And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;
Matthew 1:13 is one preserved link in the royal line after Zerubbabel, naming Abiud then Eliakim then Azor onward toward Joseph and Jesus. It belongs to Joseph's legal pedigree through Solomon and the kings, while Luke traces Mary's blood line through Nathan. Together the lines show Jesus as Son of David, rightful King, heir of Abraham, and true Messiah with claim to David's throne. The unbroken descent proves Him heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, the promised Seed in whom all nations are blessed. It also shows He truly entered the human family by birth, partaking of flesh and blood with its inherited weakness yet without sin, to sympathize, to conquer sin, and to save sinners.
Words and Arrangement
The term rendered as begat denotes a man fathering a child, while the same Greek term can also denote a woman bringing forth or giving birth. Generation denotes the steps of family descent such as father, son, and grandson, and the opening chapter reckons forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ.
The list deliberately names selected ancestors rather than every generation, as is customary in biblical genealogies where a grandfather may be called father, in order to form three groups of fourteen. By that compression it joins Christ to the distant ancestors Abraham and David and divides Hebrew history into patriarchal, royal, and exilic phases. The omitted names were familiar from Israel's historical records, so the missing links do not make the lineage unreliable, nor should such genealogies automatically be taken as complete chronological lists.
The reckoning of forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ yields averages of about forty-five years overall, but more than sixty-four years from Abraham to David, about twenty-eight from David to the Babylonian captivity, and about forty-three from the captivity to Christ, so no fixed length for a generation is established. That total has been used to estimate roughly forty or more years to a generation, yet the verse itself defines no fixed length and the figure cannot be depended upon to fix chronology.
The line presents royal succession from David to Joseph rather than an unbroken father-to-son chain at every step, with names able to stand for descendants separated by several generations and with lines able to join or diverge through marriage. Some generations may be skipped, and Abiud stands in that royal line after Zerubbabel and before Eliakim on the way toward Joseph and Jesus. Together with the surrounding verses the list gives only a brief family record for the centuries between the Old and New Testaments, making the royal line of Jesus the relevant point rather than describing those centuries' events.
The verse is a simple historical record of real, literal progenitors joining Israel's history to earlier generations, not a fictitious allegory nor a text for fanciful spiritual meaning. Its place in the genealogy helps present Jesus as a real person in human history whose ancestry can be traced through Genesis to the beginning. Scripture preserves such original genealogical records as raw material for history with the flavor of contemporary authorship, set down each in its own time and place and left beside parallel accounts without editorial harmonizing, explanation, correction, weighing, or adjustment. Their rawness, incompleteness, redundancy, abruptness, and any apparent conflict remain in simplicity and integrity, displaying the artlessness of conscious truth and proving the documents to be original data on which systematic history must be founded rather than secondary critical conclusions or mythical imaginings.
Two Genealogies Compared
Matthew's list is Joseph's pedigree, tracing legal descent through the male line, while Luke's list traces Mary's lineage with Mary reckoned through her husband Heli. Matthew gives Joseph's genealogy and the legal pedigree through Joseph, distinct from Luke's genealogy of Mary, in which Heli is the father of Mary, the father-in-law of Joseph, and the grandfather of Jesus. Luke traces that pedigree back to the promise of the seed of the woman in the beginning, reckoned through the males as genealogies were reckoned. The greater number of names in Mary's line accounts for the difference in the generations listed by Matthew and Luke.
Matthew traces the royal and legal lineage through Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father, from David through Solomon and the kings in the reigning house. Because inheritance and kingship pass through the father and Jesus was regarded as Joseph's son, Jesus as Joseph's legal son is legally heir to the kingdom and throne of David. This establishes legal heirship rather than biological descent through Joseph, while Luke's genealogy traces Christ's human lineage through Mary. The line is traced through males in the reigning house from Abraham through David to Joseph, and it begins from Abraham because the promises came through Abraham.
Joseph's line through David's son Solomon differs from Mary's literal blood line through David's son Nathan, Solomon's brother. Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, while Heli was the father of Mary and grandfather of Jesus. Joseph is treated as son of Mary's father and as son of Heli because descent was reckoned through males, a son-in-law was counted as a son, and males rather than females were customarily named in genealogical lines. Under Jewish law Joseph was Jesus' legal father, so he is named as Jesus' father, while Jesus' fleshly descent came through Mary. Luke traces instead the literal blood descent from Adam to Mary, carrying that line back through Nathan.
The two lines from David on meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. Matthew 1:13 continues the royal line onward after that meeting point, placing Abiud, Eliakim, and Azor in succession after Zorobabel toward Joseph and Jesus. The verse belongs to Joseph's genealogy of Christ, which runs from David through Solomon as the kingly royal line traced through the males because inheritance came that way.
Messiah and King Identified
Matthew's list is a kingly royal line that marks Jesus as Son of David, rightful King and heir of Abraham, the true Messiah with claim to rulership and to David's throne. It underlies the Gospel's portrayal of Christ as king and stands as its witness to his Messiahship. The royal descent runs through the male line, with Joseph named as Jesus' legal father and ancestor, so that Jesus as his legal son legally receives the kingship.
The verse is one link in the fleshly ancestry traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Christ, establishing Jesus' identity as Messiah and promised Seed of Abraham. It shows his family relation to Joseph as lineal descendant of Abraham and David, through whom he has claim to all that belonged to Joseph and to the covenant promises of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. With Mary's line also uniting in Abraham, the two lines together make doubly sure he is that promised Seed.
Zorobabel begat Abiud, Abiud begat Eliakim, and Eliakim begat Azor, in the preserved line of descent and succession leading on toward Joseph and Jesus and to Christ's claim to Abraham's promised inheritance. Through that lineage the promised Deliverer came, preserved through generations despite efforts to destroy the family line, so that his earthly ancestry could be traced to David, Judah, Jacob, and Abraham. The careful preservation of Judah's genealogy matters because Christ came through that tribe.
He is thus shown as descended from Abraham through the chosen line of Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau, Judah, Jesse, and David, as direct descendant of Abraham through forty-two generations and as son of Abraham identifying the Messiah at the opening of the New Testament. Matthew's genealogy together with Luke's accounts establishes that his parents were Jews belonging to the family of David and the tribe of Judah, tracing his ancestry back to Abraham and presenting him as the perfect Jew. The preserved pedigree tracing his line from Abraham through David and Solomon toward his birth bears witness to the reliability of Scripture and to his identity as the promised Messiah, recording his ancestry and supporting the account of his birth as fulfilment of Old Testament gospel promises in public testimony to his Messiahship.
Covenant Promise Kept
The genealogy proves Jesus is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, for Matthew 1:13 is one link in the fleshly ancestry traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Christ, to establish His identity as Messiah and promised Seed of Abraham. He stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as lineal descendant of Abraham, joining with Mary's line that also unites in Abraham to make doubly sure He is that promised Seed. The family link from Abraham's promised seed was kept intact in the preserved genealogy of Abraham's line leading to Christ, providing the recorded pedigree that connects Christ to the promise. That preservation was necessary for Christ, the promised Seed, to be born in the land promised to Abraham.
God chose Israel because they were the seed of Abraham and set them apart from other nations so that through them He could fulfill the promise to Abraham that in his Seed, Christ, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The genealogical record is placed first in the New Testament to identify the Messiah as the son of Abraham. Israel was also a typical nation with a typical sanctuary and typical service whose yearly round was typical of the work of salvation including the work of the High Priest in heaven, so there could not be another such nation.
The verse belongs to the preserved genealogy of the tribe of Judah that traces the lineage of Jesus through both His mother's side and His father's side and proves He came as ruler through Judah. Judah was held together with its genealogical records kept intact until Jesus came, while the other tribes except Levi were scattered and their genealogies lost. In this preserved line Jesus appears as Shiloh to whom the gathering of the people belongs, and from His coming He becomes the center of the gathering of God's people. The genealogy tracing Christ's lineage from Abraham to Joseph establishes His descent as the promised Seed of Abraham before the account of His earthly life begins. By placing Abiud, Eliakim, and Azor in the earthly lineage through David and the kings, it makes David a type and prelude of Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
The genealogy supports the presentation of Christ and, through faith in Him, the believer's right to Abraham's promised blessing. It assures believers in Christ that the promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual seed. Natural descent from Abraham was privilege and opportunity, but it did not by itself guarantee heirship. Those who receive the promise through faith share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David. The genealogy was preserved to assure the world that God's promises and prophecies were fulfilled in the Messiah. The chosen family was set apart to preserve the truth and remove idolatry from its land, and the Levitical law helped unfold the plan of salvation and make it clear and memorable.
Human Ancestry Shared
Matthew 1:13 is part of the record of Jesus' human ancestry showing that he truly became a member of the human race, entering the human family by birth as an infant and sharing its sorrows and temptations while remaining without sin. As brother in the same family and partaker of flesh and blood, he knows human needs from experience and can sympathize with human weakness, and he shared humanity's inheritance of death. That record of earthly ancestors shows the effects of heredity in a human race weakened by four thousand years of sin, which Jesus accepted like every child of Adam so that he could share humanity's sorrows and temptations and give the example of a sinless life.
His descent was through human ancestors who shared the iniquities common to the race, entering a family line containing both the wicked and the righteous, and that descent was significant to his life in human flesh and its inherited liability to sin, showing he was born in the flesh in David's line and entered humanity to conquer sin for mankind. He came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners, taking the nature of man and being tempted in all points as humans are, yet living a perfect life in spite of his human nature and thereby showing that it is possible for human beings to live a holy life in the world. The genealogy includes a number of bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews.
It includes Ruth, a Moabitess, among its women, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles, while the other women named suggest his kinship with sinners and the inclusion of people of another race than the Jews. Christ has a pedigree showing he entered the world by birth into the human family as an infant and later died, which contrasts with Melchizedek as priest having no pedigree, no beginning of days, and no end of life, proving the Melchizedek of Genesis was not Christ but a distinct individual with Christ as another priest after the same order.
Matthew 1:13 is one preserved link in the royal line after Zerubbabel, naming Abiud then Eliakim then Azor onward toward Joseph and Jesus. It belongs to Joseph's legal pedigree through Solomon and the kings, while Luke traces Mary's blood line through Nathan. Together the lines show Jesus as Son of David, rightful King, heir of Abraham, and true Messiah with claim to David's throne. The unbroken descent proves Him heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, the promised Seed in whom all nations are blessed. It also shows He truly entered the human family by birth, partaking of flesh and blood with its inherited weakness yet without sin, to sympathize, to conquer sin, and to save sinners.
Words and Arrangement
The term rendered as begat denotes a man fathering a child, while the same Greek term can also denote a woman bringing forth or giving birth. Generation denotes the steps of family descent such as father, son, and grandson, and the opening chapter reckons forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ.
The list deliberately names selected ancestors rather than every generation, as is customary in biblical genealogies where a grandfather may be called father, in order to form three groups of fourteen. By that compression it joins Christ to the distant ancestors Abraham and David and divides Hebrew history into patriarchal, royal, and exilic phases. The omitted names were familiar from Israel's historical records, so the missing links do not make the lineage unreliable, nor should such genealogies automatically be taken as complete chronological lists.
The reckoning of forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ yields averages of about forty-five years overall, but more than sixty-four years from Abraham to David, about twenty-eight from David to the Babylonian captivity, and about forty-three from the captivity to Christ, so no fixed length for a generation is established. That total has been used to estimate roughly forty or more years to a generation, yet the verse itself defines no fixed length and the figure cannot be depended upon to fix chronology.
The line presents royal succession from David to Joseph rather than an unbroken father-to-son chain at every step, with names able to stand for descendants separated by several generations and with lines able to join or diverge through marriage. Some generations may be skipped, and Abiud stands in that royal line after Zerubbabel and before Eliakim on the way toward Joseph and Jesus. Together with the surrounding verses the list gives only a brief family record for the centuries between the Old and New Testaments, making the royal line of Jesus the relevant point rather than describing those centuries' events.
The verse is a simple historical record of real, literal progenitors joining Israel's history to earlier generations, not a fictitious allegory nor a text for fanciful spiritual meaning. Its place in the genealogy helps present Jesus as a real person in human history whose ancestry can be traced through Genesis to the beginning. Scripture preserves such original genealogical records as raw material for history with the flavor of contemporary authorship, set down each in its own time and place and left beside parallel accounts without editorial harmonizing, explanation, correction, weighing, or adjustment. Their rawness, incompleteness, redundancy, abruptness, and any apparent conflict remain in simplicity and integrity, displaying the artlessness of conscious truth and proving the documents to be original data on which systematic history must be founded rather than secondary critical conclusions or mythical imaginings.
Two Genealogies Compared
Matthew's list is Joseph's pedigree, tracing legal descent through the male line, while Luke's list traces Mary's lineage with Mary reckoned through her husband Heli. Matthew gives Joseph's genealogy and the legal pedigree through Joseph, distinct from Luke's genealogy of Mary, in which Heli is the father of Mary, the father-in-law of Joseph, and the grandfather of Jesus. Luke traces that pedigree back to the promise of the seed of the woman in the beginning, reckoned through the males as genealogies were reckoned. The greater number of names in Mary's line accounts for the difference in the generations listed by Matthew and Luke.
Matthew traces the royal and legal lineage through Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father, from David through Solomon and the kings in the reigning house. Because inheritance and kingship pass through the father and Jesus was regarded as Joseph's son, Jesus as Joseph's legal son is legally heir to the kingdom and throne of David. This establishes legal heirship rather than biological descent through Joseph, while Luke's genealogy traces Christ's human lineage through Mary. The line is traced through males in the reigning house from Abraham through David to Joseph, and it begins from Abraham because the promises came through Abraham.
Joseph's line through David's son Solomon differs from Mary's literal blood line through David's son Nathan, Solomon's brother. Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, while Heli was the father of Mary and grandfather of Jesus. Joseph is treated as son of Mary's father and as son of Heli because descent was reckoned through males, a son-in-law was counted as a son, and males rather than females were customarily named in genealogical lines. Under Jewish law Joseph was Jesus' legal father, so he is named as Jesus' father, while Jesus' fleshly descent came through Mary. Luke traces instead the literal blood descent from Adam to Mary, carrying that line back through Nathan.
The two lines from David on meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. Matthew 1:13 continues the royal line onward after that meeting point, placing Abiud, Eliakim, and Azor in succession after Zorobabel toward Joseph and Jesus. The verse belongs to Joseph's genealogy of Christ, which runs from David through Solomon as the kingly royal line traced through the males because inheritance came that way.
Messiah and King Identified
Matthew's list is a kingly royal line that marks Jesus as Son of David, rightful King and heir of Abraham, the true Messiah with claim to rulership and to David's throne. It underlies the Gospel's portrayal of Christ as king and stands as its witness to his Messiahship. The royal descent runs through the male line, with Joseph named as Jesus' legal father and ancestor, so that Jesus as his legal son legally receives the kingship.
The verse is one link in the fleshly ancestry traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Christ, establishing Jesus' identity as Messiah and promised Seed of Abraham. It shows his family relation to Joseph as lineal descendant of Abraham and David, through whom he has claim to all that belonged to Joseph and to the covenant promises of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. With Mary's line also uniting in Abraham, the two lines together make doubly sure he is that promised Seed.
Zorobabel begat Abiud, Abiud begat Eliakim, and Eliakim begat Azor, in the preserved line of descent and succession leading on toward Joseph and Jesus and to Christ's claim to Abraham's promised inheritance. Through that lineage the promised Deliverer came, preserved through generations despite efforts to destroy the family line, so that his earthly ancestry could be traced to David, Judah, Jacob, and Abraham. The careful preservation of Judah's genealogy matters because Christ came through that tribe.
He is thus shown as descended from Abraham through the chosen line of Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau, Judah, Jesse, and David, as direct descendant of Abraham through forty-two generations and as son of Abraham identifying the Messiah at the opening of the New Testament. Matthew's genealogy together with Luke's accounts establishes that his parents were Jews belonging to the family of David and the tribe of Judah, tracing his ancestry back to Abraham and presenting him as the perfect Jew. The preserved pedigree tracing his line from Abraham through David and Solomon toward his birth bears witness to the reliability of Scripture and to his identity as the promised Messiah, recording his ancestry and supporting the account of his birth as fulfilment of Old Testament gospel promises in public testimony to his Messiahship.
Covenant Promise Kept
The genealogy proves Jesus is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, for Matthew 1:13 is one link in the fleshly ancestry traced from Abraham through David to Joseph, the reputed father of Christ, to establish His identity as Messiah and promised Seed of Abraham. He stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as lineal descendant of Abraham, joining with Mary's line that also unites in Abraham to make doubly sure He is that promised Seed. The family link from Abraham's promised seed was kept intact in the preserved genealogy of Abraham's line leading to Christ, providing the recorded pedigree that connects Christ to the promise. That preservation was necessary for Christ, the promised Seed, to be born in the land promised to Abraham.
God chose Israel because they were the seed of Abraham and set them apart from other nations so that through them He could fulfill the promise to Abraham that in his Seed, Christ, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The genealogical record is placed first in the New Testament to identify the Messiah as the son of Abraham. Israel was also a typical nation with a typical sanctuary and typical service whose yearly round was typical of the work of salvation including the work of the High Priest in heaven, so there could not be another such nation.
The verse belongs to the preserved genealogy of the tribe of Judah that traces the lineage of Jesus through both His mother's side and His father's side and proves He came as ruler through Judah. Judah was held together with its genealogical records kept intact until Jesus came, while the other tribes except Levi were scattered and their genealogies lost. In this preserved line Jesus appears as Shiloh to whom the gathering of the people belongs, and from His coming He becomes the center of the gathering of God's people. The genealogy tracing Christ's lineage from Abraham to Joseph establishes His descent as the promised Seed of Abraham before the account of His earthly life begins. By placing Abiud, Eliakim, and Azor in the earthly lineage through David and the kings, it makes David a type and prelude of Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
The genealogy supports the presentation of Christ and, through faith in Him, the believer's right to Abraham's promised blessing. It assures believers in Christ that the promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual seed. Natural descent from Abraham was privilege and opportunity, but it did not by itself guarantee heirship. Those who receive the promise through faith share Abraham's inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David. The genealogy was preserved to assure the world that God's promises and prophecies were fulfilled in the Messiah. The chosen family was set apart to preserve the truth and remove idolatry from its land, and the Levitical law helped unfold the plan of salvation and make it clear and memorable.
Human Ancestry Shared
Matthew 1:13 is part of the record of Jesus' human ancestry showing that he truly became a member of the human race, entering the human family by birth as an infant and sharing its sorrows and temptations while remaining without sin. As brother in the same family and partaker of flesh and blood, he knows human needs from experience and can sympathize with human weakness, and he shared humanity's inheritance of death. That record of earthly ancestors shows the effects of heredity in a human race weakened by four thousand years of sin, which Jesus accepted like every child of Adam so that he could share humanity's sorrows and temptations and give the example of a sinless life.
His descent was through human ancestors who shared the iniquities common to the race, entering a family line containing both the wicked and the righteous, and that descent was significant to his life in human flesh and its inherited liability to sin, showing he was born in the flesh in David's line and entered humanity to conquer sin for mankind. He came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners, taking the nature of man and being tempted in all points as humans are, yet living a perfect life in spite of his human nature and thereby showing that it is possible for human beings to live a holy life in the world. The genealogy includes a number of bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews.
It includes Ruth, a Moabitess, among its women, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles, while the other women named suggest his kinship with sinners and the inclusion of people of another race than the Jews. Christ has a pedigree showing he entered the world by birth into the human family as an infant and later died, which contrasts with Melchizedek as priest having no pedigree, no beginning of days, and no end of life, proving the Melchizedek of Genesis was not Christ but a distinct individual with Christ as another priest after the same order.