Swindoll's Living Insights Commentary Matthew 1a - Flipbook - Page 26
Announcement and Arrival of the King (Matthew 1:1–4:25)
In Genesis 12:7, God said to Abram, “To your descendants [or offspring or seed] I will give this land.” Thus, none other than a descendant of Abraham could be the ultimate recipient of the kingdom of
Israel. Then, centuries later, God made a covenant with David and
swore, “Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever;
your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam. 7:16). So only an heir
from the house (family) of David would have the credentials to reign as
the messianic King.
This is why Matthew begins his Gospel account with a straight
forward and simple—but vitally i mportant—thesis for his Jewish readers: “This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant
of David and of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1, nlt). The list of names that follows
becomes Exhibit A
—proof that Jesus really does have the pedigree to be
the long-awaited Messiah.
Realizing the value of the genealogical record of Matthew, we can
now look at the unique way he organized the information. He didn’t
just present a roll of names in chronological order like one might dig
up in the basement of a public archives building. Rather, he divided
the history from Abraham to Jesus into three clusters—from Abraham
to David (1:2‑6a), from David to the Babylonian captivity (1:6b-11), and
from the Babylonian captivity to Jesus (1:12‑16). Within each of these
three groups, Matthew selected fourteen names, intentionally leaving
some lesser-known individuals out of the record and unexpectedly including some specific women in the list.
It’s clear that this genealogy isn’t meant to present an exhaustive,
precise, “just the facts” presentation of Jesus’ lineage. While providing a summary of the ancestry of Jesus sufficient to satisfy those who
would doubt His legal right to the Davidic throne, Matthew seems to
have been even more interested in teaching his Jewish readers some
things about Jesus—using a method of presenting material that would
have particularly appealed to them as Jews.
Instead of examining every name in Matthew’s genealogy, let’s
focus on some of the unique features of each cluster.
— 1:2-6a —
The first cluster of fourteen generations takes us from Abraham to
David. This era, spanning roughly from 2000 bc to 1000 bc, included
the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, from whom the line of
Israelite kings was to come (see Gen. 49:10). This period also spanned
the time during the enslavement in Egypt, the Exodus under Moses,
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