Matthew 1:17, commentary and pictures

Matthew 1:17 sums up the family line in three sets of fourteen steps of descent, from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away to Babylon, and from the carrying away to Christ, making forty-two generations in all from Abraham to Christ. The list is chosen to make that orderly and memorable pattern, leaving out some links such as three kings between Joram and Uzziah, as Scripture sometimes calls a grandfather a father. It traces Jesus' rightful kingship through Joseph His legal father in the male line, running through David and Solomon and the royal house down to Joseph the husband of Mary. In doing so it proves Him the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of David in whom the covenant promises and blessing to all nations are fulfilled. At the same time the long line of real human ancestors, righteous and wicked and including Gentiles, shows the Son of God truly became flesh and blood as man's sinless brother, tempted as men are yet living a perfect life to conquer sin for us.

Structure and Wording

The verse gathers the family line into three sets of fourteen steps, from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon to Christ. Together the three fourteens make forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ. Here generation means a step in family descent, as father, son or grandson. The underlying Greek word genea means family, generation or descent, and as applied to a people it means the regular succession of descendants from father to son.

The three divisions mark successive phases of Hebrew history, the patriarchal, the royal, and the post-exile periods. They are bounded by experiences pivotal in Israel's history, including the promises to Abraham and to David and the Babylonian captivity. The grouping is deliberate and orderly, serving as a mnemonic arrangement to display those successive phases and God's purposes for Israel toward fulfillment. David stands as a dividing point, whose reign begins a new epoch in Jewish history. The carrying away to Babylon is a landmark that took the promised land from Abraham's descendants and removed the king from David's throne, exposing the failure of confidence in outward and human strength.

Dates and Generation Length

The three fourteens do not cover equal spans of time and do not fix how long a generation is. From Abraham to David generations averaged about seventy years, from David to the captivity about thirty-three years, and from the captivity to Christ about forty-three years. Those who reckoned the periods differently made them about sixty-four years from Abraham to David, twenty-eight years from David to the captivity, and forty-three years from the captivity to Christ, averaging a little over forty-five years across 1,898 years from Isaac to Christ. Others put the average for the three periods roughly between twenty-nine and forty-three years, showing generation does not mean a fixed number of years.

Scripture gives no fixed length for a generation, and no definition was designedly given to fix that time. People lived longer in the patriarchal and judges' periods than during the stormy years of the kings or the later period after the captivity. A generation was probably longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs than at the present time, and generation sometimes means race, people, nation, and sometimes the people living upon the earth at one time.

Averages of about forty or forty-two years drawn from the forty-two generations are speculation and cannot be depended on to settle how long a generation is. That figure gives no uniform measure by which to calculate a generation or to set the time of Christ's coming. Estimates drawn from other biblical accounts or from average human life likewise do not establish it.

The period from the first great captivity, dated 606 B.C., to Christ's birth, dated four years before the common era, was 602 years. Jerusalem's destruction and taking of many to Babylon occurred later in 586 B.C., and the seventy years of captivity began with the earlier captivity. Christ's birth about four years before A.D. 1 accords with His age when He began His ministry in A.D. 27 as given in Luke 3:23.

Compressed genealogies that omit links cannot be assumed complete when calculating chronology or elapsed time by treating every listed link as an unbroken sequence. The grouping into fourteens is deliberate and selective, leaving out familiar generations to preserve symmetry and to mark successive phases of history rather than to provide a complete family record.

Selective Yet Preserved Record

Matthew's list is selective rather than complete, omitting some links to form the orderly, symmetrical arrangement of three fourteens, since Scripture sometimes calls a grandfather a father. The grouping is deliberate, serving both as a mnemonic form and as a way to mark successive phases of Hebrew history, and its purpose is to show descent from Abraham and David toward fulfillment in Christ rather than to give an exhaustive family record. Matthew traces the royal line of succession rather than an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step, for the number of names is smaller than in Luke because some named kings stood several generations removed as grandchildren or great-grandchildren of earlier kings. Names may have been left out to complete the groups of fourteen.

To preserve the symmetry Matthew deliberately leaves out three familiar generations, Amariah or Amaziah, Joash, and Ahaziah, not through ignorance but to keep the planned pattern. The genealogy records forty-two generations in all, yet selects ancestors rather than listing every link. Because genealogies may omit intermediate links, such compressed lists cannot always establish elapsed time by treating every named link as a generation in unbroken sequence.

The lineage leading to Christ was preserved despite obstacles and efforts to destroy the people and family through whom the Deliverer was to come. God's protecting power kept the line intact, including through Herod's attempt to kill the infant Christ, and the record was necessary both as proof of that lineage and as a preface to Christ's gospel. God chose one family out of corrupt nations and planted them as a separate people cleared of idolatry, to acquaint them with truth and assure the world that the promises and prophecies were fulfilled in Messiah. In this way the preserved genealogy shows the legitimacy of Mary's Son's succession and His claim to inherit the material promise made to Abraham, which included the whole world. The overthrow of the Egyptians in mercy to His people and the extermination of the idolatrous nations of Canaan in mercy to the race unfolded the facts of Messiah's future kingdom, while the wisdom of the Levitical law gradually developed the plan of salvation to make it plain to reason and impress it on the heart.

The genealogy of Judah the ruler tribe was kept intact while the other tribes except Levi were scattered and their genealogies lost, so that Jesus' lineage can be traced on His father's side as well as His mother's side in Luke 3, proving His descent from Judah and showing that Judah was held together until Jesus came to become the center of the gathering of God's people. It is a plain historical account of literal people in a real line of descent, connecting Jesus' family history with Israel's actual history, with descent from Abraham serving an Israelite as proof of citizenship and claim to covenant blessings. Its place at the beginning of the Gospel gives Matthew an air of factual, businesslike honesty and presents Jesus as a real person in history, not a passage to be replaced with a fanciful or imposed spiritual meaning. The generations it traces can be verified only by the record in Genesis traced back to the beginning.

Royal Descent Through Joseph

Matthew traces the legal descent of Jesus through Joseph, who was His reputed and legal father though not His literal father, because Jewish descent and the right of rulership and kingship were reckoned through the male line. As Joseph's regarded son Jesus was heir to David's throne, and Joseph being His legal father gives Christ legal receipt of the kingship through him. Under Jewish law Mary being Joseph's wife allowed Joseph to be reckoned as son of her father and Jesus as Joseph's son.

The line runs from Abraham through David and Solomon and the royal house through Rehoboam down to Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, establishing Jesus as rightful King and Heir of Abraham and of David's throne. Matthew's list is presented as the royal line of inheritance from David to Joseph, not as an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step, since the number of names is smaller because some kings in the succession were grandchildren or great-grandchildren of earlier kings. His birth in Bethlehem, David's city, during Herod's reign as King of the Jews and His identification as King of the Jews fits this royal presentation. It traces His descent from Abraham through David's royal family to establish His claim as king and proves He was entitled to the throne of Israel.

Matthew begins with Abraham rather than tracing the ancestry back to Adam. The genealogy traces His descent through David and Judah, showing His parents were Jews. Reaching back only to Abraham, it presents Him as the perfect Jew and son of Abraham.

Matthew's genealogy does not contradict Luke's, for Matthew gives Joseph's legal pedigree while Luke gives Mary's fleshly, literal blood descent. Luke's line is Mary's ancestral line through Heli, Mary's father and Joseph's father-in-law, reckoned under her husband Joseph's name as son of Heli, with Jesus called only the supposed son of Joseph but in reality the maternal grandson of Heli. Jesus stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as lineal descendant of Abraham, and in the more widely accepted explanation He belongs to David's royal family legally through marriage into Joseph's line and by descent through Mary. Jacob may be another name for Joseph, as held by those who would resolve the difference of the fathers' names in that way. One explanation treats both genealogies as Joseph's legal genealogies, with Matthew giving the royal line.

Luke's line runs from Heli back through David by Nathan on Mary's side, and through Abraham to Adam, inverting Matthew's descending order from Abraham through Solomon down to Joseph. It contains more names, accounting for the difference between the numbers of generations in 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, making doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed of that patriarch.

Matthew's account of Christ's birth stands alongside the other Gospel accounts without an editorial explanation to harmonize their differences.

Promise and Covenant Fulfillment

The three fourteens mark stages in the unfolding of the promise of the Seed, from Abraham through David and the exile to the first advent, tracing God's purposes for Israel toward fulfillment in Christ as the promised Seed of Abraham, the Branch from Jesse, and King of kings. The carrying away to Babylon stands as a landmark in that development, taking the promised land from Abraham's descendants and removing the king from David's throne to expose the failure of confidence in outward and human strength and to call the people back to the faith of Abraham and David in God's word and promise.

The genealogy establishes Jesus' Messiahship and ancestral pedigree, proving Him heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David and identifying Him as the Messiah in whom the promises and prophecies and the blessing to all nations are fulfilled. Matthew begins with Abraham and follows the line down through David to Joseph, the reputed father, so that Jesus stands in such family relation to Joseph as to have claim to all that belonged to him as lineal descendant of Abraham, while Luke inverts the order and traces Mary's line from Heli her father back through David and Abraham to Adam, calling Jesus only the supposed son of Joseph but in reality the maternal grandson of Heli, so both lines unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. God preserved this pedigree by choosing one family out of corrupt nations and planting them as a separate people cleared of idolatry to acquaint them with truth, unfolding in mercy the overthrow of the Egyptians, the extermination of the idolatrous nations of Canaan, and the wisdom of the Levitical law as gradual development of the great plan of salvation and of Messiah's future kingdom, so the world might be assured the promises were fulfilled in Him. His birth is thus a landmark in the fulfillment of the Old Testament gospel promises.

Descent from Abraham was a valuable privilege and opportunity, and an Israelite's descent proved citizenship in the nation and claim to the blessings of the covenants, connecting Jesus' family history with Israel's actual history through literal people in a real line. Natural birth alone did not guarantee heirship, for the promises belong to his spiritual seed, and those who did not inherit by birth share in them through faith. Through faith in Christ believers share Abraham's blessing and inheritance of the world and are joint heirs with Christ to the throne of David, with right through the chapter's genealogy to that promised blessing. The record preserves the lineage leading to Christ despite obstacles, showing the legitimacy of Mary's Son's succession and His claim to inherit the material promise made to Abraham, which included the whole world.

Only forty-two generations passed from Abraham to Christ, a small part of the thousand generations the everlasting covenant was to last, proving the covenant was confirmed in Christ and not abolished at the cross and still continues for believers today. The forty-two generations cover 2,056 years, and the promise of covenant mercy to a thousand generations of commandment-keepers was given six hundred years after Abraham's birth. Allowing twenty-five years for a generation this side of Christ gives eighty generations for nearly two thousand years, making 122 generations from Abraham to the present, leaving at least 878 generations in which the commandments including the seventh-day Sabbath remain binding, the thousand generations being another expression for eternity, so that as surely as the earth revolves each successive seventh day remains under divine appointment for rest and worship. Counted with Genesis 11 and Luke 3:23-38 by the Bible rule of father-to-son generations, six thousand years from creation give fewer than two hundred such generations, so a thousand generations requires twenty-four thousand years yet future, and since more than a thousand generations are meant the keeping of God's commandments is perpetuated from generation to generation without end.

Those who held that the three divisions ending at Christ prove the Sabbath as a sign between God and the children of Israel throughout their generations lasted only until John or until Christ and then perished appeal to the closing of the fourteens at Christ. By contrast, the verse gives the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, not the length of the generations of the children of Israel, and Jesus Christ and the children of Israel are not synonymous terms. Generation as applied to a people means the regular succession of descendants from father to son, and Israel's generations did not cease with Christ's birth or at the cross, since Jews have continued to be born. Even if it were admitted that the generations of the Jews in a scriptural sense ceased at the cross, the Sabbath having been a sign to them throughout their generations would still not prove that the Sabbath itself then ceased or could not be a sign between God and others who afterward become His worshipers.

David's place at the head of the earthly priesthood through the kings points forward to Christ and His heavenly service. Christ's earthly pedigree is traced back to David through the kings, while His maternal line also traces back to David through priests.

Humanity and Present Application

The tracing of generations from Abraham to Christ shows that the Son of God truly entered the human family by birth and became part of its history reaching back to the beginning. As a human being He shared flesh and blood and experienced birth and death. In that descent He became a brother to mankind, sharing its sorrows and temptations while remaining without sin, which assures people of His sympathy and understanding of their needs. This stands in contrast to Melchizedek, who has no pedigree, no beginning of days as an infant and no end of life, and the fact that Christ has a distinctly traced ancestry from Adam through the human family proves that Christ and Melchizedek are distinct individuals, with Christ as another priest after the same order.

The line through David, Abraham and Adam includes both wicked and righteous ancestors, some who were sinful and some who were not Jewish. Their recorded wrongs illustrate the burden of human heredity that Christ bore and faced in temptation by being born of a woman. Among them is Ruth the Moabitess, one of four women named in the genealogy, whose place in David's ancestry put a Moabite woman in the royal line leading to Christ. Her inclusion points to Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles, while the other three women point to His kinship with sinners. He did not refuse to be born into a human family marked by sin, but took human nature and was tempted as humans are, yet lived a perfect life.

He took human flesh in order to conquer sin for us, being descended from David through ancestors subject to the sins common to humanity. By taking that nature and living a perfect life under temptation He showed that people can live holy lives in this world. The long royal record traced from Abraham through David and Solomon to Jesus' birth bears witness to the truth of God's Word and establishes a pedigree worthy of consideration.