Matthew 1 v 7 - 17

I received a couple of emails in response to my blog yesterday. One rightly pointed out that it was David (not Solomon!) who slept with Bathsheba and the second was asking how this genealogy and elsewhere can state that Jesus is the Son of David, if Joseph had no involvement with His conception? Verse 16 here gives a clue, as Matthew writes that Joseph was the husband of Mary and Mary gave birth to Jesus. When Joseph decided to marry Mary, in effect he adopted Jesus into the family and so Jesus could be both Son of God, son of Joseph and descendant of David. It is important for us to note that Matthew did not insert this record as an accurate historical record (compare to Luke's list in his third chapter which involves forty one generations between David and Jesus instead of Matthew's 28) but as an easy to remember list of the highlights of the ancestors of Jesus. His aim was to demonstrate that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of David. As we read these names, we are brought to recognise that, in the birth of Jesus, already barriers were coming down: 1. The barrier between Jew and Gentile is down: We've already noticed that Ruth and Rahab weren't Jews. 2. The barrier between male and female is down. Men and women are to be found in the record of Christ's ancestry, unknown in that day. 3. The barrier between saint and sinner is down. God can find His children from amongst those from whom respectable people might shrink in horror.