And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:
Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, marking the turn in Jesus' ancestry to the period of the Babylonian captivity in plain literal history. The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen for symmetry to mark stages of Hebrew history, from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ, with some generations omitted to make the division. Matthew traces Jesus' legal and royal lineage through Joseph from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph His reputed father, while Luke traces His literal blood descent through Mary under Joseph's name back through Nathan and David to Adam. By this fleshly ancestry from Abraham through David to Joseph He is established as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. Through this lineage He truly became part of the human family sharing its sorrows, temptations and mortal inheritance while remaining without sin, so that by faith believers share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ.
Wording and Exile Setting
Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers at about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, marking the transition in Jesus' genealogy to the period of the Babylonian captivity. The verse stands at the dividing point of that genealogy, with the carrying away into Babylon closing the second fourteen and beginning the third, the three periods being patriarchal, royal, and exilic decline. The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen, or double sevens, for symmetry and to mark stages of Hebrew history from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ, and it is not a complete list of every generation but deliberately leaves out generations including the familiar kings Amariah, Joash and Ahaziah.
The word rendered begat means a man fathering a child, as Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers, illustrating the Greek word for begetting, which can also describe a woman giving birth. The verse records plain literal history within the genealogy, and its named ancestors and the events connected with them are real, not allegory and not requiring a symbolic or figurative interpretation, with its presence contributing to the real meaning and value of the record. The genealogical records are preserved as original contemporary documents, raw material for history rather than history digested into a uniform whole, left side by side without editorial alteration, correction, explanation, or harmonizing comment to adjust apparently conflicting statements. Their rawness, incompleteness, redundancy, abruptness, fragmentary character, divergencies and contrasts prove their primitive original character, factual basis, simplicity and truthfulness, told with perfect simplicity and guileless confidence and sublime consciousness of integrity and divine truthfulness.
The verse adds no separate explanation of the Babylonian exile beyond placing Josias, Jechonias and his brothers in Christ's ancestry in the genealogy traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, Jesus' reputed father. The chronology associated with the verse places Christ's birth about four years before A.D. 1, in agreement with Luke 3:23 and the account of Jesus' age when He began His ministry.
Arrangement and Generations
The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen, or double sevens, for symmetry and to mark stages of Hebrew history, from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ. Matthew 1:11 stands at the dividing point about the time they were carried away to Babylon, with the carrying away closing the second fourteen and beginning the third, the three periods being patriarchal, royal, and exilic decline. Some generations are omitted to make this division, so the list is not a complete father-to-son genealogy of every generation. Those who held it to be Mary's line taught that it traces Mary's line from Abraham to the birth of Christ while omitting some generations to divide it into three sections of fourteen each.
Begat in this genealogy does not necessarily mean direct fatherhood, so Josias need not have been Jechonias's immediate father, since Jechonias may have been a later descendant. The line records royal succession and inheritance from David to Joseph rather than every father-to-son link. Matthew deliberately leaves out generations, including the familiar kings Amariah, Joash and Ahaziah, because they were not counted as entitled successors and to fit the stated pattern of fourteen, not through ignorance.
The verse belongs to a list of forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ counted from father to son, and generation there marks steps in family descent such as father, son and grandson, not fixed spans of years. The fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile to Christ cover about 606 years, an average of roughly 43 years per generation, so generation lengths are not uniform and the genealogy does not establish a fixed length for a generation. The forty-two generations average about forty or more years to a generation, but that average cannot be depended on to fix the length of a generation, and God has not designed to fix that time in the last generation. A generation would be longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs than at the present time; sometimes generation means race, people or nation, and sometimes the people living upon the earth at one time.
Together with the genealogies in Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the genealogies counted from father to son support the claim that six thousand years from creation would contain fewer than two hundred generations. The difference in the number of generations between Matthew and Luke is explained by the longer line given for Mary.
Royal Line Through Joseph
Matthew gives the legal and royal lineage of Jesus through Joseph, running from Abraham through David and Solomon and on through the reigning house in the male line to Joseph, who stands as Jesus' reputed father and father by law. Josias and Jechonias with his brethren stand in that line about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, with some generations omitted to form the groups of fourteen. As Joseph's reputed son Jesus is heir to David's throne, and this complete genealogy is given because Matthew presents Christ as Son of David and King of the Jews, joining the Old Testament line to Christ. The line from David to Christ runs through Solomon and Joseph as legal father, carrying royal inheritance and legal claim to the kingdom rather than in every case immediate father-to-son begetting.
Luke gives a different line, the literal blood descent through Mary, recorded under Joseph's name because genealogies were reckoned through males and were not customarily counted through women. Heli was Mary's real father and Joseph's father-in-law, and Joseph is counted as son of Heli because he was the husband of Mary, being named only as the male member of the house. That line runs through Nathan the brother of Solomon, back through David and Abraham to Adam, presenting Jesus as Son of man and Son of Adam, while Matthew's kingly line runs through Solomon to Christ to present Him as heir to David's throne. It does not give the literal blood line of Christ, which runs through Mary from David through Nathan, since inheritance came through the males and genealogical lines named males instead of females.
The two accounts are reconciled because one traces descent through Mary and the other through Joseph, Joseph being Jesus' legal father treated by Jewish law as the son of Mary's father, so that Jesus was legally reckoned as Joseph's son while His human descent came through Mary. Two explanations are set forth, one treating both genealogies as Joseph's legal genealogies with Matthew giving the royal line and Luke the private line, and the other, more widely accepted, treating Matthew as Joseph's genealogy and Luke as Mary's, so that Jesus is joined to David's royal line legally through Joseph and naturally through Mary. The two genealogies meet and touch in the course of time, and both unite in Abraham. The Matthew and Luke lines meet in Zorobabel and Salathiel, so that the blood of Solomon was present in both Joseph and Mary, and Jesus in law as the child of Joseph was entitled to the throne of Israel.
The royal line through the kings of Judah is one side of Christ's pedigree, while the priestly line is traced through His maternal side. The genealogy shows that Jesus' parents were Jews belonging to David's family and the tribe of Judah, presenting Him as the perfect Jew. The genealogy in Matthew 1 is also described as tracing Mary's line from Abraham to the birth of Christ, omitting some generations in order to divide it into three sections of fourteen generations each.
Messiah and Covenant Promise
Matthew traces the fleshly ancestry from Abraham down through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, to establish His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham. Matthew 1:1-16 proves He is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David by showing He stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, while Luke traces the ancestral line of Mary from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam, with both genealogies uniting in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. The genealogy shows Jesus is the Son of David, the true Messiah who was to come.
The genealogical record connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Christ, preserving the lineage through the generations despite obstacles. It establishes the legitimacy of the Son of Mary's succession and His claim to Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world. As part of that genealogy the verse supports the claim that Jesus descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse and David. It shows Jesus descended from Judah on His father's side, the ruler tribe whose genealogies were kept while other tribes were scattered and lost.
The tribe of Judah was held together until Jesus came, proving He is Shiloh of the tribe of Judah, and from His coming He became the center of the gathering of God's people. The verse belongs to the preserved genealogy of Judah, through whom Christ came. The lineage through which the promised Deliverer would come was preserved despite efforts to destroy or scatter God's people, and Jesus' earthly line at the time Judah was carried captive to Babylon can be traced back to David and Abraham. The exile did not break the link from Abraham's seed to Christ before the promised Seed was born in the land promised to Him.
The genealogy preserves the line through which the world could see that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. It traces Christ's lineage from Abraham to Joseph before recounting His earthly life and helps show that the predicted signs of the Messiah centered in Christ. The royal genealogy from Abraham through David and Solomon to His birth bears witness to the reliability of Scripture and to Jesus' place in the promised line. Israel was chosen because it was the seed of Abraham and was set apart from other nations so Christ could be identified as the son of Abraham, fulfilling the promise that all nations would be blessed in His Seed, who is Christ. Israel was a unique typical nation with typical sanctuary, service and yearly round pointing to the work of salvation including the High Priest's work in heaven, so there cannot be another such nation.
Matthew traces Christ's ancestry from Adam and gives Him a human pedigree, showing He entered the world by birth into the human family. Together with His death this shows He was both born and died, in contrast with Melchizedek who as priest has no pedigree, no beginning of days as an infant and no end of life. This proves the Melchizedek of Genesis was not Christ but a distinct individual, with Christ as another priest after the same order. The genealogy is a chapter tracing the Lord's ancestry, especially valued by those who honor ancestral genealogies, belonging to Scripture's profitable record with no part of the Bible treated as nonessential or needing human additions or removal. The verse belongs to the text of the four Gospels that gives the picture of Christ, set within the society, life, and intellectual and religious development in Palestine.
Humanity and Believers Inheritance
The genealogy shows Jesus had human ancestors and truly became part of the human family, not merely God dwelling in a human body. Through this lineage He shares the sorrows, temptations, needs and mortal inheritance of humanity, including its inheritance of death, while remaining without sin. It places Him in a human line containing both righteous and wicked ancestors, showing He truly shared human flesh and blood and its liability to sin, and His ancestry mattered in His temptations and throughout His life in the flesh. It is a genealogy that includes sinful ancestors, including people of other races, for Christ did not refuse to be born from sinners, and His human ancestors were subject to the iniquities common to humanity. The record of His earthly ancestors shows the human heredity He accepted, for like every child of Adam He took the results of heredity in a race weakened by four thousand years of sin, sharing human sorrows and temptations while living a sinless life.
His human experience assures believers that He sympathizes with weakness and knows the salvation needed, and as brother and High Priest He can be approached with confidence, making human troubles easier to bear, human duties easier to do, and the mystery of the grave brighter. As part of the genealogy the verse assures believers in Christ that Abraham's promises are for his spiritual seed, since natural descent was a valuable privilege and opportunity but did not by itself guarantee inheritance, and those not heirs by birth share the promises through faith. By faith in Christ believers share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ in David's throne, and have proof of their right to the blessing promised to Abraham.
The verse belongs to the genealogy that presents Jesus as a direct descendant of Abraham. That descent is traced through forty-two generations. In this way it establishes His human lineage and royal descent.
Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, marking the turn in Jesus' ancestry to the period of the Babylonian captivity in plain literal history. The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen for symmetry to mark stages of Hebrew history, from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ, with some generations omitted to make the division. Matthew traces Jesus' legal and royal lineage through Joseph from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph His reputed father, while Luke traces His literal blood descent through Mary under Joseph's name back through Nathan and David to Adam. By this fleshly ancestry from Abraham through David to Joseph He is established as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. Through this lineage He truly became part of the human family sharing its sorrows, temptations and mortal inheritance while remaining without sin, so that by faith believers share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ.
Wording and Exile Setting
Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers at about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, marking the transition in Jesus' genealogy to the period of the Babylonian captivity. The verse stands at the dividing point of that genealogy, with the carrying away into Babylon closing the second fourteen and beginning the third, the three periods being patriarchal, royal, and exilic decline. The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen, or double sevens, for symmetry and to mark stages of Hebrew history from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ, and it is not a complete list of every generation but deliberately leaves out generations including the familiar kings Amariah, Joash and Ahaziah.
The word rendered begat means a man fathering a child, as Josias fathered Jechonias and his brothers, illustrating the Greek word for begetting, which can also describe a woman giving birth. The verse records plain literal history within the genealogy, and its named ancestors and the events connected with them are real, not allegory and not requiring a symbolic or figurative interpretation, with its presence contributing to the real meaning and value of the record. The genealogical records are preserved as original contemporary documents, raw material for history rather than history digested into a uniform whole, left side by side without editorial alteration, correction, explanation, or harmonizing comment to adjust apparently conflicting statements. Their rawness, incompleteness, redundancy, abruptness, fragmentary character, divergencies and contrasts prove their primitive original character, factual basis, simplicity and truthfulness, told with perfect simplicity and guileless confidence and sublime consciousness of integrity and divine truthfulness.
The verse adds no separate explanation of the Babylonian exile beyond placing Josias, Jechonias and his brothers in Christ's ancestry in the genealogy traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, Jesus' reputed father. The chronology associated with the verse places Christ's birth about four years before A.D. 1, in agreement with Luke 3:23 and the account of Jesus' age when He began His ministry.
Arrangement and Generations
The genealogy is arranged in three groups of fourteen, or double sevens, for symmetry and to mark stages of Hebrew history, from Abraham to David, from David until the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ. Matthew 1:11 stands at the dividing point about the time they were carried away to Babylon, with the carrying away closing the second fourteen and beginning the third, the three periods being patriarchal, royal, and exilic decline. Some generations are omitted to make this division, so the list is not a complete father-to-son genealogy of every generation. Those who held it to be Mary's line taught that it traces Mary's line from Abraham to the birth of Christ while omitting some generations to divide it into three sections of fourteen each.
Begat in this genealogy does not necessarily mean direct fatherhood, so Josias need not have been Jechonias's immediate father, since Jechonias may have been a later descendant. The line records royal succession and inheritance from David to Joseph rather than every father-to-son link. Matthew deliberately leaves out generations, including the familiar kings Amariah, Joash and Ahaziah, because they were not counted as entitled successors and to fit the stated pattern of fourteen, not through ignorance.
The verse belongs to a list of forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ counted from father to son, and generation there marks steps in family descent such as father, son and grandson, not fixed spans of years. The fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile to Christ cover about 606 years, an average of roughly 43 years per generation, so generation lengths are not uniform and the genealogy does not establish a fixed length for a generation. The forty-two generations average about forty or more years to a generation, but that average cannot be depended on to fix the length of a generation, and God has not designed to fix that time in the last generation. A generation would be longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs than at the present time; sometimes generation means race, people or nation, and sometimes the people living upon the earth at one time.
Together with the genealogies in Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the genealogies counted from father to son support the claim that six thousand years from creation would contain fewer than two hundred generations. The difference in the number of generations between Matthew and Luke is explained by the longer line given for Mary.
Royal Line Through Joseph
Matthew gives the legal and royal lineage of Jesus through Joseph, running from Abraham through David and Solomon and on through the reigning house in the male line to Joseph, who stands as Jesus' reputed father and father by law. Josias and Jechonias with his brethren stand in that line about the time of the carrying away to Babylon, with some generations omitted to form the groups of fourteen. As Joseph's reputed son Jesus is heir to David's throne, and this complete genealogy is given because Matthew presents Christ as Son of David and King of the Jews, joining the Old Testament line to Christ. The line from David to Christ runs through Solomon and Joseph as legal father, carrying royal inheritance and legal claim to the kingdom rather than in every case immediate father-to-son begetting.
Luke gives a different line, the literal blood descent through Mary, recorded under Joseph's name because genealogies were reckoned through males and were not customarily counted through women. Heli was Mary's real father and Joseph's father-in-law, and Joseph is counted as son of Heli because he was the husband of Mary, being named only as the male member of the house. That line runs through Nathan the brother of Solomon, back through David and Abraham to Adam, presenting Jesus as Son of man and Son of Adam, while Matthew's kingly line runs through Solomon to Christ to present Him as heir to David's throne. It does not give the literal blood line of Christ, which runs through Mary from David through Nathan, since inheritance came through the males and genealogical lines named males instead of females.
The two accounts are reconciled because one traces descent through Mary and the other through Joseph, Joseph being Jesus' legal father treated by Jewish law as the son of Mary's father, so that Jesus was legally reckoned as Joseph's son while His human descent came through Mary. Two explanations are set forth, one treating both genealogies as Joseph's legal genealogies with Matthew giving the royal line and Luke the private line, and the other, more widely accepted, treating Matthew as Joseph's genealogy and Luke as Mary's, so that Jesus is joined to David's royal line legally through Joseph and naturally through Mary. The two genealogies meet and touch in the course of time, and both unite in Abraham. The Matthew and Luke lines meet in Zorobabel and Salathiel, so that the blood of Solomon was present in both Joseph and Mary, and Jesus in law as the child of Joseph was entitled to the throne of Israel.
The royal line through the kings of Judah is one side of Christ's pedigree, while the priestly line is traced through His maternal side. The genealogy shows that Jesus' parents were Jews belonging to David's family and the tribe of Judah, presenting Him as the perfect Jew. The genealogy in Matthew 1 is also described as tracing Mary's line from Abraham to the birth of Christ, omitting some generations in order to divide it into three sections of fourteen generations each.
Messiah and Covenant Promise
Matthew traces the fleshly ancestry from Abraham down through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, to establish His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham. Matthew 1:1-16 proves He is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David by showing He stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, while Luke traces the ancestral line of Mary from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam, with both genealogies uniting in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. The genealogy shows Jesus is the Son of David, the true Messiah who was to come.
The genealogical record connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Christ, preserving the lineage through the generations despite obstacles. It establishes the legitimacy of the Son of Mary's succession and His claim to Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world. As part of that genealogy the verse supports the claim that Jesus descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse and David. It shows Jesus descended from Judah on His father's side, the ruler tribe whose genealogies were kept while other tribes were scattered and lost.
The tribe of Judah was held together until Jesus came, proving He is Shiloh of the tribe of Judah, and from His coming He became the center of the gathering of God's people. The verse belongs to the preserved genealogy of Judah, through whom Christ came. The lineage through which the promised Deliverer would come was preserved despite efforts to destroy or scatter God's people, and Jesus' earthly line at the time Judah was carried captive to Babylon can be traced back to David and Abraham. The exile did not break the link from Abraham's seed to Christ before the promised Seed was born in the land promised to Him.
The genealogy preserves the line through which the world could see that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. It traces Christ's lineage from Abraham to Joseph before recounting His earthly life and helps show that the predicted signs of the Messiah centered in Christ. The royal genealogy from Abraham through David and Solomon to His birth bears witness to the reliability of Scripture and to Jesus' place in the promised line. Israel was chosen because it was the seed of Abraham and was set apart from other nations so Christ could be identified as the son of Abraham, fulfilling the promise that all nations would be blessed in His Seed, who is Christ. Israel was a unique typical nation with typical sanctuary, service and yearly round pointing to the work of salvation including the High Priest's work in heaven, so there cannot be another such nation.
Matthew traces Christ's ancestry from Adam and gives Him a human pedigree, showing He entered the world by birth into the human family. Together with His death this shows He was both born and died, in contrast with Melchizedek who as priest has no pedigree, no beginning of days as an infant and no end of life. This proves the Melchizedek of Genesis was not Christ but a distinct individual, with Christ as another priest after the same order. The genealogy is a chapter tracing the Lord's ancestry, especially valued by those who honor ancestral genealogies, belonging to Scripture's profitable record with no part of the Bible treated as nonessential or needing human additions or removal. The verse belongs to the text of the four Gospels that gives the picture of Christ, set within the society, life, and intellectual and religious development in Palestine.
Humanity and Believers Inheritance
The genealogy shows Jesus had human ancestors and truly became part of the human family, not merely God dwelling in a human body. Through this lineage He shares the sorrows, temptations, needs and mortal inheritance of humanity, including its inheritance of death, while remaining without sin. It places Him in a human line containing both righteous and wicked ancestors, showing He truly shared human flesh and blood and its liability to sin, and His ancestry mattered in His temptations and throughout His life in the flesh. It is a genealogy that includes sinful ancestors, including people of other races, for Christ did not refuse to be born from sinners, and His human ancestors were subject to the iniquities common to humanity. The record of His earthly ancestors shows the human heredity He accepted, for like every child of Adam He took the results of heredity in a race weakened by four thousand years of sin, sharing human sorrows and temptations while living a sinless life.
His human experience assures believers that He sympathizes with weakness and knows the salvation needed, and as brother and High Priest He can be approached with confidence, making human troubles easier to bear, human duties easier to do, and the mystery of the grave brighter. As part of the genealogy the verse assures believers in Christ that Abraham's promises are for his spiritual seed, since natural descent was a valuable privilege and opportunity but did not by itself guarantee inheritance, and those not heirs by birth share the promises through faith. By faith in Christ believers share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ in David's throne, and have proof of their right to the blessing promised to Abraham.
The verse belongs to the genealogy that presents Jesus as a direct descendant of Abraham. That descent is traced through forty-two generations. In this way it establishes His human lineage and royal descent.