Luke 3:33, commentary and pictures

This link carries Jesus' ancestry backward from Aminadab through Aram and Esrom and Phares to Juda.
Luke traces the flesh-and-blood line through Mary His mother back toward Adam, while Matthew traces the legal royal line through Joseph His legal father forward from Abraham.
So read it presents Jesus preeminently as the Son of Man, come of the human family as the seed of the woman and Saviour of all nations.
It proves His Jewish and royal descent, of the tribe of Judah and born of the seed of David according to the flesh.
Through Juda, Phares, Esrom, Aram, and Aminadab it identifies Him as the promised Seed of Abraham and the Messiah, heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David.

Names, Order, and Scope

Luke 3:33 gives one father-to-son link in Jesus' ancestry, from Juda to Phares to Esrom to Aram to Aminadab. The line belongs to the genealogy that traces Jesus' maternal ancestry through Mary back through David and Abraham to Adam, identifying Him as the promised Seed of Abraham and the Messiah whose life was given for the whole human race. Luke traces that line backward from Jesus, while Matthew traces forward, and Luke places the genealogy after the account of Jesus' birth and baptism. Luke presents the family history in reverse order from Matthew's and compresses the centuries between the Testaments into six verses.

Luke carries the line back to Adam the very first man and still back of Adam to God the Creator to show the human side, that Jesus was of man, of the human family. Matthew carries the legal royal line back only to Abraham, giving the kingly side through Joseph as legal father so Christ legally receives the kingship as rightful King and heir of Abraham. Matthew's complete record runs from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph the husband of Mary in forty-two generations, with some generations omitted and divided into three groups of fourteen, after the scriptural custom of calling a grandfather father. Luke's parallel genealogy on Mary's side runs through Nathan rather than Solomon, strengthening and confirming Matthew's record and establishing Jesus as Christ.

In the genealogy, son can mean a descendant removed by many generations. Generation means a line of descent from father to son, not a fixed number of years. Counted from Christ back to Adam, Luke 3 contains seventy-five generations. Counted from Adam to Christ, the same genealogy numbers about seventy-six generations. Excluding both Adam and Christ, the names between them number seventy-four, showing far fewer generations from Adam to Christ than might be guessed. More names are found in Mary's line than in Joseph's line, which accounts for the difference in the number of generations given by Matthew and Luke.

Mary's Line and Joseph's Name

Luke gives the literal flesh-and-blood line of Jesus through Mary His mother, while Matthew gives the legal pedigree through Joseph. Luke's line runs backward from Jesus through Heli and the royal family of David and through the seed of Abraham to Adam the first man and to God the Creator, presenting Jesus preeminently as the Son of Man, of man and of the human family, alongside the royal descent through His legal father Joseph. Joseph is named next to Christ for legal purposes, and Mary herself is treated as the son of her father through her marriage to Joseph.

Because genealogy was customarily reckoned through men and inheritance passed through men, and it was not customary to trace genealogy through women, Mary herself is not named and the record is kept in the male line according to Jewish usage and law. Jesus is called the supposed son of Joseph, Joseph is named as Mary's husband in Mary's place, Heli the next name being the father of Mary, and Joseph is listed as his son because Joseph was Heli's son-in-law by marriage. In reality Christ was the son, that is the maternal grandson, of Heli the son of Matthat, with the list including Juda, Phares, Esrom, Aram and Aminadab establishing His identity as Messiah and promised Seed of Abraham.

Heirship and kingship come through the father, while Christ's humanity comes through His mother. Matthew gives the kingly side through Joseph as the legal father of Jesus, the royal legal descent through Joseph and David to Abraham, so Christ legally receives the kingship as the rightful King and rightful heir of Abraham and inherits the kingdom as legal heir, while Luke gives the literal flesh descent by which Jesus is literally the Son of David. Luke therefore gives the mother's side to show Jesus was of man, and Matthew establishes claim to David's throne as Joseph's reputed son.

The two lines diverge from David, Luke going through Nathan on Mary's side and Matthew through Solomon on Joseph's line, and they meet at different points. Unlike Matthew's list, which traces royal inheritance with some generations omitted and divided into three groups of fourteen after the scriptural custom of calling a grandfather father, Luke's genealogy traces descent father to son to show ancestry. The two lines meet at Salathiel and Zerubbabel, possibly explained by marriage, then diverge again before reaching Jesus.

One explanation holds that Heli may have been another name for Joseph, so that the genealogy is not contradictory to Matthew's whether one account traces the line through Mary and the other through Joseph. Another understanding counts Joseph as Heli's son as Mary's husband, with Heli understood to be Mary's mother, Joseph being named as the male member of the family. The difference between Luke's and Matthew's genealogies has been seen as a difficulty for readers seeking to harmonize the two records, raising the question how Luke's account agrees with Matthew's.

Truly the Son of Man

Luke's genealogy is the mother's side, showing Jesus to be of man and of the human family, while Matthew's is the kingly side through Joseph as legal father by which Christ legally receives the kingship as rightful King and rightful heir of Abraham. Because it was not customary to trace genealogy through women, and reckoning by Jewish usage and law runs through the male, Mary herself is not named but male members are named instead, with Jesus called the supposed son of Joseph and Joseph named in Mary's place as Mary's husband. Heli, the next name, was the father of Mary and by marriage the legal father of Joseph as Mary's husband, so that Jesus is Heli's maternal grandson and the line runs through Heli back to Adam. Luke places this genealogy in chapter 3 after the account of Jesus' birth and traces it backward from Jesus to Adam the very first man and still back of Adam to God the Creator and Son of God, through the royal family of David and up through the seed of Abraham to Adam the progenitor of the race, so that the Son of God was truly the Son of Man. This is why He called Himself the Son of Man, for the unbroken human line of descent continuing back through Adam to God shows His descent from the human side of His nature. It is the seed of the woman come through the female side of the race, through Adam and Enoch and Noah, giving His literal flesh descent from Adam down through David's seed to Mary by which He is literally the Son of David, alongside the royal legal descent through His legal father Joseph by which He inherits the kingdom as legal heir. Matthew's forward royal pedigree from Abraham through David and Solomon to Jesus is read with Luke's backward line, which bears mighty witness to the divinity of Scripture and shows Jesus has a long pedigree through honorable characters worthy of consideration, with some generations omitted and divided into three groups of fourteen generations each after the scriptural custom of calling a grandfather father.

The genealogy is a pedigree of literal ancestors linking Him through Phares and the generations named to the history of Israel, showing that Adam and the other named ancestors were real people and that early biblical history belongs to the same literal history as Israel's later generations. By entering this world by birth into the human family and by dying, He proves He is a distinct individual from Melchizedek, who has no pedigree, no beginning of days as an infant, and no end of life.

The Messiah's human ancestors were subject to the iniquities common to humanity, and the family line extending through Phares, Esrom, Aram, and Aminadab shows lives that included both good and evil. By becoming human He shared humanity's inherited liability to sin and faced temptation in the flesh in order to conquer sin on humanity's behalf.

By tracing His ancestry through Mary back to Adam, with Aminadab, Aram, Esrom, Phares, and Juda named among His ancestors, the genealogy shows His life was given for the whole human race and presents Him as Saviour of all nations and a Saviour for all.

Judah, David, and Promise

The genealogy proves the Jewish descent of Jesus, showing that his parents were Jews, of the tribe of Judah and of the family of David. It proves his descent from the tribe of Judah, whose genealogy was preserved as that of the ruler, as Levi's was preserved as that of the priest, while the other tribes were scattered and their genealogies lost, so that his lineage as ruler could be traced on both his mother's side and his legal father's side. That preserved descent fulfills the promise that the scepter and rulership would not depart from Judah and his posterity until Shiloh, Christ, should come, and from the coming of Jesus he becomes the center of the gathering of God's people.

The literal and legal earthly lineage runs back through the line of promise to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, David, and Solomon down to the virgin Mary, with special emphasis on the tribe of Judah and the family of David. Satan knew the Deliverer, the second Adam, must come as the seed of the woman through that predicted seed, and through all the centuries before the first advent he tried by deception, idolatry, error, and persecution to destroy the channels of the seed, including all the seed of Abraham. Despite all his devices God preserved the seed so that Jesus could be born with his lineage intact. The family history, tracing his line through named ancestors in reverse order from Matthew's and compressing the centuries between the Testaments into six verses, serves to prove his royal descent. It shows how Christ is descended from David and proves he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, which is why he is called the Son of David, son meaning a descendant removed by many generations.

The line through Juda, Phares, Esrom, Aram, and Aminadab traces his maternal ancestry back through David and Abraham, identifying him as the promised Seed of Abraham and the Messiah. It is part of the fleshly ancestry of Christ through Mary, tracing the line in reverse order from Heli, her father, back through David and Abraham to Adam who was the son of God, so that Christ called the supposed son of Joseph was in reality the son, that is the maternal grandson, of Heli the son of Matthat. Together with Matthew's line from Abraham down through David to Joseph, it makes it doubly sure that Jesus stands in family relation to Abraham and has claim as heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. Phares was one of the sons born to Judah and Tamar, and their sons were reckoned as legitimate under the custom of the kinsman-redeemer duty.

History, Proof, and Application

Luke's backward line through Adam and Enoch and Noah to Adam the son of God is one link in the chain that presents Jesus as the seed of the woman come through the female side of the race. It is the parallel genealogy given on the side of Mary the mother of Jesus, strengthening and confirming the complete forty-two-generation record in Matthew 1 from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph the husband of Mary. Read together with that royal pedigree from Abraham through David and Solomon to Jesus, it bears mighty witness to the divinity of Scripture and shows Jesus has a long pedigree through honorable characters worthy of consideration. So understood, it establishes Jesus as Christ whose Messiahship was never successfully challenged.

The record in Genesis is needed to verify the Gospel genealogy traced through Genesis to the beginning. This link from Juda to Phares to Esrom to Aram to Aminadab, joined with the genealogies in Genesis 11 and Matthew 1, gives the Bible rule for counting generations by father-to-son links. By that rule six thousand years from creation make fewer than two hundred generations. Therefore the thousand generations that keep the commandments mean far more than a thousand literal generations, requiring thousands of years still future and proving the keeping of God's commandments continues from generation to generation without end.