And Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. The Babylonian exile enters the genealogy — the catastrophic rupture in Israel's story when the Davidic king was removed from the throne, the temple was destroyed, and the people were carried to a foreign land. Jechoniah (also called Jeconiah or Coniah) was the king over whom Jeremiah pronounced the curse that no descendant of his would sit on David's throne (Jeremiah 22:30). This creates a legal problem for the Messiah's genealogy that Matthew resolves through the virginal conception: Jesus is the legal heir of David's line through Joseph without being the biological descendant of the cursed Jechoniah.

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