The Crooked Line of Descent

Matthew’s gospel is the first book of the NT and the very beginning of Matthew (1:1-17) is one of those boring genealogies that we’re used to seeing in Genesis. Just as the use of genealogies in Genesis served the purpose of linking Abraham to Noah and to Adam, Matthew uses a genealogy to link Jesus to Abraham. In v. 17 Matthew explicitly divides his list into three parts:

1. From Abraham to David
2. From David to the Babylonian Exile
3. From the Babylonian Exile to Jesus

The words Matthew uses (“book of the genesis”) to introduce his genealogy in v. 1 hearken back to the toledot formula we saw at the beginning of each of the genealogies in Genesis. He also specifies that Jesus Christ (= messiah) is both son of David and son of Abraham. By tracing Jesus’ descent through the Davidic line of kings, Matthew emphasizes the sonship of David, an important theme in the first chapter of his infancy narrative. By tracing descent back to Abraham, Matthew is also stressing his second theme that Jesus is the realization of God’s promise to Abraham by whom “all nations of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen 22:18). This promise will be fulfilled when the magi come to pay homage to the Christ child.

Artificial Tree

Matthew’s construction is highly artificial. Luke (3:23-38) also provides a genealogy of Jesus. Unlike Matthew who works forward from Abraham, Luke works backwards from Jesus all the way to “Adam, son of God.” A quick comparison of the two genealogies show them diverging after David, with Matthew tracing Jesus’ descent through Solomon and Luke through a non-regal son, Nathan. This poses a problem for biblical inerrantists. A popular explanation is that Matthew cites Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph while Luke documents Mary’s genealogy. It is true that Matthew is focused on Joseph while Luke focuses on Mary, but Luke writes “Joseph, the son of Heli” and Matthew says “Jacob the father of Joseph.” They are both clearly describing Joseph's line of descent.

Matthew says that there were fourteen generations in each of his three parts, but that’s only true of the second section. In both the first and last parts there are fourteen names, but only thirteen generations. Oops! And to get fourteen generations in the second part, he had to skip over several kings. According to the OT Joram was not the father of Uzziah; there were three additional generations between these two kings. More problems for inerrantists.

Jesus' family tree. The genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew lists an assortment of known and unknown names and links Jesus to Abraham and the rest of the OT.

From Abraham to David

The first section has some familiar names, beginning with the patriarchs of Genesis: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. Anyone familiar with the OT stories would know of the covenant made with Abraham and his act of faith in being willing to sacrifice Isaac. But the patriarchs also behaved badly at times. Jacob cheated his elder brother out of his birthright and Judah and his brothers sold Joseph into slavery. Perhaps Matthew wants to remind the reader of that by specifically mentioning “Judah and his brothers.” Matthew also said that Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. It’s very odd in a genealogy to mention the mother. We’ll return to this later.

From David to the Babylonian Exile

Starting at the high point in Israel’s history with David and Solomon, we pass through a series of kings that ends with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the end of the monarchy. David gets mentioned more than anyone else in the OT. Yet he sinned by taking Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then arranging for Uriah’s death when Bathsheba became pregnant. Matthew alludes to that incident in citing David as “the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” With the exception of Hezekiah and Josiah, all the other kings in the list were corrupt, incompetent or idolators. Although they were God’s representatives on earth, the kings listed in the second section were hardly exemplars of faith.

From the Babylonian Exile to Jesus

The final section covers the period from the exile in Babylon to the return and occupation by first the Greeks and then the Romans. It lists mostly unknown names. We don’t know where Matthew got these names and they don’t match the few post-exilic names that are documented in 1 Chronicles 3:19-24. Just as the line of Jesus’ descent goes through rich and powerful kings, it also wends its way through poor and powerless unknowns. If the names and stories we know in the other section are any judge, then the final section has its mix of saints and sinners – mostly sinners – as well.

What about the Women?

Scattered through Matthew’s genealogy are a few names of the mothers who made their contribution to the line of descent. From Genesis, we know of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, but those are not names Matthew cites. Instead, he gives us Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” (Bathsheba). Why mention these women and not the others?

The one thing these women seem to have in common is that there was something irregular or scandalous about them. For example, Tamar’s husbands died before she had a child. As father-in-law, it was Judah’s duty to give her children. When he shirked his duty, Tamar took matters into her own hands and disguised herself as a prostitute. Rahab actually was a prostitute who aided the spies sent into Jericho. Ruth was a Moabite who literally threw herself at the feet of Boaz to get him to marry her. Bathsheba’s story has already been mentioned. Matthew is using these case studies in scandalous relationships to prepare us for the similarly irregular nature of the birth of Jesus.

The Big Picture

The big picture Matthew is drawing indicates that God has a plan, but that plan does not proceed apace without some twists and turns. God has to work with fallible human beings. We are not simply subject to fate, but retain our free will. Similarly, God is free to choose whom he will. It is not always the oldest son or the favored son who appears in the line of succession. Sometimes, the actions of women carry great import in moving the plan forward. 

The genealogy is Matthew’s way of saying that God writes straight with crooked lines, acting through a collection of saints and sinners, the powerful and the powerless to bring about the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham in Jesus Christ.

Transition to History

The Hebrew word toledot means “generations” or “descendants.” In Genesis, it appears once in the conclusion of the Priestly (P) writer’s story of the creation of the universe, and nine other times at the beginning of a section of narrative or genealogy:

1. Gen 2:4   These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
2. Gen. 5:1  This is the list of the descendants of Adam. (the period from Adam to Noah)
3. Gen. 6:9  These are the descendants of Noah. (introduces the flood story)
4. Gen. 10:1  These are the descendants of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth... (the Table of Nations)
5. Gen. 11:10  These are the descendants of Shem. (the period from Noah to Abraham)
6. Gen. 11:27  Now these are the descendants of Terah. (introduces the Abraham cycle)
7. Gen. 25:12  These are the descendants of Ishmael… (links Abraham to Arab tribes)
8. Gen. 25:19  These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son… (introduces the Jacob cycle)
9. Gen. 36:1  These are the descendants of Esau… (links Jacob to the Edomites)
10. Gen. 37:2  This is the story of the family of Jacob. (introduces the Joseph story)

Functionally, the toledot formula serves as a means of linking the descendants of Jacob to the creation of the universe. Some English versions may translate toledot as “records” or “story,” so the link may not be as obvious in translation as it is in Hebrew.

Toledot written in Hebrew. Above it is the name of the first book in the Torah, Bereshit ("In the Beginning"). We call it Genesis. 

The formula also serves as a cue to the reader. Modern books have chapter and section headings to organize the material, but the biblical books made use of repeated phrases to inform their audience that one section was ending and another section beginning.

The first use of toledot at 2:4 is an especially odd one in that, instead of referring to the descendants of a person, it is referring to the “generations” or “begettings” of the heavens and the earth. It is also unusual in that it serves as a hinge, closing out the P creation account and opening the Yahwist (J) primeval story in Gen 2-4.

The last use of the toledot formula in the primeval story appears at 11:10. As you can see from the list above, it introduces vv. 11-26 which serve to connect Shem to Abraham. It serves as a transition from primeval time to historical time. Beginning with 11:27 which marks the opening of the cycle of stories associated with Abraham, we move into the time of the patriarchs and this will carry the story forward until the end of Genesis. Other appearances of the toledot formula will close out the Abraham cycle, begin and close the Jacob cycle, and introduce the Joseph story.

As far as the passage of 11:10-26 itself is concerned, there’s not much to say. It is a pure P genealogy with no variation to the rigid format. That said, there are some inconsistencies with other P genealogies and the biggest one concerns Arpachshad.

Back in 10:22 (another P passage), Arpachshad was listed as the third of Shem’s five sons: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. In 11:10, it is recorded, “When Shem was 100 years old, he begot Arpachshad, two years after the flood.” The implication, of course, is that Arpachshad is the first-born, since genealogies are only concerned with the first-born son.

If that wasn’t enough, 5:32 states that Noah was 500 years old when he begot Shem. Gen 7:6 says that Noah was 600 years old when the flood came upon the earth. Simple arithmetic would give us the age of Shem as 100 when the flood began, yet 11:10 says that two years after the flood – a flood that lasted a year in P’s account – Shem was 100 years when he fathered Arpachshad.

This conundrum could tie a biblical literalist into knots trying to explain it. A non-literalist, however, could appeal to different traditions. But in this case, we are not dealing with the Yahwist (J) tradition on one hand and the Priestly (P) tradition on the other. All the passages cited come from P, so this passage actually demonstrates that the Priestly writer has several traditions before him that he is trying to preserve. We saw something similar in the Tower of Babel story where the J author was preserving separate traditions of how YHWH ended the tower-building project by either dispersing the population or confusing their language.

According to biblical scholars, in the P tradition that was taken up into the Table of Nations, Shem’s five sons represent five different nations: Elam (located in modern-day Iran), Asshur (Assyria), Arpachshad (Babylon), Lud (?), and Aram (Syria). But in the P tradition that appears in 11:10-26, Arpachshad is the name of a person who fathered Shelah.

The fact that P is combining and preserving pre-existing oral traditions that came to him demonstrates that the composition of the book of Genesis had a very complicated history. At the beginning of the process, you have a series of oral traditions that are handed down through the various tribes. At some point – probably around the time of David and Solomon – some of these traditions were written down by the Yahwist writer. Much later, around the time of the Babylonian exile, other traditions were preserved by the Priestly writer. Later still, the redactor (R) combined the J and P texts into Genesis as we have it today.

The inconsistencies and mismatches in the received text that are something of an embarrassment to biblical inerrantists allows the critical scholar to peer into the past to get a rough idea of how Genesis was put together. Or, as P would state it, “These are the generations (toledot) of Genesis when it was created.”

Begin the Begats

There is much in the story of Cain and Abel to perplex a casual reader of the Bible. First, when YHWH sentences Cain to exile in the land of Nod, Cain complains in Gen 4:14c, “Anyone who meets me may kill me!” According to the story, there is no one else in the world beside his mother and father, so why should Cain fear that he will be hunted down and killed? A couple of verses later, in 4:17, we read that Cain “knew his wife,” she bore him a son (Enoch), and he built a city which he named after his son. Where did his wife come from? And how could there be enough people in the world, let alone the “land of Nod,” that a city would be needed to hold them all?

Based on clues like these, biblical scholars speculate that the story of Cain and Abel was once an independent story that was attached to the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Cain and Abel presupposes that there were more people in the world than just Adam and Eve and their two sons. Unless there were neighbors around to witness the deed, why else would Cain be concerned about taking Abel out into the field to kill him? And why else would he be concerned about his safety when he was expelled from the community? It also explains how he was able to find a wife and need to build a city.

There’s another clue in the genealogies in Gen 4 and 5. Gen 4:17-24 gives a list of Cain’s descendants: Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusahael, Lamech. The closing verses list the three sons of Lamech: Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-cain (and one daughter, Naamah). Vv. 25-26 describe the birth of Seth to replace Abel, and the birth of Seth’s son, Enosh (which means “man” in Hebrew).

The Cain Family tree according to Gen 4:17-24

Gen 5:1-32 begins with Adam begetting Seth and proceeds to Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. Noah, it is noted, had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The name of the Seth line is eerily similar to the Cain line. Both genealogies end with the naming of 3 sons instead of the usual one. Biblical scholars believe that we have two traditions citing the line of descent from Adam, one through Cain and one through Seth.

The writing styles differ, too. The genealogy in Gen 5 follows a strict formula, just like the creation story in Gen 1 followed a strict formula. Biblical scholars attribute Gen 1 and 5 to the “Priestly” writer (or “P”) because of his interest in priestly matters like legal codes, genealogies and rituals. The genealogy in Gen 5 cites the name of the father, states he was X number of years old when he begat his first son, he lived Y number of years after that, and then after living X+Y years, he died. This formula is not broken except for Enoch who, instead of dying, was “taken by God.” If we only read Gen 5, we would have no indication that Cain, rather than Seth, was Adam’s firstborn son.

Compare this to the genealogy in 4:17-26 and it is a bit more free-form. We get details about the various accomplishments of the individuals mentioned: Cain built the first city, Lamech took two wives, Jabal was the ancestor of tent-dwellers, Jubal of musicians, and Tubal-cain of blacksmiths. A couple of wives and a daughter are also named. This genealogy is showing us how civilization and technology spread in the primeval period. Also, violence as Lamech brags about how he takes extreme vengeance on any who slights him in the least way. Lamech’s story prepares us for the increasing amount of sinfulness in the world that will lead God to want to destroy it in a great flood. Scholars attribute the author of this genealogy in Gen 4 (along with Gen 2-3) to the “Yahwist” writer (or “J”), who gets his name from his consistent use of the name YHWH for God.

Another difference between the two is that J’s genealogy does not provide ages for the various ancestors. P’s genealogy provides precise numbers and, using those numbers and others like them, we could calculate a date around 4000 BCE for the creation of the world. The problem for chronologists is that the numbers of years separating Adam from Noah are different depending on whether you consult the Hebrew Masoretic Text (1656 years), the Greek Septuagint (2242) or the Samaritan Pentateuch (1307). It quickly becomes apparent that the ages were not in the original text, but were added later.

It is also apparent that there is a desired number each tradition is aiming for and the ages are adjusted to meet that pre-determined date. One proposal, for example, is that the total of the years from the creation of earth to the dedication of the second temple in Jerusalem is 3600 according to the MT. When you consider that the Bible was edited during the Babylonian Captivity and the Babylonians used a base-60 mathematical system, 3600 is 60 x 60, a nice round symbolic number in base-60. Perhaps the numbers are different in the SP because they were counting to founding of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. We don’t really know for sure, other than that the numbers were definitely manipulated for some symbolic purpose.

The genealogies are considered by many to be some of the “boring” parts of the Bible, but there are some interesting aspects to them. Once you know where to look.