And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias;
Matthew 1:9 records the royal succession from Ozias, also called Uzziah, to Joatham, also called Jotham, to Achaz, also called Ahaz, to Ezekias, also called Hezekiah, continuing the line toward Jesus. As part of Matthew's genealogy it traces Jesus' legal, kingly, paternal descent through Joseph's male line from Abraham through David and Solomon, while Luke's genealogy traces His descent through Mary back through Nathan to Adam. This preserved lineage establishes Jesus as heir to the kingdom and rightful King with claim to David's throne, and as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant. By placing Him among human ancestors it shows He truly became a member of the human race, sharing its sorrows and temptations but not its sin as a compassionate High Priest who knows human troubles by experience. Yet the promises to Abraham belong to His spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not by natural birth alone, so through faith people share Abraham's inheritance and become joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David.
Words and Historical Setting
Matthew 1:9 continues the royal genealogy toward Jesus by recording the succession from Ozias, also called Uzziah, to Joatham, also called Jotham, to Achaz, also called Ahaz, to Ezekias, also called Hezekiah. It names Joatham as the son of Ozias and the father of Achaz, placing Jesus' genealogy in the royal line of Judah through David and Solomon to Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father. That royal pedigree traces the line toward Jesus and bears witness to the divine word, showing the lineage connecting Abraham's promises to the birth of Mary's Son preserved through successive generations. The preservation of Judah's genealogy, kept together because it held the rulership until He came, made it possible to trace Jesus' lineage through that tribe.
"Begat" means a man begetting or generating a child, using the same Greek word that can also describe a woman bringing forth or giving birth. These "begat" links do not require each named person to be the immediate next generation, since names in the genealogy do not always mark direct father-to-son descent and some kings were grandsons or great-grandsons of earlier kings. Matthew deliberately omits three familiar kings, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, and omits other generations to form three sections of fourteen generations each, a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible. The omissions highlight successive eras of Hebrew history and fit his arrangement, without implying ignorance or unreliability, while still establishing Jesus' place in the royal line.
The verse is one link in the forty-two generations counted from father to son from Abraham to the birth of Christ, tracing family descent through successive generations in Matthew 1:1-16. That genealogy traces Christ's direct ancestral and royal lineage from Abraham through forty-two generations. Its genealogical names are real people and actual ancestors within Israel's literal history, connecting Israel's history to the earlier history of the patriarchs, not fictional figures in an allegory.
The verse records a plain historical fact and should be received for what it says rather than given a fanciful or supposedly more spiritual meaning; its real value is found in why the genealogy was included and what the historical record teaches. The genealogy is presented without editorial comment to reconcile it with other accounts, and its names stand as firsthand data, memoirs set down by different authors at different times and places and left without editorial alteration, correction, or harmonization with the parallel records of the kings of Judah and Israel. This guileless, artless preservation without anxiety to vindicate consistency reveals conscious truthfulness and integrity, proves the materials are authentic primitive facts and not secondary mythical formations filtered through professional historians, and makes divergences inevitable yet valuable as evidence of the real character of the documents. The genealogy of which the verse is part was objected to by Julian while he still accepted the gospel accounts as historical.
Two Genealogies Compared
Matthew's list, where this link from Ozias to Joatham to Achaz to Ezekias stands, traces the legal and kingly paternal descent through Joseph's male line from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph. Joseph was the reputed and legal father and not the biological father, and heirship and kingship pass through that paternal line, since genealogies customarily named males and inheritance passed through them. It establishes the rightful King and heir of Abraham, arranged in three groups of fourteen generations with some generations omitted, a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible, and it presents the royal descent through David's royal family legally traced through Joseph to support identification as King of the Jews and claim to David's throne and to rulership through the male line. Luke gives a different genealogy, understood as tracing Mary's descent from her father Heli back through Nathan on Mary's side, through David and Abraham to Adam. Matthew names Joseph's father as Jacob, while Luke names Joseph only as the male member of the house counted as son of Heli as Mary's husband.
Because Jewish genealogies did not name women, they could list a daughter's husband as the son of his father-in-law. Joseph is therefore called the son of Heli because he was Mary's husband, Mary's father is called Joseph's father because Joseph was Mary's husband, and Mary is treated as the daughter of Joseph's father because she was Joseph's wife. Under Jewish law Joseph was the legal father, so he could be named as father in either genealogy, while physical descent came through Mary. It has been suggested by some that Heli may have been another name for Joseph, though the generally accepted explanation is that one genealogy traces descent through Mary and the other through Joseph. The two genealogies do not contradict each other but are to be harmonized, with Matthew's genealogy to be harmonized with Luke 3, though their differences have occasioned questions about how the two accounts fit together.
Matthew stops at Abraham and presents Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham, the perfect Jew and legal heir to David's throne through the royal reigning house from Abraham through David to Joseph, the line being carried to Abraham because the promises came through Abraham. Luke traces Jesus not as heir to David's throne but as the son of man and son of Adam back to Adam the son of God, tracing the family through Mary back to Adam. Together they show Jesus as David's Seed according to the flesh through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, as Joseph's reputed son and heir to David's throne and as legal son of Joseph and therefore heir to the throne of David. Both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. Mary also belongs to that royal family by descent, Christ is placed legally in David's royal line through Joseph's marriage to Mary, the line of Joseph distinct from Luke's line through Nathan on Mary's side with the two lines meeting in the course of time, and they contain different numbers of generations because Mary's line includes more names.
Heir to Promise and Throne
The preserved succession from Ozias to Joatham to Achaz to Ezekias continues the royal line from David through Solomon to Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father, through whom heirship and kingship pass in the paternal male line. As Joseph's reputed son, Jesus stands as legal and kingly heir to David's throne and rightful King, with a claim to rulership through the male line that supports His identification as King of the Jews. Matthew stops this legal genealogy at Abraham and presents it in three groups of fourteen generations, with some generations omitted after a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible, while Luke carries Mary's family through David and Abraham back to Adam, so that together they show Jesus as David's Seed according to the flesh through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph. The same link from Ozias through Joatham and Achaz to Ezekias traces Christ's fleshly ancestry from Abraham through David to Joseph and establishes His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. He is thereby proved heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, with claim through family relation to Joseph as lineal descendant of Abraham, and both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure He is the promised Seed. As part of the genealogy leading to Christ, the verse shows the lineage connecting Abraham's promises to the birth of Mary's Son preserved through successive generations, supporting Christ's legitimate succession and claim to Abraham's promised inheritance. Traced through forty-two generations from Abraham, it establishes His direct ancestral and royal lineage as rightful heir to the promises and throne associated with Abraham's descendants.
The verse places Ozias, Joatham, Achaz, and Ezekias among Jesus' human ancestors in David's line through the kings of Judah, showing that He descended from the patriarchs and Judah through David's line. Ahaz is thus identified as an ancestor according to the flesh within that royal ancestry. The genealogy traces Jesus' parents as Jews through David's family and the tribe of Judah. Judah's genealogy was kept together and preserved because it held the rulership until He came, which made it possible to trace Jesus' lineage through that tribe and shows the care with which it was maintained because Christ came through it. The royal pedigree toward Jesus in Ozias begat Joatham, Joatham begat Achaz, and Achaz begat Ezekias bears witness to the divine word. It places Jesus' birth within the fulfillment of the Old Testament gospel promises and shows that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled, supporting His Messiahship. The recorded genealogy thus preserves the link in the pedigree of Abraham's seed as a necessary preface to the Gospel of Christ and to the promise that the land would be restored through Christ.
Sharing Human Nature
Matthew 1 shows Christ with a human pedigree traced through generations, placing Him among human ancestors as one who truly became a member of the human race. This stands in contrast to Melchizedek, who has no recorded pedigree or birth into the human family. That human lineage grounds His closeness to humanity and His sympathy with human weakness and need, for He shares its sorrows and temptations but not its sin. As a brother who knows human troubles by experience, He can be trusted as a compassionate High Priest.
He did not refuse to be born of sinners, for a number of bad men and women are found among His ancestors, some of another race than the Jews. He took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are, yet lived a perfect life, showing that human beings can live a holy life here in the world. His human ancestors in the line of David, including Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, belonged to a race subject to the iniquities common to humanity, and He entered human flesh to conquer sin on humanity's behalf. The genealogy includes both the worst and the best, with Ahaz standing among the wicked ancestors in that line, showing that Jesus entered humanity through a line marked by sin and inherited human weakness. Placed thus in the history of His earthly ancestors, whose lineage shows the results of heredity, Jesus accepted humanity weakened by sin and shared the conditions inherited by the human race.
Faith Inheritance and Generations
The promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not by natural birth alone. The literal descendants who inherited privileges along the way were part of carrying out the promises, but natural descent did not itself guarantee heirship. Through faith in Christ people have a right to the promised blessing of Abraham, sharing Abraham's inheritance of the world and becoming joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David.
The genealogy records forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ covering unequal spans of time. The period from the Babylonian exile to Christ averages about forty-three years per generation, while other periods average about twenty-eight, forty-five, or sixty-four years, working out to about forty or more years to a generation. Some have used this to figure that a generation is somewhere around forty years. The genealogy therefore does not establish a fixed length for a generation or a basis for setting the time of Christ's coming and gives no dependable measure for the length of a generation. God has given no definition of a generation nor designed to fix that time.
Generation sometimes means race, people, or nation, and sometimes means the people living upon the earth at one time, probably considered longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs than at the present time, and no definite time is allotted to it. Counted from father to son by the genealogies, six thousand years from creation would amount to fewer than two hundred generations.
Matthew 1:9 records the royal succession from Ozias, also called Uzziah, to Joatham, also called Jotham, to Achaz, also called Ahaz, to Ezekias, also called Hezekiah, continuing the line toward Jesus. As part of Matthew's genealogy it traces Jesus' legal, kingly, paternal descent through Joseph's male line from Abraham through David and Solomon, while Luke's genealogy traces His descent through Mary back through Nathan to Adam. This preserved lineage establishes Jesus as heir to the kingdom and rightful King with claim to David's throne, and as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham and heir of the everlasting covenant. By placing Him among human ancestors it shows He truly became a member of the human race, sharing its sorrows and temptations but not its sin as a compassionate High Priest who knows human troubles by experience. Yet the promises to Abraham belong to His spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not by natural birth alone, so through faith people share Abraham's inheritance and become joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David.
Words and Historical Setting
Matthew 1:9 continues the royal genealogy toward Jesus by recording the succession from Ozias, also called Uzziah, to Joatham, also called Jotham, to Achaz, also called Ahaz, to Ezekias, also called Hezekiah. It names Joatham as the son of Ozias and the father of Achaz, placing Jesus' genealogy in the royal line of Judah through David and Solomon to Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father. That royal pedigree traces the line toward Jesus and bears witness to the divine word, showing the lineage connecting Abraham's promises to the birth of Mary's Son preserved through successive generations. The preservation of Judah's genealogy, kept together because it held the rulership until He came, made it possible to trace Jesus' lineage through that tribe.
"Begat" means a man begetting or generating a child, using the same Greek word that can also describe a woman bringing forth or giving birth. These "begat" links do not require each named person to be the immediate next generation, since names in the genealogy do not always mark direct father-to-son descent and some kings were grandsons or great-grandsons of earlier kings. Matthew deliberately omits three familiar kings, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, and omits other generations to form three sections of fourteen generations each, a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible. The omissions highlight successive eras of Hebrew history and fit his arrangement, without implying ignorance or unreliability, while still establishing Jesus' place in the royal line.
The verse is one link in the forty-two generations counted from father to son from Abraham to the birth of Christ, tracing family descent through successive generations in Matthew 1:1-16. That genealogy traces Christ's direct ancestral and royal lineage from Abraham through forty-two generations. Its genealogical names are real people and actual ancestors within Israel's literal history, connecting Israel's history to the earlier history of the patriarchs, not fictional figures in an allegory.
The verse records a plain historical fact and should be received for what it says rather than given a fanciful or supposedly more spiritual meaning; its real value is found in why the genealogy was included and what the historical record teaches. The genealogy is presented without editorial comment to reconcile it with other accounts, and its names stand as firsthand data, memoirs set down by different authors at different times and places and left without editorial alteration, correction, or harmonization with the parallel records of the kings of Judah and Israel. This guileless, artless preservation without anxiety to vindicate consistency reveals conscious truthfulness and integrity, proves the materials are authentic primitive facts and not secondary mythical formations filtered through professional historians, and makes divergences inevitable yet valuable as evidence of the real character of the documents. The genealogy of which the verse is part was objected to by Julian while he still accepted the gospel accounts as historical.
Two Genealogies Compared
Matthew's list, where this link from Ozias to Joatham to Achaz to Ezekias stands, traces the legal and kingly paternal descent through Joseph's male line from Abraham through David and Solomon to Joseph. Joseph was the reputed and legal father and not the biological father, and heirship and kingship pass through that paternal line, since genealogies customarily named males and inheritance passed through them. It establishes the rightful King and heir of Abraham, arranged in three groups of fourteen generations with some generations omitted, a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible, and it presents the royal descent through David's royal family legally traced through Joseph to support identification as King of the Jews and claim to David's throne and to rulership through the male line. Luke gives a different genealogy, understood as tracing Mary's descent from her father Heli back through Nathan on Mary's side, through David and Abraham to Adam. Matthew names Joseph's father as Jacob, while Luke names Joseph only as the male member of the house counted as son of Heli as Mary's husband.
Because Jewish genealogies did not name women, they could list a daughter's husband as the son of his father-in-law. Joseph is therefore called the son of Heli because he was Mary's husband, Mary's father is called Joseph's father because Joseph was Mary's husband, and Mary is treated as the daughter of Joseph's father because she was Joseph's wife. Under Jewish law Joseph was the legal father, so he could be named as father in either genealogy, while physical descent came through Mary. It has been suggested by some that Heli may have been another name for Joseph, though the generally accepted explanation is that one genealogy traces descent through Mary and the other through Joseph. The two genealogies do not contradict each other but are to be harmonized, with Matthew's genealogy to be harmonized with Luke 3, though their differences have occasioned questions about how the two accounts fit together.
Matthew stops at Abraham and presents Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham, the perfect Jew and legal heir to David's throne through the royal reigning house from Abraham through David to Joseph, the line being carried to Abraham because the promises came through Abraham. Luke traces Jesus not as heir to David's throne but as the son of man and son of Adam back to Adam the son of God, tracing the family through Mary back to Adam. Together they show Jesus as David's Seed according to the flesh through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph, as Joseph's reputed son and heir to David's throne and as legal son of Joseph and therefore heir to the throne of David. Both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure Christ is the promised Seed. Mary also belongs to that royal family by descent, Christ is placed legally in David's royal line through Joseph's marriage to Mary, the line of Joseph distinct from Luke's line through Nathan on Mary's side with the two lines meeting in the course of time, and they contain different numbers of generations because Mary's line includes more names.
Heir to Promise and Throne
The preserved succession from Ozias to Joatham to Achaz to Ezekias continues the royal line from David through Solomon to Joseph, Jesus' reputed and legal father, through whom heirship and kingship pass in the paternal male line. As Joseph's reputed son, Jesus stands as legal and kingly heir to David's throne and rightful King, with a claim to rulership through the male line that supports His identification as King of the Jews. Matthew stops this legal genealogy at Abraham and presents it in three groups of fourteen generations, with some generations omitted after a practice also found elsewhere in the Bible, while Luke carries Mary's family through David and Abraham back to Adam, so that together they show Jesus as David's Seed according to the flesh through Mary and David's royal successor through Joseph. The same link from Ozias through Joatham and Achaz to Ezekias traces Christ's fleshly ancestry from Abraham through David to Joseph and establishes His identity as the Messiah, the promised Seed of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. He is thereby proved heir of the everlasting covenant made with Abraham and renewed to David, with claim through family relation to Joseph as lineal descendant of Abraham, and both genealogies unite in Abraham to make doubly sure He is the promised Seed. As part of the genealogy leading to Christ, the verse shows the lineage connecting Abraham's promises to the birth of Mary's Son preserved through successive generations, supporting Christ's legitimate succession and claim to Abraham's promised inheritance. Traced through forty-two generations from Abraham, it establishes His direct ancestral and royal lineage as rightful heir to the promises and throne associated with Abraham's descendants.
The verse places Ozias, Joatham, Achaz, and Ezekias among Jesus' human ancestors in David's line through the kings of Judah, showing that He descended from the patriarchs and Judah through David's line. Ahaz is thus identified as an ancestor according to the flesh within that royal ancestry. The genealogy traces Jesus' parents as Jews through David's family and the tribe of Judah. Judah's genealogy was kept together and preserved because it held the rulership until He came, which made it possible to trace Jesus' lineage through that tribe and shows the care with which it was maintained because Christ came through it. The royal pedigree toward Jesus in Ozias begat Joatham, Joatham begat Achaz, and Achaz begat Ezekias bears witness to the divine word. It places Jesus' birth within the fulfillment of the Old Testament gospel promises and shows that God's promises and prophecies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled, supporting His Messiahship. The recorded genealogy thus preserves the link in the pedigree of Abraham's seed as a necessary preface to the Gospel of Christ and to the promise that the land would be restored through Christ.
Sharing Human Nature
Matthew 1 shows Christ with a human pedigree traced through generations, placing Him among human ancestors as one who truly became a member of the human race. This stands in contrast to Melchizedek, who has no recorded pedigree or birth into the human family. That human lineage grounds His closeness to humanity and His sympathy with human weakness and need, for He shares its sorrows and temptations but not its sin. As a brother who knows human troubles by experience, He can be trusted as a compassionate High Priest.
He did not refuse to be born of sinners, for a number of bad men and women are found among His ancestors, some of another race than the Jews. He took upon Himself the nature of man and was tempted in all points as humans are, yet lived a perfect life, showing that human beings can live a holy life here in the world. His human ancestors in the line of David, including Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, belonged to a race subject to the iniquities common to humanity, and He entered human flesh to conquer sin on humanity's behalf. The genealogy includes both the worst and the best, with Ahaz standing among the wicked ancestors in that line, showing that Jesus entered humanity through a line marked by sin and inherited human weakness. Placed thus in the history of His earthly ancestors, whose lineage shows the results of heredity, Jesus accepted humanity weakened by sin and shared the conditions inherited by the human race.
Faith Inheritance and Generations
The promises to Abraham belong to his spiritual descendants through faith in Christ, not by natural birth alone. The literal descendants who inherited privileges along the way were part of carrying out the promises, but natural descent did not itself guarantee heirship. Through faith in Christ people have a right to the promised blessing of Abraham, sharing Abraham's inheritance of the world and becoming joint heirs with Christ in the throne of David.
The genealogy records forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ covering unequal spans of time. The period from the Babylonian exile to Christ averages about forty-three years per generation, while other periods average about twenty-eight, forty-five, or sixty-four years, working out to about forty or more years to a generation. Some have used this to figure that a generation is somewhere around forty years. The genealogy therefore does not establish a fixed length for a generation or a basis for setting the time of Christ's coming and gives no dependable measure for the length of a generation. God has given no definition of a generation nor designed to fix that time.
Generation sometimes means race, people, or nation, and sometimes means the people living upon the earth at one time, probably considered longer in the days of the antediluvian patriarchs than at the present time, and no definite time is allotted to it. Counted from father to son by the genealogies, six thousand years from creation would amount to fewer than two hundred generations.