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2–6a These verses cover the first period from Abraham to David. While
much of the data could have been derived from Genesis and the subsequent
historical accounts, the names after Jacob are conveniently brought
together in 1 Chr 2:1–15 and Ruth 4:18–22, and Matthew has followed that
summary tradition. It is likely that those lists, like some other biblical
genealogies, are deliberately selective, since the number of generations listed
is hardly enough to cover seven or eight hundred years; if Gen 49:12 is
compared with Num 1:7 it appears that Hezron, Ram and Amminadab
between them cover the whole period from the patriarchal arrival in Egypt
to the exodus, which the OT records put at some 400 years.
A few additions are made to the simple pattern “x was the father of y.”³ The
mention of Judah’s brothers in v. 2 reflects a natural Jewish interest in the twelve
patriarchs from whom the Israelite tribes were named, even though inevitably
only one of them can have a place in the genealogy.³¹ Perez’ twin brother Zerah
is included because of the well-known story of the circumstances of their birth
(Gen 38), and because they are also mentioned together in 1 Chr 2:4. That same
record also mentions their mother, since it was not through the legitimate sons of
Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, (who are listed first in 1 Chr 2:3) that the
royal line would be derived, but from his irregular liaison with his daughter-in-
law, Tamar. Tamar’s contribution to the royal line is also specially mentioned in
Ruth 4:12.
Tamar is the first of four mothers included in vv. 3–6. To mention a mother in the
course of a biblical genealogy was not unprecedented: there are fourteen mothers
mentioned in 1 Chr 2 alone. As we have seen Tamar comes to Matthew already
in the 1 Chronicles genealogy, and one of Matthew’s other women, the unnamed
mother of Solomon, also appears in her due place in the OT list in 1 Chr 3:5.³²
Tamar and the wife of Uriah therefore came to Matthew already included in the
1 Chronicles lists, and the genealogy at the end of the book of Ruth is placed
there to record how her role contributed to the growth of the royal house. Thus
only Rahab, as the mother of Boaz, does not derive directly from Matthew’s OT
sources. But even so, the fact that Matthew includes four mothers in this first
part of the list and none thereafter may suggest that he had a special reason to do
so.
The only other person called Rahab in the OT is the prostitute of Jericho (Josh
2:1–21), but her date at the time of the Israelite conquest places her at least a
century too early to be the wife of David’s great-grandfather unless the
genealogy is incomplete at that point, nor is there anything in the OT to connect
her with the family of Boaz, whose story presupposes a family well settled in
Canaan, not a new arrival. However, Matthew’s mention of her without further
identification suggests that he expected her name to be familiar to his readers,
and so it is generally assumed (and it can be no more than an assumption)³³ that
despite the chronological problem he had Rahab of Jericho in mind.
In that case, the four mothers included in the list certainly make a strikingly
unconventional group to find within the pedigree of the Messiah of Israel, in that
probably all four of them were non-Israelite (Tamar and Rahab were
Canaanites,³⁴ Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba the wife of a Hittite). Moreover,
their stories do not fit comfortably into traditional patterns of sexual morality.
Tamar’s seduction of her father-in-law, Rahab’s prostitution and Bathsheba’s
adultery are all explicit in the OT (and Matthew’s phrase “the wife of Uriah”
rather than giving Bathsheba’s name makes the point rather obviously), and
while Ruth 3–4 records without moral censure how her marriage to Boaz was
arranged, the euphemistic language recounting the events at the threshing-floor
leaves many modern interpreters uneasy. It is therefore customarily asserted that
in including these four “embarrassing” mothers Matthew may have intended to
prepare his readers for the Messiah’s “disreputable” origin in a pregnancy before
marriage (1:18–25),³⁵ though the force of this suggestion is weakened by the fact
that embarrassment over their sexual activities is primarily a modern
phenomenon: in Jewish tradition Tamar, Rahab and Ruth were regarded as
heroines, and it is David rather than Bathsheba who is stigmatized for their
adultery.³ More appropriate to Matthew’s own context is the view that the four
“foreign” women prepare the reader for the coming of non-Israelites to follow
Israel’s Messiah³⁷ which will be foreshadowed in the homage of the magi in 2:1–
12 and will be a recurrent and increasing theme throughout the gospel until it
reaches its climax in the mission to all nations in 28:19 (and which was
appropriate to the story of a son of Abraham, see on previous verse). But if this
was Matthew’s intention, he gives us no overt indication of it, so that, as with the
significance of “fourteen”, we cannot go beyond conjecture.³⁸
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