And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias;
Asa, Josaphat, Joram and Ozias, who is Uzziah also called Azariah, stand as successive links in the royal family line from David through Solomon to Joseph. Matthew here traces Joseph's kingly legal descent through the males from David through Solomon, while Luke traces Mary's literal blood descent from David through Nathan. The list is deliberately abbreviated and selective, omitting Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah between Joram and Ozias to preserve its arrangement in three fourteens. As Joseph's reputed legal son in this male line, Jesus has legal descent from David and legal right to his throne as Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. His place in this line also shows he truly became a member of the human family whose ancestors included both the good and the wicked, taking its burdened nature yet living sinless to conquer sin for humanity.
Text and Historical Setting
The wording turns on the Greek term for begetting as used of men, meaning to beget or generate offspring. Ozias in the line is Uzziah, also called Azariah.
The ancestors named here, including these kings, were real persons in the history leading to Israel and to Joseph and Mary. The genealogy thus connects the lineage of Jesus with Israelite descent, which was regarded as proof of Jewish citizenship and a claim to the blessings of the covenants. It shows that his parents were Jews, placing them in the family of David and the tribe of Judah.
The genealogy depends on the earlier records in Genesis and cannot be verified without them. It belongs to the Gospel account of Christ framed by the society, life, and intellectual and religious development in Palestine. It is a plain historical record of ancestry and a historical part of the Gospel, not an unprofitable interruption. Its names are therefore to be received as facts rather than given a fanciful spiritual meaning.
The verse stands as part of a biblical genealogy that people may especially value because of respect for ancestral lineages. In this it illustrates that every part of Scripture is profitable and needed.
Arrangement and Preservation
Matthew 1:8 belongs to the line traced from Abraham to the birth of Christ, counted as forty-two generations in all from father to son, confirming Jesus' human lineage and right of descent and supporting His Messiahship, with Luke 3 giving the parallel genealogy through Mary. The lineage is arranged in three sections of fourteen generations each to make it memorable and to portray successive phases of Hebrew history. The genealogy is deliberately abbreviated and selective rather than complete, naming selected ancestors and omitting Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah between Joram and Ozias or Uzziah to preserve that arrangement.
The omissions are intentional, not from ignorance, since the omitted kings were familiar figures in Israel's history. The names mark heirs to David's throne and the line of royal inheritance, not necessarily a direct father-to-son line, for some listed kings were grandsons or great-grandsons or otherwise several generations removed. Biblical genealogies sometimes call a grandfather a father, and a person could be called the son of a remote ancestor even when intermediate generations were left out, with Joseph included as Jesus' legal father through whom He legally received the kingship as His reputed son entitled to David's throne.
The genealogy's intervals differ greatly in length, so it does not set a fixed number of years for a generation. About forty or more years has been figured for a generation from the forty-two generations, but this cannot be depended upon as the fixed length, for God has given no definition of a generation and has not designed to fix that time. Generation sometimes means race, people, or nation and sometimes means the people living upon the earth at one time. As part of the father-to-son genealogies, alongside Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the list supports the claim that fewer than two hundred generations span six thousand years from creation, but genealogical lists should not automatically be treated as complete records for calculating chronology.
The recorded pedigree preserves the link in Abraham's family line leading to Christ, including the carefully preserved genealogy of Judah, the tribe through which Christ came. That preservation was necessary to show the line through which the promised Seed came, and was part of God's protection of the heirs of the promise. The genealogy stands among Scripture's original records without editorial explanations or alterations to harmonize apparent differences with parallel accounts. Scripture in this way retains original documentary materials rather than reshaping every record into a uniform history.
Matthew and Luke Compared
Matthew gives Joseph's genealogy, the kingly or royal legal descent traced through the males from David through Solomon and Rehoboam and their successors to Joseph, Jesus' legal father, showing He was entitled to the throne of Israel, while Luke gives Mary's literal blood descent from Adam through Mary, whose father was Heli, back through Nathan, Solomon's brother, to David. Matthew traces the legal pedigree through Joseph and does not go back beyond Abraham, presenting Jesus as the perfect Jew, while Luke traces the pedigree through Mary back to Adam, presenting Him as the true and perfect Son of man. The difference in the number of generations comes from these distinct lines, with Luke 3 giving a parallel genealogy through Mary.
Jewish genealogies did not name women, and genealogical lines named the males instead of the females, since inheritance and heirship come through the males and descent was counted through the husband under Jewish law. Thus Luke's genealogy, though it gives Jesus' literal blood descent through Mary, is listed through Joseph because genealogies were not customarily counted through women, and Joseph could be listed as Heli's son. Heli, named as Joseph's father in Luke's genealogy, was Mary's father and Joseph's father-in-law and hence Jesus' grandfather, with Luke tracing the pedigree through the males back to the promise of the seed of the woman in the beginning. The genealogy in Matthew can be harmonized with Luke's either by understanding Heli as another name for Joseph or, more commonly, by taking one genealogy through Joseph and the other through Mary, with Joseph then counted as the son of Mary's father.
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. Together the two lines show Jesus as David's Seed through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, since heirship comes through the father and as Joseph's reputed son Jesus was heir to the throne. Joseph is Jesus' legal link and Mary His natural link to the royal family, establishing His legal heirship and kingship and His claim to David's throne. Another proposed explanation treats Matthew and Luke as the royal and private genealogies of Joseph, while the more widely accepted explanation assigns Matthew's genealogy to Joseph and Luke's to Mary. Matthew's line runs from Abraham through David in the reigning house to Joseph because the promises came through Abraham, making Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham, and this royal legal purpose is different from Luke's, which traces Jesus as the son of man back to Adam the son of God.
Royal Line and Messiahship
Matthew 1:8 places Asa, Josaphat or Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ozias as successive links in Jesus' royal family line from David, traced through the male descendants in the reigning house through Solomon, Rehoboam and their successors. The names mark heirs to David's throne and the line of royal inheritance, not necessarily a direct father-to-son line, since some listed kings were descendants several generations removed from the preceding king. The genealogy is the royal legal descent traced through Joseph, the reputed father and legal father and direct ancestor in the male line, and is distinct from Luke's genealogy which gives the literal blood descent through Mary back through Nathan to David, though the two lines meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel so that the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. It is part of the genealogy tracing the royal line from Asa through Josaphat and Joram to Ozias.
Jesus stands in family relation to Joseph so as to have claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, with Joseph included as His legal father through whom He legally received the kingship, since heirship comes through the father. The genealogy traced through Joseph on Joseph's side from Abraham through David to Joseph establishes His legal descent from David, His legal right to rule through the male line, and that the throne of David belonged to Him as heir to the kingdom and heir to the throne. Together the two lines show Jesus as David's Seed through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, and the genealogy does not go back beyond Abraham. The generations are arranged in groups of fourteen and may omit generations, since biblical genealogies sometimes call a grandfather a father.
The genealogy presents Jesus as the rightful King and Heir of Abraham and as the Son of David, establishing His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham, and proving He is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. The line runs from Abraham through David in the reigning house to Joseph because the promises came through Abraham, making Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham, and this royal legal purpose is different from Luke, which traces Jesus as the son of man back to Adam the son of God. The preserved record connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Jesus, in whom those promises are fulfilled, and establishes the legitimacy of Jesus' succession and His claim to Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world.
The genealogy's preservation and fulfillment bear witness to the Messiah's promised descent through David's royal line, preserving the line through which the world could see that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. It establishes Christ's pedigree as the promised Seed of Abraham traced from Abraham through Joseph, His reputed father, and helps show that the predicted signs of the Messiahship center in Him. The promised Deliverer came through the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and Solomon, and God preserved that line despite efforts to destroy it, so that Jesus' lineage could be traced back to David and the other people of promise. Matthew presents this royal descent in keeping with his emphasis on Jesus as king, tracing the earthly lineage through the kings descended from David, with David presented as a type and prelude of Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
Matthew preserves the genealogy of Judah, the ruling tribe, showing that Jesus descended from Judah and that the tribe was held together until Jesus came so His lineage could be traced on both His mother's side and His father's side, fulfilling the promise that the scepter would not depart from Judah till Shiloh come and that unto Him shall the gathering of the people be, with Jesus becoming the center of the gathering of God's people. The lineage shows that the Messiah descended from Abraham through the line leading to David and identifies Him as Abraham's descendant. Israel was set apart so this lineage and the promise to Abraham, that all nations would be blessed through Christ, Abraham's Seed, could be fulfilled and connect God's promises to the birth of Jesus, in whom they are fulfilled.
Human Family and Faith
Matthew 1 places Christ within a distinctly traced pedigree from Adam through human ancestors, showing that He truly became a member of the human family by entering this world by birth as an infant. That He both was born and died stands in contrast to Melchizedek, who has no pedigree and no beginning of days or end of life as a priest. The contrast proves that Melchizedek and Christ are two distinct individuals who are priests after the same order. Through Asa, Josaphat or Jehoshaphat, and Joram, Jesus stands in David's human line of descent within a real human ancestry whose history shows the effects of sin and heredity. That genealogy includes both the wicked and the good and even sinners, for His human ancestors were subject to the iniquities common to humanity. Jesus thus entered a human line marked by sin and inherited its burden, belonging to a race weakened by four thousand years of sin, and He accepted the resulting human condition while living a sinless life, a descent that mattered in His temptations and life in the flesh.
Christ did not refuse to be born into a sinful human family but took human nature and was tempted as humans are, yet lived a perfect life. He entered human flesh to conquer sin on humanity's behalf, showing that people can live holy lives in this world. Sharing its sorrows, temptations, and needs though without sin, His human descent and experience assure people of His sympathy and make Him a brother who knows their troubles and can help them. His sharing in human flesh and death also brings hope in the face of death.
Natural descent was a valuable privilege and opportunity, but it did not by itself secure heirship. Through faith in Christ believers have a right to the promised blessing of Abraham, so that those who were not literal descendants could share the inheritance. Through that faith they share Abraham's inheritance of the world and become joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David as His spiritual seed. The same genealogy exceptionally includes Ruth, a Moabitess and David's ancestress, and her place in Christ's ancestry shows His brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles. The succession from a good father, Asa, to a good son, Josaphat, and then from a good father, Josaphat, to a bad son, Joram, shows that a parent's piety is not inherited automatically and that impiety is not inevitable in the next generation.
Asa, Josaphat, Joram and Ozias, who is Uzziah also called Azariah, stand as successive links in the royal family line from David through Solomon to Joseph. Matthew here traces Joseph's kingly legal descent through the males from David through Solomon, while Luke traces Mary's literal blood descent from David through Nathan. The list is deliberately abbreviated and selective, omitting Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah between Joram and Ozias to preserve its arrangement in three fourteens. As Joseph's reputed legal son in this male line, Jesus has legal descent from David and legal right to his throne as Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and Son of David. His place in this line also shows he truly became a member of the human family whose ancestors included both the good and the wicked, taking its burdened nature yet living sinless to conquer sin for humanity.
Text and Historical Setting
The wording turns on the Greek term for begetting as used of men, meaning to beget or generate offspring. Ozias in the line is Uzziah, also called Azariah.
The ancestors named here, including these kings, were real persons in the history leading to Israel and to Joseph and Mary. The genealogy thus connects the lineage of Jesus with Israelite descent, which was regarded as proof of Jewish citizenship and a claim to the blessings of the covenants. It shows that his parents were Jews, placing them in the family of David and the tribe of Judah.
The genealogy depends on the earlier records in Genesis and cannot be verified without them. It belongs to the Gospel account of Christ framed by the society, life, and intellectual and religious development in Palestine. It is a plain historical record of ancestry and a historical part of the Gospel, not an unprofitable interruption. Its names are therefore to be received as facts rather than given a fanciful spiritual meaning.
The verse stands as part of a biblical genealogy that people may especially value because of respect for ancestral lineages. In this it illustrates that every part of Scripture is profitable and needed.
Arrangement and Preservation
Matthew 1:8 belongs to the line traced from Abraham to the birth of Christ, counted as forty-two generations in all from father to son, confirming Jesus' human lineage and right of descent and supporting His Messiahship, with Luke 3 giving the parallel genealogy through Mary. The lineage is arranged in three sections of fourteen generations each to make it memorable and to portray successive phases of Hebrew history. The genealogy is deliberately abbreviated and selective rather than complete, naming selected ancestors and omitting Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah between Joram and Ozias or Uzziah to preserve that arrangement.
The omissions are intentional, not from ignorance, since the omitted kings were familiar figures in Israel's history. The names mark heirs to David's throne and the line of royal inheritance, not necessarily a direct father-to-son line, for some listed kings were grandsons or great-grandsons or otherwise several generations removed. Biblical genealogies sometimes call a grandfather a father, and a person could be called the son of a remote ancestor even when intermediate generations were left out, with Joseph included as Jesus' legal father through whom He legally received the kingship as His reputed son entitled to David's throne.
The genealogy's intervals differ greatly in length, so it does not set a fixed number of years for a generation. About forty or more years has been figured for a generation from the forty-two generations, but this cannot be depended upon as the fixed length, for God has given no definition of a generation and has not designed to fix that time. Generation sometimes means race, people, or nation and sometimes means the people living upon the earth at one time. As part of the father-to-son genealogies, alongside Genesis 11 and Luke 3, the list supports the claim that fewer than two hundred generations span six thousand years from creation, but genealogical lists should not automatically be treated as complete records for calculating chronology.
The recorded pedigree preserves the link in Abraham's family line leading to Christ, including the carefully preserved genealogy of Judah, the tribe through which Christ came. That preservation was necessary to show the line through which the promised Seed came, and was part of God's protection of the heirs of the promise. The genealogy stands among Scripture's original records without editorial explanations or alterations to harmonize apparent differences with parallel accounts. Scripture in this way retains original documentary materials rather than reshaping every record into a uniform history.
Matthew and Luke Compared
Matthew gives Joseph's genealogy, the kingly or royal legal descent traced through the males from David through Solomon and Rehoboam and their successors to Joseph, Jesus' legal father, showing He was entitled to the throne of Israel, while Luke gives Mary's literal blood descent from Adam through Mary, whose father was Heli, back through Nathan, Solomon's brother, to David. Matthew traces the legal pedigree through Joseph and does not go back beyond Abraham, presenting Jesus as the perfect Jew, while Luke traces the pedigree through Mary back to Adam, presenting Him as the true and perfect Son of man. The difference in the number of generations comes from these distinct lines, with Luke 3 giving a parallel genealogy through Mary.
Jewish genealogies did not name women, and genealogical lines named the males instead of the females, since inheritance and heirship come through the males and descent was counted through the husband under Jewish law. Thus Luke's genealogy, though it gives Jesus' literal blood descent through Mary, is listed through Joseph because genealogies were not customarily counted through women, and Joseph could be listed as Heli's son. Heli, named as Joseph's father in Luke's genealogy, was Mary's father and Joseph's father-in-law and hence Jesus' grandfather, with Luke tracing the pedigree through the males back to the promise of the seed of the woman in the beginning. The genealogy in Matthew can be harmonized with Luke's either by understanding Heli as another name for Joseph or, more commonly, by taking one genealogy through Joseph and the other through Mary, with Joseph then counted as the son of Mary's father.
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. Together the two lines show Jesus as David's Seed through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, since heirship comes through the father and as Joseph's reputed son Jesus was heir to the throne. Joseph is Jesus' legal link and Mary His natural link to the royal family, establishing His legal heirship and kingship and His claim to David's throne. Another proposed explanation treats Matthew and Luke as the royal and private genealogies of Joseph, while the more widely accepted explanation assigns Matthew's genealogy to Joseph and Luke's to Mary. Matthew's line runs from Abraham through David in the reigning house to Joseph because the promises came through Abraham, making Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham, and this royal legal purpose is different from Luke's, which traces Jesus as the son of man back to Adam the son of God.
Royal Line and Messiahship
Matthew 1:8 places Asa, Josaphat or Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ozias as successive links in Jesus' royal family line from David, traced through the male descendants in the reigning house through Solomon, Rehoboam and their successors. The names mark heirs to David's throne and the line of royal inheritance, not necessarily a direct father-to-son line, since some listed kings were descendants several generations removed from the preceding king. The genealogy is the royal legal descent traced through Joseph, the reputed father and legal father and direct ancestor in the male line, and is distinct from Luke's genealogy which gives the literal blood descent through Mary back through Nathan to David, though the two lines meet in Salathiel and Zorobabel so that the blood of both Solomon and Nathan was in both Joseph and Mary. It is part of the genealogy tracing the royal line from Asa through Josaphat and Joram to Ozias.
Jesus stands in family relation to Joseph so as to have claim to all that belonged to him as the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, with Joseph included as His legal father through whom He legally received the kingship, since heirship comes through the father. The genealogy traced through Joseph on Joseph's side from Abraham through David to Joseph establishes His legal descent from David, His legal right to rule through the male line, and that the throne of David belonged to Him as heir to the kingdom and heir to the throne. Together the two lines show Jesus as David's Seed through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, and the genealogy does not go back beyond Abraham. The generations are arranged in groups of fourteen and may omit generations, since biblical genealogies sometimes call a grandfather a father.
The genealogy presents Jesus as the rightful King and Heir of Abraham and as the Son of David, establishing His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham, and proving He is heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David. The line runs from Abraham through David in the reigning house to Joseph because the promises came through Abraham, making Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham, and this royal legal purpose is different from Luke, which traces Jesus as the son of man back to Adam the son of God. The preserved record connects God's promises to Abraham with the birth of Jesus, in whom those promises are fulfilled, and establishes the legitimacy of Jesus' succession and His claim to Abraham's material promise, which includes the whole world.
The genealogy's preservation and fulfillment bear witness to the Messiah's promised descent through David's royal line, preserving the line through which the world could see that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. It establishes Christ's pedigree as the promised Seed of Abraham traced from Abraham through Joseph, His reputed father, and helps show that the predicted signs of the Messiahship center in Him. The promised Deliverer came through the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and Solomon, and God preserved that line despite efforts to destroy it, so that Jesus' lineage could be traced back to David and the other people of promise. Matthew presents this royal descent in keeping with his emphasis on Jesus as king, tracing the earthly lineage through the kings descended from David, with David presented as a type and prelude of Christ, the heavenly Prince of Peace.
Matthew preserves the genealogy of Judah, the ruling tribe, showing that Jesus descended from Judah and that the tribe was held together until Jesus came so His lineage could be traced on both His mother's side and His father's side, fulfilling the promise that the scepter would not depart from Judah till Shiloh come and that unto Him shall the gathering of the people be, with Jesus becoming the center of the gathering of God's people. The lineage shows that the Messiah descended from Abraham through the line leading to David and identifies Him as Abraham's descendant. Israel was set apart so this lineage and the promise to Abraham, that all nations would be blessed through Christ, Abraham's Seed, could be fulfilled and connect God's promises to the birth of Jesus, in whom they are fulfilled.
Human Family and Faith
Matthew 1 places Christ within a distinctly traced pedigree from Adam through human ancestors, showing that He truly became a member of the human family by entering this world by birth as an infant. That He both was born and died stands in contrast to Melchizedek, who has no pedigree and no beginning of days or end of life as a priest. The contrast proves that Melchizedek and Christ are two distinct individuals who are priests after the same order. Through Asa, Josaphat or Jehoshaphat, and Joram, Jesus stands in David's human line of descent within a real human ancestry whose history shows the effects of sin and heredity. That genealogy includes both the wicked and the good and even sinners, for His human ancestors were subject to the iniquities common to humanity. Jesus thus entered a human line marked by sin and inherited its burden, belonging to a race weakened by four thousand years of sin, and He accepted the resulting human condition while living a sinless life, a descent that mattered in His temptations and life in the flesh.
Christ did not refuse to be born into a sinful human family but took human nature and was tempted as humans are, yet lived a perfect life. He entered human flesh to conquer sin on humanity's behalf, showing that people can live holy lives in this world. Sharing its sorrows, temptations, and needs though without sin, His human descent and experience assure people of His sympathy and make Him a brother who knows their troubles and can help them. His sharing in human flesh and death also brings hope in the face of death.
Natural descent was a valuable privilege and opportunity, but it did not by itself secure heirship. Through faith in Christ believers have a right to the promised blessing of Abraham, so that those who were not literal descendants could share the inheritance. Through that faith they share Abraham's inheritance of the world and become joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David as His spiritual seed. The same genealogy exceptionally includes Ruth, a Moabitess and David's ancestress, and her place in Christ's ancestry shows His brotherhood with aliens and Gentiles. The succession from a good father, Asa, to a good son, Josaphat, and then from a good father, Josaphat, to a bad son, Joram, shows that a parent's piety is not inherited automatically and that impiety is not inevitable in the next generation.