Matthew 1:13

The first verse is the title of Matthew’s Gospel, and it names its subject at once. “The book” is bíblos, which properly means the inner bark of the papyrus plant, and so a sheet or scroll of writing, here a written record. “Generation” is génesis, which means birth or origin, so the phrase means the account of where Jesus Christ came from. The Greek words biblos geneseos are the ones the Greek Old Testament uses for “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1). Genesis began with Adam, and Matthew begins a new account of God’s work with Jesus.

For Matthew’s first readers, most of them Jews, a genealogy was much more than a family tree. It was a legal record that settled a man’s identity, his tribe, his inheritance and his right to an office such as king or priest. Anyone said to be the Messiah had to come from David, because the prophets had said so. Matthew therefore opens his Gospel by setting out the record that shows who Jesus is.

“The son of David” was a recognised title of the Messiah, and people call Jesus by it later in this Gospel (Matthew 9:27). God had promised David a descendant whose throne he would establish for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16, 7:16), and Isaiah foretold a child born to sit on David’s throne and rule it with justice for ever (Isaiah 9:6–7). Paul says that Jesus was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection (Romans 1:3–4), and the angel told Mary that God would give her son the throne of his father David and that his kingdom would have no end (Luke 1:32–33).

“The son of Abraham” reaches further. God called Abraham and promised, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:1–3, 12:3), and later, “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). Paul says that this seed is Christ (Galatians 3:16) and that in this promise the Scripture preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand (Galatians 3:8). So the King of Israel is also the one through whom the nations are blessed. In him Jew and Gentile are made one and the wall between them is broken down (Ephesians 2:14–16), and the Gospel that opens with the son of Abraham closes with the risen Christ, who has all power in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18), sending his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19). All the promises of God in him are yea and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).

The verb that carries the list is “begat”, gennáō, which means to father a child. It is properly said of the father, by extension of the mother, and figuratively it means to regenerate. It comes from a form of génos, race or stock. Matthew repeats the same form, egennēsen, “he begat”, with each name, and the little word dé, “and”, joins one clause to the next. The repetition gives the list the steady rhythm of a litany and keeps the line moving from father to son, generation after generation, toward the one at its end. That figurative sense of the verb fits him well, because the one born at the end of this line gives new birth to all who believe, and he is the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16).

Every name here belongs to real history. Jesus entered the world through a real family, with a real ancestry, and the record shows that his humanity was as real as theirs. The pattern holds unchanged until verse 16, where Matthew alters it on purpose, and the change is the key to the whole list.

The record starts with Abraám, whose name means “father of a multitude”, the man with whom God began his covenant with Israel. Isaac was the son of promise, born to Sarah after she had long been barren, when a child was humanly impossible. Jacob, Isaac’s son, was renamed Israel, and his twelve sons became the fathers of the twelve tribes. Paul reminds us that the line of promise runs through the children God chose (Romans 9:6–8).

Of the twelve, Matthew names only “Judas”, Ioúdas, the Greek form of Judah, a name that means “praise”. Judah was Jacob’s fourth son, and Jacob prophesied over him, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah ... until Shiloh come” (Genesis 49:10). The kings were to come from Judah’s tribe, and so did David. Our Lord sprang out of Judah (Hebrews 7:14), and he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5).

“His brethren” are the other eleven sons of Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. Matthew mentions them so that the whole family of Israel stands behind the line, while his eye stays on the branch that leads to Christ.

Genealogies in Israel were traced through the fathers, so a mother’s name stands out. Matthew names four women before Mary: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “her that had been the wife of Urias”. Each is introduced with ek, “of”, which means from or out of and marks the mother from whom the child was born. Their stories are unusual, some are scandalous, and several involve people from outside Israel. Matthew put them in on purpose.

Verses 3 to 6 follow the same line that closes the book of Ruth, from Perez to David (Ruth 4:18–22), and that Chronicles records (1 Chronicles 2:9–10). Luke’s list passes through the same names (Luke 3:33). The line goes through Perez, and Zerah is left aside. Esrom is Hezron, and Aram is Ram.

Little is told of Aminadab beyond his place here, but his son Naasson, the Nahshon of the Old Testament, was the prince of the tribe of Judah in the wilderness (Numbers 1:7). When the tabernacle was dedicated, he was the first of the princes to bring his offering (Numbers 7:12). Salmon, his son, married Rahab and was the father of Boaz.

Boaz, “Booz” in the KJV, is the man of integrity in the book of Ruth who acted as kinsman-redeemer for Ruth and Naomi. In this he points to Christ, the greater Redeemer, who came for the lost sheep of Israel and for every nation. Boaz, Ruth, Obed and Jesse all belonged to Bethlehem, the town where the prophet said the ruler of Israel would be born (Micah 5:2).

Jesse is remembered as the father of David, the son whom God chose and Samuel anointed (1 Samuel 16:1–13). Isaiah foretold a rod coming out of the stem of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1). In verse 6 David is twice called “the king”, basileús, the word for a sovereign ruler. He alone in the list bears the title, because he was the king to whom God made the covenant of an everlasting throne. The first part of the list ends with him and the second begins with him.

From Solomon to Josiah the list is a roll of the kings of Judah, and Matthew gives them all the same plain words. Their reigns are told in Kings and Chronicles, among them the four kings of verse 9 (2 Kings 15, 2 Chronicles 26).

• Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem and was famed for his wisdom, but his later idolatry helped bring the kingdom to division.
• Roboam, Rehoboam, made the foolish decisions that split the kingdom in two (1 Kings 12).
• Abia, Abijah (also called Abijam), reigned briefly, at war with the northern kingdom of Israel.
• Asa, Asá, was a reforming king who removed idols and sought to restore the worship of the LORD (1 Kings 15:11–24).
• Josaphat, Jehoshaphat, was also a largely righteous king, known for his reforms and for having the people taught the Law.
• Joram, Iōrám, also called Jehoram, was wicked, led astray largely through his marriage to Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (2 Kings 8:16–24).
• Ozias, Uzziah, began his reign in righteousness and prosperity, but in his pride he went where the law forbade him and ended his days a leper (2 Chronicles 26:16–21).
• Joatham, Jotham, followed the LORD and strengthened the kingdom (2 Kings 15:34–35).
• Achaz, Ahaz, was one of Judah’s most wicked kings. He worshipped idols, made his son pass through the fire, and leaned on Assyria instead of on God (2 Kings 16:3–9). It was to Ahaz that Isaiah gave the sign of the virgin’s son, Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).
• Ezekias, Ezekías, from the Hebrew Chizqîyâh, is Hezekiah, one of the most righteous kings of Judah. He destroyed idols, restored the temple worship and trusted the LORD when Assyria besieged Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:3–7).
• Manasses, Manasseh, his son, was Judah’s most notorious king, who brought in pagan worship and shed innocent blood. Late in life, in his distress, he humbled himself before God and repented (2 Chronicles 33:12–13).
• Amon followed his father’s wickedness and took no part in his repentance, in a short and evil reign.
• Josias, Iōsías, is Josiah, who led Judah back to the Law of Moses and purged the land of idols, a last great return to God before the exile.

The kings of verses 9 and 10 ruled mostly in the eighth century before Christ and after, when Assyria and then Babylon pressed on Judah. Matthew lists the good and the bad side by side, and the list shows that God’s promise to David rested on God himself. He had sworn, “Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations” (Psalm 89:3–4), and he kept that oath through wise kings and foolish ones, through reform and apostasy. To Israel belong the covenants and the promises (Romans 9:4), and of them, as concerning the flesh, Christ came (Romans 9:5). Joseph was of the house and lineage of David (Luke 2:4), and Jesus calls himself the root and the offspring of David (Revelation 22:16).

The list also shows how much Israel needed a better King. Hezekiah and Josiah brought reforms that lasted only a while and could save their people from judgment for only a time. Jesus reigns in perfect righteousness and goes further than any reformer, for he is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God commends his love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Verse 11 marks the great turning point of the list. “Carried away” is metoikesía, a change of abode, which here means deportation, a people removed from their home by force. Babylon, Babylṓn, the capital of Chaldea, besieged Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar. The temple was destroyed in 586 BC, and the royal family, the leading men and the skilled workers were taken away. Jeremiah had warned that this would come as judgment for Judah’s long idolatry (Jeremiah 25, 25:8–11, 25:11–12), and Isaiah had warned Hezekiah of Babylon (Isaiah 39). In Scripture Babylon becomes a picture of worldly power set against God’s people.

The exile looked like the end of God’s promise of an everlasting throne. It closed the line of kings reigning in Jerusalem, yet the line of David went on. “Jechonias and his brethren” are Jechoniah, also called Jehoiachin or Coniah, and his brothers, adelphós, members of the royal house who shared the exile. Genealogies usually follow one son, so naming the brothers shows that the whole house of David went into captivity together. Jechoniah reigned only briefly and was carried away to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10–16).

After Zerubbabel come Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Sadoc, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan and Jacob. Abiud is mentioned nowhere else in Scripture, and the rest are known to us almost only from this record. They lived after the return, when the Jews were under foreign rule and longed for their kingdom to be restored and for the Messiah to come. Their names carry quiet testimony. Eliud, Elioúd, means “God of majesty” or “God of praise”, Eleazar means “God has helped”, and Matthan means “gift”. Luke’s list also passes through Zerubbabel (Luke 3:27–28).

The last of them is Jacob, Iakṓb, a name that means “supplanter” or “heel-grabber”. This Jacob is a different man from the patriarch of verse 2. He was the father of Joseph.

These generations show that God’s work goes forward through ordinary lives as surely as through kings and prophets. Nothing in their time looked remarkable, yet God was bringing his promise near, until “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4).

Verse 16 begins in the usual way, “Jacob begat Joseph”, and then the pattern changes. Matthew calls Joseph “the husband of Mary”, using anḗr, the word for a man or husband, and then writes “of whom was born Jesus”. In Greek this is ex hēs egennēthē Iēsous. The word for “of whom” is feminine, so it refers to Mary alone, and the verb “was born” is the same gennáō, now in the passive. Every name before Joseph is said to have begotten the next, and here Matthew carefully avoids saying that Joseph begat Jesus. He prepares us for what he tells next, that Mary was found with child of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 1:18–25, 1:18–20). Isaiah had said, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), and Gabriel told Mary that the Holy Ghost would come upon her and that her child would be called the Son of God (Luke 1:34–35).

Joseph still matters to the record. By Jewish custom the husband of the mother was the legal father of her child, so Jesus received through Joseph the legal right of David’s house. Through Mary he is truly human, and by his conception of the Holy Ghost he is the Son of God. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

“Who is called Christ” gives his office. Christós comes from chriō, to anoint, and means “anointed”, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew mashiach, Messiah. In Israel kings and priests, and sometimes prophets, were anointed as a sign that God had appointed them. Christ is a title declaring that Jesus is the King and Deliverer the prophets promised, and the whole Gospel of Matthew unfolds from it.

Verse 17 sums up the record. “Generations” is geneá, a generation, a line of descent, or a period of time. Matthew divides the history into three spans of fourteen generations, from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away, metoikesía again, to Christ. The first span runs from the promise to the kingdom, the second from the height of David’s throne down through decline to judgment, and the third through the long years of waiting after the exile. Each ends at a great turning point, and the last ends in Christ.

The count is arranged on purpose. As verse 8 shows, Matthew passed over some names, and his list is shorter than the records in Chronicles (1 Chronicles 3). Ancient genealogies were written to establish a line and make a point, and Matthew’s shape tells us that God ordered this history and brought his Son at the time he had set.

Many see a reason for the number fourteen in David’s name. Hebrew letters also served as numbers, and the three letters of David’s name, D-V-D (dalet, vav, dalet), add up to 4 + 6 + 4 = 14. On this reading the very shape of the list says “David” three times over, and points to Jesus as the son of David and heir of his throne.

This list of names teaches us to trust God’s timing. He made promises to Abraham and to David and kept them through centuries of faithfulness and failure, captivity and silence, until Christ was born. He is just as faithful to the promises he has made to us, and he works all things together for good to them that love him (Romans 8:28). In Christ all things hold together (Colossians 1:17), and God’s purpose is to gather together in one all things in him (Ephesians 1:10).

The record also shows the reach of God’s grace. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, David and Manasseh are all here, and Jesus was glad to be known as their descendant. Your past and your family history lie open before the same grace that wrote these names into the line of the Saviour, and Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth of Moab are a welcome to every nation.

And the quiet names matter. Abiud, Azor and Achim lived and died with nothing recorded of them beyond their place in this list, and God counted each one as he carried his promise forward. A life of faithful obedience in an ordinary generation, handing on the faith to those who come after, has its place in the same story.