“Getting” The Begetting
As part of one of my New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve begun reading through the New Testament. The other day I discovered something about the genealogy of Jesus which I thought was rather interesting. Matthew’s Gospel begins thus:
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, … and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife, Solomon the father of Rehoboam, …Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, … Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
To our modern minds, this list seems rather dull, but to a First Century Jew it is tremendously exciting and important. If you want to know the man, you learn about his family. Anyway, Matthew’s list is about begetting! How can that not be exciting?! 😉
What does it mean?!
Matthew is actually saying many things to us through the genealogy he provides…
He includes some of the great figures from Israel’s history to prepare us for the kind of person Jesus is going to be, but he also includes some pretty sinful people, reminding us of the fallen world Christ came to save.
In this genealogy he includes Jews and Gentiles of both genders, thus preparing us for the universal call of the Church’s mission and reminding us that:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” – Galatians 3:28
The Davidic Fourteen
As you can can see, Matthew’s genealogy can be neatly broken up into three sections. In each of these sections, fourteen generations are listed:
1. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David
2. Fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile
3. Fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile to Jesus, the Messiah.
What’s the significance of these groups of fourteen? To understand, we first have to look at the Hebrew numbering system. In Hebrew, every word has a numeric value. The name “David” is made up of three Hebrew letters:
דוד
These letters are called Dalet, Vav and Dalet and using English lettering reads “DVD”. The letter D has the value of 4 and the letter V has the value of 6. Therefore “David” is 4 + 6 + 4 which add up to…14. It is because of this that the number 14 is symbolic of King David.
ד ו ד
D V D
4 + 6 + 4 = 14
As I wrote above, Matthew is telling us many things through his genealogy, but I would suggest that the primary thing he wishes to communicate is the fact that Jesus is the Son of David. By assembling a genealogy in groups of 14, Matthew creates an association in his reader’s mind between Jesus and David, emphasizing the point that Jesus is in the Davidic line. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to that former ruler of Israel. Jesus is the coming King and He brings with Him the Kingdom.