The Importance of the names
Matthew was a Jewish believer. His opening point is to demonstrate that Jesus meets all the requirements of the Old Testament to be the Messiah. According to Scripture, the true Messiah must be a descendant of Abraham, Jacob, Judah, Jessie and David.
The opening verse of Matthew is like a preamble which introduces the genealogy. Jesus’ identity is summed up as simply the son of David, son of Abraham. Only thereafter (starting in verse 2) does the actual generation by generation accounting of Jesus’ ancestors begin. By saying that Jesus is the son of David, the intent is to prove that He is royalty of the tribe of Judah through Davi, which makes Him of the proper family to rule. By saying also that He is the sons of Abraham, it makes a firm connection that He is a full-fledged Hebrew and is therefore eligible to bring about the promise God made to Abraham is Genesis 12 that through Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed.
We find Matthew beginning his table of ancestors with Abraham, the founder of the Hebrews. The list of Jesus’ ancestors is a descending list (oldest first) which begins with Father Abraham and ends with Jesus. The usual Hebrew way of presenting a genealogy is one which is organized in descending order. Genesis 4:17 begins the Bible’s first genealogy. It is given in descending order. The Hebrew tradition of presenting a genealogy beginning with the oldest seems to have been taken from that.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the ancestor list is divided into three equal parts of 14 generations each. Between Abraham and David, there are 14 generations. From David to the Babylonian Exile there are 14 generations. And from the Babylonian Exile to Jesus there are 14 more generations. This gives a total of 42 generations.
The structure Matthew used is meant to covey meaning to the Jewish people. There are missing ancestors and generations are skipped. As mentioned before, the purpose of Hebraic genealogies is not to create a family tree. Rather, the purpose of Jewish genealogies is to convey a meaning, agenda or pedigree.
In Hebrew, even letter of the alphabet is assigned a numerical value. For example, the first letter aleph is assigned the number one. The second letter bet is assigned the number 2. So the word av (spelled aleph-bet) is 1+2 which equals three. Av means father. It is one of God’s names. God is associated with the number 3.
In kabbalistic Judaism, God is represented as the number 42. Without going into all the details, any word in the Bible which equals the number 42 is associated with God. Moreover, the number 42 is often broken down into three sets of 14. This is precisely how Matthew has written his genealogy.
Additionally, David’s name in Hebrew is represented as the number 14. David’s name is dalet-vav-dalet. Dalet is the number 4; vav is the number 6. So David’s name (dalet-vav-dalet) would be 4+6+4 which equals 14. Again it seems Matthew is trying to convey to his reader’s Jesus’ association with David. Jesus is called the son of David throughout the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Messiah is referred to as the son of David.
A Jew in the first century would have known the significance of the numbers 3,14 and 42. Matthew’s genealogy would have been a powerful example of why Jesus is the Messiah.
The mention of four women in the genealogy
An interesting thing to to is the mention of four women in Mathew’s genealogy of Jesus. The inclusion of women in a Hebrew genealogy is rare. The four named are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba (although Bathsheba is not directly mentioned; she is referred to as the wife of Uriah).
Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah (the founder of the tribe of Judah) who disguised herself as a prostitue and produced twins sons with him.
Rahab was the inn keeper/prostitute of Jericho. She betrayed her own people to help Israel and their leader Joshua conquer Jericho was they began their invasion of Canaan.
Ruth was from Moab. She married a Israelite, but he died. She followed her mother-in-law Naomi back to Israel. Ruth met a relative called Boaz. Boaz marries Ruth. They have a son called Obed. Ruth’s great-grandson is King David.
Bathsheba was the woman with whom King David had an affair. King David had her husband Uriah killed so that King David could have Bathsheba as his wife. King David and Bathsheba have Solomon who becomes King David’s successor.
We do not know Bathsheba’s background, the other three woman all began their lives as gentiles. Tamar, Rahab and Ruth all join themselves to Israel and covert to Judaism. It is likely Bathsheba was also a foreigner as her husband Uriah was a Hittite.
Assuming Matthew’s genealogy is based on gematria (the numbers assigned to each letter in the Hebrew alphabet, we should assume that since there are four women included there must be a meaning to the number four.
The number four means universality. It means the whole world. We can see this represented in our own culture since there are four directions—north, south, east and west. Most chairs have four legs. Many common household items such as sheets, blankets and towels have four corners. Standard paper has four corners.
The message seems to be that although Jesus was thoroughly Jewish, of the royal line of David and was born from a Jewish woman in the Holy Land, in his family lineage there are traces of gentile connection that cannot be ignored.
After a long list of Jesus’ ancestors, verse 16 says: “Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary from whom was born the Jesus who was called the Messiah.”
Matthew is careful to make Joseph Mary’s husband but NOT the biological father of the child. At the same time, he makes Mary Jesus’ biological mother. Matthew is also specific in placing the word “the” in front of Jesus’ name. Jesus was one of the most popular male names in the Holy Land during that ear. It was necessary for Matthew to be clear about which one of the many hundreds if not thousands of Jesus he was referring to.
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