Smoodock's Blog

Matthew begins his Gospel narrative with a genealogy! Instead of prefacing his narrative with some interesting stories about Jesus, before he lists his genealogy, as Luke does, he begins by listing forty-one names, and then he tells his readers about Jesus’ birth. What was Matthew thinking? Jesus sent him out to disciple men for the Kingdom of God, but instead he seems to want to turn the minds of men off by quoting a boring list of names. Moreover, he tells us that there should be 42 names: three lists of 14 names each. Yet, there is only 41 in Matthew’s list! What’s going on?

Moreover, the problems with Matthew’s list doesn’t end there. There are names of kings left out in order to keep the lists at 14 names each, and clearly Matthew wants each list to total 14 names, for a total of 42. Yet, he seems to shoot himself in the foot at every turn. For example, he begins his account with the words: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ…” which would remind any Jewish reader in the first century AD of reading the Book of Genesis. In several earlier studies I mentioned that Moses compiled the Book of Genesis from ancient family records such as: “This is the book of the generations of Adam…” (Genesis 5:1), or “These are the generations of Noah…” (Genesis 6:9). There are 11 such records from Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 37:2, and when speaking of the families, without exception they begin with the patriarch, the father of the family, and afterward the record often gives a short history of that family. In Matthew’s Gospel, however, his narrative begins with the last generation, Jesus, and incorporates the whole list under his name, almost as though Jesus chose his family tree, rather than the other way around.

I heard this explained using the idea of Russian dolls, wherein several dolls are placed inside the larger one, and, when this is done, one is left with one doll. Matthew’s idea seems to be opposite to that of Luke. Luke puts everyone inside Adam, while Matthew puts everyone inside Christ. Using this logic, the author of the Book of Hebrews could say that Levi, the son of Jacob tithed to Melchizedek through Abraham (Hebrews 7:9-10; cp. Genesis 14:18-20). So, Matthew begins his Gospel narrative by saying, all the names in his three lists, are ultimately **in** Christ. Just as whatever happened to Adam happened also to us (Romans 5:12), so, too, whatever happened to Christ, happened also to those **in** him (Romans 6:3-5).

Notice, as well, that Matthew chooses five women in Jesus’ genealogy, as five matriarchs among the patriarchs, four ancient women plus Mary, the mother of Jesus. This is unusual, especially since none of the first four women were Sarah, Rebekkah, Leah or Rachel. On the contrary, Matthew’s women were women of questionable character, four of whom were gentiles. What is Matthew telling us by choosing these women?

I believe what Matthew is doing is characterizing the three lists of names. The first list, Abraham to David, which contains the four women, seems to be characterized by grace. Certainly, by grace these four women were received as righteous, just as it is certain that Abraham was called by grace, just as King David was made king by grace. The second list of names King Solomon to Jeconiah, seems to be characterize by judgment. Just because we are received by grace, does not mean that we can mock God through disrespect and disobedience (Galatians 6:7). We shall reap whatever we sow! Finally, the third list incorporates the remaining patriarchs with the fifth woman in Matthew’s list, Mary, the mother of Jesus. What the third list of names characterizes is Israel’s longing for redemption, the looking for the return of God (Malachi 3:1), who comes as the son of the Son of David, the Messiah, and Mary embodies that desire.

There are other problems with Jesus’ genealogy, such as why would Matthew purposefully leave out the names of certain kings, in order to keep the names in the list to 14? Another would be, does Matthew know how to count to 42, since there are only 41 names listed? We’ll address these problems as we come to them in our study of the genealogy itself.