Bible Study series. Scripture: Matthew 1:1-17. This post is for your personal Bible study or your small group. How do we apply this section of Scripture to our lives?

A warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together. I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:

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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!

Matthew 1

The NIV is used here, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many other translations, please go here: bibligateway.com.

Let’s begin with the whole genealogy. Women are in bold font.

The Genealogy

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:1-17)

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

¹⁷ Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.

Comments:

The genealogy at first seems irrelevant to our lives. All the names! But it proves these things: (1) Jesus was Jewish, not Palestinian or Arab. Two thousand years ago, Matthew’s Jewish readers would spot this fact immediately and be grateful that the genealogy opened the Gospel.

Jesus Called It ‘Israel’

(2) He is the culmination of God’s plan of salvation, his rescue mission, launched with Abraham. (3) He is the new Israel. Where old Israel failed, he will succeed. (4) The persons listed here can be used of God, regardless of their foibles and sins.

It’s the fourth point that we go for.

Look for the grow app at the end.

For more information on the counting of fourteen generations, please go here:

Matthew 1

This post is more streamlined:

Reconciling Matthew’s and Luke’s Genealogies: Mission: Impossible?

Jesus’s Ancestry: Women

Now for the women listed in the genealogy.

Commentator R. T. France points out that the appearance of women in OT genealogies is not so rare (Gen. 20:22-24; 25:1-6; 36:1-14; 1 Chron. 2:3-4, 18-20, 46-47, 3:1-9); . what is rare is that four (or three) foreign women appear in this genealogy here. However, it is still good sermon material to talk about the disreputable past of many people—in order to show that Jesus’s ancestry may be imperfect, but so is ours. We can still be accepted by God, even if our heritage is off-kilter or dubious (or dodgy, as the English like to say).

In contrast to Matthew, Luke writes about women contributing mightily to the Jesus Movement (Luke 8:2-3; 23:49; 55; 24:10, 22, 44), but he does not include women by name in his genealogy, not even the great matriarchs like Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel and Leah, and not even Mary, the mother of Jesus. Matthew mentions four besides Mary.

Let’s look at their lives.

Tamar (Gen. 38)

She was an Aramean woman. She married losers who did not do right by her. According to ancient custom, brothers were to marry Tamar and were required to carry on their brother’s lineage, but they performed “tricks” to not do their duty. The Lord “took” them. (According to some Bible interpreters, God is said to do what he actually allows. When people break the law, they suffer the consequences.) In any case, Tamar took scandalous action to rectify the custom-breaking. Her father-in-law was Judah, one of the twelve patriarchs. He finally told her to go back to her father’s house and wait for Judah’s youngest son to grow up and he would provide a line for his older deceased brother. However, Judah had no intention of giving his son to her. Judah’s sons were “taken” by the Lord. Tamar was fed up with the dysfunctional family.

She heard that Judah was going to a certain area, so she hatched a plan. She disguised herself as a cult prostitute (some gods required prostitution), and he fell for her hook, line, and sinker. She required him to give her some token possessions (signet, cord, and staff) as a pledge until he would pay her with a goat, and he left. She took got into her normal clothes and waited. Judah sent a man to pay her but did not find her. No one had ever heard of a cult prostitute in the area.

Then three months later, Judah had heard the Tamar had been immoral and was pregnant, so Judah was outraged. He went to confront her, and she produced the tokens. “Then Judah identified them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah” (Gen. 38:26). So she had twins by her father-in-law: Perez the firstborn and the second born was Zerah.

Perez was in Jesus’s lineage.

Here is a table for the patriarchs in Genesis. The red = Jesus’s direct line:

Source: Families in Genesis + The Messiah’s Lineage

Rahab (Josh. 2, 6; Heb. 11:31; Jas. 2:5)

She was also a Canaanite woman of Jericho. She welcomed the spies who went on a reconnaissance mission to find out how difficult or easy the Promised Land could be taken. They were told to check out Jericho especially. They met Rahab the prostitute, who lived in an apartment in the wall. She told them that everyone had heard of the great miracles God has done for the Israelites. Everyone is trembling. She hid them under flax, when the pursuers came knocking on her door. They got out of their hiding place, She made a deal. She would not tell on them to the guards, if they saved herself and her family. They agreed. She let them down the wall through a window. “Then she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window” (Josh 2:21). The scarlet thread speaks of redemption: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev. 17:11, ESV). “And after eating, likewise, he did so with the cup, saying, ‘This cup, which is poured out for you, is the New Covenant in my blood’” (Luke 22:20).

Then in Josh. 6, the Israelite army marched around Jericho seven times in seven days, and just before the trumpet blast:

²² But to the two men who had spied out the land, Joshua said, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring out from there the woman and all who belong to her, as you swore to her.” ²³ So the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and mother and brothers and all who belonged to her. And they brought all her relatives and put them outside the camp of Israel. ²⁴ And they burned the city with fire, and everything in it. Only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. ²⁵ But Rahab the prostitute and her father’s household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. (Josh. 6:22-25, ESV)

Other verses in the New Testament honor her good deeds.

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. (Heb. 11:31, ESV)

And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? (Jas. 2:5, ESV)

Ruth (book of Ruth)

She was a Moabitess, who married Mahlon (Ruth 4:10), one of Israelite Naomi’s sons:

These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, ⁵ and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband (Ruth 1:4-5, ESV)

Then the story progresses, and Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law Naomi. Naomi counselor her to go back home:

¹⁵ And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” ¹⁶ But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. ¹⁷ Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” ¹⁸ And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. (Ruth 1:15-18, ESV).

The rest of the story goes on. Ruth the widow married Boaz, and they had Jesse, and Jesse had David, the exemplar king.

Moabites were not allowed to enter the temple of ten generation, even forever: “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever” (Deut. 23:3, ESV)

Jesus descends from a Moabite outcast, a misfit, in terms of lineage and heritage.

Bathsheba: “Wife of Uriah” (2 Sam. 11-12)

Some scholars believe that since she was married to a foreigner, she herself was one also. However, she was probably an Israelite. Mathew highlights her foreign husband to indicate Jesus had Gentiles in his heritage (Osborne, comment on 1:6). When kings were supposed to go out to battle, David stayed home. Bathsheba was on a nearby rooftop taking a bath. David saw her and called for her. She came. He had sex with her. She got pregnant. But she was married to Uriah the Hittite, a foreigner. David called him back from the battle and insisted that he sleep with his wife, but he refused, since his men were not experiencing such luxury. David contrived to get him killed. He told his general to put Uriah near the front where the battle was fiercest and then withdraw without him. He was killed. Nathan the prophet confronted him. “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:7). David repented. His repentance is seen in Psalm 51.

What Is Biblical Forgiveness?

How to Forgive Adultery and Fornication

Their child died. David and Bathsheba later had Solomon, and Jesus descends from him, but his ancestors David and Bathsheba had a sinful, dysfunctional past.

As a matter of fact, most of these descendants were not one hundred percent moral. They all did something wrong at various times in their lives. The kings were frequently wicked. Yet Jesus descends from these defective characters whom God still selected and used.

Mary

In v. 16, I really like the wording: “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.” In Greek the pronoun “of whom” is feminine, so it clearly and can only refer to Mary. Jesus was born from her, not Mary’s husband Joseph. This is a subtle way to express the virgin birth. So I could have analyzed Mary in Matthew’s genealogy, adding up to five women, but she is about to be the star of this chapter and the next, so let’s wait till then. Also Turner points out that the verb becomes passive, which is a surprise, because it introduces divine activity (comment on 1:6b-11). Many scholars call it the divine passive, meaning, God is behind the scenes working it out.

We will learn more about Mary in other posts on Matthew 1.

Commentaries

Keener is right:

When Matthew cites four women, he is probably reminding his readers that three of King David and the mother of King Solomon were Gentiles. The Bible that accepted David’s mixed race also implied it for the Messianic King; Matthew thus declares that the Gentiles were never an afterthought in God’s plan, but had been part of his work in history from the beginning. One who traces Matthew’s treatment of Gentiles through the Gospel, from the Magi who sought Jesus in Chapter 2 through the concluding commission to disciple the nations in 28:19, will understand Matthew’s point in emphasizing this. Matthew exhorts his readers that as much as Jesus is connected with the heritage of Israel, he is for all peoples as well, and his disciples have a responsibility to let everyone know. (pp. 80-81, emphasis original)

Grant R. Osborne:

All four women were foreigners and Gentiles (Tamar the Canaanite or from Aram, Rahab from Jericho, Ruth the Moabitess, and Bathsheba, the wife of a Hittite). This along with the appearance of the Magi stresses at the outset the Gentile mission towards which Matthew is building (28:18-20) and shows that all humanity is involved in the birth of the Messiah … Putting them together, God in his providence saw fit to include women who were foreigners and sinners in the royal lineage of Jesus so as to show that he is God not only of the righteous Jews but of all humanity and that he has come to bring salvation to the whole world of humanity (Osborne, comment on. 1:3 and 1:6).

Craig Blomberg:

Within the Gospels, Jewish polemic hinted (John 8:48) and in the early centuries of the Christian era explicitly charged that Jesus was an illegitimate child. Matthew here strenuously denies the charge, but he also points out that key members of the messianic genealogy were haunted by similar suspicions (justified in at least the two cases of Tamar and Bathsheba and probably unjustified in the case of Ruth). Such suspicions, nevertheless, did not impugn the spiritual character of the individuals involved. In fact, Jesus comes to save precisely such people. Already here in the genealogy, Jesus is presented as the one who will ignore human labels of legitimacy and illegitimacy to offer his gospel of salvation to all, including the most despised and outcast of society. A question for the church to ask itself in any age is how well it is visibly representing this commitment to reach out to the oppressed and marginalized of society with the good news of salvation in Christ. (comment on 1:2-17)

I like the last sentence: are we willing to take in the oppressed and marginalized of society with the gospel?

Grow App

1.. Why does God accept imperfect women in the Messiah Jesus’s lineage?

2. Why does God accept you, though you too are imperfect?

3.. If you come out of a dysfunctional family, how has God changed your life? Do you consider your local church to be your new spiritual family?

4. Are we willing to accept the oppressed and marginalized into our churches?

5. What does grace mean to you?

6. What does God’s forgiveness mean to you?

RELATED

Reconciling Matthew’s and Luke’s Genealogies: Mission: Impossible?

9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel

1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel

2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels

14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels

1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series

Luke’s Birth Narrative: Pagan Myth or Sacred Story?

Common Details in Matthew’s and Luke’s Birth Narratives

SOURCES

If you would like to see the bibliographical data, please click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:

Matthew 1