Luke 3:30, commentary and pictures

Luke 3:30 names Simeon as son of Juda, Juda as son of Joseph, Joseph as son of Jonan, and Jonan as son of Eliakim, as one link in the genealogy of Luke 3:23-38 that traces upward and backward from Jesus through Heli to Adam and to God, in reverse order from Matthew's genealogy. Luke gives Christ's fleshly blood descent through Mary while Matthew gives His legal royal pedigree through Joseph, Heli being Mary's father whose son-in-law Joseph stands in her place because genealogies were reckoned through the male. The line passes through David's son Nathan while Matthew's passes through Solomon, making Jesus literally the Son of David according to the flesh through Mary and heir to David's throne as Joseph's legal son. By carrying His human descent in unbroken father-to-son line back to Adam the first man and beyond Adam to God the Creator, it presents Him preeminently as the true Son of man who is both Son of Adam and Son of God. So traced to Adam, it shows His connection to the whole human race as Saviour of all nations, and as one link in the preserved line of promise through Abraham, Judah, and David it identifies Him as the promised Seed and Messiah.

Words and Historical Setting

The verse names Simeon as the son of Juda, Juda as the son of Joseph, Joseph as the son of Jonan, and Jonan as the son of Eliakim, forming one chain of ancestors in the line. It belongs to the genealogy in Luke 3:23-38, which traces upward and backward from Jesus and Heli to Adam and to God. That tracing runs in reverse order from Matthew's genealogy, which proceeds downward from Abraham.

The genealogy is placed after the account of Jesus' birth and stands at the close of His baptism. At that point He was about thirty years of age when He began to teach and was supposed to be the son of Joseph. In this setting it presents Him as the Son of man, emphasizing His humanity.

The genealogy compresses the four centuries between the Old and New Testaments into six verses of family history. Its purpose in doing so is to establish His royal line. It gives no inspired account of the events of those centuries.

Each step is a direct father-to-son descent, not a list of royal successors as in Matthew's genealogy. The persons named are real, literal progenitors, and the history connected with them is literal history. The early part of that record is supplied and verified by Genesis, through which the line is traced back to the beginning.

Mary's Line Through Joseph

Luke gives the fleshly, literal blood descent of Christ through Mary, while Matthew gives His legal, royal pedigree through Joseph, and the two accounts are to be harmonized together and do not contradict one another. Luke traces the humanity and ancestry through Mary's line back to Adam, showing connection to the whole human race, and names Joseph because Hebrew custom traced ancestry through the male line. Its reference to Joseph as the supposed father distinguishes Joseph's family relationship from Jesus' descent through Mary, for under Jewish law Joseph was Jesus' legal father and is included next to Jesus for legal purposes, since heirship and inheritance come through the father.

Heli was Mary's father and immediate ancestor, making Jesus Heli's maternal grandson, and Joseph is named as Heli's son in the legal sense of son-in-law because he was Mary's husband and of the same tribe. Because Jewish genealogies did not include women and were customarily counted through male family members, Mary herself is not named but her husband Joseph is named in place of her and stands in her place, with the line reckoned through the male. To name her would have been contrary to Jewish usage and law, so Jesus is listed as being as was supposed the son of Joseph which was the son of Heli, with Heli being the father of Mary and the legal father of Joseph by marriage to Mary.

Luke's line passes through David's son Nathan on Mary's side, while Matthew's line passes through Solomon to Joseph as Jesus' legal father, so Jesus is David's descendant through Mary and heir to David's royal line, throne, kingdom, and right of rulership as Joseph's legal son through the male. It belongs to the flesh line through Heli, distinct from Matthew's royal line that comes down through David and Joseph, proving Jesus is literally the Son of David according to the flesh and of man, of the human family. As another possible explanation held by some, Heli may have been another name for Joseph. Luke's line contains more names than Joseph's line, accounting for the different numbers of generations in the two genealogies.

Humanity and Messiahship of Jesus

Luke's genealogy presents Jesus preeminently as the Son of man by tracing His human descent from Adam in unbroken line, emphasizing His humanity as the true and perfect Son of man and Son of Adam. It traces Him through David's seed to Mary and then back through her husband Joseph, with Heli as Mary's immediate ancestor and father, while Joseph is named in place of Mary and counted as Heli's son because genealogies were customarily counted through male family members and naming her would have been contrary to Jewish usage and law. It is placed after the account of His birth and reverses the record from Adam down to the mother of Jesus, distinct from Matthew 1:1-17 which gives the separate royal genealogy through the legal father Joseph with the right of rulership coming through the male, so that Luke gives Mary's lineage and not the legal heirship to David's throne. This human line runs back to Adam the very first man and progenitor of the race and beyond Adam to God the Creator and to the Son of God, so that the Son of God is truly the Son of man, both Son of Adam from His human side and Son of God. Together with Matthew's genealogy through Joseph, it shows Jesus as David's descendant through Mary and heir to David's royal line through Joseph, with Joseph listed as Heli's son in the legal sense of son-in-law since the ancestry came through Mary.

By tracing Him to Adam it shows His connection to the whole human race and presents Him from the standpoint of Saviour of all nations and Saviour for all. It shows Him as the seed of the woman come through the female portion of the race from Adam onward, through Adam and Enoch and Noah, with the whole list running back to the beginning to the promise of the seed of the woman. His parents were Jews of the tribe of Judah and the family of David, making Him naturally part of David's royal family as Heli's maternal grandson, with Joseph's marriage to Mary giving a legal connection to that royal line. He is thereby literally the Son of David according to the flesh through Mary in the flesh line through Heli, distinct from Matthew's royal line that comes down through David and Joseph and makes Him the legal heir to the kingdom as Joseph's legal son, since heirship is counted through the male. This illustrates the common scriptural usage calling a man the son of an ancestor removed by many generations, by which Christ is rightly called the Son of David because He was born of the seed of David according to the flesh.

The genealogy traces His human ancestry through Mary back from Heli through Jonan, Joseph, Juda and Simeon to establish His identity as the promised Seed of Abraham and descendant of David and thus as the Messiah, with Joseph called His supposed father to distinguish Joseph's family relationship from His descent through Mary whose father was Heli. The parallel genealogy on the side of Mary fortifies and confirms the complete forty-two-generation record in Matthew 1 from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ, proving His Messiahship with a record His enemies never dared to attack openly. He entered humanity through ancestors subject to the iniquities common to the human race, through generations of people both good and evil reaching back through David, Abraham and Adam to the beginning of humanity and sin. He entered human life with the inheritance of a sinful human family and faced temptation in that condition.

His distinct pedigree traced from Adam proves He entered this world by birth into the human family and was both born and died, in contrast to Melchizedek who has no pedigree, no beginning of days as an infant and no end of life, proving the Melchizedek of Genesis was not Christ but a distinct individual, while both are priests after the same order. The long genealogies, to be read with the royal pedigree in Matthew 1 which takes up the genealogy from Abraham and traces it down through David and Solomon to the birth of Jesus, bear mighty witness to the divinity of the Word. Their fulfillment in the works the Father gave Jesus to accomplish bears witness that the Father sent Him.

Promise Preserved and Fulfilled

Luke 3:30 is one link in the complete earthly lineage of Jesus that can be traced literally and legally back through the line of promise to David, to Judah, to Jacob, to Abraham. It means He is the promised Deliverer, the second Adam, come of the seed of the woman through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, David and Solomon down to the virgin Mary. Its unbroken chain proves God preserved the seed despite the devil's centuries-long effort before the first advent to destroy it by deception, idolatry, error and persecution. That assault was aimed at all the seed of Abraham but especially at the tribe of Judah and the family of David.

The verse is one link in the preserved genealogy of the tribe of Judah, descending from Judah through Eliakim, Jonan, Joseph, Juda and Simeon. It proves rulership belonged not to Judah personally but to Judah and his posterity until Shiloh, Christ, came. The tribe of Judah was held together and kept until Jesus came while the other tribes except Levi were scattered and their genealogies lost, so His lineage could be traced on both His mother's side and His father's side. From that time He became the center of the gathering of God's people.

Chronology and Doctrinal Lessons

Luke's genealogy counts seventy-five generations from Christ to Adam. Each generation in that count runs from father to son, with this verse forming one of those father-to-son links back toward Adam. That counting shows the Bible assigns no fixed number of years to a generation. Counted from Adam to Christ there are about seventy-six generations, with this verse contributing one link to that total. When Adam and Christ themselves are excluded, the genealogy contains seventy-four names between them.

Together with Genesis 11 and Matthew 1, Luke 3:23-38 supplies the Bible rule for counting father-to-son generations. By that rule six thousand years from creation make fewer than two hundred such generations. The thousand generations of those who keep the commandments therefore mean more than a literal thousand. They reach twenty-four thousand years beyond 1868, proving that keeping God's commandments continues from generation to generation without end.