Luke 4:1-7

19 Compare Mat_14:3-5; Mar_6:17-18.

19 Herod's treatment of John is here inserted ahead of time to close the account of John's ministry before opening that of his Master's.

21-22 Compare Mat_3:13-17; Mar_1:9-11; Joh_1:32-34.

23 Maturity and sonship, as distinguished from nativity and minority, were not attained at birth, but waited until the thirtieth year. The genealogy here given does not deal with birth or begettal, but with sonship. Hence it is not introduced until He arrives at His full manhood, and God Himself claims Him as His Son. The following pedigree is hardly intended to prove Him a descendant of Adam, but rather to show that this line, through which He came as to flesh, was absolutely incapable of producing the Sinless One, apart from His divine paternity.

23 This genealogy gives us the "Seed of the woman " (Gen_3:15) Who shall crush the serpent's head. Unlike Matthew's pedigree, it does not trace the physical male ancestry, but the legal line, through Mary back to Adam. Christ is first proclaimed as the Son of God. Then He is shown to be the legal (not physical) son of Joseph. Joseph, also, is not the offspring of Heli, whose son he is said to be, for in Matthew we read that he was begotten by Jacob. He was, therefore, the son-in-law of Heli, by his marriage with Mary, Heli's daughter. As Heli had no son of his own his allotment passed to his daughter's husband (Num_27:8) and so Joseph is the legal son of Heli and the physical son of Jacob.

27 The lines meet in Zerubbabel and Salathiel (Mat_1:12), just after the captivity, because the line of Nathan died out in Neri, so that Jechoniah's son Salathiel was also the legal son and heir of Neri. From thence it is traced back to the second surviving son of Bathsheba the wife of David. From David back to Abraham this corresponds with Matthew's genealogy. When Eve bore Cain she supposed that he was the promised Seed, so she said "I have acquired a man, Jehovah", and she names him "Cain", that is "Acquired". But before his brother Abel was born she realized her mistake, and called him "Abel," Vanity. The Seed was not to be the seed of Adam, but the Seed of the woman. This lesson is emphasized again when the male line dies out in Neri, and the allotment passes through a woman to a legal son, and this is repeated when Joseph becomes the son of Heli through his wife Mary. Not a single man in the whole list was capable of generating the One Who was to bruise the serpent's head. It is a broken, sinful pedigree. Hence the absolute necessity that He should be begotten, not of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God, and that a virgin should bring forth Emmanuel.

36 As this Cainan is not found in the Hebrew text and seems to have been unknown to some of the early fathers, some are inclined to regard it as a very early corruption of the text. But, if we retain it we have the notable number, seventy-seven, as the full total, and, when all names found also in Matthew's genealogy are omitted, we discover three groups of exactly twenty names each.

1-13 Compare Mat_4:1-11; Mar_1:12-13.

2 The Slanderer is the suzerain of the kingdoms of the earth. Before proclaiming the Kingdom it was necessary that he should be met and overcome. He took the dominion away from mankind through his deception in the garden (1Ti_2:14). Adam was in no need of food, yet he sinned. Christ was famished from a forty-day fast, yet He withstood the temptation to provide Himself with food. Adam was in a beautiful garden, the head of all creatures on earth, yet he yielded to Satan. Christ was in a wilderness among the wild beasts, yet He refused to do homage even though it should give Him the headship which was rightfully His. Adam questioned God's goodness and offended Him by seeking that which He withheld. Our Lord refused to doubt His love, though every token of it seemed to have vanished. He would not put it to a test. On every point in which the first man failed, the second Man, though tempted many times more searchingly, stood the test triumphantly. No mere son of Adam could have stood. Had He not been the Son of God the stress would have been too great.