Jesus' Genealogy in Matthew 1: The troubled family history of the Saviour

Today's Readings

My first thought of this journey relates to the book of Matthew and how it starts with the human story of Jesus' descendants; often called the 'genealogy of Jesus'. The astute reader may notice how the Genesis passage relates to this. Indeed, after the primary creation narrative in Genesis one, which can be read as a prologue to the book, Gen 2:4 tells us about generations. תּוֹלְדֹת which is the word translated as Generations literally means genealogy.

Thus the literary genre of Genesis can be defined as genealogy, first of the heavens and the earth and progressing on to the descendants of Adam. Genealogy is perhaps not a readily understandable concept but, to put it into today’s terms, it may be easier to think of it as the Adam’s family history.

It is important then that Jesus is tied into a family history too. There are some real giants in there – Abraham – Jacob (Isreal) – David – Solomon – whose stories fill the walls of Sunday schools across the world. Alongside these there are however some rather more unlikely candidates. Rahab was a prostitute outside of Isreal’s family, many of them did “…evil in the sight of the lord…” (1 kings 11:6; 2 kings 8:18, 21:11) and even the hero David is mentioned alongside his victim Bathsheba.

All of this tells us that Jesus, like all of us was bought into a family life that was far from perfect. There were members of his family history that they were probably to embarrassed to talk about. But, God uses the unexpected to bring an unfolding plan to fulfilment. History is not a linear series of events leading to predictable outcomes. It involves sin and conversion, success and failure, heroes and villains. But God is at work in it, making crooked ways straight and rough ways smooth. And ultimately, Gods love prevails, a truth revealed in the person and life of Jesus.

When we reflect on today’s reading we should think of those in our own family history, of how they have lived in Godly ways and, how they have lived in sinful ways. God invented families for a purpose and though today’s society and many of our experiences of ‘family’ may be difficult and even painful, we must remember that God weaves all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). Perhaps so many villains are included in Jesus’ Genealogy because God wants to remind us that God’s love penetrates through even the worst human sin. Jesus wasn’t brought up in a perfect family bubble; God enters into the awkward, ambiguous, sketchy parts of human existence and wants to redeem it from the inside.


To finish, a quote from another blog: “If Matthew was able to find God’s redemptive hand at work in this mixed bag of morally ambiguous people, then surely we ought to be able to see God’s hand at work in our own brokenness and the brokenness of our family of origin. And if God’s hand is at work, then there’s always hope that King Jesus can bring about redemption of all of our brokenness. The snapshots of your past don’t have to dominate the landscape of your future in Christ.”