The opening statement in Matthew's Gospel is fascinating. The word rendered 'genealogy' can mean both 'genealogy' and 'birth', and the opening phrase 'The Book of the Genealogy' is the same as in Gen. 2:4 and 5:2. So Matthew has used a phrase that can apply to ...
1. the genealogy alone which follows immediately
2. the account of Jesus' birth thereafter
3. the life-story as it will later develop (as do the "generations of Adam" in Gen. 5)
Even beyond that it may refer to ...
4. the New Creation which begins with the miraculous conception of Jesus and will develop right through to the Consummation of the Kingdom.
What began with the birth of Jesus will yet have an unimaginably glorious future! If we begin with Him, so shall we.
The word 'Christ' (Christos in the Greek) is the equivalent of 'Messiah' in the Hebrew, both meaning 'anointed one.' Anointing applied particularly to priests and kings at the time of their inauguration to office, so that the word indicates the one 'Chosen of God' to fulfil the divine purpose of providing both Priest and King to all mankind. Its meaning builds through the Old Testament to the point where in our Lord's day it was understood to mean the promised King who would be sent by God in the last days to rule the world and establish His Kingdom of righteousness. Matthew will be at pains throughout his Gospel to show that the promised Messiah is one with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah's prophecy - an equation the Jews lacked the perception to see at the time, but which became a fundamental insight in the unfolding of the New Testament Gospel.
The promise of the Messiah conjured up visions of dramatic crisis in the Jewish mind: with His advent final judgment would overtake the world, establishing the righteous and destroying the wicked. Even John the Baptist so understood it; hence the misgivings he later entertained after he had announced Jesus as the Messiah, Matt. 11:2-3. Much of Matthew's Gospel will be concerned to explain why things have not turned out this way; the Kingdom of God (His Reign) operates in a 'hidden' way until the final consummation. John in his Gospel, 3:18-19 nails down the conviction Christians reached on this issue: "He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment" (it is happening now, though its process, like the Kingdom, is presently hidden), "that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
The insertion of a genealogy into the beginning of a Gospel strikes our Western minds strangely; but to a Jew a person's genealogy was of huge importance, for an admixture of foreign blood lost him the right to regard himself as a Jew at all. Because there was Edomite blood in his ancestry, for example, Herod had records destroyed so that the purity of his lineage might not be impugned. So too, a priest must trace his line to Aaron, or not qualify. To trace Jesus' line to Abraham was vital, or He was not 'the child of promise' (see Gen. 12ƒƒ and Gal. 3:16), and through David, or He was not the 'son of David' (a title Matthew frequently attributes to Jesus: 9:27, 12:3, 15:22, 20:30, 31, 22:42, 45). Both Abraham and David were promised sons - Abraham's for the world, David's for the chosen people.
The genealogy is in three groups of fourteen names each for ease of memory.
Note the four women -
v. 3 Tamar - a seductress (Gen. 38)
v. 5 Rahab - a Jericho harlot (Joshua 2:1-7)
v. 5 Ruth - a Moabitess - a non-Jew (Ruth, Deut. 23:3)
v. 6 Bathsheba - an adulteress, wife of Uriah the Hittite (II Sam. 11 & 12)
Jesus has connections with sinners (9:10) even before He is born! The barriers are down between ...
Jew and Gentile - Ruth and Rahab
Male and Female - the women
Saint and Sinner - harlots etc. (Matt. 9:13)
For Mary, the formula is changed: "the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born who is called the Christ." The reason will be given in the birth story.
The three stages in the genealogy each suggest a major feature of Israel's life under God, and each concludes with a major turning point in Israel's history :
1. Abraham to David - faith and loyalty ("A man after my own heart")
2. David to the Deportation - submission to judgment on sin
3. The Deportation to Christ - preparation
In its quiet Jewish way, the genealogy is preparing for a statement of the Gospel in terms of Romans 1:1-3 - "The gospel ... concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ..."
Note first the many fulfilment formulae in the Prologue: 1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23 (and 2:5 - an oblique one). Matthew is notifying us that with the birth of Jesus the time of the fulfilment of the prophecies has arrived; the 'last days' have begun - a dominant note in the apostolic preaching (Acts 2:14, 30-31 e.g.). The promised Kingdom (Reign) of God has been inaugurated.
The element of fulfilment in the Gospel proclamation (the kerygma) impacts with less force on our Western minds than it did on the Jewish mind, but it is a note we should not let drop out of our Gospel presentation. It emphasises the fact that what God did in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus was the focus of history - an event absolutely pivotal in the drama of human life on earth and for which God had set in motion a massive process of preparation. Its primary meaning was that with the advent of the Messiah the Kingdom (the Active Rule) of God had come. God had taken the reigns of history into His own hands. The Messiah is God's Regent: through Him God Himself now ruled directly in the affairs of this world. A direct consequence of this was that final judgement is committed into Christ's hands. God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, His Son, took the stage of this world Himself. In Jesus the Messiah the Reign of God has begun.
The phrase 'Kingdom of God' (or 'of Heaven' - they mean the same thing; the Jewish mind was more at ease with the indirect 'Heaven' than with the direct 'God' lest His Name be "taken in vain") would in most cases be better rendered as the 'Reign of God.' It is a dynamic, not an inert concept; most often it indicates the active rule of the living God rather than the territory over which He exercises it. It was clearly our Lord's preferred phrase to describe the work He understood He had been sent into the world by God to undertake, and in His teaching it was bound in with that other phrase by which He so often referred to Himself, 'Son of Man.'
The phrase 'Son of Man' does not feature conspicuously in the Old Testament, but the significant occasion of its use is Daniel 7:14, "To him ('one like a son of man' v. 13) was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." There, interestingly, the two phrases so prominent in the Gospels, 'Son of Man' and 'Kingdom', feature together. In Daniel's vision this Kingdom is in stark contrast to the other earlier kingdoms and their rulers: they were 'beastly' in origin and character; by contrast the Kingdom God will establish is 'human'; it will be humane - pure and peaceable.
There were three stages in the Jewish marriage process of that time:
i. Engagement - by family arrangement. The arrangements could even be made during childhood.
ii. Betrothal - it lasted one year. Unlike engagement among us, it could be ended only by divorce.
|iii. Marriage - "come together" - in both a domestic and a conjugal way.
Joseph could have denounced Mary publicly, even have had her stoned (Deut. 22: 21). For the grounds of divorce, needing only two witnesses (hence 'quietly'), see Deut. 24:1, Matt. 19:3. His attitude of pious submission (v. 24) matches Mary's (Luke 1:38).
God may still speak today in visions and dreams, I believe, but not contrary to, nor as a substitute for, His Word in Scripture.
On linguistic grounds, the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 may mean either 'virgin' or 'young woman' (of marriageable age). See Gen. 24:43, Ex. 2:8, Prov. 30:19, Song 6:8. Most young women of marriageable age would in fact be virgins. Isaiah's prophecy did not have a virgin specifically in view. But Christians saw a second meaning in it as referred to Mary. "Thoughts beyond their thoughts were given." *
Ahaz in Jerusalem, threatened by Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Samaria, was looking round for political reinforcements in a time of national crisis. "Don't," said Isaiah. "Sit still and trust God. The threat will disappear." He offered Ahaz a sign of his own choosing as a confirmation of the truth of what he promised. But Ahaz declined, because he preferred not to trust God at all; he preferred his own political expertise. ("I will not ask - I will not put the Lord to the test," 7:12, was pious humbug.) Isaiah replied, "I will give you one anyway. By the time a child can be conceived, born and weaned, the two kings Ahaz fears will be finished." The immediate meaning of the statement (8:4) is simply an indication of a time interval: there will be a rough, tough period, then deliverance. But in the way of the prophets, God's 'signs' carry more meaning than at first appears. Emmanuel (God with us) is given as a name for the child, meaning 'God will deal with Rezin and Pekah for us.' This idea develops through chs. 8-9 to the Messianic promise of Isaiah 9:1-7.
a. 8:8 - the land of Israel is Emmanuel's, but it will be humbled.
b. 8: 9-10 - but those who do the humbling will themselves fail.
c. 8:11-22 - God and His word will be an offence that will bring trouble and darkness, but God will lighten the darkness with the gift of a child to bear saving rule, 9:7.
Hence the angelic instruction to Joseph, "You shall call Him Jesus (Saviour) for he shall save his people from their sins"; for it is in our sins that all our troubles, whether natural, political, social or personal etc., have their roots. God will "redeem Israel out of all his troubles." (Psalm 130:8)
This still proves to be a stumbling-block to the modern pseudo-scientific Western mind. But if, on other grounds, you believe in the deity of Christ - that it is He through Whom all things were made - where is the problem? He is nature's Lord. To use C. S. Lewis's marvellous phrase, "He here touched nature with an ungloved hand."
If the Christian conviction be true that He is both truly God and truly man, there is no other conceivable means by which His incarnation could have been wrought. If He is truly divine, His origin must be more than merely human. Yet if He is truly human, He must enter humanity through the same narrow door of birth we all do. *
* C. S. Lewis, 'Reflections on the Psalms'
[Geoffrey Bles]
** The difference in our Lord from other men is further developed in
the chapter on His Temptations
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