Reading: Matthew 1-2, Psalm 81

Hey, it’s the New Testament! Now the story will really pick up with some good old fashioned genealogy. Wait, not what you were looking forward to? Oh, but it is so good! If you thought the genealogies in the Old Testament were good (I know. But look, I can hope, right?) then you’ll be blown away by this one. Matthew is doing some crazy stuff with not just the genealogy, but with how he tells the story of Jesus birth.

Let’s start with the words. Matthew 1:1 begins with the phrase “book of the generations/origin/beginning,” which is exactly the way Genesis 2 introduces us to the creation narrative of the humans. The Greek word underlying our translation “generations” is literally the word Genesis, which by the time Matthew was writing was the common accepted title of the first book of Moses. So he ties this book to creation right off the bat. Then he introduces Jesus as Jesus the Christ. Christ is the Greek take on the Hebrew word Messiah. Matthew is one sentence into his book and is claiming Jesus is the answer to all the hopes of the Hebrew Scriptures. The answer to the Big Question that ends the book of Chronicles.

But he’s not done. The genealogy here is of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, evoking the most important figures in the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew then lists the ancestry of Jesus…. sort of. He makes some creative edits and double counting in order to get 14 generations between each hallmark event: the call of Abraham, the ascension of David, the exile to Babylon, and the birth of Jesus. Why bother getting to 14? There are a few ideas out there. What I find most interesting is that the name David in Hebrew is also the number 14- Hebrew assigned numeric values to certain letters, and adding up David’s name comes up with 14. I think Matthew noticed this and decided to use it as another way of pointing to Jesus as the new David. The genealogy itself is a rapid tour of the history of Israel, with no sugarcoating. Rahab the prostitute and Ruth the Moabite are both there, as is the story of Judah and Tamar. David’s worst moment in the taking of Bathsheba is brought to mind. Judah’s terrible kings Ahaz and Manasseh are not excepted. Matthew is not in the least bit interested in making Jesus’ ancestry anything other than what it was: a history of the human problem.

Then we get the whole pregnant by the Holy Spirit bit. Joseph is all set to marry Mary and, well…. this is awkward. The virgin birth is a difficult and baffling part of the story for many people. Why couldn’t Jesus have just had a normal Dad? I think there are two big reasons. The first is the contrast with the lineage we just read. If there is a single thread that persists through the story of the family of Abraham it is the sins of the father impacting all the following generations- more about that in a moment when we talk about Herod. The other is the often ignored fact that Jesus was adopted by Joseph, prefiguring the adoption of humans into God’s family- a major theme of Paul in his definition of the Church. Matthew is making a point about how Jesus was the descendant of David and Abraham, but is fundamentally different from them in a very important way. He does not have the human problem. He is unique, and yet one of us.

Awkwardness aside, Matthew wastes no opportunity to tie this event to the story of Israel. He jumps right to Isaiah 9 and the prophecy of the virgin bearing a son, named God with Us. Next there are these wise guys from the east, who bring up a prophecy from the prophet Micah about the Messiah coming from Bethlehem. Third we get a story about the infant Jesus and family fleeing to Egypt, which Matthew ties to the prophet Hosea. The unconscionable slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by Herod brings Matthew to the prophet Jeremiah. Finally, the family’s settlement in Nazareth is… well, nobody is quite sure what is going on there, but I think Matthew is sort of doing a pun on Nazirite- the distinct commitment of a person to the service of God. There are two really prominent Nazirites in the Hebrew Scriptures- Samson and Samuel. Both were conceived following God’s direct promise, and both had specific missions from God for their lives. I think Matthew is casting Jesus in the same light.

There is one other little theme going on here I want to mention, and that is the one involving Herod. There is lots of fascinating history about who ruled the promised land between the exiles return and the birth of Jesus, but I’ll leave that to another time. The point I think Matthew is making with this story has to do with competing kingdoms, and even with competing brothers. Herod was an Edomite, a descendant of Esau. Jesus is the descendant of Jacob. Herod’s destruction of the children of Bethlehem is referenced with a story of Jacob’s wife Rachel weeping for her children. The whole story is the schism of Jacob and Esau playing out fifteen hundred years after they both died. Matthew reminds us that the human problem and the divisions that result have horrendous consequences.

That is a lot of Hebrew prophecy and history for just the introduction to Matthew’s story, as well as a pretty outlandish claim or two. Matthew is, like the Chronicler, assuming a pretty deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures if one is going to understand what he is saying about Jesus. He also is making some wild claims. First, that this guy Jesus is the Messiah, the heir of David and Abraham. Second, that he is conceived by the Holy Spirit, and is therefore a human without a problem. The rest of his Gospel will continue along these same lines, arguing that Jesus of Nazareth is the restoration of Israel, the fulfillment of all God’s promises, and the beginning of the New Creation.