Biblical genealogies are things most of us read, accept and move on in our reading. But the genealogy Matthew gives for Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel has a particularly interesting aspect. Matthew divides the “family tree” he constructs for the promised Messiah into three sections of fourteen generations each, saying: “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17).
But if we look back into the Old Testament lists of the ancient kings of Judah who were among the ancestors of Jesus, we find that Matthew actually omits three individuals between the kings Jehoram and Uzziah (Matthew 1:8): Ahaziah (2 Kings 8:25), Joash (2 Kings 12:1) and Amaziah (2 Kings 14:1). In other words, there were actually seventeen known generations between David and the exile, rather than fourteen as Matthew states.
How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction in the Scriptures? First, we must understand that Matthew follows a common ancient practice in structuring the genealogy he gives into clear units which were more easily remembered and taught. That Matthew omits some individuals in order to accomplish this pattern is not surprising because if we look back to the very first verse of his Gospel, he does that to an even more striking degree in saying “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” – where the practice of “jumping generations” is clearly utilized to make his point: to stress that Jesus was the descendant of David (who is actually named first, before Abraham).
We must remember that because Mathew wrote to a primarily Jewish audience, he knew that his readers were familiar with the king lists of the Hebrew Scriptures and that they would understand he was “jumping generations” in Matthew 1:8 in exactly the same way he did in Matthew 1:1.
We can see this fact in another way. Ancient genealogies usually omitted women in their reckoning, but Matthew includes four women who were Gentiles or had Gentile connections (Matthew 1:3, 5-6), even though he did not include the four great matriarchs of the biblical tradition – Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel. The reason is clearly because another theme of Matthew’s Gospel is the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s plan for humanity.
Matthew adjusted the details of his genealogy of Jesus in order to make the points that were vital for his story. So, rather than contradicting Old Testament accounts, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is carefully constructed to stress Jesus’ descent from David and from Gentile ancestors – which gave him the genealogy to be not only the King of the Jews, but also the King of all mankind.
