Matthew 1

Historical Context

The Gospel of Matthew does not name its author. Early church tradition, going back at least to the second century, attributes it to Matthew the tax collector, one of the twelve apostles. Most modern scholars date it somewhere between about AD 60 and 90, with many favoring the years after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and many think it was written for Christians of Jewish background, perhaps in Syria. Whoever wrote it knew the Hebrew Scriptures deeply. By most counts this Gospel quotes the Old Testament more often than any of the others, frequently with the formula we meet today: "that it might be fulfilled" (v. 22).

A modern reader skims a genealogy. An ancient Jewish reader did not. Family lines settled who could serve as a priest, who belonged to which tribe, and who had any claim to David's throne. The books of Chronicles open with nine chapters of them. Matthew's opening phrase, "The book of the genealogy" (v. 1), echoes the wording of the Greek Old Testament in Genesis 2:4 and 5:1, as if to say a new beginning is under way.

The two names in verse 1 carry the weight of two promises. God told Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3). God told David that his throne would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:12-16). By the first century those promises had been waiting a long time. Judea was under Roman rule, with Herod as a client king, and no descendant of David had reigned since the exile to Babylon nearly six centuries earlier.

The birth story turns on a custom. In Jewish practice, betrothal was legally binding. The couple was already called husband and wife, breaking it required a divorce, and unfaithfulness during it counted as adultery (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). Later rabbinic sources say the bride typically moved into her husband's home up to a year later, and the gap was likely similar in Mary's day. She and Joseph were in that gap when she was "found pregnant" (v. 18).

Understanding the Passage

The chapter answers two questions: who is Jesus, and how did he come?

The genealogy answers the first. Jesus is "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (v. 1), heir to both promises. Matthew sorts the names into three blocks of fourteen (v. 17): from Abraham to the kingdom's height, from the kingdom to its collapse, from exile to the Christ. The pattern is deliberate. Between Joram and Uzziah he skips three kings named in 1 Chronicles 3:11-12. Many scholars note that the Hebrew letters of David's name add up to fourteen, but Matthew never says so, and the point is not certain. The message is clear either way: Israel's whole story has been moving toward this child.

Then there are the women. Jewish genealogies rarely included them, and Matthew names four before Mary: Tamar, who posed as a prostitute to get the heir Judah's family owed her (Genesis 38); Rahab, a prostitute of Jericho; Ruth, a Moabite; and Bathsheba, whom Matthew pointedly calls "her who had been Uriah’s wife" (v. 6), keeping David's sin in view. Each was an outsider, or caught in a scandal, or both. Matthew seems to be preparing readers for one more irregular story, and saying that God's purposes have always run through unlikely people.

Matthew does not hide a tension. The whole line runs through Joseph, yet verse 16 breaks the pattern: Joseph is "the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus." In Jewish thinking, a man who named and acknowledged a child was treated as the child's father, including for inheritance (later rabbinic law spells this out). That is what the angel tells Joseph to do (v. 21) and what he does (v. 25). Jesus is David's son by legal acknowledgment, what we would call adoption. Luke's genealogy (Luke 3:23-38) differs from Matthew's at many points, and the proposed reconciliations remain debated.

The quotation from Isaiah 7:14 deserves care. In its setting, the sign was given to King Ahaz during a war in the 730s BC, and the child would be born in his lifetime (Isaiah 7:16). The Hebrew word usually refers to a young woman of marriageable age and does not by itself say whether she is a virgin, though some argue that every biblical use implies one. The Greek translation Matthew quotes uses a word that normally means virgin. Some Christians read Isaiah as a direct prediction. Others understand "fulfilled" as Matthew often uses it: an earlier pattern reaching its fullest meaning in Jesus. Matthew's own claim that Mary conceived "by the Holy Spirit" (v. 18) rests on his testimony and Luke's, not on Isaiah alone.

Verse 25 divides traditions. Many Protestants read "until" as implying a normal marriage afterward. Catholic and Orthodox teaching holds that Mary remained a virgin, noting that "until" in Scripture often says nothing about what followed. The text does not decide.

What it does settle is the name. Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, "the LORD saves," and he will "save his people from their sins" (v. 21). Not from Rome. From sins. And he is "God with us" (v. 23), a promise the Gospel closes with: "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20).

Living the Teaching

Consider Joseph for a moment. He is engaged, the woman he is to marry is pregnant, and he knows the child is not his. In his world, a man's honor was public property, and the expected move was a public break that put the shame where it seemed to belong. Matthew calls Joseph "a righteous man" (v. 19) and then describes his righteousness as quiet mercy: he will not make her "a public example." Before any angel speaks, he has already chosen to absorb a cost rather than pass it on.

That is worth sitting with, because most of us have a different reflex. When someone's choice upends our plans, or a situation makes us look bad at work or in the family, the pull is toward self-protection, toward making sure everyone knows it was not our fault. Joseph shows a righteousness that protects the other person first. It is a good test of the difference between what our culture calls looking strong and what Scripture calls being good.

Then the dream, and the words "don’t be afraid" (v. 20). Joseph is asked to do something that may well cost him his reputation for the rest of his life, on the strength of a message he cannot verify, for a child he did not father. He "did as the angel of the Lord commanded him" (v. 24). Matthew records no words from Joseph anywhere; he only acts. Faith here is not a feeling of certainty. It is getting up in the morning and doing the next right thing with a plan you did not choose.

The genealogy offers a quieter encouragement. God's purposes ran through Tamar and Rahab and a king who took another man's wife. No family history, including yours, is too tangled for God to work in.