The Gospel of Matthew
The Genealogy: Mt 1,1-17
The Genealogies of Matthew and Luke
The Genealogy of Matthew opens the Gospel whereas Luke has place his genealogy immediately after the baptism of Jesus. Luke records his genealogy in reverse, beginning with Jesus and going back beyond Abraham all the way to Adam, who is called the son of God (Lk 3,38). Jesus has just been called Son at his baptism (Lk 3,22). It's as if Luke wishes to stress through the genealogy Jesus' full humanity and his divine origins different to those of Adam.
Matthew is more interested in his genealogy in the orgins (1,1.18) by presenting Jesus as the climax of the history of his people because he is Son of Abraham, Son of David and also Messiah.
Luke provides far more names than Matthew. Matthew's genealogy is more artificially organised (Mt 1,17). It could be said that Matthew provides Joseph with a royal ancestry whereas Luke stresses the ordinary human lineage.
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From Abraham to Joseph: 1,2-16
The traditional "begat" is a verb, indicating the active role of the father. Changing this to a noun loses this impact. "Fathered" might be better.
verses 2 & 3 list the Patriarchs, familiar to us from the book of Genesis.
"And his brothers" might have been added to Judah in verse 2 to stress the origins of Jesus in the whole house of Israel, all twelve tribes.
Jesse, David and Solomon are also likely to be familiar to us. Here Matthew is following the books of Samuel and Kings where the names can be followed through to Jeconiah and the Babylonian exile(1,6-1,11)
The names after the Babylonian exile (1,12-15) will all be unfamiliar. We don't know Matthew's source for these people.
Finally, we arrive at Joseph (1,16). We can note that his father was Jacob, just as Jacob was the father of the first Joseph. We will be seeing more similarities between the two Josephs.
To get his pattern of fourteen generations, Matthew has had to omit three kings of Judah in the middle section: Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah are listed between Joram and Uzziah (1 Chronicles 3,11-12).
Asaph and Amos instead of Asa and Amon are well attested in the manuscripts. Amos reminds us of the prophet whilst Asaph led a school of psalmists (see the headings of some of the Psalms). This has led to the suggestion that Matthew wished to introduce a note of psalmic and prophetic strains into Jesus' ancestry.
The Women
A remarkable feature of this genealogy is the appearance of five woman - and every one of them has something unusual about her life.
Tamar had to disguise herself as a harlot in order to get her rights (Gen 38).
Rahab was a harlot. It was she who gave Jericho over to the Israelites(Joshua 2,6)
Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabite. The book of Ruth is the story of how she came to marry Boaz.
The sorry tale of David and Bathsheeba and the honourable behaviour of Uriah her husband is to be found in 2 Samuel 12.
Finally, there is Mary, the mother of Jesus, brought into the list as the husband to Joseph - but of her, not Joseph, was born Jesus, 1,16.
It is noticeable that apart from Mary, none of these women were Israelites. God's plan for our salvation is not exclusive to Israel.
This leads us to see God's plan for our salvation unfolding not only through continuity but also through unexpected discontinuity. Even when the orderly pattern is upset or broken, God's plan continues.
The result is an unusual birth. There is discontinuity in Mary giving birth of which we will hear more in the following verse. Continuity though is provided by Joseph who becomes the legal father of Jesus and thus provides him with an ancestry and a place in the village as the carpenter's son (13,55).
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Matthew 1,17: the scheme.
The number fourteen is often linked to the numeric value of David's name (in ancient times letters also served as numbers). Jewish thought at the time of Matthew divided the history of the world into weeks of years (eg Daniel 9,24). Fourteen therefore is 2 x 7 weeks. That gives us 6 weeks altogether so Jesus begins the seventh week. 7 was seen as the number of completeness or wholeness.
All of this just underlines that Matthew's interests are religious in intent. There is no point in trying to get Matthew and Luke to agree on the biological ancestry of Jesus because that is not their interest. Matthew in particular is interested in the orderly unfolding of God's plan - whilst allowing for discontinuity.
And it is to the greatest discontinuity of all that we can now turn.
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