Want to know a fun fact? In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (really of Joseph) we see Joseph adopted Jesus into a family with a Davidic royal bloodline. This fits in with the idea that Jesus was to restore the Davidic throne. God, after all, had promised the Davidic throne would be reestablished. Yet in Jesus’s time, there was little chance of that happening with Imperial Rome. But here’s a further problem. Rich Robinson notes:

According to the genealogy in Matthew 1:12, Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah. But Jeconiah was cursed in Jeremiah 22:24 and 22:30:

As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off.

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 any more in Judah.”

Since no descendant of Jeconiah could ever sit on the throne, if Jesus is a descendant of this cursed king, he is disqualified from being the Messiah.

What was Matthew doing? He was accounting for the fact that Jesus was killed instead of re-establishing the Davidic throne, but the curse was ultimately overcome because Jesus would rule in the coming kingdom of God, since Jesus was not directly in the cursed bloodline but only adopted into it. This is the genius of Matthew’s genealogy. The throne of David would be resurrected because Jesus was not physically Davidic. Contrast this with Paul who said Jesus was of the seed of David. This fits in with the notion in the ancient world of the power of being adopted into a family, like Augustus Caesar.

NEXT TIME:

(2/2) Merry Christmas! Jesus’s Bloodline in Matthew