Week 34 Matthew 1
Matthew starts his gospel with two family name-lists. There’s a short one – only one verse long. Then right away there’s a longer list – fifteen verses of names.
Matthew could easily have started his gospel at verse eighteen:
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
That could have worked. But Matthew began his gospel story with a fifteen-verse list of names.
It can’t be because he figured it would grab people’s attention. But he must have figured the list was important to the story.
One thing the list does is make it clear that Jesus’ family connection went back through the centuries. Back through the kings of Judah to David. Then all the way back to father Abraham.
The key connection is to king David. In the OT a couple of key promises were made to David about the big things that would eventually come through his family line.
Matthew doesn’t come right out and say that’s his point. He just lays out a family tree showing that Jesus did come from the line of Judah’s greatest king (through whom someone big would come). And Jesus is part of David’s line. So now Matthew has twenty-eight chapters to make a case for Jesus being a big thing.
Note: quote from Matthew 1:18 (NIV)