Matthew 1 Study Notes

1:1 The title of this genealogy introduces several important themes in Matthew. Jesus is identified as the Christ, Messiah, the King anointed by God to rule over his people. This is reiterated by identifying Jesus as Son of David (v. 20; 2:2; 9:27; 12:3,23; 15:22; 20:30-31; 21:9,15). OT prophecies like 2Sm 7:16 and Is 9:2-7 foretold that Messiah (the “anointed one”) would be a descendant of King David. Jesus’s Davidic lineage shows that he meets this qualification. Though the genealogy is otherwise arranged in chronological order, Matthew shifted “Son of David” ahead of Son of Abraham to lay emphasis on the royal title.

The title “Son of Abraham” implies that just as Abraham was the father of national Israel, Jesus will be the founder of a new spiritual Israel. The phrase an account of the genealogy of Jesus is unusual. OT genealogies are consistently named after the earliest ancestor in the lineage because the Jews considered that person to be most significant since everyone else derived from them. That Matthew names his genealogy after Jesus, the final descendant in the lineage, implies that Jesus is more important than anyone who preceded him.

1:2-6 Matthew mentioned four women in his genealogy, all of them Gentiles. Tamar was a Canaanite. Rahab was from Jericho. Ruth was a Moabitess. Uriah’s wife Bathsheba was probably a Hittite. The mention of these women signals God’s intention to include Gentiles and women in his redemptive plan. Several kings are named also, but only David is explicitly given the title King. This highlights that the Son of David (Jesus) will likewise be a kingly figure.

1:7-16 Matthew’s genealogy agrees with the genealogies of 1Ch 1-3 and Lk 3:23-38 from the generation of Abraham down to David. After David, Matthew’s genealogy agrees with that of 1 Chronicles except for a few intentional gaps, but departs significantly from Luke’s. Some interpreters argue from this that one or both of the NT genealogies is inaccurate. However, Jews in David’s line carefully preserved their genealogies because they knew from the OT prophecies that one of their descendants would be the Messiah. David’s descendants also had the privilege of providing firewood for the altar in Jerusalem (m. Ta‘an. 4:5). Naturally, they kept careful records to demonstrate their Davidic descent and preserve their privileges. Evidence in Josephus (Life 1) and rabbinic texts suggests that genealogical archives were kept in public registers.

Scholars suggest several ways in which the genealogies of Matthew and Luke may be harmonized. First, one may preserve the genealogy of Jesus through Mary and the other through Joseph. Second, the custom of levirate marriage resulted in a child having different biological and legal fathers. Perhaps one genealogy follows the biological line while the other follows the legal. Third, one genealogy may trace David’s legal descendants who would have reigned if the Davidic kingdom had continued, while the other lists descendants in Joseph’s specific line. A combination of these approaches is also possible.

In English, it is difficult to identify the antecedent of the first occurrence of the pronoun who in v. 16. However, in Matthew’s Greek, the pronoun is feminine. Thus, although the rest of the genealogy focuses on fathers and only rarely mentions mothers, Matthew identified a human mother but not a human father of Jesus, thus implying Jesus’s virginal conception.

1:17 Matthew’s arrangement of Jesus’s genealogy into three sets of fourteen generations is probably an example of gematria, a system that assigns numerical value to letters of the alphabet (e.g., A = 1, B = 2, etc.) in order to communicate a subtle message. In Hebrew, the numerical value of the letters composing the name David is fourteen. Thus Matthew’s artistic arrangement probably highlights Jesus’s Davidic lineage. If Matthew did intentionally use gematria, this supports the view that he originally wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, for the gematria functions in the Hebrew version of the genealogy but not the Greek.

1:18 The words of Jesus Christ are in an emphatic position in the Greek text, implying that the circumstances of Jesus’s birth differed from those of everyone else in the genealogy. Although several of those people were conceived by miracles, they all had a human father. Only Jesus was born of a virgin. Mary had been engaged to Joseph. However, ancient Jewish engagement was as legally binding as marriage. The couple did not live together or engage in sexual intercourse. But the engagement could only be ended by divorce (thus, Joseph’s decision in 1:19). Before they came together means that Joseph and Mary had not yet had intercourse. Joseph thus assumed that Mary had been unfaithful. Pregnant from the Holy Spirit means that Mary’s pregnancy was a miracle performed by the Spirit, not that God assumed material form and physically impregnated her. This makes Jesus’s conception dramatically different from Greek myths that speak of children born to gods who lay with women.

1:19 Joseph did not want to humiliate Mary publicly because he was a righteous man. His peers most likely expected him to expose her apparent sin, but true righteousness is characterized by compassion and mercy, an important theme for Matthew (5:6-7,21-26,38-48).

1:20 God spoke to Joseph through dreams, just as he did to his OT namesake (Gn 37:1-11). The title son of David reminded Joseph of his royal lineage and prepared him for the announcement of Messiah’s birth. On conceived . . . from the Holy Spirit, see note at v. 18.

1:21 Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua which means “Yahweh saves.” The angel explained that Jesus’s name revealed his purpose: He would rescue sinners from the punishment they deserve. This salvation would be experienced by his people, identified as those who follow Jesus.

1:22 Spoken by the Lord through the prophet implies that God was the ultimate author of the messages spoken and written by the prophets. The grammar that Matthew uses to introduce the quote from Is 7:14 (see Mt 1:23) suggests that the angel quoted this verse to Joseph during his announcement. Some interpreters argue that Matthew mishandled Is 7:14, but he seems to have handled it just as the angel did, which means his usage is backed by angelic authority.

1:23 The name Immanuel (God with us) implies Jesus’s deity. Mary’s virgin-born Son would be God himself living among his people. The Immanuel of Is 7:14 is to be identified with the person described in Is 9:2-7 and 11:1-9.

1:24-25 These verses emphasize Joseph’s absolute obedience to the angel’s instructions, a prevalent theme in these early chapters (2:13-15,19-21). Joseph is a model of the obedience that should characterize Jesus’s disciples (5:19-20). Did not have sexual relations with her confirms again that Jesus was the product of a virginal conception.