other relatives when there was no direct heir. Thus there could have been a movement from Jacob to Heli's son, with Heli's son Joseph having become the heir of a sonless Jacob. We must also take into account the possible effect of Levirate marriages where a brother produced an heir for his dead brother, the latter being the heir to the throne. ‘Begat' did not necessarily indicate blood relationship. This wider use of ‘begat' is well attested by archaeology.

But there is no reason to doubt the genuineness of the genealogies, whatever problems we might have with them. All ancient and important Jewish families who were proud of their purity of descent maintained the genealogies of their families, and many were kept on public record. Indeed it was regularly necessary for descent to be proved in order to enjoy certain privileges, such as that of providing the wood for the altar. Josephus mentions such records and Herod the Great in fact tried to destroy some of them through jealousy because he was not a true-born Israelite. There is therefore no need to doubt that the genealogies of the house of David were carefully preserved (and there is in fact also external evidence of the fact that the genealogy of the house of David was claimed to be known by some who cited it to prove their own claims).

The names here in Matthew cover a period of over four hundred years. It must thus be seen as very probable, indeed certain, that Matthew omits some names in order to achieve his fourteen names, doing it in line with normal practise at the time. Compare the much larger number of names in Luke over the same period.

(With regard to genealogies, we may incidentally note here how the genealogical line to the throne of Scotland was remembered orally over hundreds of years in a much more primitive country than Israel, and was repeated at every coronation, because of their pride in the ancestry of their kings. It is even more likely then that this would occur in a country famed for its interest in genealogies and in its history. To ancient peoples genealogy was considered important).

‘Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.' Jacob begat Joseph, that is, Joseph succeeded to the royal line through Jacob, who may not have been his father but an heirless relative. Note that Joseph is deliberately not said to have ‘begotten' Jesus, Who is rather said to be born of Mary. In fact as he had adopted Jesus as his heir ‘begat' could have been used, (someone who was adopted could be described as ‘begotten'), but Matthew clearly wanted to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding. The emphasis is being laid here on His unusual birth, a ‘virgin conception and birth' through Mary as Matthew 1:19; Matthew 1:23; Matthew 1:25 demonstrate.

(The suggestion that Mary had been raped is untenable. In those days, had she been raped Joseph, in view of his position and status, would not have married her, for we know that, while revealed as a compassionate man, his original purpose, even when he thought that she had committed adultery, is made clear (Matthew 1:19). Rape would actually have been seen as even worse. So the honour of his house would have demanded at the very minimum a quiet withdrawal. There was no way in which he would have overlooked it).