(I'm indebted to pastor Kevin Kim for much of the content here.
Any mistakes are mine. This isn't a scholarly paper -- just the opposite!
Please see a ministry professional for competent exegetical or hermeneutical
advice.)
The very first line of the New Testament, in Matthew 1:1,
tells us who Jesus is: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the
son of David, the son of Abraham" -- which says Jesus is
the Christ, "Christ" being the Greek word for "Messiah," or "anointed
one."
"Anointed" means somebody got oil (or ointment), as a sign of
being set apart for some particular purpose. From the two-word
phrase, "Jesus Christ," any reader of Matthew
would immediately understand what Matthew was saying about Jesus,
and the next few words would give them lots of information that
most of us would miss.
By calling Jesus "the son of David," Matthew means more than
just that Jesus was descended from David; he also means that Jesus
is a successor to David, who was king over Israel's golden age. So not
only has Jesus been anointed; he's been anointed to ascend David's throne.
Since Matthew's earliest readers would have been Jews
living under Roman occupation, this reference to David would likely
have been provocative.
The reference to Abraham I'm thinking was likely a reminder of
the covenant: from the burning bush (Exodus 3) God introduces himself
as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; as Jerusalem is about
to be sacked (Jeremiah 33), he refers to the Israelites as the descendants of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I'll further guess that for those
discouraged by living under occupation, the reference to Abraham
would have been an encouragement, because God's covenant with
Abraham dates from over a thousand years before Jesus,
and over 400 years before
Moses delivered them from their Egyptian oppressors.
Then, starting in verse 2, we have an interesting list -- all
focused on the question of "Who is this Jesus we're talking about?"
A genealogy was like a person's calling card; it still is today
in the mideast. Therefore, if you were listing your ancestors,
you'd mention the ones you'd want a hearer to remember when they
thought about you. The ancestors named were almost always men, so it's
unusual that four women are mentioned here:
- "Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar" (Matthew 1:3)
Judah was Tamar's father-in-law, and two of Judah's sons
(successive husbands to Tamar) had died.
Tamar dressed up as a prostitute,
Judah had sex with her, and she bore a pair of twin boys.
(Genesis 38).
- "Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab" (Matthew 1:5)
Rahab was a prostitute living in Jericho while the Israelites
wandered in the desert (Joshua 2); she sheltered the Israelite
spies and was saved along with her household when the city fell.
- "Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth" (Matthew 1:5)
Ruth was from Moab, and immigrated to Israel with Naomi her
mother-in-law (Ruth 1).
- "David the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife"
(Matthew 1:6)
For some reason Matthew does not mention the name "Bathsheba,"
but that's the person in question (2 Samuel 11). She had
been bathing somewhere visible from the palace. David had
sex with her, she became pregnant, and David had her husband
killed.
Why doesn't Matthew write "Bathsheba"? Two reasons come
to mind: first, mentioning Uriah (Matthew's readers
would automatically fill in "...the Hittite") establishes
her as a foreigner's wife without naming her husband's background
(Matthew doesn't write "Ruth the Moabitess" either); second,
Uriah was one of David's Thirty mighty men (2 Samuel 23),
which makes David's betrayal that much more despicable.
I find this list astonishing in view of what a genealogy is usually
for; Matthew is introducing Jesus, anointed to David's throne, as a
descendant of foreigners, prostitutes (well, Tamar only acted like
one), a woman who bathed in view of the palace, a man who betrayed
his friend with adultery and murder.
But it gets even more interesting: verse 16 has, "...Jacob
the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus,
who is called Christ." Wait -- we have "the father of... the father of..."
and then at the end Joseph is the husband of Mary, not "the father
of Jesus." Wha...? Hold that thought for a moment, because
Matthew gives us one more oddity:
In verse 17, Matthew says, "Thus there were fourteen generations
from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile...." What's so
odd here? To Matthew's first readers, steeped in the history
of the kings of Judah, the omissions in David's line (1 Chronicles 1)
would stand out: "Jehoram the father of Uzziah, Uzziah the father of
Jotham" (Matthew 1:8-9)? No, no, no! 1 Chronicles 1:11-12 reads
(note the names highlighted in yellow):
"Jehoram his son,
Ahaziah his
son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham
his son" -- Uzziah and Azariah being names for the same person.
What's this about? Matthew wasn't working from some different
manuscript that lacked those names; Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah
reigned a total of 70 years, as described in 2 Kings 8:24-14:18.
No, Matthew didn't forget those other kings; he included some
people and omitted others in order to present Jesus
as the beginning of the 7th set of 7 generations from Abraham.
Right? 14 from Abraham to David -- that's two 7s; 14 from David
to the exile (the 3rd and 4th 7s), 14 from the exile to the Christ
(the 5th and 6th 7s). Programmers and math majors may notice
that when counting 14 generations, the beginning and the ending
are counted twice. Don't sweat it; the point is, beginning with
the migration to the land we call Israel, the
first set of 14 generations established the kingdom of Israel,
the second set was the duration of the kingdom (of Judah anyway)
as a kingdom, the third set was the exile to the start
of something new. In other words, Matthew is signaling here
that Jesus inaugurates the 7th set of 7 for Jews living in
the land of promise.
18This is
how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was
pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together,
she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.
19Because Joseph her
husband was a righteous man and did not
want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce
her quietly. 20But after
he had considered this, an angel of the
Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21She will give birth
to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he
will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to
fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
23"The
virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they
will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
24When
Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded
him and took Mary home as his wife.
25But he had no union with
her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name
Jesus.
Matthew 1:18-21
Let me unpack verse 19 a bit. Joseph hasn't had any union with
Mary (cf. verse 25), yet Mary is somehow pregnant. He's within his
rights to accuse her of unfaithfulness, but he doesn't want to disgrace her.
He doesn't want someone else's child, though, and
"divorcing her quietly" seems like a reasonable way out. So he was
willing to let everyone think him somewhat of a deserter (i.e., for leaving
Mary with their child), rather than accusing her to vindicate himself.
I really like this guy.
But he has a dream, and obeying it, does not divorce her.
(By the way, "pledged to be married" (verse 18) had more meaning in
those days than what we think of as engagement. Dissolving it wasn't
a matter of just calling the whole thing off.)
I have often thought that we don't pay as much attention to Joseph as he
deserves. Anyway, he names the baby boy Jesus.
What does it mean "give him the name Jesus, because he
will save his people from their sins." (1:21, emphasis added)? For many
of us today, a name is only an identifier, a word to disambiguate
"that person" or "you there."
But even a casual reading of Israel's history shows that names meant a
lot more in the ancient world; consider Moses, so named because "I drew
him out of the water" (Exodus 2:10) -- or how God changes Abram's name to
Abraham (Genesis 17:5-6) or Jacob's name to Israel (Genesis 32:28).
Joseph was told to name the boy "Y'shua", like "Joshua" in the
Old Testament. If these names are pronounced like "Y'shua", then
why are they spelled "Joshua" and "Jesus" in English?
Probably for the same reason the German word "ja" (meaning "yes",
pronounced "ya") is spelled like it is. English is Germanic;
it's not a Romance language.
And why do "Joshua" and "Jesus" differ so much? Well, I'm not
too sure about that first vowel, but I believe that the Hebrew
Bible was written without vowels. How did the NIV editors
decide to put "Joshua" for the 6th book of the Bible but "Jeshua"
in Ezra and Nehemiah? I don't know. Regarding "sh" vs "s" -- Greek
doesn't have an "sh" sound and can't represent it. About the
different endings -- as mentioned earlier, the New Testament is
written in Greek; names are inflected in Greek, unlike in English.
Thus when Matthew writes "the book of the genealogy of Jesus",
his name is written as "Ἰησοῦ" (i.e., "Iesou"); in 1:16 "of whom
was born Jesus", his name is written as "Ἰησοῦς" (Iesous);
in 1:21 "give him the name Jesus", it's rendered
"Ἰησοῦν" (Iesoun).
Editors of English New Testaments have chosen the spelling "Jesus" for
some time now; they had to choose one, and I guess they took the
nominative.
But here's the most astonishing part: Jesus Christ had no human
father, in fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah 7:14. Exactly how
did this happen? I'll tell you: I don't know. But Matthew states
it simply, just as he states the other events: they were pledged to
be married, she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, he was going to
divorce her, he had a dream and didn't divorce her, they had no sex
until after the baby was born.
This isn't the most important part of the good news of Jesus Christ
(Mark doesn't mention it at all in his gospel; neither does John), but
it is a fact that Matthew and Luke considered important enough to
describe in some detail. I suppose that by calling attention to
the supernatural beginning of his life, they prepare the reader for
what will come later.
So to this occupied nation, the once sovereign nation of Israel,
comes someone with a unique and supernatural
origin, to save them from their sins. That's Matthew's introduction to
the question, "Who is Jesus?" I'll say that's good news for a troubled
world -- in that age or this.
