The Son of David

To be honest, the genealogies of Scripture are the parts we probably skim (or skip!) most frequently when we’re reading the Bible. After all, who cares that that Jehoshophat’s son was Joram, right? It might even be more perplexing that after reading the Old Testament for a long time and (finally) getting to the New Testament, the first page of Matthew is mostly names, many of which we don’t even really know or care about.

But as we probably ought to guess, God has important reasons for including genealogies in Scripture, and we’ll explore some of them tomorrow. There’s so much weight in the very first words of Matthew’s gospel, of course: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” David and Abraham are the theological heavyweights of the Old Testament, so it’s not surprising that Matthew mentions them first.

But there are also some hidden gems in Matthew’s genealogy, and we’ll explore some of them tomorrow as well. For example, why are five women mentioned? And why these particular women? And what about some of these other, lesser-known characters?

Jesus is the “son of David, the son of Abraham,” but he’s also the son of Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba and Shealtiel and Eliakim and others. All this, of course, is according to God’s plan.