Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: We three kings of Israel aren’t.

SUB-TITLE: A method to Matthew’s apparent madness.

As is well known, Matthew’s genealogy (in Matt. 1.1-17) consists of three groups of fourteen generations.

P.S. Substack version available at the end.

As is well known, Matthew’s genealogy (in Matt. 1.1–17) consists of three groups of fourteen generations.

Between Abraham and Israel’s first great king (David) we have fourteen generations;

between David and Israel’s great disaster (the exile) we have a further fourteen;

and between the exile and Israel’s great deliverer (the Messiah) we have our final fourteen.

Every fourteen generations, an event of epochal significance takes place, which makes Jesus’ arrival right on cue.

‘It’s almost as if God planned it’, Bart Ehrman says.

There’s a fly in the ointment, however, which is as follows.

The interval between David and the exile isn’t actually spanned by fourteen kings;

it’s spanned by *seventeen* kings.

Matthew has bypassed three generations in order to make his pattern of fourteens add up.

Or at least so it seems.

As Raymond Brown rightly points out, however, ‘It would be strange for Matthew to deliberately omit generations in order to create a pattern and then call his readers’ attention to it as if it’s some marvellous and (implicitly) providential pattern’.

Brown therefore thinks Matthew must have stumbled across an ‘accidentally abbreviated’ list of Davidic kings and failed to realise it was three kings short.

If we prefer, then, we can view Matthew as incompetent rather than disingenuous.

But, before we jump to such conclusions, let’s take a step back and consider the bigger picture.

Matthew introduces us to Jesus as ‘the son of David’ and ‘the son of Abraham’ (1.1).

These aren’t unrelated statements.

When YHWH called Abraham, he said kings (מלכים) would emerge from Abraham’s loins (Gen. 17),

...and, with the emergence of David’s line, YHWH’s words began to be filled up.

Prior to David’s day, Israel had been led by isolated leaders: Moses, Joshua, the Judges, Samuel.

Many of these men *tried* to establish dynasties (e.g., Judg. 10–12), though none succeeded.

In c. 1000 BC, however, a new era began.

YHWH established ‘the throne of David over all Israel’ (2 Sam. 3.9–10)...

...and said David would never be without ‘a man on the throne of Israel’ (1 Kgs. 2.4) (if his sons walked faithfully before him)—a promise reiterated by Solomon in 1 Kings 8.25 and 9.5.

The term ‘throne of Israel’ thus has a specific significance in the Biblical narrative.

It refers to the promise made to David, which was inherited first by Solomon and afterwards by the Davidic kings while the northern kingdom went its own way. (We’ll discuss an important exception to the rule later on.)

The throne-line defined by YHWH’s promise is clearly of great interest to Matthew, since it’s precisely what his genealogy details the fulfilment of.

That’s why, when Matthew’s genealogy reaches David, it goes on to mention *Solomon* (and those who succeeded him)...

...rather than a different son of David (as Luke’s genealogy does).

That’s why Matthew’s genealogy culminates in the fulfilment of a promise made to ‘the house of David’ to establish David’s ‘throne’ (cp. Isa. 7.14, 9.6 w. Matt. 1.23).

That’s why Matthew’s genealogy leads into a narrative which tells us about the occupant of David’s throne at the time of Jesus’ birth, namely Herod (a man whose genealogy *isn’t* recorded by Matthew because he *isn’t* a son of David).

And that’s why Matthew portrays the age to come as a day when the Son of Man will sit on his throne surrounded by the twelve, who are likewise seated on thrones (19.28).

To trace the course of the Davidic throne-line, however, isn’t a straightforward task due to the exception we mentioned earlier.

Midway through the book of 2 Kings, we find two unusual references to ‘the throne of Israel’,...

... which suggest the throne was (temporarily) removed from David’s line and entrusted to an outsider.

In the 9th cent. BC, a king named Ahab enforced the worship of Baal in Israel with unprecedented fervour...

... and forged close alliances with the house of Judah (aided by intermarriage between the houses of Ahab and David).

The line of David thus came under threat. And so YHWH raised up a man named Jehu to sort things out.

YHWH made Jehu a remarkable promise: ‘Unto the fourth generation, your sons will sit on the throne of Israel’ (2 Kgs. 10.30).

Which is exactly what happened.

Hence, at the end of the reign of Jehu’s fourth son (Zechariah), the narrator of the book of Kings makes the comment,

Suffice it to say, then, the rise of Jehu’s dynasty represents a remarkable period in Israel’s history.

YHWH gave the (already intertwined) lines of Ahab and David into the hands of Jehu in order to avenge the blood of the prophets and purge Israel of the influence of Baal.

And, in one of the most bloody periods in Israel’s history, Jehu obliged, all of which is very relevant to our present line of enquiry.

Why?

Because the three kings whose reigns were entirely swallowed up by the rule of Jehu’s dynasty are precisely those kings whom Matthew omits from his genealogy.

As Matthew tells us, then, only fourteen generations of David’s descendants sat on David’s throne, which makes one for each lion on it (1 Kgs. 10.18–20).

The nature and significance of Jehu’s reign is reflected in the Biblical narrative in at least two other ways.

First, in the Bible’s use of the term ‘the people of YHWH’.

Jehu is said to be granted authority over ‘the people of YHWH’ (2 Kgs. 9.6), which is true of only two other individuals in Biblical history—Saul and David—,

both of whom reigned over Israel as a whole (1 Sam. 10.1, 2 Sam. 6.21).

Second, in the Chroniclers’ obituaries of Judah’s kings.

At the end of each king’s reign, the book of Chronicles includes a brief obituary, which is fairly formulaic in nature.

Each king of Judah from Solomon through to Manasseh is said to ‘sleep with his fathers’,...

... with four notable exceptions: Jehoram, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah.

These kings died while Jehu’s dynasty was at large. And, in contrast to their peers, they’re not said to have ‘slept with their fathers’;

rather, they’re said to have been buried in a separate location from the rest of Judah’s kings.

The Chronicler thus takes the dynasty of Jehu to have temporarily ‘interrupted’ the throne-line of David and to have disconnected David’s sons from their ancestry,

just as Matthew does.

Perhaps, then, there’s method to Matthew’s madness after all.

And perhaps Matthew’s interest in threes (so Davies & Allison 1988:62ff.) is also reflected in his threefold genealogy (‘the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham’).

Three Gentile women who wouldn’t have expected to be included in the Messiah’s ancestry are included in Matthew’s first group of fourteen.

Three Judahite men who *would* have expected to be included in the Messiah’s ancestry are unexpectedly excluded from Matthew’s second group of fourteen.

And a family of three (Joseph, Mary, and Jesus) unexpectedly appear at the climax of Matthew’s third group of fourteen,

which is the biggest surprise of all, since Mary and Joseph haven’t yet consummated their marriage.

Matthew’s method isn’t, however, the kind of thing we’ll notice if we take Matthew to be a disingenuous/incompetent author,

and, curiously, it’s not the kind of thing *Matthew* would have noticed had he’d relied on the Greek translations of the Bible available to us today.

Matthew’s Gospel is thus an illustration of one of Jesus’ own doctrines: ‘Seek and you will find!’.

P.S. In deference to non-thread-users:

jamesbejon.substack.com/p/we-three-kin…