Knowing Christ throughMatthew — Part 1: Thegenealogy of ChristIn the coming liturgical year, the Church reads primarily fromthe Gospel of Matthew. The primary context for hearing theword of God is in the liturgy. To prepare ourselves to betterreceive what is given to us in our communal celebration, OurSunday Visitor will offer a series of 12 In Focuses dedicatedto exploring some central themes and texts in the Gospel ofMatthew. We hope you will take up the task of “Meeting Christin Matthew” as we address topics such as treasure in heaven,the promise to St. Peter, the parables, the prediction of theworld’s end, the Sermon on the Mount, and others.

5 QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• Jesus is born of the Virgin Mary. What purpose, then, doesa genealogy that runs through St. Joseph serve?

• Matthew’s genealogy proceeds from father to son. Henevertheless includes four women. What do they reveal about

Jesus?• Matthew places great stress on Jesus as “the son of David,

the son of Abraham?” Why this emphasis?• What notion of fulfillment is at work in Matthew?

• There is an unfortunate tendency to pit the Gospel againstthe Law of Moses. And yet, Matthew casts Jesus as a new

Moses. What does this reveal about both figures?

Significance of structure“When the fullness of time had come,” writes St. Paul, “Godsent his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4).The Incarnation takes place in the womb of a Jewess, theBlessed Virgin Mary, and it incorporates the Son into the life

and history of the Jewish people. If the work of Jesus bringssalvation to the whole human family, it does so first bybringing to perfection the life of God’s elect, the family ofIsrael. The Gospel of Matthew, with which the New Testamentbegins, situates Jesus within the wide sweep of Israel’shistory. Jesus is not only “born of a woman, born under thelaw.” He is “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son ofAbraham” (Mt 1:1). The work of God that began with Israel’sforefather in faith reaches its climax in the generation of“Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who iscalled the Messiah” (Mt 1:16).

Matthew signals this historical progress in the structure ofthe genealogy in Chapter 1. Unlike similar texts in the OldTestament, this list of ancestors does not move from somegreat figure on down: “This is the record of the descendantsof Adam” (Gn 5:1); “These are the descendants of Shem” (Gn11:10). Rather, the list moves toward Jesus, and the symmetrywith which it does so identifies him not simply as the next inline but as a figure who marks a new epoch in history. “Thusthe total number of generations from Abraham to David isfourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile,fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to theMessiah, fourteen generations” (Mt 1:17).

Abraham, David and Joseph are shown in a stained glass windowin the Basilica of Saint Clotilde in Paris, France.Shutterstock

The pattern alone is sufficient to convey the significance ofJesus. We might, though, discern additional meaning in thenumber of generations. Letters in the Hebrew alphabet possessnumerical value, and the letters of David’s name (dalet, waw,dalet) add up to 14 (4+6+4). This echoes at least half ofMatthew’s emphasis on Jesus as “the son of David, the son ofAbraham” (Mt 1:1). The number might also be significant as thedouble of seven. The three periods of 14 amount to six groupsof seven and might be taken to place Jesus at the head of aseventh — a sort of genealogical Sabbath. This has merit, butit may not be what makes the most sense of the text. Afterall, Jesus begets no one, and the related theme of becoming“children of God” is not one as present in Matthew as it iselsewhere (cf. Jn 1:12-13).

A related suggestion is more plausible in my view. In a homilyon the Book of Numbers, the third-century theologian Origen

draws an analogy between the 42 encampments made by Israel onits journey toward the Promised Land (cf. Num 33) and the 42generations (3×14) that lead to Christ. Given the analogybetween entrance into the Promised Land and entry intoChrist’s rest made by the Letter to the Hebrews, there is moreto Origen’s suggestion than first appears. And given that thisentrance is spoken of as an entrance into rest (cf. Heb 4:1),there might yet be something to the idea that the genealogyleads toward a sabbath of sorts.

In the line of DavidAs for the substance of what it means for Jesus to finish thelong march of Israel’s history, Matthew directs our attentionto the titles “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son ofAbraham.” The last of these concerns the covenant promisesgiven at the moment of Israel’s origin. “The Lord said toAbram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from yourfather’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make ofyou a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make yourname great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless thosewho bless you and curse those who curse you. All the familiesof the earth will find blessing in you” (Gn 12:1-3). The firstelements of this, the gifts of land and descendants, serve thethird — namely, the service of Israel as a blessing to thenations. As seen already in Abraham, the vocation of Israel isuniversal in scope, and in Jesus it finds its realization.

The promise to David specifies (in part) the way in which thisblessing is given. Through the prophet Nathan, David is told,“Your house and your kingdom are firm forever before me; yourthrone shall be firmly established forever” (2 Sm 7:16).Jesus, the son of David, son of Abraham, is the “king of theJews” (Mt 27:37) through whom all nations will be blessed (cf.Mt 28:19).

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This is all well and good, but we might doubt whether thegenealogy succeeds in speaking of Jesus at all. Does it not,after all, culminate in the person of Joseph? Whereas theusual formula “X is the father of Y” applies in every otherinstance in the chapter, it cannot be said of Joseph’srelation to Jesus. Accounts of miraculous births are presentin Scripture. By his grace, God overcomes the barrenness ofSarah (cf. Gn 21:1-3), Rebekah (Gn 25:21) and Hannah (1 Sm 1).Mary’s conception is analogous to these. In the Gospel ofLuke, we even hear an echo of Hannah’s song (cf. 1 Sam 2:1-10)in Mary’s Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55). Even so, the conception ofChrist is unique, for Joseph does not play the role played byAbraham, Isaac or the unnamed father of Samuel. He is not thebiological father, since “before they lived together, [Mary]was found with child through the holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18). Agenealogy that culminates in Joseph seems beside the point.

Some ancient authors reckon with this apparent difficulty. TheProtoevangelium of James as well St. Ignatius of Antioch and

St. Justin Martyr speak of Mary as belonging to the house ofDavid. This may be true, but whatever the merit of thissuggestion, the idea is not found in Matthew. It also aims tosolve a problem that, in truth, is not there, for in Israel,legal and not natural/biological descent held the greatestweight. Jesus’ genealogy rightly runs through Joseph.

We see an example of this in the practice of levirate marriage(cf. Dt 25:5-10). According to this provision of the MosaicLaw, the brother of a deceased man was to father a child withhis widow, and the child was to be reckoned as the child ofthe deceased. No such situation is in play with Joseph andMary, but the principle holds. That both Matthew and Luke canrun their genealogy through Joseph without so much as acomment affirms this. Indeed, Matthew wishes to foreground thefact that Joseph is not the biological father so as tointroduce the question that the following verses answer: Whatis the origin of this child? Yes, he is by all legal meanstruly “the son of David, the son of Abraham,” but from wheredoes he come?

From the womb of a virginIn subtle but important ways, the genealogy prepares us for ananswer. Readers have long noticed the presence of four womenin the genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Becausethe family tree runs from father to son, Matthew’s decision tomention these women is purposeful. One suggestion takes noteof their identity as foreigners. Rahab was a Canaanite, asperhaps was Tamar. Ruth was a Moabite. Bathsheba was thehusband of Uriah the Hittite, and so perhaps a Hittiteherself. If this is the connection the Gospel wishes us tomake, the inclusion of these women in the genealogy wouldaffirm the role of the Gentiles in Israel’s past and defendtheir ever-greater presence in the new “Israel of God” (Gal6:16) — namely, the Church. This would have been a welcomepoint of emphasis for the Church as a whole and more

particularly for the mixed Gentile/Jewish community out ofwhich the Gospel of Matthew grew in Syria.

Patrilineage in Matthew wastraditionally illustrated bya Tree of Jesse showing thedescent of Jesus from Jesse,father of King David.Publicdomain

Another suggestion speaks more directly to the concerns of thefirst chapter. The genealogy is not, as the great biblicalscholar Raymond Brown observed, “a record of man’s biologicalproductivity but a demonstration of God’s providence.” By itsinclusion of “idolaters, murderers, incompetents, power-seekers, and harem wastrels,” the chapter gives clear witnessto the character of God’s self-emptying love. (In this, Brownsays, “It contains the essential theology of the Old and NewTestaments.” I believe he is correct.) Even when the actorspossess great fidelity, the outworking of God’s providence

does not refrain from what can give rise to misunderstandingand scandal. Consider the women: When Judah, the father of herlate husband, denies Tamar another son in marriage, sheseduces Judah himself so as produce an heir; though Rahab isone of the Canaanites whom the Israelites are commanded todestroy, she helps Israel to enter the Promised Land andbecomes herself the father of Boaz; Ruth, from the stock ofIsrael’s ancient enemy Moab, for the love of her mother-in-lawNaomi, joins herself to Israel’s God and becomes the greatgrandmother of King David through her marriage to Boaz; andBathsheba, David’s ill-gotten wife through the murder ofUriah, bears him the heir to his throne, Solomon.

The events surrounding the birth of Jesus are similarly eye-catching. The suggestion, taken up by Celsus in the secondcentury and repeated down the ages, that Jesus was begotten byMary’s infidelity is taken up by Joseph as well. Not withoutreason does he intend “to divorce her quietly” (Mt 1:19). Maryis no foreigner, as are the women above, but as one apparentlyguilty of adultery, she, too, would have fallen outside thegood graces of the Law. And yet Matthew reveals her, like thewomen before her, to be the unlikely instrument of God’sprovidence. If in the other cases it was true that, as RaymondBrown writes, “God had overcome the moral or biologicalirregularity of the human parents … here he overcomes thetotal absence of the father’s begetting.” Tamar, Rahab, Ruthand Bathsheba all anticipate the definitive work to be broughtabout in the Blessed Virgin. Their presence in the genealogyprepares us for the radical divine intervention that Godbegins in Mary. This child, who by law is “the son of David,the son of Abraham” is also brought forth “through the HolySpirit” (Mt 1:18, 20).

In preparing his readers to understand the coming of Christ,Matthew turns also to the words of Isaiah. The Virgin Mary notonly bears a likeness to those whom God has raised up beforein Israel, but she is also anticipated by the prophets. The

virginal conception of Jesus through the agency of the HolySpirit “took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by theprophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, andhis name shall be called Emmanuel'” (1:22).

An Old Testament parallelIt is commonplace to view Matthew’s citation of the OldTestament as daft. Any careful reader will see that Isaiah’sEmmanuel prophecy most certainly addresses the politicalhappenings of Israel in the days of King Ahaz. Therefore, thepassage does not — as the argument runs — concern what came topass more than seven centuries later. Rather, it aims to hearthe prophetic word on its own terms. Not every utterance ofthe prophets is an act of long-distance future-telling. It’sfair to argue that the promise of Emmanuel is fulfilled withthe birth of Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah. In the theology of the Bookof Isaiah, Ahaz and his son function respectively as images ofinfidelity and fidelity. While his father is rebuked, Hezekiahshows, in Moses-like fashion, the type of obedience that intime will lead to Israel’s return from exile. For the Book ofIsaiah, therefore, Hezekiah is both an individual historicalperson and also a mold in which future leaders are to be cast;so, too, the “office” of Emmanuel. It is occupied by Hezekiah,and it awaits a future and fuller instantiation, such as issuggested by the cosmic descriptions of the child in Isaiah9:5 — “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince ofPeace.”

God’s providence is replete with what Robert Alter calls“duplicating patterns.” Hezekiah is the first Emmanuel; theBook of Isaiah does not anticipate that he is the last. (Toinsist with the critics of Matthew that the prophetic wordadmits of one and only one fulfillment is a constraint on theword of God in ways that it does not wish to be constrained.)Matthew’s citation, far from being daft, capitalizes on thisopenness of the prophecy. That, moreover, Isaiah 7:14 (NIV)

should speak of Emmanuel as being conceived by a “virgin”(parthenos in the early Greek translation of the OldTestament) only strengthened the identification. So too didthe meaning of “Emmanuel” as “God-with-us.” Unlike the firstEmmanuel, the king Hezekiah, Matthew recognized in Jesus onetruly born of a virgin, one who truly is a sacrament of God’spresence, and one who truly will “save his people from theirsins” (Mt 1:21). Matthew’s citation of Isaiah is well-considered and true. And it demonstrates for us the identityof Jesus not only as David’s son and Abraham’s, but alsoGod’s.

Jesus as the new MosesThis grafting of Christ onto the history and hope of Israelcomes to the fore with Jesus’ birth and sojourn in Egypt. TheExodus was remembered as God’s foremost act of deliverance. Assuch, it served as the template of God’s future and finalliberation. So it was, for instance, that in the time of theBabylonian exile, the prophecy we hear in Isaiah speaks of thecoming deliverance in terms reminiscent of Exodus. God, forexample, “opens a way in the sea” (Is 43:16) and extinguishes“chariot and horse” (Ex 14-15). So, too, he draws “water fromthe rock” (Is 48:21; Ex 17:1-7). And in time he will establish“Zion” (that is, Jerusalem) as a new Mount Sinai from which“shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord fromJerusalem” (Is 2:3).

3 KEY LESSONS

• God’s work of making all things new (Rv 21:5) takes placein and through the people of Israel. Jesus, “born of a woman,

born under the law” (Gal 4:4) is truly a member of thatpeople.

• Jesus is, moreover, the one in whom the whole of God’sworks through Israel comes to its completion. He is a trueson of Abraham, the heir of David’s throne and a lawgiver in

the likeness of Moses.• In the Exodus, God led his people out of slavery, made a

covenant with them, and led them toward the Promised Land. InChrist, God will lead his people from the bondage of death,make a new covenant with them and lead them to the place of

perfect rest.This anticipation of a new and final Exodus echoes in themouth of John the Baptist. On the cusp of Jesus’ publicministry, we hear John proclaim the words of Isaiah: “A voiceof one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,make straight his paths'” (Mt 3:3; cf. Is 40:3). Thisconnection between Jesus and the new Exodus appears already inthe preceding chapter. After relating the genealogy,conception and birth of Jesus at the opening of his Gospel,Matthew tells of Jesus’ sojourn in Egypt in the secondchapter. The affinities between Our Lord’s own biography andthat of Moses are striking. As Pharaoh sought to kill Moses(cf. Ex 2:15), so Herod seeks the life of Jesus (Mt 2:13-14).And just as the king of Egypt massacres the Hebrew children(Ex 1:22), so king Herod commands the slaughter of theinnocents (Mt 2:16). After the death of Pharaoh, Moses is toldin a dream to return to Egypt (Ex 4:19). So also after thedeath of Herod, St. Joseph is told in a dream to return to theland of Israel (Mt 2:19-20). And just as the return of Mosessets in motion the great events of the Exodus wherein the Lorddraws Israel through the waters of the Red Sea, so the returnof Jesus at the end of Matthew 2 opens onto John’s cry to“prepare the way of the Lord” and Jesus’ descent into thewaters of the Jordan. There follows both a period of trial in

the wilderness (Mt 4:1-11) and the giving of a new Law (Mt5-7). The meaning could hardly be clearer.

The Holy Family is shown in this 18th century painting in thechurch Convento de Capuchinos (Iglesia Santo Anchel).Shutterstock

Already in his childhood, Jesus begins to recapitulate thewhole history of his people. In these short opening chapters,Matthew reveals the central components of Christ’s identitythat will occupy his writing in the remainder of the Gospel.Jesus is the “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son ofAbraham.” He is the true Emmanuel foreseen by Isaiah, who likeMoses will lead Israel in a new exodus from death to life.

Anthony Pagliarini is an assistant teaching professor anddirector of undergraduate studies in the Department ofTheology at the University of Notre Dame.

COMING NEXT MONTH

In January, we will explore Matthew’s use of Old Testamentpassages. In what way does the evangelist read and understandthe Scriptures of Israel? What do the passages cited teach usabout Jesus? How does Matthew’s manner of reading the Old

Testament shape our own?