The Genealogies of Jesus
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers … Matthew 1:2
Most people probably roll their eyes when they encounter the genealogies. Given the price of writing materials in the first century—and through all the ages before the invention of the printing press—these records must have been important for generations of scholars to copy them.
Given the price paid in attention and time in a modern world built on an attention economy, we need a solid reason to stick to it and read these genealogies.
But what might that reason be? There are standard answers, of course.
They show us Jesus is a child of the line of Israel through whom God had promised the Messiah would come, including Jacob, Judah, Perez, Ruth, and then David. He was also a child of the line of kings of Israel.
They show us he was a natural child of Mary and an adopted child of Joseph. How can we know this? Because Luke includes “the” (an article) before every name in his genealogy except Joseph’s—for the Greek reader, this would indicate Jesus was an adopted son.
But are these standard answers enough to convince us to take these genealogies seriously?
Let’s turn the question on its head. Why does modern culture pay so little attention to where someone comes from/ Why do we care so little about history? We consider each person a product of their choices and desires without referencing their ancestors.
Jewish culture—especially until the last hundred years or so—was never like this. Like a military unit that carries banners for each notable action and award, your family tree is a collection of the things that shaped who you are—and what people should expect from you.
These genealogies tell us something about who Jesus is that modern culture has difficulty accessing. They tell us that Jesus is human—a startling fact when spoken about God—Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer, and Jesus is the Son of God.
Human
Modern Christians tend to downplay the human nature of Jesus and emphasize the God nature—almost to the point that we become “pocket Gnostics.” We end up making Jesus into “God in a human body suit,” harming our understanding of the Scriptures.
Jesus is most certainly God—but Jesus, in his incarnation, was fully human as well.
He was a perfect human, with perfectly operating senses, a perfect ability to memorize and recall, and perfect clarity of thought—but he was human nonetheless. Why is this important?
First, we should resist the urge to attribute everything in the life of Christ to the miraculous. For instance, when we read in Matthew 26:17—
He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’ ”
We might think Jesus miraculously caused a man to prepare a room for the Passover and then will not use it. The reality may be far more prosaic—perhaps Jesus spoke with this man on one of his many trips to Jerusalem and asked him to set this room aside.
Sometimes, the smartest person in the room just knows how to do things that might seem, from the outside, to be astounding (like Sherlock Holmes explaining how he knows things to Watson). Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, a sufficiently advanced intelligence might also seem like magic (or miraculous). Jesus was always the smartest person in the room.
Second, it makes it much harder for us to relate to Jesus as an exemplar or even a person. Treating Jesus as “God in a human body suit” makes Jesus distant. Jesus, the man cried, laughed, hurt, and was tempted.
Third, unless Jesus was fully human, he could not have been our kinsman-redeemer.
Kinsman-Redeemer
One name that should stand out in the genealogy of Jesus is Ruth. After all, there is an entire book named Ruth in the Tanakh. The plot of Ruth is Boaz, Naomi’s kinsman, redeems Naomi (and her line) by marrying Ruth. What does all this have to do with Jesus, and why is it so important Ruth is in his bloodline?
Because Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer.
The kinsman-redeemer’s role is described in Leviticus 25:47–49—
If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger’s clan, then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him.
The kinsman must be:
A relative. Consider the case of Ruth. Boaz states he is a redeemer (Ruth 3:12–3), and there is a nearer redeemer. Boaz says, however, that the redeemer must marry Ruth (Ruth 4:5) so the line may be continued. The job of the redeemer is to redeem the family, not the land.
Able to redeem. In Leviticus, the ability to redeem is tied to wealth. To cover all sin, however, only a perfect sacrifice can redeem the offeror. To permanently cover sin, the sacrifice must be permanently perfect.
Willing to redeem. There is another possible redeemer in Ruth, but he refuses to redeem Naomi.
Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer on all three counts:
Being fully human, he is our kinsman.
Being perfect—without sin—he can redeem us.
He died on the cross, showing his willingness to redeem us.
Son of God
Jesus’ most common phrase to describe himself was Son of God. It’s clear Jesus is not the son of Joseph, as Luke says:
Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli … Luke 3:23[1]
But what does being the Son of God mean? We tend to place son in the context of father and son, which has led some Christian theological systems to imagine there is a mother who gave birth to the Son via the Father. Other Christian theological systems have used this language to hold the Son proceeds from the Father somehow, rather than being eternally co-existent with the Father.
Physical lineage or procession is not the sense of the word son here, though.
Son of goes beyond physical descent throughout the Scriptures to mean partake in the nature of. The son is like the father or partakes in the father’s nature.
Partakes in the nature of is often used in the Scriptures independently of physical lineage. One rather entertaining instance of this usage is in Jonah 4:10—
You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
The Hebrew reads, “the plant was a son of the night.” It partook of the character of the night, so it died when the day became hot, and the east wind scorched it. There is no way the night “gave physical birth to” a plant, so the English translation of the Hebrew replaces “son of” with “came into being in.” This perfectly follows the Hebrew sense.
This way of using son is found throughout the Scriptures:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Matthew 23:15
The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one… Matthew 13:38
While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. John 12:36
Hell did not give birth to the Pharisees. The seeds do not grow up to be people. Light cannot give birth to a person (any more than darkness can give birth to a plant). In all these cases, these people are sons because they partake in the nature or characteristics of their “father.”
Jesus, in the same way, partakes of the nature of the Father—just as the doctrine of the Trinity tells us. The Father, Son, and Spirit are three persons with the same nature.
Jesus is not only fully human, but also fully God.
This partaking of the Father’s nature is even shown in the nature of the miracles Jesus performs. None of these miracles are like what you read about in fairy tales, or you might imagine someone like God would do.
Turning water into wine in John 2:1–11
The many healings
The multiplication of food in Luke 8:1–9
All these miracles work with rather than against nature. You will not find rugs that fly, or horses that sprout wings, or tables of prepared food appearing in a wilderness among the miracles of Jesus. Because he is the Son of the Creator, he does what the Creator does.
The genealogies of Jesus point to all these things—he is the rightful heir to David’s throne, he is fully human, he is the perfect kinsman-redeemer, and he is the Son of God.
[1] Arnold Frutchenbaum argues Luke emphasizes this point using “son of Joseph,” without the “the,” and “the Heli,” leaving out “son of.” According to Frutchenbaum, this was a common way to show adoption in Hebrew genealogies, and Luke would have been following a Jewish genealogy here.