Verses 1-25
Chapter 1
1:1-17 This is the record of the lineage of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham begat Isaac,
and Isaac begat Jacob. Jacob begat Judah and his brothers. Judah begat
Phares and Zara, whose mother was Thamar. Phares begat Esrom. Esrom
begat Aram. Aram begat Aminadab. Aminadab begat Naasson. Naasson begat
Salmon. Salmon begat Booz, whose mother was Rachab. Booz begat Obed,
whose mother was Ruth. Obed begat Jesse. Jesse begat David, the king.
David begat Solomon,
whose mother was Uriah's wife. Solomon begat Roboam. Roboam begat Abia.
Abia begat Asaph. Asaph begat Josaphat. Josaphat begat Joram. Joram
begat Ozias. Ozias begat Joatham. Joatham begat Achaz. Achaz begat
Ezekias. Ezekias begat Manasses. Manasses begat Amos. Amos begat Josias.
Josias begat Jechonias, and his brothers, in the days when the exile to
Babylon took place.
After the exile to
Babylon Jechonias begat Salathiel. Salathiel begat Zorobabel. Zorobabel
begat Abioud. Abioud begat Eliakim. Eliakim begat Azor. Azor begat
Zadok. Zadok begat Acheim. Acheim begat Elioud. Elioud begat Eleazar.
Eleazar begat Matthan. Matthan begat Jacob. Jacob begat Joseph, the
husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, who is called Christ.
From Abraham to David
there were in all fourteen generations. From David to the exile to
Babylon there were also fourteen generations. From the exile to Babylon
to the coming of Christ there were also fourteen generations.
It might seem to a modern reader that Matthew chose an
extraordinary way in which to begin his gospel; and it might seem
daunting to present right at the beginning a long list of names to wade
through. But to a Jew this was the most natural, and the most
interesting, and indeed the most essential way to begin the story of any
man's life.
The Jews were exceedingly interested in genealogies. Matthew calls this the book of the generation (biblos - Greek #976; geneseos - Greek #1078)
of Jesus Christ. That to the Jews was a common phrase; and it means the
record of a man's lineage, with a few explanatory sentences, where such
comment was necessary. In the Old Testament we frequently find lists of
the generations of famous men (Genesis 5:1; Genesis 10:1; Genesis 11:10; Genesis 11:27).
When Josephus, the great Jewish historian, wrote his own autobiography,
he began it with his own pedigree, which, he tells us, he found in the
public records.
The reason for this interest in pedigrees was that the Jews set
the greatest possible store on purity of lineage. If in any man there
was the slightest admixture of foreign blood, he lost his right to be
called a Jew, and a member of the people of God. A priest, for instance,
was bound to produce an unbroken record of his pedigree stretching back
to Aaron; and, if he married, the woman he married must produce her
pedigree for at least five generations back. When Ezra was reorganizing
the worship of God, after the people returned from exile, and was
setting the priesthood to function again, the children of Habaiah, the
children of Koz, and the children of Barzillai were debarred from
office, and were labelled as polluted because "These sought their
registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not
found there" (Ezra 2:62).
These genealogical records were actually kept by the Sanhedrin.
Herod the Great was always despised by the pure-blooded Jews because he
was half an Edomite; and we can see the importance that even Herod
attached to these genealogies from the fact that he had the official
registers destroyed, so that no one could prove a purer pedigree than
his own. This may seem to us an uninteresting passage, but to the Jew it
would be a most impressive matter that the pedigree of Jesus could be
traced back to Abraham.
It is further to be noted that this pedigree is most carefully
arranged. It is arranged in three groups of fourteen people each. It is
in fact what is technically known as a mnemonic, that is to say a thing
so arranged that it is easy to memorize. It is always to be remembered
that the gospels were written hundreds of years before there was any
such thing as a printed book. Very few people would be able to own
actual copies of them; and so, if they wished to possess them, they
would be compelled to memorize them. This pedigree, therefore, is
arranged in such a way that it is easy to memorize. It is meant to prove
that Jesus was the son of David, and is so arranged as to make it easy
for people to carry it in their memories.
There is something symbolic of the whole of human life in the way in
which this pedigree is arranged. It is arranged in three sections, and
the three sections are based on three great stages in Jewish history.
The first section takes the history down to David. David was the
man who welded Israel into a nation, and made the Jews a power in the
world. The first section takes the story down to the rise of Israel's
greatest king.
The second section takes the story down to the exile to Babylon.
It is the section which tells of the nation's shame, and tragedy, and
disaster.
The third section takes the story down to Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ was the person who liberated men from their slavery, who rescued
them from their disaster, and in whom the tragedy was turned into
triumph.
These three sections stand for three stages in the spiritual history of mankind.
(i) Man was born for greatness. "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him" (Genesis 1:27). God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26).
Man was created in the image of God. God's dream for man was a dream of
greatness. Man was designed for fellowship with God. He was created
that he might be nothing less than kin to God. As Cicero, the Roman
thinker, saw it, "The only difference between man and God is in point of
time." Man was essentially man born to be king.
(ii) Man lost his greatness. Instead of being the servant of
God, man became the slave of sin. As G. K. Chesterton said, 6. whatever
else is true of man, man is not what he was meant to be." He used his
free-will to defy and to disobey God, rather than to enter into
friendship and fellowship with him. Left to himself man had frustrated
the design and plan of God in His creation.
(iii) Man can regain his greatness. Even then God did not
abandon man to himself and to his own devices. God did not allow man to
be destroyed by his own folly. The end of the story was not left to be
tragedy. Into this world God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, that he might
rescue man from the morass of sin in which he had lost himself, and
liberate him from the chains of sin with which he had bound himself so
that through him man might regain the fellowship with God which he had
lost.
In his genealogy Matthew shows us the royalty of kingship
gained; the tragedy of freedom lost; the glory of liberty restored. And
that, in the mercy of God, is the story of mankind, and of each
individual man.
This passage stresses two special things about Jesus.
(i) It stresses the fact that he was the son of David. It was,
indeed, mainly to prove this that the genealogy was composed. The New
Testament stresses this again and again.
Peter states it in the first recorded sermon of the Christian Church (Acts 2:29-36). Paul speaks of Jesus Christ descended from David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3). The writer of the Pastoral Epistles urges men to remember that Jesus Christ, descended from David, was raised from the dead (2 Timothy 2:8). The writer of the Revelation hears the Risen Christ say: "I am the root and the offspring of David" (Revelation 22:16).
Repeatedly Jesus is so addressed in the gospel story. After the
healing of the blind and dumb man, the people exclaim, "Can this be the
son of David?" (Matthew 12:23). The woman of Tyre and Sidon, who wished for Jesus' help for her daughter, calls him: "Son of David" (Matthew 15:22). The blind men cry out to Jesus as son of David (Matthew 20:30-31). It is as son of David that the crowds greet Jesus when he enters Jerusalem for the last time (Matthew 21:9; Matthew 21:15).
There is something of great significance here. It is clear that
it was the crowd, the common people, the ordinary folk, who addressed
Jesus as son of David. The Jews were a waiting people. They never
forgot, and never could forget, that they were the chosen people of God.
Although their history was one long series of disasters, although at
this very time they were a subject people, they never forgot their
destiny. And it was the dream of the common people that into this world
would come a descendant of David who would lead them to the glory which
they believed to be theirs by right.
That is to say, Jesus is the answer to the dreams of men. It is
true that so often men do not see it so. They see the answer to their
dreams in power, in wealth, in material plenty, and in the realization
of the ambitions which they cherish. But if ever men's dreams of peace
and loveliness, and greatness and satisfaction, are to be realized, they
can find their realization only in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ and the life he offers is the answer to the dreams
of men. In the old Joseph story there is a text which goes far beyond
the story itself. When Joseph was in prison, Pharaoh's chief butler and
chief baker were prisoners along with him. They had their dreams, and
their dreams troubled them, and their bewildered cry is, "We have had
dreams, and there is no one to interpret them" (Genesis 40:8).
Because man is man, because he is a child of eternity, man is always
haunted by his dream; and the only way to the realization of it lies in
Jesus Christ.
(ii) This passage also stresses that Jesus was the fulfillment
of prophecy. In him the message of the prophets came true. We tend
nowadays to make very little of prophecy. We are not really interested,
for the most part, in searching for sayings in the Old Testament which
are fulfilled in the New Testament. But prophecy does contain this great
and eternal truth, that in this universe there is purpose and design
and that God is meaning and willing certain things to happen.
J. H. Withers quotes a saying from Gerald Healy's play, The
Black Stranger. The scene is in Ireland, in the terrible days of famine
in the mid-nineteenth century. For want of something better to do, and
for lack of some other solution, the government had set men to digging
roads to no purpose and to no destination. Michael finds out about this
and comes home one day, and says in poignant wonder to his father,
"They're makin' roads that lead to nowhere."
If we believe in prophecy that is what we can never say. History
can never be a road that leads to nowhere. We may not use prophecy in
the same way as our fathers did, but at the back of the fact of prophecy
lies the eternal fact that life and the world are not on the way to
nowhere, but on the way to the goal of God.
By far the most amazing thing about this pedigree is the names of the women who appear in it.
It is not normal to find the names of women in Jewish pedigrees
at all. The woman had no legal rights; she was regarded, not as a
person, but as a thing. She was merely the possession of her father or
of her husband, and in his disposal to do with as he liked. In the
regular form of morning prayer the Jew thanked God that he had not made
him a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. The very existence of these names in
any pedigree at all is a most surprising and extraordinary phenomenon.
But when we look at who these women were, and at what they did,
the matter becomes even more amazing. Rachab, or as the Old Testament
calls her, Rahab, was a harlot of Jericho (Joshua 2:1-7). Ruth was not even a Jewess; she was a Moabitess (Ruth 1:4),
and does not the law itself lay it down, "No Ammonite or Moabite shall
enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none
belonging to them shall enter the assembly of the Lord for ever" (Deuteronomy 23:3)? Ruth belonged to an alien and a hated people. Tamar was a deliberate seducer and an adulteress (Genesis 38:1-30 ). Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was the woman whom David seduced from Uriah, her husband, with an unforgivable cruelty (2 Samuel 11:1-27; 2 Samuel 12:1-31).
If Matthew had ransacked the pages of the Old Testament for improbable
candidates he could not have discovered four more incredible ancestors
for Jesus Christ. But, surely, there is something very lovely in this.
Here, at the very beginning, Matthew shows us in symbol the essence of
the gospel of God in Jesus Christ, for here he shows us the barriers
going down.
(i) The barrier between Jew and Gentile is down. Rahab, the
woman of Jericho, and Ruth, the woman of Moab, find their place within
the pedigree of Jesus Christ. Already the great truth is there that in
Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. Here, at the very beginning,
there is the universalism of the gospel and of the love of God.
(ii) The barriers between male and female are down. In no
ordinary pedigree would the name of any woman be found; but such names
are found in Jesus' pedigree. The old contempt is gone; and men and
women stand equally dear to God, and equally important to his purposes.
(iii) The barrier between saint and sinner is down. Somehow God
can use for his purposes, and fit into his scheme of things, those who
have sinned greatly. "I came" said Jesus, "not to call the righteous,
but sinners" (Matthew 9:13).
Here at the very beginning of the gospel we are given a hint of
the all-embracing width of the love of God. God can find his servants
amongst those from whom the respectable orthodox would shudder away in
horror.
1:18-25 The
birth of Jesus Christ happened in this way. Mary, His mother, was
betrothed to Joseph, and, before they became man and wife, it was
discovered that she was carrying a child in her womb through the action
of the Holy Spirit. Although Joseph, her husband, was a man who kept the
law, he did not wish publicly to humiliate her, so he wished to divorce
her secretly. When he was planning this, behold, an angel of the Lord
came to him in a dream. "Joseph, son of David" said the angel, "do not
hesitate to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been begotten
within her has come from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you
must call his name Jesus, for it is he who will save his people from
their sins. All this has happened that there might be fulfilled that
which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, 'Behold, the maiden
will conceive and bear a son, and you must call his name Emmanuel, which
is translated: God with us'." So Joseph woke from his sleep, and did as
the angel of the Lord had commanded him; and he accepted his wife: and
he did not know her until she had borne a son; and he called his name
Jesus.
To our western ways of thinking the relationships in this
passage are very bewildering. First, Joseph is said to be betrothed to
Mary; then he is said to be planning quietly to divorce her; and then
she is called his wife. But the relationships represent normal Jewish
marriage procedure, in which there were three steps.
(i) There was the engagement. The engagement was often made when
the couple were only children. It was usually made through the parents,
or through a professional match-maker. And it was often made without
the couple involved ever having seen each other. Marriage was held to be
far too serious a step to be left to the dictates of the human heart.
(ii) There was the betrothal. The betrothal was what we might
call the ratification of the engagement into which the couple had
previously entered. At this point the engagement, entered into by the
parents or the match-maker, could be broken if the girl was unwilling to
go on with it. But once the betrothal was entered into, it was
absolutely binding. It lasted for one year. During that year the couple
were known as man and wife, although they had not the rights of man and
wife. It could not be terminated in any other way than by divorce. In
the Jewish law we frequently find what is to us a curious phrase. A girl
whose fiance had died during the year of betrothal is called "a virgin
who is a widow". It was at this stage that Joseph and Mary were. They
were betrothed, and if Joseph wished to end the betrothal, he could do
so in no other way than by divorce; and in that year of betrothal Mary
was legally known as his wife.
(iii) The third stage was the marriage proper, which took place at the end of the year of betrothal.
If we remember the normal Jewish wedding customs, then the
relationships in this passage are perfectly usual and perfectly clear.
So at this stage it was told to Joseph that Mary was to bear a
child, that that child had been begotten by the Holy Spirit, and that he
must call the child by the name Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form of the
Jewish name Joshua, and Joshua means Jehovah is salvation. Long ago the
Psalmist had heard God say, "He will redeem Israel from all his
iniquities'" (Psalms 130:8).
And Joseph was told that the child to be born would grow into the
Saviour who would save God's people from their sins. Jesus was not so
much The Man born to be King as The Man born to be Saviour. He came to
this world, not for his own sake, but for men and for our salvation.
This passage tells us how Jesus was born by the action of the Holy
Spirit. It tells us of what we call the Virgin Birth. This is a doctrine
which presents us with many difficulties; and our Church does not
compel us to accept it in the literal and the physical sense. This is
one of the doctrines on which the Church says that we have full liberty
to come to our own conclusion. At the moment we are concerned only to
find out what this means for us.
If we come to this passage with fresh eyes, and read it as if we
were reading it for the first time, we will find that what it stresses
is not so much that Jesus was born of a woman who was a virgin, as that
the birth of Jesus is the work of the Holy Spirit. "Mary was found to be
with child of the Holy Spirit." "That which is conceived in her is of
the Holy Spirit." It is as if these sentences were underlined, and
printed large. That is what Matthew wishes to say to us in this passage.
What then does it mean to say that in the birth of Jesus the Holy
Spirit of God was specially operative? Let us leave aside all the
doubtful and debatable things, and concentrate on that great truth, as
Matthew would wish us to do.
In Jewish thought the Holy Spirit had certain very definite
functions. We cannot bring to this passage the Christian idea of the
Holy Spirit in all its fullness, because Joseph would know nothing about
that. We must interpret it in the light of the Jewish idea of the Holy
Spirit, for it is that idea that Joseph would inevitably bring to this
message, for that was all he knew.
(i) According to the Jewish idea, the Holy Spirit was the person
who brought God's truth to men. It was the Holy Spirit who taught the
prophets what to say; it was the Holy Spirit who taught men of God what
to do; it was the Holy Spirit who, throughout the ages and the
generations, brought God's truth to men. So then, Jesus is the one
person who brings God's truth to men.
Let us put it in another way. Jesus is the one person who can
tell us what God is like, add what God means us to be. In him alone we
see what God is and what man ought to be. Before Jesus came men had only
vague and shadowy, and often quite wrong, ideas about God; they could
only at best guess and grope; but Jesus could say, "He who has seen me
has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
In Jesus we see the love, the compassion, the mercy, the seeking heart,
the purity of God as nowhere else in all this world. With the coming of
Jesus the time of guessing is gone, and the time of certainty is come.
Before Jesus came men did not really know what goodness was. In Jesus
alone we see true manhood, true goodness, true obedience to the will of
God. Jesus came to tell us the truth about God and the truth about
ourselves.
(ii) The Jews believed that the Holy Spirit not only brought
God's truth to men, but also enabled men to recognize that truth when
they saw it. So then Jesus opens men's eyes to the truth. Men are
blinded by their own ignorance; they are led astray by their own
prejudices; their minds and eyes are darkened by their own sins and
their own passions. Jesus can open our eyes until we are able to see the
truth.
In one of William J. Locke's novels there is a picture of a
woman who has any amount of money, and who has spent half a lifetime on a
tour of the sights and picture galleries of the world. She is weary and
bored. Then she meets a Frenchman who has little of this world's goods,
but who has a wide knowledge and a great love of beauty. He comes with
her, and in his company things are completely different. "I never knew
what things were like," she said to him, "until you taught me how to
look at them."
Life is quite different when Jesus teaches us how to look at
things. When Jesus comes into our hearts, he opens our eyes to see
things truly.
(iii) The Jews specially connected the Spirit of God with the work of
creation. It was through his Spirit that God performed his creating
work. In the beginning the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters and chaos became a world (Genesis 1:2). "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made," said the Psalmist, "and all their host by the breath of his mouth" (Psalms 33:6). (Both in Hebrew: ruwach (Hebrew #7307), and in Greek: pneuma (Greek #4151), the word for breath and spirit is the same word.) "When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created" (Psalms 104:30). "The Spirit of God has made me," said Job, "and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4).
The Spirit is the Creator of the World and the Giver of Life.
So, then, in Jesus there came into the world God's life-giving and
creating power. That power, which reduced the primal chaos to order, is
come to bring order to our disordered life. That power, which breathed
life into that in which there was no life, is come to breathe life into
our weaknesses and frustrations. We could put it this way--we are not
really alive until Jesus enters into our lives.
(iv) The Jews specially connected the Spirit, not only with the
work of creation, but with the work of re-creation. Ezekiel draws his
grim picture of the valley of dry bones. He goes on to tell how the dry
bones came alive; and then he hears God say, "I will cause breath to
enter you, and you shall live" (Ezekiel 37:1-14).
The Rabbis had a saying, "God said to Israel: 'In this world my Spirit
has put wisdom in you, but in the future my Spirit will make you to live
again'." When men are dead in sin and in lethargy, it is the Spirit of
God which can waken them to life anew.
So then, in Jesus there came to this world the power which can
re-create life. He can bring to life again the soul which is dead in
sin; he can revive again the ideals which have died; he can make strong
again the will to goodness which has perished. He can renew life, when
men have lost all that life means.
There is much more in this chapter than the crude fact that
Jesus Christ was born of a virgin mother. The essence of Matthew's story
is that in the birth of Jesus the Spirit of God was operative as never
before in this world. It is the Spirit who brings God's truth to men; it
is the Spirit who enables men to recognize that truth when they see it;
it is the Spirit who was God's agent in the creation of the world; it
is the Spirit who alone can re-create the human soul when it has lost
the life it ought to have.
Jesus enables us to see what God is and what man ought to be;
Jesus opens the eyes of our minds so that we can see the truth of God
for us; Jesus is the creating power come amongst men; Jesus is the
re-creating power which can release the souls of men from the death of
sin.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)