Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;
Matthew 1:2 begins the fleshly ancestry of Jesus with Abraham begetting Isaac, Isaac begetting Jacob, and Jacob begetting Judah and his brothers, continuing through David to Joseph. It stands in Matthew's genealogy through Joseph, the reputed and legal father of Jesus under Jewish law, distinct from Luke's literal blood line through Mary. The line proves Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. It presents Him as the rightful King and heir of Abraham and David, legally inheriting the kingship and David's throne through Joseph. As part of that genealogy it shows He had real human ancestors and belonged to the same human family as those He came to save, taking flesh and blood and sharing humanity's sorrows and temptations without sin.
Language and Literary Arrangement
The word for begetting in the verse, when used of men, means to beget or generate. The word generation in this genealogy means steps in family descent such as father, son, and grandson, shown in the human genealogy of Christ from Abraham to the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-16. That genealogy from Abraham to Christ is arranged in three groups of fourteen generations: from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon to Christ. The threefold arrangement portrays the patriarchal, royal, and provincial phases of Hebrew history.
The list is selective and omits some generations to form that design, serving the design rather than showing ignorance of the historical record. Father can mean grandfather and later descendants can be called children, so its names do not necessarily mark an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step but record royal succession and the royal line of inheritance leading to Joseph. The names are to be received as plain history of literal people, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, not given a fanciful or spiritualized meaning. The detailed list of Jewish names may at first seem unfamiliar and unprofitable or less directly spiritual than an account of Christ's character and mercy, but its genealogical detail tracing the line through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons is a meaningful part of Scripture and not material to be dismissed or edited out.
The record is preserved as an original document with the flavor of contemporary authorship, raw material for history rather than history digested and assimilated into a uniform whole. It is spread before readers with perfect simplicity and guileless confidence, without editorial explanation, weighing, alteration, or correction to bring it into harmony with other accounts, and its differences are left visible. This shows the artlessness of conscious truth and a sublime consciousness of integrity rather than ignorance, and its value is very high in showing the real nature and character of the materials, proving them to be the original data on which all systematic history must be founded and not secondary formations or mythical imaginings. The Gospels are memoirs set down by different authors at different times and places, abrupt, fragmentary, raw, incomplete and redundant, assuming much that is not said and leaving much unsaid, not fitted to each other or adjusted to any system or theory, so that discrepancies in such a mass of materials are inevitable. Objections and apparent discrepancies in the Gospel genealogies have long been raised and were already discussed by early Christian writers.
The genealogy counts forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ, each reckoned from father to son, beginning with Isaac as the next generation after Abraham. The forty-two generations do not establish a fixed length for a generation, because their lengths are not uniform: the fourteen generations from Abraham to David cover about 898 years, while the full period from Abraham to Christ is about 1,898 years. Some reckon about forty or more years to each generation from the forty-two, figuring a generation is somewhere in the vicinity of forty years, but that reckoning cannot be depended on to fix the length of a generation and God has given no definition of it nor designed to fix that time. Scripture gives no fixed number of years for a generation. A generation was probably longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs and just after the Flood than at present; sometimes generation means race, people, nation, or the people living on the earth at one time. Counted with the genealogies in Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the father-to-son generations show that six thousand years from creation amount to fewer than two hundred generations.
Two Genealogical Lines Compared
Matthew's list containing this verse is Joseph's genealogy, tracing the line through Joseph as the reputed and legal father of Jesus under Jewish law, distinct from Luke's genealogy through Mary. It begins with Abraham and runs through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, following the male line and reckoning descent through the males to establish Joseph as Jesus' legal father and legal heir. Joseph was not the literal father but the legal father, and because Mary was his wife Jesus was counted in law as Joseph's child and posterity. Unlike Luke, Matthew does not trace back to Adam but begins with Abraham and shows Jesus as Joseph's reputed son and legal heir to David's throne.
Matthew gives Christ's kingly royal line traced through the males from David through Solomon to Joseph, since genealogies named the males because inheritance came that way, while Luke gives the literal blood line from David through Nathan to Mary through Heli. This royal succession through David, Solomon, Rehoboam and the rest shows Jesus entitled in law to the throne of Israel as Joseph's child, distinct from the literal blood descent traced in Luke from Adam to Mary. The names do not necessarily mark an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step but record royal succession establishing His claim to David's throne as Joseph's reputed son.
In law Jesus stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have legal claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham, while His fleshly descent came through Mary. Because Mary was Joseph's wife, Joseph was treated as the son of her father and Jesus as Joseph's son, so that He was counted as Joseph's posterity under Jewish law. Luke's genealogy of Mary joins Matthew's in Abraham, making doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed of that patriarch and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. The two lines meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so that the blood of Solomon as well as the blood of Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary.
The difference in the number of generations reflects the different lines traced, Matthew giving Joseph's line from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, and Luke giving Mary's line. The two genealogies have been explained in competing ways: one view treats Matthew's list as Joseph's royal genealogy and Luke's as Joseph's private genealogy, with Mary and Joseph related as first cousins; another treats Matthew's as Joseph's and Luke's as Mary's, under which Jesus is legally connected to David's royal line through Joseph and naturally connected through Mary, who is also of David's royal family, with Heli identified as Mary's father. Alternatively, Heli may have been another name for Joseph, so that the genealogies do not contradict each other.
Messiah's Descent and Kingship
Matthew 1:2 opens the record of Jesus' ancestry on the fleshly side with Abraham and carries it through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, then onward through David to Joseph. It names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as successive links and then names Judah and his brothers as the sons of Jacob, showing an unbroken progress of the promise through Abraham's descendants. As part of Matthew's account it follows the male line and establishes Joseph as the legal father of Jesus, placing Jesus in the line of Abraham and the royal family of David. Through that line Jesus stands as a direct descendant of Abraham and the promised Seed, and His lineage could be traced literally and legally back through Judah, Jacob and Abraham because the promised Seed was preserved through this family despite attempts to destroy it.
Among Abraham's sons Isaac alone is recognized as the promised seed, the son God had promised Abraham and the heir of his family's inheritance, and the genealogy preserves that link needed to connect Abraham's seed to Christ. The ancestry therefore runs from Abraham through Isaac rather than Ishmael and through Jacob rather than Esau, and among Jacob's twelve sons the line of the Messiah comes through Judah. The list proves Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham and 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. Luke's genealogy of Mary joins Matthew's in Abraham, making it doubly sure that Christ is the promised Seed of that patriarch.
The genealogy presents Jesus as the rightful King and heir of Abraham, beginning with Abraham and not tracing back to Adam, and tracing the royal lineage through Abraham and David to Joseph. It is the kingly royal line traced through the males from David through Solomon, Rehoboam and the rest to Joseph, because inheritance came that way, distinct from the literal blood descent traced in Luke from Adam to Mary through Nathan and Heli. In law Jesus was counted as the child of Joseph, His reputed son, so He legally inherits the kingship through him and is entitled to the throne of Israel and to David's throne, to which the throne of David belongs. That right to the kingdom includes the everlasting kingdom He will take when He comes again, and His connection to Abraham reflects the promises given through Abraham.
The genealogy thus establishes His identity as the promised Son of David and true Messiah, showing the lineage through which the Messiah came and guarding the identity of His Messiahship against doubt. It forms part of the scriptural record that bears witness to Jesus, and His descent could be established while Judah remained a distinct tribe with preserved genealogies, which served their purpose in identifying the Messiah and were lost after His coming. It presents the Gospel as a factual account of a real person who lived in the world, connecting Jesus with God's earlier revelations and promises, with its names forming links in the evidence that God keeps His word. It traces His earthly lineage through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah, showing His descent from Judah and thus His Jewish ancestry, for His parents were Jews of the family of David and the tribe of Judah, presenting Him as the perfect Jew.
Israelite descent from Abraham served as proof of national citizenship and a claim to the covenant blessings, treating Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah as literal people and the genealogy as real history, and Matthew traces Jesus' lineage to Abraham in that setting. Its sequence of human generations from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob affirms descent through the biblical patriarchs rather than from animals, in contrast to an imagined evolutionary ancestry.
Covenant Promise and Preservation
Matthew 1:2 stands in the genealogy beginning with Abraham to show that the promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not automatically to everyone descended from him by natural birth. Natural descent was privilege and opportunity, but did not itself guarantee heirship, while those who receive the promises by faith share Abraham's inheritance of the world and Christ's inheritance of David's throne. The verse thus contributes to identifying Christ with Abraham and the promised blessing given through Abraham, as proof that believers receive that blessing through faith in Christ.
The succession it names from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob shows the continuity of God's promises and the preservation of the line leading to the Son of Mary. It establishes Jesus' legitimate succession and claim to inherit the material promise made to Abraham, a promise that includes the whole world. His birth stands as a landmark in the fulfillment of the Old Testament gospel promises, and the genealogy preserves the line through which God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled.
Israel was chosen as Abraham's people and set apart so that God's promise through Abraham's Seed, Christ, could bring blessing to all nations and so the Messiah's descent could be identified. God set apart a family as a distinct people, removed idolatry from their land, and used the Levitical law to develop the plan of salvation and make it clear to understanding and deeply felt in the heart. The line from Abraham onward is traced through Genesis and cannot be verified without that book, which also records the everlasting covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while belonging to Christ makes one Abraham's seed and heir according to the promise in Galatians 3:29.
The promised Seed was preserved through this family line despite attempts to destroy it, and Jesus' lineage could be traced literally and legally back through Judah, Jacob, and Abraham. While the other tribes were scattered and their genealogies lost, the genealogy of Judah was held together and preserved until Jesus came, and the careful recording of Judah's line shows the tribe through which Christ came. His descent from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to Judah proves that the scepter and lawgiver remained with Judah till Shiloh, Christ, came, to whom the gathering of God's people now belongs. Those genealogies served their purpose in identifying the Messiah and were lost after His coming. The genealogy shows God's purposes for Israel reaching fulfillment in the promised Seed of Abraham and the royal line of Judah, with David, who belonged to Judah, as a type and prelude of Jesus, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
Human Nature and Saving Sympathy
Matthew 1:2 belongs to the record of Christ's human pedigree, tracing His ancestry through the human family and showing that He had real human ancestors and belonged to the same human family as those He came to save, entering that family by birth as an infant, unlike Melchizedek. His lineage therefore confirms that He truly shared human life, sorrows, and temptations, though He did not sin. Because He experienced human needs and suffering, He can sympathize with human weakness, and by taking flesh and blood and sharing humanity's inheritance of death He makes troubles easier to bear and gives confidence that He understands the salvation people need.
This ancestry shows the human heredity Jesus accepted, the weakened condition of the race after four thousand years of sin. He entered the human family with its inherited liability to sin, and His descent through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in a line containing both the wicked and the good was therefore significant to His temptations and life in the flesh. His descent according to the flesh through human ancestors subject to the iniquities common to humanity means He entered human nature to conquer sin for humanity, while retaining His divine connection and power. He shared humanity's sorrows and temptations while living a sinless life.
Beginning with Abraham begetting Isaac and Isaac begetting Jacob and Jacob begetting Judas and his brethren, the list includes sinners as ancestors of Christ, including a number of bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, because Christ came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners. It means Jesus Christ took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as human beings are, yet 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 genealogy also exceptionally includes Ruth among Christ's ancestors, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles as well as with sinners represented by the other women named in the genealogy. Ruth came into this line through marriage to a kinsman of Naomi after returning from Moab to Bethlehem, becoming the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David.
Matthew 1:2 begins the fleshly ancestry of Jesus with Abraham begetting Isaac, Isaac begetting Jacob, and Jacob begetting Judah and his brothers, continuing through David to Joseph. It stands in Matthew's genealogy through Joseph, the reputed and legal father of Jesus under Jewish law, distinct from Luke's literal blood line through Mary. The line proves Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. It presents Him as the rightful King and heir of Abraham and David, legally inheriting the kingship and David's throne through Joseph. As part of that genealogy it shows He had real human ancestors and belonged to the same human family as those He came to save, taking flesh and blood and sharing humanity's sorrows and temptations without sin.
Language and Literary Arrangement
The word for begetting in the verse, when used of men, means to beget or generate. The word generation in this genealogy means steps in family descent such as father, son, and grandson, shown in the human genealogy of Christ from Abraham to the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-16. That genealogy from Abraham to Christ is arranged in three groups of fourteen generations: from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon to Christ. The threefold arrangement portrays the patriarchal, royal, and provincial phases of Hebrew history.
The list is selective and omits some generations to form that design, serving the design rather than showing ignorance of the historical record. Father can mean grandfather and later descendants can be called children, so its names do not necessarily mark an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step but record royal succession and the royal line of inheritance leading to Joseph. The names are to be received as plain history of literal people, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, not given a fanciful or spiritualized meaning. The detailed list of Jewish names may at first seem unfamiliar and unprofitable or less directly spiritual than an account of Christ's character and mercy, but its genealogical detail tracing the line through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons is a meaningful part of Scripture and not material to be dismissed or edited out.
The record is preserved as an original document with the flavor of contemporary authorship, raw material for history rather than history digested and assimilated into a uniform whole. It is spread before readers with perfect simplicity and guileless confidence, without editorial explanation, weighing, alteration, or correction to bring it into harmony with other accounts, and its differences are left visible. This shows the artlessness of conscious truth and a sublime consciousness of integrity rather than ignorance, and its value is very high in showing the real nature and character of the materials, proving them to be the original data on which all systematic history must be founded and not secondary formations or mythical imaginings. The Gospels are memoirs set down by different authors at different times and places, abrupt, fragmentary, raw, incomplete and redundant, assuming much that is not said and leaving much unsaid, not fitted to each other or adjusted to any system or theory, so that discrepancies in such a mass of materials are inevitable. Objections and apparent discrepancies in the Gospel genealogies have long been raised and were already discussed by early Christian writers.
The genealogy counts forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ, each reckoned from father to son, beginning with Isaac as the next generation after Abraham. The forty-two generations do not establish a fixed length for a generation, because their lengths are not uniform: the fourteen generations from Abraham to David cover about 898 years, while the full period from Abraham to Christ is about 1,898 years. Some reckon about forty or more years to each generation from the forty-two, figuring a generation is somewhere in the vicinity of forty years, but that reckoning cannot be depended on to fix the length of a generation and God has given no definition of it nor designed to fix that time. Scripture gives no fixed number of years for a generation. A generation was probably longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs and just after the Flood than at present; sometimes generation means race, people, nation, or the people living on the earth at one time. Counted with the genealogies in Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the father-to-son generations show that six thousand years from creation amount to fewer than two hundred generations.
Two Genealogical Lines Compared
Matthew's list containing this verse is Joseph's genealogy, tracing the line through Joseph as the reputed and legal father of Jesus under Jewish law, distinct from Luke's genealogy through Mary. It begins with Abraham and runs through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, following the male line and reckoning descent through the males to establish Joseph as Jesus' legal father and legal heir. Joseph was not the literal father but the legal father, and because Mary was his wife Jesus was counted in law as Joseph's child and posterity. Unlike Luke, Matthew does not trace back to Adam but begins with Abraham and shows Jesus as Joseph's reputed son and legal heir to David's throne.
Matthew gives Christ's kingly royal line traced through the males from David through Solomon to Joseph, since genealogies named the males because inheritance came that way, while Luke gives the literal blood line from David through Nathan to Mary through Heli. This royal succession through David, Solomon, Rehoboam and the rest shows Jesus entitled in law to the throne of Israel as Joseph's child, distinct from the literal blood descent traced in Luke from Adam to Mary. The names do not necessarily mark an unbroken father-to-son descent at every step but record royal succession establishing His claim to David's throne as Joseph's reputed son.
In law Jesus stood in such family relation to Joseph as to have legal claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham, while His fleshly descent came through Mary. Because Mary was Joseph's wife, Joseph was treated as the son of her father and Jesus as Joseph's son, so that He was counted as Joseph's posterity under Jewish law. Luke's genealogy of Mary joins Matthew's in Abraham, making doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed of that patriarch and heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. The two lines meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel, so that the blood of Solomon as well as the blood of Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary.
The difference in the number of generations reflects the different lines traced, Matthew giving Joseph's line from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, and Luke giving Mary's line. The two genealogies have been explained in competing ways: one view treats Matthew's list as Joseph's royal genealogy and Luke's as Joseph's private genealogy, with Mary and Joseph related as first cousins; another treats Matthew's as Joseph's and Luke's as Mary's, under which Jesus is legally connected to David's royal line through Joseph and naturally connected through Mary, who is also of David's royal family, with Heli identified as Mary's father. Alternatively, Heli may have been another name for Joseph, so that the genealogies do not contradict each other.
Messiah's Descent and Kingship
Matthew 1:2 opens the record of Jesus' ancestry on the fleshly side with Abraham and carries it through Isaac and Jacob to Judah and his brothers, then onward through David to Joseph. It names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as successive links and then names Judah and his brothers as the sons of Jacob, showing an unbroken progress of the promise through Abraham's descendants. As part of Matthew's account it follows the male line and establishes Joseph as the legal father of Jesus, placing Jesus in the line of Abraham and the royal family of David. Through that line Jesus stands as a direct descendant of Abraham and the promised Seed, and His lineage could be traced literally and legally back through Judah, Jacob and Abraham because the promised Seed was preserved through this family despite attempts to destroy it.
Among Abraham's sons Isaac alone is recognized as the promised seed, the son God had promised Abraham and the heir of his family's inheritance, and the genealogy preserves that link needed to connect Abraham's seed to Christ. The ancestry therefore runs from Abraham through Isaac rather than Ishmael and through Jacob rather than Esau, and among Jacob's twelve sons the line of the Messiah comes through Judah. The list proves Jesus is the promised Seed of Abraham and 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. Luke's genealogy of Mary joins Matthew's in Abraham, making it doubly sure that Christ is the promised Seed of that patriarch.
The genealogy presents Jesus as the rightful King and heir of Abraham, beginning with Abraham and not tracing back to Adam, and tracing the royal lineage through Abraham and David to Joseph. It is the kingly royal line traced through the males from David through Solomon, Rehoboam and the rest to Joseph, because inheritance came that way, distinct from the literal blood descent traced in Luke from Adam to Mary through Nathan and Heli. In law Jesus was counted as the child of Joseph, His reputed son, so He legally inherits the kingship through him and is entitled to the throne of Israel and to David's throne, to which the throne of David belongs. That right to the kingdom includes the everlasting kingdom He will take when He comes again, and His connection to Abraham reflects the promises given through Abraham.
The genealogy thus establishes His identity as the promised Son of David and true Messiah, showing the lineage through which the Messiah came and guarding the identity of His Messiahship against doubt. It forms part of the scriptural record that bears witness to Jesus, and His descent could be established while Judah remained a distinct tribe with preserved genealogies, which served their purpose in identifying the Messiah and were lost after His coming. It presents the Gospel as a factual account of a real person who lived in the world, connecting Jesus with God's earlier revelations and promises, with its names forming links in the evidence that God keeps His word. It traces His earthly lineage through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah, showing His descent from Judah and thus His Jewish ancestry, for His parents were Jews of the family of David and the tribe of Judah, presenting Him as the perfect Jew.
Israelite descent from Abraham served as proof of national citizenship and a claim to the covenant blessings, treating Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah as literal people and the genealogy as real history, and Matthew traces Jesus' lineage to Abraham in that setting. Its sequence of human generations from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob affirms descent through the biblical patriarchs rather than from animals, in contrast to an imagined evolutionary ancestry.
Covenant Promise and Preservation
Matthew 1:2 stands in the genealogy beginning with Abraham to show that the promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not automatically to everyone descended from him by natural birth. Natural descent was privilege and opportunity, but did not itself guarantee heirship, while those who receive the promises by faith share Abraham's inheritance of the world and Christ's inheritance of David's throne. The verse thus contributes to identifying Christ with Abraham and the promised blessing given through Abraham, as proof that believers receive that blessing through faith in Christ.
The succession it names from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob shows the continuity of God's promises and the preservation of the line leading to the Son of Mary. It establishes Jesus' legitimate succession and claim to inherit the material promise made to Abraham, a promise that includes the whole world. His birth stands as a landmark in the fulfillment of the Old Testament gospel promises, and the genealogy preserves the line through which God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled.
Israel was chosen as Abraham's people and set apart so that God's promise through Abraham's Seed, Christ, could bring blessing to all nations and so the Messiah's descent could be identified. God set apart a family as a distinct people, removed idolatry from their land, and used the Levitical law to develop the plan of salvation and make it clear to understanding and deeply felt in the heart. The line from Abraham onward is traced through Genesis and cannot be verified without that book, which also records the everlasting covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while belonging to Christ makes one Abraham's seed and heir according to the promise in Galatians 3:29.
The promised Seed was preserved through this family line despite attempts to destroy it, and Jesus' lineage could be traced literally and legally back through Judah, Jacob, and Abraham. While the other tribes were scattered and their genealogies lost, the genealogy of Judah was held together and preserved until Jesus came, and the careful recording of Judah's line shows the tribe through which Christ came. His descent from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to Judah proves that the scepter and lawgiver remained with Judah till Shiloh, Christ, came, to whom the gathering of God's people now belongs. Those genealogies served their purpose in identifying the Messiah and were lost after His coming. The genealogy shows God's purposes for Israel reaching fulfillment in the promised Seed of Abraham and the royal line of Judah, with David, who belonged to Judah, as a type and prelude of Jesus, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
Human Nature and Saving Sympathy
Matthew 1:2 belongs to the record of Christ's human pedigree, tracing His ancestry through the human family and showing that He had real human ancestors and belonged to the same human family as those He came to save, entering that family by birth as an infant, unlike Melchizedek. His lineage therefore confirms that He truly shared human life, sorrows, and temptations, though He did not sin. Because He experienced human needs and suffering, He can sympathize with human weakness, and by taking flesh and blood and sharing humanity's inheritance of death He makes troubles easier to bear and gives confidence that He understands the salvation people need.
This ancestry shows the human heredity Jesus accepted, the weakened condition of the race after four thousand years of sin. He entered the human family with its inherited liability to sin, and His descent through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in a line containing both the wicked and the good was therefore significant to His temptations and life in the flesh. His descent according to the flesh through human ancestors subject to the iniquities common to humanity means He entered human nature to conquer sin for humanity, while retaining His divine connection and power. He shared humanity's sorrows and temptations while living a sinless life.
Beginning with Abraham begetting Isaac and Isaac begetting Jacob and Jacob begetting Judas and his brethren, the list includes sinners as ancestors of Christ, including a number of bad men and women, some of another race than the Jews, because Christ came to save sinners and did not refuse to be born of sinners. It means Jesus Christ took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as human beings are, yet 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 genealogy also exceptionally includes Ruth among Christ's ancestors, showing Christ's brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles as well as with sinners represented by the other women named in the genealogy. Ruth came into this line through marriage to a kinsman of Naomi after returning from Moab to Bethlehem, becoming the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David.