We observe that the genealogy of our Lord in Matthew differs totally from what we have in Luke, where it is not given until the end of chapter 3. Thus, in the latter Gospel we learn a great deal about the Lord Jesus before His genealogy appears. In Matthew we find ourselves on a narrower ground, circumscribed to a certain nation. Abraham and David are mentioned in the very first verse. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” David was the king God chose, and he is here mentioned as the forefather of the Lord’s Anointed — “the son of David.” Abraham, again, was the one in whom, it was said, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Thus the opening words prepare us for the whole of the Gospel. Christ came with all the reality of the kingdom promised to David’s son. But if He were refused as the son of David, still as the son of Abraham, there was blessing not merely for the Jew but for the Gentile. He is the true Messiah, but if Israel will not have Him, God will bring the nations to taste of its mercy.
The Four Women
We begin with Abraham, not tracing Jesus up to Him, but down from him. “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; and Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar” (Matt. 1:3). What is the reason for bringing in a woman and naming Tamar here? There were women of great note in the lineage of the Messiah — persons whom the Jews naturally looked up to as holy and honorable. But there is no mention of them here. On the other hand, Tamar is mentioned. Grace, most rebuking to the flesh, lay underneath this, but most precious in its way. There are four women, and only four, who appear in the line, and upon every one of them there was a blot. To a proud Jew, with all these women there was connected what was humbling — something that he would have kept in the dark. Oh wondrous way of God! What can He not do? The Messiah was to spring from a line in which there had been dismal sin. These, on whom there were such foul blots in the judgment of men, are the only females brought specifically before us. Not at all as if the sin were not exceeding sinful, nor as if God thought lightly of the privileges of His people. But God, feeling the sin of His own people to be the worst of all sin, yet having introduced in this very Messiah the only One who could save His people from their sins, does not hesitate to bring their sin into the presence of the grace that could and would put it all away.
Grace to Save
What are we not taught by this? If the Messiah deigns to link Himself with such a family, surely there could be none too bad to be received of Him. He came to “save His people from their sins,” not to find a people that had no sins. Who might not now be born of God? Who is there that such a God would reject? Such a hint in Matthew 1 opens the way for the wonders of grace which appear afterward. In one sense, no man has such a position of ancient privileges as the Jew; yet, even as to the Messiah, this is the account that the Holy Spirit gives of His lineage.
But that is not all. “Phares begat Ezrom, and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab.” And who and what was she? A Gentile, and once a harlot! But Rahab is taken out of all her belongings — separated from everything that was her portion by nature. And here she is, in this Gospel of Jesus written for the Jew — for the very people who despised and hated Him, because He would look upon a Gentile. Rahab was named for heaven already, and no Jew could deny it. She was visited of God and made a part of the royal line out of which Jesus, the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever, was to be born. Oh, what marvels of grace dawn upon us, as we dwell even upon the mere list of names of our Lord’s genealogy!
Odious Gentiles Brought In
It might be said that Rahab was called in at some distant epoch. But no: “Salmon begat Booz of Rachab, and Booz begat Obed of Ruth, and Obed begat Jesse. And Jesse begat David the king” (Matt. 1:5). Ruth, loving as she was, yet to a Jew was from a source peculiarly odious. She was a Moabitess, and thus forbidden by the law to enter the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation. Even the Edomite or the Egyptian were held in less abhorrence, and their children might enter in the third generation (Deut. 23:3-8). Thus was given a still deeper testimony that grace would go out and bless the very worst of the Gentiles. “Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon, of her that had been the wife of Urias.” With only a few generations intervening, we have these three women who would have been utterly despised and rejected by the same spirit which rejected Jesus and the grace of God. It was then no new thought—the divine mercy that was reaching out to gather in the outcasts of the Gentiles. It was God’s way of old.
To leave out what a Jew gloried in and to bring in what he would have concealed through shame, and all in tender mercy to Israel, to sinners, was indeed divine. We may see from this that the mention of these four women is particularly instructive. Man could not have originated it: Our place is to learn and adore. Every female that is named is one that nature would have studiously excluded from the record, but that grace has made most prominent in it. The truth that she taught thereby ought never to be forgotten, for He is a Messiah come in quest of sinners; He would despise no needy one, not even a poor publican or a harlot. The Messiah so thoroughly reflected what God is in His holy love, and He is so true to all the purposes of God, so perfect an expression of the grace that is in God, that there never was a thought, feeling or word of grace there but what the Messiah was come now to make it good in His dealing with poor souls, and first of all with the Jew.
W. Kelly (adapted)