And Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Tamar is the first of five women named in Matthew's genealogy, each one a scandal by conventional standards and each one a sign of how God works. Tamar was the Canaanite daughter-in-law who disguised herself as a prostitute to secure the line-of-descent that Judah had owed her (Genesis 38). Her inclusion in the list of Jesus' ancestors communicates something Matthew will develop throughout his gospel: the Messiah comes from and for the nations, and he comes through the kind of people polite religion would exclude. Hebrews 11:32–40 suggests that the faith of the Old Testament was always enacted through complicated people in complicated circumstances.

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