Matthew 1 - Introduction

CHAPTER 1.

THE GENEALOGY AND BIRTH OF JESUS.

The genealogy may readily appear to us a most ungenial beginning of the Gospel. A dry list of names! It is the tribute which the Gospel pays to the spirit of Judaism. The Jews set much store by genealogies, and to Jewish Christians the Messiahship of Jesus depended on its being proved that He was a descendant of David. But the matter can hardly be so vital as that. We may distinguish between the question of fact and the question of faith. It may be that Jesus was really descended from David many things point that way; but even if He were not He might still be the Christ, the fulfiller of O. T. ideals, the bringer-in of the highest good, if He possessed the proper spiritual qualifications. What although the Christ were not David's son in the physical sense? He was a priest after the order of Melchisedec, though ἀγενεαλόγητος; why not Messiah under the same conditions? He might still be a son of David in the sense in which John the Baptist was Elijah in spirit and power, realising the ideal of the hero king. The kingdom of prophecy came only in a spiritual sense, why not also the king? The two hang together. Paul was not an apostle in the legitimist sense, not one of the men who had been with Jesus; yet he was a very real apostle. So might Jesus be a Christ, though not descended from David. St. Paul writes (Galatians 3:29): “If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed”. So might we say: If Jesus was fit to be the Christ in point of spiritual equipment, then was He of the seed of David. There is no clear evidence in the Gospels that Jesus Himself set value on Davidic descent; there are some things that seem to point the other way: e.g., the question, “Who is my mother?” (Matthew 12:48; Mark 3:33), and the other, “What think ye of the Christ, whose son is He?” (Matthew 22:42, et par.). There is reason to believe that, like St. Paul, He would argue from the spiritual to the genealogical, not vice versâ : not Christ because from David, but from David, at least ideally, because Christ on other higher grounds.