Jesus' lineage to David

  • Thread starter Thread starter Back2Church
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

Back2Church

Guest
I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. The book of Matthew shows the lineage of Jesus to David, but lineage is through Joseph. Since Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, then Jesus is not biologically descended from David.

I don’t doubt that Jesus is the messiah, but I’m having a bit of trouble with this “wrinkle” in prophecy fulfillment. Could someone help me out with understanding this better?
 
Back2Church said:
I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. The book of Matthew shows the lineage of Jesus to David, but lineage is through Joseph. Since Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, then Jesus is not biologically descended from David.

I don’t doubt that Jesus is the messiah, but I’m having a bit of trouble with this “wrinkle” in prophecy fulfillment. Could someone help me out with understanding this better?
Click to expand...
Well, Joseph’s still the legal father of Jesus even if he’s not the biological parent.
 
The Messiah destined to crush Satan was predicted to come from the biological seed of a woman “Mary” not of a man “Joseph”. I think it is very clear that it was to be a line from David through Mary and not Joseph.
Code: 
**Gen 3:15 ** 	
    **And I will put enmity Between you and the woman,
    And between your seed and her Seed;
    He shall bruise your head,
    And you shall bruise His heel.”**
 
Back2Church said:
I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. The book of Matthew shows the lineage of Jesus to David, but lineage is through Joseph. Since Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, then Jesus is not biologically descended from David.
I don’t doubt that Jesus is the messiah, but I’m having a bit of trouble with this “wrinkle” in prophecy fulfillment. Could someone help me out with understanding this better?
Click to expand...
God promised to establish a Davidic kingdom forever on earth. Blood lines were only an indicator of candidacy. i.e. the crown passed from Saul to David yet David was not the biological son of Saul. The lineage written by Matthew showed that Jesus had legal candidacy.
 
Remember when the angel Gabriel visited Mary, his words included:

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

And Mary responds:

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

But she doesn’t say, “How will this be, since I’m not of the house of David?”

It’s important that Mary be of the house of David, but it’s also important that his adoptive father, Joseph, also be of the house of David as well: his ancestors have a more solid connection to the royal line. You’ll notice there are two different genealogies: one in Matthew 1, one in Luke 3.

Matthew was written with a Jewish audience in mind. It traces the genealogy from Abraham to David through Solomon, who was David’s legal successor, and ends with:

16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

Luke, though, was writing with a Greek audience in mind, and traces Jesus’ physical lineage to David through Nathan, who obviously didn’t succeed his father as king. This starts with:

23 Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, who was of Heli…

where scholars tend to think that it means Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli, rather than physically related to him, due to the original Greek phrasing. So that brings up the question of was-Mary’s-father-Heli-or-Joachim?, but I don’t know enough about Anglicized–ancient-Hebrew-names to go off on that tangent.

Anyhow, if you go back to your Jeremiah, you’ve got a big long angry passage:

24 “As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin[c] son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. 25 I will deliver you into the hands of those who want to kill you, those you fear—Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Babylonians.[d] 26 I will hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you both will die. 27 You will never come back to the land you long to return to.”

28 Is this man Jehoiachin a despised, broken pot,
an object no one wants?
Why will he and his children be hurled out,
cast into a land they do not know?
29 O land, land, land,
hear the word of the LORD!
30 This is what the LORD says:
“Record this man as if childless,
a man who will not prosper in his lifetime,
for none of his offspring will prosper,
none will sit on the throne of David
or rule anymore in Judah.”

So, God was able to keep his curse intact: Joseph was related to Jeconiah, but Jesus was never physically related to him. And yet, through Joseph, Jesus was able to connect himself to the major royal line of David. And at the same time, he was still technically of the House of David, since Mary fulfilled that qualification on her own by being David’s direct descendant, albeit through a less significant branch of the family.
 
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think property was/is passed from father to son. So Adam’s estate fell to Seth, then afterward after several generations to Noah, and again more generations to Abraham, and from thereon as described in Matthew.

I think that’s another reason for Jesus being begotten by God, since otherwise he would have inherited Adam’s estate of sin and death.
 
HISTORY OF THE PATRIARCHS OF THE
COPTIC CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA
I
S. MARK TO THEONAS (300)
ARABIC TEXT EDITED, TRANSLATED, AND ANNOTATED
BY
B. EVETTS

THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST
…
Enquire and you will learn that in the days of Aaron the priest there was an alliance by marriage between Aaron and the tribe of Juda, to which the prophet David bore witness. Now I have enquired much about Jesus, his tribe and genealogy, and I find that his mother Mary is connected with both tribes. And, she is also innocent of sin, through another great mystery…
 
I’ll just copy and paste from the thread I made:

To answer this I’m going to turn to, "Eusabius book “ecclesiastical history” 1 chapter 7 Read for yourself, and I’ll try my best to explain.
  1. Matthew and Luke in their gospels have given us the genealogy of Christ differently, and many suppose that they are at variance with one another. Since as a consequence every believer, in ignorance of the truth, has been zealous to invent some explanation which shall harmonize the two passages, permit us to subjoin the account of the matter which has come down to us, and which is given by Africanus, who was mentioned by us just above, in his epistle to Aristides, where he discusses the harmony of the gospel genealogies. After refuting the opinions of others as forced and deceptive, he give the account which he had received from tradition in these words:
  2. For whereas the names of the generations were reckoned in Israel either according to nature or according to law—according to nature by the succession of legitimate offspring, and according to law whenever another raised up a child to the name of a brother dying childless; for because a clear hope of resurrection was not yet given they had a representation of the future promise by a kind of mortal resurrection, in order that the name of the one deceased might be perpetuated—
  3. whereas then some of those who are inserted in this genealogical table succeeded by natural descent, the son to the father, while others, though born of one father, were ascribed by name to another, mention was made of both of those who were progenitors in fact and of those who were so only in name.
  4. Thus neither of the gospels is in error, for one reckons by nature, the other by law. For the line of descent from Solomon and that from Nathan were so involved, the one with the other, by the raising up of children to the childless and by second marriages, that the same persons are justly considered to belong at one time to one, at another time to another; that is, at one time to the reputed fathers, at another to the actual fathers. So that both these accounts are strictly true and come down to Joseph with considerable intricacy indeed, yet quite accurately.
  5. But in order that what I have said may be made clear I shall explain the interchange of the generations. If we reckon the generations from David through Solomon, the third from the end is found to be Matthan, who begot Jacob the father of Joseph. But if, with Luke, we reckon them from Nathan the son of David, in like manner the third from the end is Melchi, whose son Eli was the father of Joseph. For Joseph was the son of Eli, the son of Melchi.
  6. Joseph therefore being the object proposed to us, it must be shown how it is that each is recorded to be his father, both Jacob, who derived his descent from Solomon, and Eli, who derived his from Nathan; first how it is that these two, Jacob and Eli, were brothers, and then how it is that their fathers, Matthan and Melchi, although of different families, are declared to be grandfathers of Joseph.
  7. Matthan and Melchi having married in succession the same woman, begot children who were uterine brothers, for the law did not prohibit a widow, whether such by divorce or by the death of her husband, from marrying another.
  8. By Estha then (for this was the woman’s name according to tradition) Matthan, a descendant of Solomon, first begot Jacob. And when Matthan was dead, Melchi, who traced his descent back to Nathan, being of the same tribe but of another family, married her as before said, and begot a son Eli.
  9. Thus we shall find the two, Jacob and Eli, although belonging to different families, yet brethren by the same mother. Of these the one, Jacob, when his brother Eli had died childless, took the latter’s wife and begot by her a son Joseph, his own son by nature and in accordance with reason. Wherefore also it is written: ‘Jacob begot Joseph.’ Matthew*1:6 But according to law he was the son of Eli, for Jacob, being the brother of the latter, raised up seed to him.
  10. Hence the genealogy traced through him will not be rendered void, which the evangelist Matthew in his enumeration gives thus: ‘Jacob begot Joseph.’ But Luke, on the other hand, says: ‘Who was the son, as was supposed’ (for this he also adds), ‘of Joseph, the son of Eli, the son of Melchi’; for he could not more clearly express the generation according to law. And the expression ‘he begot’ he has omitted in his genealogical table up to the end, tracing the genealogy back to Adam the son of God. This interpretation is neither incapable of proof nor is it an idle conjecture.
 
  1. Eusebius gives an explanation that many have tried to explain this, and have done poorly. Eusabius gives his sorce, “Africanus” or “Sextus Julius Africanus”
2-4. Eusebius then goes on to explain that Joseph was a descendant of Jacob by nature, hence the wording: And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. (Matthew 1:16) And that Joseph was a descendant of Heli by law, hence the wording in Luke 3:23 Joseph, which was the son of Heli. Joseph could not have been begotten by both Jacob and Heli, he was however begotten by Jacob and yet the son of Heli. How? They were brothers. Now how could they have been brothers with different fathers? Well, let’s look at Deuteronomy 25:5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.

5-9. Eusebius explains that Heli and Jacob were brothers and Heli had a wife. However, Heli died prior to having a son, so Jacob took the wife of Heli and bore a son who would be named Joseph. Thus Jacob has begotten Joseph, and yet was the son of Heli by law.

Now, Jacob’s (who begat Joseph) father was Matthan, and yet Heli’s father was Matthat so how is it possible for the two to be brothers? Here, what we see is that Eusebius explains Heli and Jacob had different fathers but the same mother (Estha). And how is this possible? Well Matthan (begat Jacob who begat Joseph) took a wife for himself (Estha), however after the birth of Jacob, Matthan had died. Matthan’s wife (Estha) then married Matthat who would have literally begat Heli and the two would have grown up as brothers (Heli and Jacob).

After that, see above.
  1. Eusebius concludes that the genealogies are without flaw.
I was looking for other explanations and they all seemed too confusing, so I hope this helps when people are addressed with this. Try your best to remember the names!
 
Since Mary was of the house of David through her marriage to Joseph, who was the adopted father of Jesus, Jesus still fits in the family bloodline prophezied from old.

Add’l note: The adoption point is an important foreshadowing of the covenant promise that God’s promise is extended to all the world, though doesn’t apply to everyone (i.e. Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc.). The Gentiles and others outside of the bloodline nation of Israel (like the Philistines who were often referred to as “the uncircumsized”) were brought into the covenant promise through similar adoption.

Christ REALLY does set the tone for His followers! - though, like the patriarchs, we often misinterpret the end goal.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top