And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud;
The verse names four successive links in the male line of Jesus' ancestry, tracing real descent from father to son within the line from Abraham to Jesus. It stands in the count of forty-two generations arranged in three groups of fourteen for the patriarchal, royal, and provincial phases, with ancestors deliberately selected and some omitted to serve that design. Matthew here gives the legal, royal descent through Joseph, Jesus' legal father under Jewish custom that reckoned pedigrees through males, while Luke gives the complementary blood descent through Mary. By this paternal kingly line from David through Solomon to Joseph, Jesus stands as Joseph's legal son and heir to the throne of David, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. That human ancestry shows He was truly made flesh of the human family, sharing its sorrows and temptations without sin so He can sympathize with weakness, and assures believers that Abraham's blessing and inheritance belong by faith to His spiritual seed as joint heirs with Christ.
Words and Historical Record
Matthew 1:14 records Azor, Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in succession in the male line of Jesus' genealogy. That genealogy traces Jesus through Joseph, His reputed and legal father, and presents Him as heir to the kingdom. It is the kingly, paternal line tracing Christ's kingship from David through Solomon, establishing His legal right to the kingship and His standing as rightful heir of Abraham. It belongs to the preserved line of promise through which the promised Deliverer came, supporting that Jesus descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, and David.
The Greek word for begetting in Matthew 1:2–16 is used of men in the sense of fathering or generating, while the same word can also describe women giving birth. The verse is one link tracing successive family relationships from Abraham to Jesus. It names real people in a literal line of descent, not figures in an allegory.
The verse belongs to the genealogical table with which the Gospel begins, a plain historical record of successive generations from an earlier dispensation, many of them unfamiliar names. It is to be received for its plain meaning rather than given a fanciful spiritual meaning. In this way it helps present Jesus as a real person who lived in human history.
For the centuries between the Old and New Testaments the genealogy gives only a brief family record, establishing the royal line rather than recounting the events of that period. The Gospel record leaves differences from other accounts without editorial explanation. Such unharmonized details and incompleteness reflect the original character of the records and their candid presentation as separate, firsthand memoirs rather than one reshaped uniform history.
Arrangement and Preservation
Matthew 1:14 stands within the forty-two generations reckoned from Abraham to Christ. The genealogy is ordered in three groups of fourteen, marking the patriarchal, the royal, and the provincial phases of Hebrew history. The selection is deliberate, choosing ancestors and omitting some generations to serve that design, which does not imply ignorance of those omitted.
The names trace royal inheritance rather than an unbroken father-to-son sequence at every step, for entries can stand for descendants several generations later and lines can converge through marriage. Those who held the commonly accepted explanation understood the first chapter's list as tracing Mary's lineage from Abraham to Christ, likewise omitting some generations to make three sections of fourteen. The generations give no fixed or dependable measure of a generation, for averages vary across the genealogy, including about forty-three years per generation from the Babylonian exile to Christ and about forty or more years when the forty-two generations are divided, while Genesis 15:13, 16 with its four generations in four hundred years has been used to figure one hundred years; God has given no definition and has not fixed its time, and generation also means race, people, nation, and the people living on earth at one time.
The verse belongs to the carefully preserved genealogy of Judah on the father's side, paired with Luke 3 on the mother's side; while the other tribes were scattered and their genealogies lost, the genealogy of Judah the ruler was kept and the tribe held together until Jesus came as Shiloh of the tribe of Judah, to whom the gathering of the people would be. It is the necessary link connecting Abraham's promised seed to Jesus Christ, preserved by God's protecting power despite Satan's efforts to destroy the promised seed, including the attempt through Herod to kill the infant Christ. God preserved it by choosing one family and planting them as a separate people when all nations had become corrupt, removing idolatry from their land to acquaint them with truth so the world might be assured that promises and prophecies were fulfilled in Messiah.
He has perfect right to choose His instruments, using flood, fire, tornado, earthquake, or other nations, and the overthrow of the Egyptians and the extermination of the Canaanite nations sunken in idolatry and sensuality was mercy to His people and to the race to unfold the doctrines and facts of Messiah's future kingdom, with the Levitical law showing God's wisdom in gradually developing the plan of salvation to make it plain to reason and impress it on the heart. The genealogy's careful record bears witness to the truth of God's word and to Jesus' place in the promised line.
Matthew and Luke Compared
Matthew gives the royal, legal descent of Jesus through Joseph, His reputed and legal father under Jewish law reckoned in the male line, while Luke gives the complementary literal blood descent through Mary from Adam. Matthew's list is Joseph's family line, the kingly line from David through Solomon traced through the males, through which Jesus is legally included in David's royal line. Luke's list traces the ancestral line of Mary, from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam.
By Jewish custom genealogical tables did not name women and reckoned pedigrees and inheritance through males, so Mary is not named and Joseph is named instead of Mary. Because Mary was Joseph's wife, Joseph was treated as the son of her father and Jesus was treated as Joseph's son. Joseph was Jesus' legal father though not His biological father, while Jesus' fleshly descent came through Mary.
Matthew's line runs from David through Solomon in the royal family through Rehoboam on to Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, showing Jesus entitled to the throne of Israel. Luke's line runs from David through Nathan, Solomon's brother, with Heli as Mary's father. In Luke Joseph is called the son of Heli because Heli was Mary's father and Joseph became his legal son by marriage to Mary, so Jesus was the supposed son of Joseph but in reality the maternal grandson of Heli. The greater number of names in Mary's line accounts for the difference in generations listed by Matthew and Luke.
The two lines meet in the course of time in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so that the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. Both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. Matthew therefore makes Jesus legally a son of David and heir to the kingdom, the kingdom belonging to Him by law through Joseph, while Luke makes Him literally a son of David according to the flesh in human descent from Adam through Mary. The two genealogies do not contradict each other, one tracing descent through Mary and the other through Joseph. In the commonly accepted explanation Matthew traces Joseph's family line, through whom Jesus is legally included in David's royal line; another proposed explanation treats both Matthew's and Luke's lists as Joseph's genealogies, with Matthew giving the royal line and Luke the private line.
Messiah, King and Heir
Matthew 1:14 is one link tracing Jesus' ancestry on the fleshly side from Abraham down through David to Joseph to establish His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. He stands as a direct descendant of Abraham in line with Hebrew law, descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, and David. His parents were Jews, and He belonged to the family of David and the tribe of Judah, presented as the perfect Jew with complete royal descent. Matthew gives Joseph's line as reputed father, while Luke 3:23-38 gives the complementary line of Mary from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam, so both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed.
The genealogy traces the paternal, kingly, royal male line from David through Solomon to Joseph, showing Jesus as Joseph's legal son. Because Jesus was regarded as Joseph's son, His reputed and legal father under Jewish reckoning, He was heir to the kingdom and to the throne of David and Israel. Rulership passed through the male line, and this legal descent through Joseph from Abraham through David's royal family establishes His legal right to the kingship and rightful claim to David's throne by law. Some generations are omitted to arrange three groups of fourteen, which does not deny the omitted generations.
Because Jesus stood in such family relation to Joseph as Abraham's lineal descendant and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, He had claim to all that belonged to Joseph. That claim includes Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world, and the preserved lineage records the legitimacy of Christ's succession. The genealogy thus connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Christ, presenting that birth as a landmark in the fulfillment of the Gospel promises made in the Old Testament. It is the preserved line of promise and necessary link through which the promised Deliverer came, preserved by God's protecting power despite Satan's efforts to destroy the promised seed including the attempt through Herod to kill the infant Christ.
Israel was set apart so that the descent of the Messiah as Abraham's descendant and the promise that all nations would be blessed through Christ, Abraham's Seed, could be shown. The genealogy tracing Christ's line from Abraham to Joseph His reputed father establishes His descent as the promised Seed, and the predicted signs of Messiahship converge in Him. Tracing lineage to Abraham also established an Israelite's citizenship and claim to the covenant blessings, with ancestors presented as real people in a literal line of descent rather than figures in allegory. The earthly pedigree tracing descent through kings back to David points to Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace, whose priestly service follows the earthly priesthood. Ruth, a Moabitess, is exceptionally included among the women in that genealogy tracing ancestry through David, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles.
Human Descent and Sympathy
The genealogy to which this verse belongs shows that Christ had a human ancestry and was born into the human family, made flesh and descended from humanity within an actual human line, unlike Melchizedek who had no birth into that family and no recorded pedigree. It names Azor, Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in the line leading to Him, placing Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in His human ancestry. By naming such human ancestors it shows that Jesus truly became a member of the human race, sharing its sorrows and temptations while remaining without sin.
Jesus accepted humanity with the inherited results shown in His earthly ancestors' history after four thousand years of sin. Born into a race whose ancestors were subject to humanity's iniquities, He entered human flesh to share human sorrows and temptations, conquer sin, give an example of a sinless life, and lift humanity back to God and righteousness. He did not refuse to be born of sinners in a line that includes many bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, including ancestors whose lives contained evil as well as good. He took the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are, yet lived a perfect life in spite of His human nature.
By taking part in human ties, troubles, duties, flesh and blood, and the inheritance of death, His human descent means He can sympathize with human weakness and needs through experience. People may therefore approach Him with confidence as both God and a brother. Human suffering is made easier to bear through His sharing in it, and there is hope in the face of the grave.
Assurance for Believers
The genealogy to which Matthew 1:14 belongs assures those who believe in Christ that Abraham's promises and blessing belong to his spiritual seed, presenting Christ as heir to that promised blessing. Descent from Abraham was a valuable privilege and opportunity, yet natural birth alone did not guarantee heirship. Through faith in Christ people share in the promises, sharing Abraham's inheritance of the world and becoming joint heirs with Christ to David's throne.
Jesus came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners in the line containing Azor, Sadoc, Achim and Eliud. That line includes many bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, and in it He took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are. Yet He lived a perfect life in spite of His human nature, showing that it is possible for human beings to live a holy life here in the world.
The verse names four successive links in the male line of Jesus' ancestry, tracing real descent from father to son within the line from Abraham to Jesus. It stands in the count of forty-two generations arranged in three groups of fourteen for the patriarchal, royal, and provincial phases, with ancestors deliberately selected and some omitted to serve that design. Matthew here gives the legal, royal descent through Joseph, Jesus' legal father under Jewish custom that reckoned pedigrees through males, while Luke gives the complementary blood descent through Mary. By this paternal kingly line from David through Solomon to Joseph, Jesus stands as Joseph's legal son and heir to the throne of David, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. That human ancestry shows He was truly made flesh of the human family, sharing its sorrows and temptations without sin so He can sympathize with weakness, and assures believers that Abraham's blessing and inheritance belong by faith to His spiritual seed as joint heirs with Christ.
Words and Historical Record
Matthew 1:14 records Azor, Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in succession in the male line of Jesus' genealogy. That genealogy traces Jesus through Joseph, His reputed and legal father, and presents Him as heir to the kingdom. It is the kingly, paternal line tracing Christ's kingship from David through Solomon, establishing His legal right to the kingship and His standing as rightful heir of Abraham. It belongs to the preserved line of promise through which the promised Deliverer came, supporting that Jesus descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, and David.
The Greek word for begetting in Matthew 1:2–16 is used of men in the sense of fathering or generating, while the same word can also describe women giving birth. The verse is one link tracing successive family relationships from Abraham to Jesus. It names real people in a literal line of descent, not figures in an allegory.
The verse belongs to the genealogical table with which the Gospel begins, a plain historical record of successive generations from an earlier dispensation, many of them unfamiliar names. It is to be received for its plain meaning rather than given a fanciful spiritual meaning. In this way it helps present Jesus as a real person who lived in human history.
For the centuries between the Old and New Testaments the genealogy gives only a brief family record, establishing the royal line rather than recounting the events of that period. The Gospel record leaves differences from other accounts without editorial explanation. Such unharmonized details and incompleteness reflect the original character of the records and their candid presentation as separate, firsthand memoirs rather than one reshaped uniform history.
Arrangement and Preservation
Matthew 1:14 stands within the forty-two generations reckoned from Abraham to Christ. The genealogy is ordered in three groups of fourteen, marking the patriarchal, the royal, and the provincial phases of Hebrew history. The selection is deliberate, choosing ancestors and omitting some generations to serve that design, which does not imply ignorance of those omitted.
The names trace royal inheritance rather than an unbroken father-to-son sequence at every step, for entries can stand for descendants several generations later and lines can converge through marriage. Those who held the commonly accepted explanation understood the first chapter's list as tracing Mary's lineage from Abraham to Christ, likewise omitting some generations to make three sections of fourteen. The generations give no fixed or dependable measure of a generation, for averages vary across the genealogy, including about forty-three years per generation from the Babylonian exile to Christ and about forty or more years when the forty-two generations are divided, while Genesis 15:13, 16 with its four generations in four hundred years has been used to figure one hundred years; God has given no definition and has not fixed its time, and generation also means race, people, nation, and the people living on earth at one time.
The verse belongs to the carefully preserved genealogy of Judah on the father's side, paired with Luke 3 on the mother's side; while the other tribes were scattered and their genealogies lost, the genealogy of Judah the ruler was kept and the tribe held together until Jesus came as Shiloh of the tribe of Judah, to whom the gathering of the people would be. It is the necessary link connecting Abraham's promised seed to Jesus Christ, preserved by God's protecting power despite Satan's efforts to destroy the promised seed, including the attempt through Herod to kill the infant Christ. God preserved it by choosing one family and planting them as a separate people when all nations had become corrupt, removing idolatry from their land to acquaint them with truth so the world might be assured that promises and prophecies were fulfilled in Messiah.
He has perfect right to choose His instruments, using flood, fire, tornado, earthquake, or other nations, and the overthrow of the Egyptians and the extermination of the Canaanite nations sunken in idolatry and sensuality was mercy to His people and to the race to unfold the doctrines and facts of Messiah's future kingdom, with the Levitical law showing God's wisdom in gradually developing the plan of salvation to make it plain to reason and impress it on the heart. The genealogy's careful record bears witness to the truth of God's word and to Jesus' place in the promised line.
Matthew and Luke Compared
Matthew gives the royal, legal descent of Jesus through Joseph, His reputed and legal father under Jewish law reckoned in the male line, while Luke gives the complementary literal blood descent through Mary from Adam. Matthew's list is Joseph's family line, the kingly line from David through Solomon traced through the males, through which Jesus is legally included in David's royal line. Luke's list traces the ancestral line of Mary, from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam.
By Jewish custom genealogical tables did not name women and reckoned pedigrees and inheritance through males, so Mary is not named and Joseph is named instead of Mary. Because Mary was Joseph's wife, Joseph was treated as the son of her father and Jesus was treated as Joseph's son. Joseph was Jesus' legal father though not His biological father, while Jesus' fleshly descent came through Mary.
Matthew's line runs from David through Solomon in the royal family through Rehoboam on to Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, showing Jesus entitled to the throne of Israel. Luke's line runs from David through Nathan, Solomon's brother, with Heli as Mary's father. In Luke Joseph is called the son of Heli because Heli was Mary's father and Joseph became his legal son by marriage to Mary, so Jesus was the supposed son of Joseph but in reality the maternal grandson of Heli. The greater number of names in Mary's line accounts for the difference in generations listed by Matthew and Luke.
The two lines meet in the course of time in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so that the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. Both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. Matthew therefore makes Jesus legally a son of David and heir to the kingdom, the kingdom belonging to Him by law through Joseph, while Luke makes Him literally a son of David according to the flesh in human descent from Adam through Mary. The two genealogies do not contradict each other, one tracing descent through Mary and the other through Joseph. In the commonly accepted explanation Matthew traces Joseph's family line, through whom Jesus is legally included in David's royal line; another proposed explanation treats both Matthew's and Luke's lists as Joseph's genealogies, with Matthew giving the royal line and Luke the private line.
Messiah, King and Heir
Matthew 1:14 is one link tracing Jesus' ancestry on the fleshly side from Abraham down through David to Joseph to establish His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. He stands as a direct descendant of Abraham in line with Hebrew law, descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, and David. His parents were Jews, and He belonged to the family of David and the tribe of Judah, presented as the perfect Jew with complete royal descent. Matthew gives Joseph's line as reputed father, while Luke 3:23-38 gives the complementary line of Mary from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam, so both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed.
The genealogy traces the paternal, kingly, royal male line from David through Solomon to Joseph, showing Jesus as Joseph's legal son. Because Jesus was regarded as Joseph's son, His reputed and legal father under Jewish reckoning, He was heir to the kingdom and to the throne of David and Israel. Rulership passed through the male line, and this legal descent through Joseph from Abraham through David's royal family establishes His legal right to the kingship and rightful claim to David's throne by law. Some generations are omitted to arrange three groups of fourteen, which does not deny the omitted generations.
Because Jesus stood in such family relation to Joseph as Abraham's lineal descendant and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, He had claim to all that belonged to Joseph. That claim includes Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world, and the preserved lineage records the legitimacy of Christ's succession. The genealogy thus connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Christ, presenting that birth as a landmark in the fulfillment of the Gospel promises made in the Old Testament. It is the preserved line of promise and necessary link through which the promised Deliverer came, preserved by God's protecting power despite Satan's efforts to destroy the promised seed including the attempt through Herod to kill the infant Christ.
Israel was set apart so that the descent of the Messiah as Abraham's descendant and the promise that all nations would be blessed through Christ, Abraham's Seed, could be shown. The genealogy tracing Christ's line from Abraham to Joseph His reputed father establishes His descent as the promised Seed, and the predicted signs of Messiahship converge in Him. Tracing lineage to Abraham also established an Israelite's citizenship and claim to the covenant blessings, with ancestors presented as real people in a literal line of descent rather than figures in allegory. The earthly pedigree tracing descent through kings back to David points to Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace, whose priestly service follows the earthly priesthood. Ruth, a Moabitess, is exceptionally included among the women in that genealogy tracing ancestry through David, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles.
Human Descent and Sympathy
The genealogy to which this verse belongs shows that Christ had a human ancestry and was born into the human family, made flesh and descended from humanity within an actual human line, unlike Melchizedek who had no birth into that family and no recorded pedigree. It names Azor, Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in the line leading to Him, placing Sadoc, Achim, and Eliud in His human ancestry. By naming such human ancestors it shows that Jesus truly became a member of the human race, sharing its sorrows and temptations while remaining without sin.
Jesus accepted humanity with the inherited results shown in His earthly ancestors' history after four thousand years of sin. Born into a race whose ancestors were subject to humanity's iniquities, He entered human flesh to share human sorrows and temptations, conquer sin, give an example of a sinless life, and lift humanity back to God and righteousness. He did not refuse to be born of sinners in a line that includes many bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, including ancestors whose lives contained evil as well as good. He took the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are, yet lived a perfect life in spite of His human nature.
By taking part in human ties, troubles, duties, flesh and blood, and the inheritance of death, His human descent means He can sympathize with human weakness and needs through experience. People may therefore approach Him with confidence as both God and a brother. Human suffering is made easier to bear through His sharing in it, and there is hope in the face of the grave.
Assurance for Believers
The genealogy to which Matthew 1:14 belongs assures those who believe in Christ that Abraham's promises and blessing belong to his spiritual seed, presenting Christ as heir to that promised blessing. Descent from Abraham was a valuable privilege and opportunity, yet natural birth alone did not guarantee heirship. Through faith in Christ people share in the promises, sharing Abraham's inheritance of the world and becoming joint heirs with Christ to David's throne.
Jesus came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners in the line containing Azor, Sadoc, Achim and Eliud. That line includes many bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, and in it He took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are. Yet He lived a perfect life in spite of His human nature, showing that it is possible for human beings to live a holy life here in the world.