Matthew's genealogy is cool

First book of the New Testament. MATTHEW. Here we are, ready to intro JESUS!! Drumroll….. Ready, set… snore… It’s a genealogy, of all things, to start this party.

But Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. They would need to know, just at the very ground level of taking him seriously, that Jesus was from the line of David. “Thus there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile, and 14 from the exile to the Christ” (Matt. 1:17). The problem is, THERE WERE NOT 14 generations from David to the exile. Matthew was using a common ancient near eastern technique called ‘telescoping’ that skipped generations for structuring a genealogy. We know Matthew did that because he says Uzziah was the father of Jotham when, in fact, he was the great great grandfather of Jotham. (It would not have been an issue to the original author since ‘father’ could just mean ‘ancestor’.) Jews knew the Messiah would need to be a descendant of David. Rather than having a separate numbering system, the Jews used their alphabet as a numbering system. David’s name adds up to 14. By structuring David’s genealogy around the number 14, he’s emphasizing Jesus’ Davidic lineage. Matthew is a Jew writing to Jews about the Messiah. Americans could just snore through a bunch of genealogy names that are unpronounceable, but when I read Matthew 1 and take on the ancient mindset, the snore-able becomes RADICAL.