Five Women (Matt 1:1–17)

Matthew 1

A Link to Matthew 1 (ESV)

Five Women (1:1–17 again)

Matthew’s genealogy spans seventeen verses and forty-two generations, almost all of them fathers begetting sons in an unbroken line. But there are five times where a woman interrupts this pattern. Here’s the first:

and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar (1:3).

Tamar was not Judah’s wife. She was his daughter-in-law, widowed twice by his own sons, and when Judah refused to give her his third son as the law required, she disguised herself as a prostitute and conceived by Judah himself. When he found out the truth, Judah’s own judgment was that she was “more righteous than I” (Gen 38:26).

Then comes Rahab:

and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab (1:5).

Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute in Jericho who hid Israel’s spies and chose to join a people who were not her own. Who would have guessed that there was a Canaanite prostitute in the Messianic line?

Then comes Ruth:

and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth (1:5).

While not a prostitute like Rahab, Ruth was a Moabite, and Moabites were forbidden from entering the assembly of the Lord up to the tenth generation (Deut 23:3). She went to Boaz’s threshing floor at night, following Naomi’s instructions, and lay at his feet until morning— a scene Israel’s customs would have considered unusual at best.

And then Bathsheba:

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah (1:6).

Matthew does not even name Bathsheba here. He names her by her husband. Given that Matthew names the other women, we can only speculate why. Maybe this story of all the other was most shameful to Matthew. David didn’t just marry Bathsheba after she became a widow; instead, he took her while Uriah was still alive and then had Uriah killed to cover it. Of the four women in the genealogy, hers is the only story in which the guilt belongs solely to the man, and yet she is the one who goes unnamed.

These four women point to four stories a first-century audience would have flagged as irregular. They include seduction, foreign blood, unconventional courtship, and adultery. And yet, in every case, the blessing that carried Israel’s story forward ran directly through what looked, from the outside, like scandal.

Then Matthew reaches verse sixteen, and he breaks the pattern he has used for fifteen verses. Every other entry reads “the father of X by Y.” Joseph’s does not.

and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ (1:16).

Matthew knows that Joseph did not father Jesus by Mary, and he wants to make this clear by breaking his pattern. And once again, there are questions related to the named woman. Mary becomes pregnant before she is married, and yet, she is righteous.

Tamar was vindicated. Rahab was grafted in. Ruth was redeemed. Even David’s sin with Bathsheba became the line through which Solomon, and eventually the Messiah, would come. And Mary, despite all the questions she probably faced about her pregnancy, became theotokos, the bearer of God. The Messiah’s family history is not neat and tidy. It is messy, and there is a place in his family for messy people.

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Filled Full, Not Fulfilled (1:18–25)

“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matt 1:22–23, quoting Isa 7:14).

“And he called his name Jesus” (Matt 1:25).

Many Christians think about the relationship between the New Testament and the Old Testament, especially as it pertains to Jesus, through a lens of prophecy and fulfillment. We are taught that there are numerous predictions about the Messiah in the OT, and, as proof of his Messiahship, Jesus shows up and fulfills those prophecies.

Matthew’s frequent use of πληρόω, usually translated as “fulfilled” as it is in verse 22, would seem to confirm this understanding

But that’s not how the OT is actually being used in the NT, and there are far fewer prophecies about the Messiah in the OT than we have been led to believe. How Jesus fulfills, or rather, “fills full” the OT is far more interesting than mere prophecy-fulfillment language. Take this scene at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, for example.

Matthew says quite explicitly, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,” and then he quotes Isa 7:14. It’s worth noting that Matthew could easily have stopped his quotation after the reference to the virgin birth, but he doesn’t He carries the quotation all the way through to “and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us).”

And then what happens?

Joseph awakes from the dream, and Matthew writes, “And he called his name Jesus.”

If Matthew were operating on a simple prophecy-fulfillment model, that paragraph should have ended differently. He quotes the Isaianic text that says the child born to the virgin shall be named Immanuel. He says the text was fulfilled. And then Joseph gives the child a different name.

Matthew isn’t being careless; he just isn’t using the model we think he is.

The Greek word πληρόω does not mean “a prediction came true.” It means to fill something up, to bring something to its complete and full expression. Matthew isn’t saying Isaiah predicted Jesus. He is saying that Jesus “fills full” the story that Isaiah was telling.

Isaiah 7:14 was not a prediction about a future messiah. It was a sign given to King Ahaz in an acute political crisis. The Syro-Ephraimite coalition was threatening Jerusalem. Isaiah came with a word: trust the promises of God. A young woman would conceive and bear a son, and before the child was old enough to know good from evil, the threat would be gone. The child’s name — Immanuel, God with us — was the theological ground of the deliverance. Divine presence was the answer to the crisis.

That story had a specific meaning in the eighth century BC. Matthew knows this, and he’s not pretending otherwise.

What Matthew sees is that the same pattern has arrived at a greater destination. Once again, a son of David faces fear and uncertainty. Once again, a child is born as the sign of divine presence. But now the sign is not merely a sign. The child born to Mary does not point to God's presence. He is the presence. Immanuel announced that God was with his people. Jesus — from the Hebrew יְשׁוּעָה (yeshûʿâ), the Lord saves — is what that presence does.

For Matthew (and the other NT authors), the model for understanding Jesus in relation to the OT isn’t prophecy and fulfillment. It’s “fill-fullment.” The great story of God, Israel, and creation is being filled full in the life of this child.

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“The Book of the Genealogy” (1:1–17)

If you’ve been around St. Dunstan’s for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about Matthew’s genealogy. In short, Matthew points out three key figures or moments in Israel’s history, with Jesus as the culmination of that story.

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations (Matt 1:17, ESV).

Abraham, David, Exile, Jesus—this shapes Israel’s story as Matthew sees it. But what if I told you there’s an even deeper, older story hidden in plain sight in the first two words of Matthew’s Gospel?

The book of the genealogy (Βίβλος γενέσεως, biblios geneseōs) of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt 1:1).

This is the book of the origin (βίβλος γενέσεως, biblios geneseōs) of heaven and earth, when it originated, on the day that God made the heaven and the earth (Gen 2:4, NETS).¹

Notice the identical Greek phrase—Matthew is intentionally echoing the Septuagint’s language for creation itself. Even the term biblios geneseōs alone may be a reference to the name of the book of Genesis.  

Matthew mainly writes to a Jewish audience, highlighting Jesus as the climax of the stories of Abraham, David, and the Exile. However, he also hints at the deeper story of creation and Adam, recognizing that what Jesus did was for more than just one nation and family. What Jesus accomplished was for the whole world.

If Genesis is the book of the origin of creation and the people of God, it’s not a stretch to say that Matthew views his Gospel as the account of the beginning of the new creation and the formation of the new people of God around Jesus Christ.

So, yes, to understand who Jesus is, what he did, and what he said, we must see him as the culmination of Israel’s story. But he is also the climax of a different, older story—the story of creation—and what he accomplishes will benefit the cosmos and all the people within it. Jesus isn’t just Israel’s Messiah; he’s also the one through whom God is making all things new.

1. NETS stands for New English Translation of the Septuagint, the standard academic translation of the Greek Old Testament.