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Matthew 1

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The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;

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And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;

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And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon;

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And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;

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And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;

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And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa;

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And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias;

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And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias;

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And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias;

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And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:

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And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel;

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And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;

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And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud;

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And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob;

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And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

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So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

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Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

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Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.

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But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

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And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

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Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,

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Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

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Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:

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And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

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Matthew 1

Matthew opens his Gospel with a genealogy that is simultaneously a theology: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile, fourteen from the exile to the Messiah — a structured history that places Jesus at the climax of Israel's entire story. The threefold grouping around the three great turning points (promise, monarchy, catastrophe) communicates that the Messiah is not an interruption of Israel's history but its fulfillment. The genealogy includes four women — Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah's wife — all Gentiles or those with irregular histories, preparing for the Gospel's Gentile mission before it is announced. Joseph's dilemma and the angel's interpretation give Matthew's readers the theological frame for everything that follows: this child is Immanuel, God with us, conceived by the Holy Spirit to save his people from their sins. The chapter's final verse — Joseph took Mary home as his wife but had no union with her until she gave birth — both confirms the virgin birth and opens the narrative that the rest of the Gospel will tell.

Matthew 1:1

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew opens not with a narrative scene but with a title-page: this is a record of origins, a deliberate echo of Genesis 2:4 where the same Greek word (biblos geneseos) introduces the story of creation's unfolding. The double identification — son of David, son of Abraham — immediately places Jesus at the intersection of the two most foundational covenant promises in Israel's story: the royal line that would produce the eternal king (2 Samuel 7:12–16) and the patriarchal promise through whom all nations would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Matthew is not writing biography in the modern sense but announcing that the story every Israelite has been waiting for has arrived in a person.

Matthew 1:2

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. The genealogy begins where the covenant begins: with Abraham, the man called out of Ur to father a people through whom God would redeem the world. The father-of formula is not merely biological but covenantal — each begetting is a link in the chain of divine promise. That Judah is named alongside his brothers is a quiet acknowledgment of the messy fraternal history behind the royal line: the brothers who sold Joseph into slavery are the ancestors of the king of kings. Romans 11:29 says the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable — the line moves forward through failure as well as faithfulness.

Matthew 1:3

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.

Matthew 1:4

And Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon. Nahshon appears in Numbers 7:12 as the leader of the tribe of Judah who brought the first offering at the tabernacle's dedication — a figure of honor within the wilderness community. His inclusion points to the continuity of the covenant line through the generation that walked from Sinai to the edge of the promised land. The genealogy is not merely listing names but tracing the thread of divine faithfulness through the generations that inherited the promise, carried it through the wilderness, and delivered it intact to the next link in the chain.

Matthew 1:5

And Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Two more women appear: Rahab the Canaanite prostitute of Jericho who hid the spies and was saved by a scarlet cord (Joshua 2), and Ruth the Moabite widow whose loyalty to Naomi and to Israel's God became the foundation of her place in the covenant community. Both were outsiders who crossed into Israel through faith rather than birth. Ruth 4:17–22 traces the line from Ruth to David with quiet elegance — the foreigner's faithfulness producing the royal line. Matthew's genealogy is already doing what the gospel will do throughout: expanding the boundaries of who belongs to the story.

Matthew 1:6

And Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. David the king — the title marks the genealogy's pivot point, the moment the royal promise of 2 Samuel 7 enters the list. But the mother named is not Bathsheba but the wife of Uriah — a description that keeps the adultery and murder behind the birth of Solomon permanently visible. The covenant does not erase the sin through which the royal line was extended; it carries forward through it. The fifth woman in the genealogy is the most uncomfortable: a woman obtained through the abuse of royal power, the wife of a man her husband arranged to have killed. Matthew is not sanitizing the ancestry of Jesus but showing the depths from which grace reaches.

Matthew 1:7

And Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph. The royal line continues through the divided monarchy — the kings of Judah after Solomon's catastrophic failure to hold the kingdom together. Rehoboam's foolishness split the nation (1 Kings 12:1–17); Abijah's reign was marked by war and theological inconsistency (1 Kings 15:1–8). The genealogy does not annotate these failures, but any reader who knew the kings' stories would hear them behind the names. The covenant runs through the line of David not because the Davidic kings were faithful but because God's promise to David was unconditional. Psalm 89:30–37 makes this explicit: even if David's sons forsake the law, God will not revoke the covenant.

Matthew 1:8

And Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah. Matthew skips three kings between Joram and Uzziah (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah — see 2 Kings 8–14), likely to produce the symmetrical fourteen-generation structure he announces in verse 17. The omissions communicate that Matthew is writing a theological genealogy, not an exhaustive chronicle. The choice of which names to include and exclude is itself an interpretive act: the point is not completeness but the pattern of covenant faithfulness that runs through an imperfect royal line toward the Messiah who will fulfill what every king before him could not.

Matthew 1:9

And Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. Ahaz is the king whose reign Isaiah 7 addresses — the king who refused to ask for a sign and received the promise of Immanuel anyway (Isaiah 7:14). The child whose birth Isaiah announced in the time of Ahaz is the same Immanuel whose name Matthew will apply to Jesus in verse 23. The genealogy and the prophecy are already in conversation: Matthew is tracing the line that leads to the child who is God with us, threading through the very reign in which that promise was first given.

Matthew 1:10

And Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah. Hezekiah was Judah's greatest king since David; Manasseh was its worst — a reign of child sacrifice and idolatry so severe that 2 Kings 21:11–15 attributes the coming Babylonian exile to it. The royal line descends through the most catastrophic of Judah's kings without the covenant breaking. The genealogy demonstrates what Paul will later articulate in Romans 5:20: where sin increased, grace increased all the more. The Messiah's lineage does not require exemplary ancestors; it requires only that the line continue, and God ensures that it does.

Matthew 1:11

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.

Matthew 1:12

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. The genealogy continues through the exile and into the post-exilic period. Zerubbabel was the governor of Judah who led the first return from Babylon and whose name appears in Haggai and Zechariah as the one through whom the restoration of the temple and the renewed covenant community would come. Haggai 2:23 uses the signet-ring imagery of royal appointment for Zerubbabel — a counter to the curse on Jechoniah, a renewed appointment within the same family line. Matthew traces the thread of the covenant through the exile's darkness into the dim light of the restoration period.

Matthew 1:13

And Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor. The genealogy now enters the period of post-exilic obscurity — names not found in the Old Testament, belonging to the four hundred years of silence between Malachi and Matthew. These are the generations who lived under Persian, Greek, and Roman rule without a prophet, without a king, waiting for the promise of restoration to be fulfilled. The genealogy insists that the covenant did not pause during the silence: the line continued, family by family, father to son, through centuries of occupation and waiting. God's faithfulness does not require visible demonstration to remain operative.

Matthew 1:14

And Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud. More names from the silent centuries — names without stories in any known source. The Zadok here is not the famous priest of David's court; the Achim and Eliud are not known from other texts. They are the anonymous faithful who carried the covenant line through generations that left no record beyond the genealogy itself. Their obscurity is itself a statement about how God works: the most important lineage in history passed through people whose names were unknown to anyone but their families and their God.

Matthew 1:15

And Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob. The final pre-Joseph generation approaches. Matthan and Jacob are the grandfather and father of the man who will be named as Jesus' legal father. The genealogy is narrowing from the vast sweep of Israel's history — Abraham, the patriarchs, the kings, the exile, the restoration — down to a single family in a small Galilean town. The cosmic story is about to locate itself in one carpenter's household. Luke 2:4 will confirm the Davidic descent of this family when Joseph travels to Bethlehem for the census, to the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.

Matthew 1:16

And Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. The genealogy's syntax changes at the last entry: every previous generation was described as father of, but Joseph is described as the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. The passive of whom makes Mary the grammatical antecedent — Jesus was born of Mary, not of Joseph. The genealogy has been building to this moment: the legal lineage through Joseph establishes Jesus' right to the Davidic throne, but the actual birth is through Mary alone, clearing the curse on Jechoniah while maintaining the royal claim. Christ — the Greek translation of Messiah, the Anointed One — is applied here for the first time in the gospel.

Matthew 1:17

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. The three-by-fourteen structure Matthew announces is a theological pattern, not a census. Fourteen may reflect the numerical value of David's name in Hebrew (D-V-D = 4+6+4 = 14), making the genealogy a sustained meditation on the Davidic promise. The three epochs — promise (Abraham to David), failure and exile (David to deportation), and restoration (deportation to Christ) — map the entire sweep of Israel's covenant history as a movement toward the Messiah. What looks like a list of names is actually a compressed narrative of the entire Old Testament.

Matthew 1:18

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. The genealogy announced the legal context; the narrative now explains the biological reality. Betrothal in first-century Judaism was legally binding — a betrothed couple were considered husband and wife for all legal purposes including inheritance, though they did not yet live together or consummate the marriage. Mary's pregnancy before the marriage's consummation would therefore appear, to any observer, as evidence of unfaithfulness. The from the Holy Spirit is Matthew's narrative explanation, not yet part of anyone's knowledge within the story except Mary's. Isaiah 7:14 promised a virgin-born child named Immanuel; the Spirit who brooded over the waters at creation now overshadows Mary for the new creation.

Matthew 1:19

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. Joseph's character is established in a single verse: just and merciful, a man who follows the law (which entitled him to public divorce) while choosing the form of it that protects Mary from maximum exposure. The tension between justice and mercy that will run through Jesus' entire ministry is enacted in miniature by the man who raised him. Deuteronomy 24:1 permitted divorce; Numbers 5 provided a public shaming process for suspected adultery. Joseph chooses neither the full rigor of the law nor its most severe interpretation. He is a righteous man who has not yet learned what righteousness is about to require of him.

Matthew 1:20

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. The divine interruption comes through a dream — the same medium through which God communicated with the other Joseph in Genesis 37–50, the patriarch whose story Matthew's birth narrative will echo in striking ways. The angel addresses Joseph as son of David, the first use of the royal title in the gospel for anyone other than Jesus. The fear that must be overcome is not cowardice but the legitimate anxiety of a man who does not yet understand what God is doing. The explanation is simple and cosmic simultaneously: the child is from the Holy Spirit, the breath of God that creates life from nothing.

Matthew 1:21

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus — Yeshua in Hebrew, meaning the Lord saves — carries within it the announcement of the child's mission. Names in the biblical tradition are not merely labels but descriptions: the child named Immanuel (God with us) in Isaiah 7 corresponds to the child named Jesus (the Lord saves) here. He will save his people from their sins — not from Roman occupation, not from political oppression, but from the deeper bondage that makes all other bondage possible. Acts 4:12 will later say there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. The name given before birth is the name that will be proclaimed to the ends of the earth.

Matthew 1:22

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. The fulfillment formula — all this took place to fulfill — is one of Matthew's most distinctive literary features, appearing ten times in the gospel at key moments. The formula communicates that what is happening is not new but completing: the story of Jesus is the story Israel's scriptures were always moving toward, the resolution of a plotline set in motion centuries before. The prophet's words were not merely predictions but promissory notes, and the birth of Jesus is the moment God makes good on the promise. Matthew is not claiming that Isaiah intended to predict a virgin birth; he is claiming that Isaiah's promise of divine rescue through a Spirit-conceived child is being enacted in ways that exceed what anyone expected.

Matthew 1:23

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means, God with us. The citation of Isaiah 7:14 interprets the birth of Jesus through the lens of one of Israel's most haunting promises. In its original context, the Immanuel sign was addressed to Ahaz during the Syro-Ephraimite crisis — a child whose birth would mark the timing of national deliverance. Matthew sees the fulfillment of what that sign pointed toward: not merely a child born as a sign of God's presence, but a child who is God's presence. God with us is the summary of the entire gospel: the Word becomes flesh (John 1:14), the eternal God takes up residence in the body of a Galilean peasant, and the distance between heaven and earth is permanently closed.

Matthew 1:24

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife. The simplicity of Joseph's obedience is the simplicity of faith. He received a command that redefined everything he thought he understood about his situation, and he acted on it immediately upon waking. There is no recorded prayer, no negotiation, no request for further signs. Genesis 12:4 records Abraham's equally simple obedience when God called him to leave his homeland: so Abram went. The great figures of faith in Matthew's genealogy are characterized by this responsiveness — they hear the divine word and they move. Joseph's obedience is the final step that brings Jesus legally into the royal line: by taking Mary as his wife and naming the child, Joseph adopts Jesus into the house of David.

Matthew 1:25

But knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. The chapter closes with the naming — the act that legally makes Jesus Joseph's son and therefore David's heir. The until leaves open what happened after the birth, consistent with the later references to Jesus' brothers and sisters in the gospel. The entire chapter has moved from genealogy to angelic announcement to obedient action to the naming of the child, tracing the arc from promise to fulfillment in the space of a few verses. Revelation 22:16 will end the biblical story with Jesus identifying himself as the Root and Offspring of David — the same royal identity that Matthew's first chapter establishes through genealogy, miracle, and adoption.