When you read the Bible, either by yourself or with your family, do you skip the genealogies? When I was a child, growing up in a Reformed household, we would read the Bible after supper. Oftentimes the four of us kids would fight about who got to read—until we approached a genealogy. Then the fighting would stop, and we encouraged each other to take the chapter.

Although the names are difficult to pronounce, genealogies are valuable because they are part of Scripture. You just need to dig a little bit to get their significance. The genealogy in Matthew 1 is especially significant—it tells an important story. This lineage has a theme running through the list of names: gracious fulfillment.

Perhaps the most striking piece of the genealogy are the surprises, the people we maybe wouldn’t have picked ourselves if we were putting together an all-star lineage for the King of Kings.

Surprising Women

The women in the genealogy stand out, and not only because women are unusual in a Hebrew genealogy. Matthew is making a point about the universality of the gospel by naming three heathen female ancestors by name: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth. They all stand in contrast to the righteousness of God’s anointed one. And yet, all outcasts, they made it into Jesus’s family album. They are, thereby, strong assurances of God’s grace to sinners.

Each woman represents an unexpected turn in Israel’s history. Let’s start with Tamar, mentioned in Matthew 1:3: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.” Tamar’s story, found in Genesis 38, is a sordid tale of incest, prostitution, and deception. Perhaps you remember how the patriarch Judah chose Tamar as a wife for his son Er. Er was wicked and was killed by the Lord. Then Er’s brother Onan became Tamar’s husband (see Deut. 25 for the law that required this). He refused to father a child by her, so God struck him dead, too. She, still childless, dressed up like a prostitute, placed a veil over her face, and sat by the road. Her father-in-law, Judah, came along. He—not knowing who she was—slept with her. Twin sons were born of the act of harlotry and incest. Judah was worse in his hypocrisy and blindness than even Tamar, and he admits this in the end. Tamar and her story are part of the great plotline of God’s redemptive work. Mankind’s sinful rebellion simply cannot thwart the grace of God. If God would continue his messianic line through Tamar and Judah—with the web of incest, harlotry, hypocrisy, and deception—then he surely is a God of grace.

The next surprise is Rahab, two verses later in Matthew 1:5: “Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab.” She originally was a professional prostitute, according to Joshua 2. Her heritage was as a Canaanite, an enemy of God’s people. One of her most important acts was telling a lie: As Israel is ready to enter the Promised Land, Joshua sends some spies to scout out Jericho. They come to Rahab’s house. She hides them from the city officials. When asked where they are, she lies! Rahab then pleads with the spies to spare her family. Her family is saved and delivered. She turned to the Lord and became part of the messianic line. She was the great-great-grandmother of David.

Then there is Ruth. Ruth is not a surprise due to her occupation but due to her own lineage. She was a Gentile. She was a Moabitess. You may recall that the whole nation of Moabites was the product of incest. Genesis 19:30–38 describes how Lot fled with his two daughters at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The daughters, thinking there would be no one to marry them and carry on the family, decided to get their father drunk and lie with him. The oldest daughter later gave birth to Moab. So, Ruth came from a nation that was the product of incest. Yet she was the wife of Boaz, the ancestor of King David, and thus an ancestor of Christ. 

What do we gather from all this? It is important that these women are mentioned because Matthew is saying that the Jewish Messiah’s blessings extend beyond Israel. Not just to the Jews but to the whole world comes tremendous news—to people of all different backgrounds and nationalities.

Surprising Men

Yet, the story is not over. I do think Matthew pays special attention to the women in his genealogy. But note also some surprising men. We’ll look at two.

In Matthew 1:6, attention is drawn to David and Bathsheba, whose story is told in 2 Samuel 12.

David the king illicitly sent for this married woman, Bathsheba. A child was conceived. When David learned of the news, he tried to cover his tracks by getting Bathsheba’s husband to come home. He assumed that her husband, Uriah, when he came home from battle, would have normal relations with his wife and David’s sin would be covered up. But Uriah was a man of dedication; he would not go home to his wife. Even getting Uriah drunk did not work, for he was a better man drunk than David was sober. With his plan frustrated, David sent a note to his army officers to put Uriah in the front lines in battle and pull back from him so that he would be killed.

Then David took Bathsheba to be his wife, and their child died. David was confronted with his sin and repented. Later, he had another child by Bathsheba who was named Solomon—the one in the messianic line. Matthew highlights the grace of God by exposing David’s sin and mentioning “the wife of Uriah,” Bathsheba, in the genealogy.

Finally, look at one of the worst bad boys of Israel’s history: Manasseh. “Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos” (Matt. 1:10). Raised in the covenant, Manasseh committed reprehensible sins: he sacrificed his own children in idol worship and did other things that were far worse than the pagan nations that the Lord had expelled from the land (see 2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chron. 33:1–20). Although he was the son of the godly Hezekiah, Manasseh’s wickedness was epic. But the story is not over yet. God weaves him into the grand story of redemption. The Lord was gracious to him at the end of his life and brought him to himself and then included him in the line of the Messiah.

All these failures—all our failures, rebellion, and sin—remind us how we need Christ, the great Son of David, the son of Abraham. Where all others failed, God overcame and prevailed by his grace. He has brought into the world his perfect Son through a genealogy that is full of sinners.

A Line of Grace

The black sheep make this an incredible genealogy for Christ our Lord to have. The line of Jesus is a hall of shame, filled with Gentiles, fornicators, adulterers, liars, cursed kings, and other sinners.

Why doesn’t the Bible gloss over it? Because it is a line of grace. That is Matthew’s point. The people in the Messiah’s line are not so much on display—God’s grace is. They are memorable for God’s grace in forgiving them.

He has put enmity between Satan and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3). The conquering power of God is seen in the face of such sinfulness, in the face of our great wickedness. It underscores that Jesus identified with sinners, yet without sin. The spotlight is on God’s grace of pure unmerited favor, his sovereign intervention based on his free choice, and his overpowering mercy. Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more! God’s grace cannot be outmaneuvered when he is at work. His arm is mighty to save.

Do not overlook the message of the genealogy, perhaps as you read the story of the birth of Christ this holiday season: God in his mercy is doing what we could not do for ourselves—he is mending broken lives. He is fulfilling his covenantal promises. The Lord in the manger is the Lord of grace, grace overflowing offered to sinners who desperately need it. Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s history, the fulfillment of our messianic hopes, the fulfillment of our hunger for a true king, and the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham to bring blessing to the nations.

The same Jesus of this genealogy is active today, mending our lives and saving us from the corrupting power of sin. Rejoice!  

The author is pastor of Immanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Andover, Minnesota. New Horizons, December 2021.