Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 3:23 - 3:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
EXCURSUS II
THE DOUBLE GENEALOGIES OF CHRIST AS THE SON OF DAVID
The general facts are these:
(i) The genealogy of our Lord in St Matthew descends from Abraham to Jesus, in accordance with his object in writing mainly for the Jews.
The genealogy in St Luke ascends from Jesus to Adam, and to God, in accordance with his object in writing for the world in general. He spans the generations of mankind from the first Adam to the Second Adam, who was the Lord from heaven (1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:45; 1Co 15:47).
(ii) The generations are introduced in St Matthew by the word “begat;” in St Luke by the genitive with the ellipse of “son.” Thus in St Matthew we have
Abraham begat Isaac,
And Isaac begat Jacob, &c.;
but in St Luke
Being the son (as was reputed) of Joseph,
(The son) of Eli
of Matthat, &c.
(iii) St Matthew says that St Luke (merely reversing the order) traces the line through
David begat Solomon | Rehoboam | Abijah | Asa | Jehoshaphat | Jehoram [Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah omitted] | Uzziah | Jotham | Ahax | Hezekiah | Manasseh | Amos | Josiah | Jeconiah and his brethren | Shealtiel | Zerubbabel David | Nathan | Mattathah | Menna | Meleah | Eliakim | Jonan | Joseph | Judas | Symeon | Levi | Matthat | Jorim | Eliezer | Jesus | Er | Elmadam | Kosam | Adaiah | Melchi | Neriah | Shealtiel | Zerubbabel (in 1Ch 3:19 we find Pedaiah, who was perhaps the actual father; Shealtiel may have adopted his nephew1#1 Some authorities maintain that Zerubbabel was the grandson of Shealtiel, and that we have six sons of Shealtiel in 1Ch 3:18.#)
Thus St Luke gives 21 names between David and Zerubbabel where St Matthew only gives 15, and all the names except that of Shealtiel (Salathiel) are different.
(iv) St Matthew says that St Luke traces the line through
Zerubbabel begat Abihud | Eliakim | Asor | Zadok | Achim | Elihud | Eliezer | Matthan | Jacob | Joseph Zerubbabel—[Rhesa] | Johanan (Hananiah, 1Ch 3:19). | Judah (Abihud of Matthew, Hodaiah of 1Ch 3:24). | Joseph | Shimei | Mattathiah | Mahath | Nogah | Azaliah | Nahum | Amos | Mattathiah | Joseph | Jannai | Melchi | Levi | Matthat | Eli | Joseph
Thus it will be seen that St Luke gives 17 generations between Zerubbabel and Joseph, where St Matthew only gives 9, and all the names are different.
The two main difficulties then which we have to meet are
A. The difference in the number of the generations;
B. The difficulties in the dissimilarity of the names.
A. The difficulty as to the number of the generations is not serious, because (1) it is a matter of daily experience that the number of generations in one line often increases far more rapidly than that in another; but also because (2) St Matthew has arranged his genealogies in an arbitrary numerical division of three tesseradecads[427]. Nothing was more common among the Jews than the adoption of this symmetrical method, at which they arrived by the free omission of generations, provided that the fact of the succession remained undoubted. Thus in 2Ch 22:9 “son” stands for “grandson,” and Ezra (in Ezr 7:1-5) omits no less than seven steps in his own pedigree, and among them his own father,—which steps are preserved in 1Ch 6:3-15. St Luke’s genealogy is tacitly arranged in eleven sevens.
[427] For the manner in which these tesseradecads are arranged the student must refer to commentaries on St Matthew.
B. The difficulty as to the dissimilarity of names will of course only affect the two steps of the genealogies at which they begin to diverge, before they again coalesce in the names of Shealtiel and of Joseph.
One of the commonest ways of meeting the difficulty has been to suppose that St Luke is giving the genealogy not of Joseph but of Mary—the genealogy of Christ by actual birth, not by legal claim.
This solution (first suggested by Annius of Viterbo at the close of the 15th century), though still adopted by some learned men, must be rejected, (1) because there is no trace that the Jews recognised the genealogies of women as constituting a legal right for their sons; and (2) because it would do the strongest violence to the language of St Luke to make it mean ‘Being, as was reputed, the son of Joseph [but really the son of Mary, who was the daughter] of Eli, &c.
We must therefore regard it as certain that both genealogies are genealogies of Joseph adduced to prove that in the eye of the Jewish law Jesus was of the House of David. The question is not what we should have expected about the matter, but what is actually the case.
1. First then, how can Joseph be called in St Matthew the son of Jacob, in St Luke the son of Eli?
(α) An ancient explanation was that Matthan, a descendant of David in the line of Solomon (as given by St Matthew) was the husband of a woman named Estha, and became the father of Jacob; on his death his widow Estha married Melchi, a descendant of David in the line of Nathan (as given by St Luke), and had a son named Eli. Eli, it is said, died childless, and Jacob, his half-brother, in accordance with the law of levirate[428] marriages (Deu 25:5-6; Mat 22:23-27), took his widow to wife, and became the father of Joseph. Thus
[428] So called from the Latin word levir, ‘a brother-in-law.’
St Luke might naturally give the latter genealogy because it would be the one recognised by Romans, with whom the notion of legal as distinguished from natural sonship was peculiarly strong. This solution derives very great authority from the fact that it is preserved for us by Eusebius (H. E. I. 7) from a letter of Julius Africanus, a Christian writer who lived in Palestine in the third century, and who professed to derive it from private memoranda preserved by ‘the Desposyni’ or kindred of the Lord.
(β) But the difficulty about this view—not to mention the strange omission of Levi and Matthat, which may be possibly due to some transposition—is that St Matthew’s genealogy will then be partly legal (as in calling Shealtiel the son of Jeconiah) and partly natural (in calling Joseph the son of Jacob). But perhaps (since Jul. Africanus does not vouch for the exact details) there was so far a confusion that it was Jacob who was childless, and Eli who became by a levirate marriage the father of Joseph. If this be so, then St Matthew’s is throughout the legal, and St Luke’s throughout the natural genealogy. Even without the supposition of a levirate marriage, if Jacob were childless then Joseph, the son of his younger brother Eli, would become heir to his claims. The tradition mentioned may point in the direction of the true solution even if the details are inexact.
(γ) We may here add that though the Virgin’s genealogy is not given (οὐκ ἐγενεαλογήθη ἡ παρθένος, S. Chrys.), yet her Davidic descent is assumed by the sacred writers (Luk 1:32; Act 2:30; Act 13:23; Rom 1:3, &c.), and was in all probability involved in that of her husband. How this was we cannot say with certainty, but if we accept the tradition which has just been mentioned it is not impossible that Mary may have been a daughter of Eli (as is stated in an obscure Jewish legend, Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. ad loc.) or of Jacob, and may have married her cousin Joseph jure agnationis. At any rate we have decisive and independent proof that the Davidic descent of our Lord was recognised by the Jews. They never attempted to avert the jealousy of the Romans about the royal descent of the Desposyni (Euseb. H. E. I. 7), and Rabbi Ulla (circ. 210) says that “Jesus was exceptionally treated because of royal descent” (T. B. Sanhedr. 43 a, Amsterdam ed., see Derenbourg, Palest. p. 349. But it is possible that the words mean ‘influential with the (Roman) government’).
2. We have now to explain why St Matthew says that Shealtiel (Salathiel) was the son of Jeconiah, while St Luke says that he was the son of Neriah.
The old suggestion that the Zerubbabel and Shealtiel of St Luke are different persons from those of St Matthew may be set aside at once. But the true answer seems to be that Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) was either actually childless, as was so emphatically prophesied by Jer 22:24-30, or that, at any rate, his children (if he ever had any, as seems possible from Luk 3:28; 1Ch 3:17-19; and Jos. Antt. X. 11, § 2) died childless in Babylon. It is true that the word rendered ‘childless’ (עֲרִירִי) may mean ‘forlorn’ or ‘naked;’ but the other is the more natural meaning of the word, and so it was understood by the Jews, who however supposed that, after a long captivity, he repented and the curse was removed. Setting aside this mere conjecture, it seems probable that Jeconiah was, or became, absolutely childless, and that therefore in the 37th year of his captivity he adopted a son to preserve his race from extinction. His choice however was limited. Daniel and others of the seed royal were eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon (Dan 1:3; 2Ki 20:16), and Ishmael and others were excluded by their murder of Gedaliah; to say nothing of the fact that the royal line had been remorselessly mown down by Jehu and by Athaliah. He therefore adopted the seven sons of Neri, the twentieth from David in the line of Nathan. We seem to have an actual intimation of this in Zec 12:12, where “the family of Nathan apart” is commemorated as well as “the family of David apart” because of the splendid Messianic prerogative which they thus obtained. And this is remarkably confirmed by Rabbi Shimeon Ben Jochai in the Zohar, where he speaks of Nathan, the son of David, as the father of Messiah the Comforter (because Menachem, ‘comforter,’ stands numerically for 138, which is the numerical value of the letters of Tsemach, ‘the Branch’). Hence too Hephzibah, the wife of Nathan, is called the mother of the Messiah. (See Schöttgen, Hor. Hebr. on Luk 1:31.)
The failure of the Messianic promise in the direct natural line of Solomon is no difficulty in the way of this hypothesis, since while the promise to David was absolute (2Sa 7:12) that to Solomon was conditional (1Ki 9:4-5).
If these very simple and probable hypotheses be accepted no difficulty remains; and this at least is certain—that no error can be demonstrated. A single adoption, and a single levirate marriage, account for the apparent discrepancies. St Matthew gives the legal descent through a line of Kings descended from Solomon—the jus successionis; St Luke the natural descent—the jus sanguinis. St Matthew’s is a royal, St Luke’s a natural pedigree. It is a confirmation of this view that in Joseph’s private and real genealogy we find the names Joseph and Nathan recurring (with slight modifications like Matthat, &c.) no less than seven times. That there must be some solution of this kind is indeed self-evident, for if the desire had been to invent a genealogy no one would have neglected a genealogy deduced through a line of Kings.
3. i. We need only further notice that in Luk 3:27 the true translation probably is “the son of the Rhesa Zerubbabel.” Rhesa is not a proper name, but a Chaldee title meaning ‘Prince.’ Thus the head of the Captivity is always known by Jewish writers as the Resh Galootha.
ii. In Luk 3:32 we have only three generations—Boaz, Obed, Jesse—between Salmon and David; a decisive proof that the common chronology is wrong in supposing that more than four hundred years elapsed between the conquest of Canaan and David.
iii. In Luk 3:24 the Matthat is perhaps identical with the Matthan of Mat 1:15; if so the line recorded by St Matthew may have failed at Eliezer, and Matthan, the lineal descendant of a younger branch, would then be his heir.
iv. In Luk 3:36 the Cainan (who must be distinguished from the Cainan of Luk 3:37) is possibly introduced by mistake. The name, though found in this place of the genealogy in the LXX[429], is not found in any Hebrew MS. of the O.T., nor in the Samaritan, Chaldee, and Syriac versions (Gen 11:12; 1Ch 1:24). It is omitted in the Codex Bezae (D), and there is some evidence that it was unknown to Irenaeus.
[429] LXX. Septuagint.
v. The difference between the two genealogies thus given without a word of explanation furnishes a strong probability that neither Evangelist had seen the work of the other.
The conclusions arrived at as probable may be thus summarized.
David’s line through Solomon failed in Jeconiah, who therefore adopted Shealtiel, the descendant of David’s line through Nathan.
(Shealtiel being also childless adopted Zerubbabel, son of his brother Pedaiah, 1Ch 3:17-19.)
Zerubbabel’s grandson, Abihud (Matt.), Judah (Lk.), or Hodaiah (1 Chr.)—for the three names are only modifications of one another—had two sons, Eliakim (Matt.) and Joseph (Lk.).
Eliakim’s line failed in Eliezer; and thus Matthan or Matthat became his legal heir.
This Matthan had two sons, Jacob the father of Mary, and Eli the father of Joseph; and Jacob having no son adopted Joseph his heir and nephew.
It is true that these suggestions are not capable of rigid demonstration, but (α) they are entirely in accordance with Jewish customs; (β) there are independent reasons which shew that they are probable; (γ) no other hypotheses are adequate to account for the early existence of a double genealogy in Christian circles.