The Lineage of Christ

The Righteous Branch

Many prophecies of the Old Testament concur that the future king of the world—that is, the Messiah, or Christ (the Greek term for Messiah)—will be a descendant of David, the first great king of Israel, who reigned about 1000 B.C. (1 Chron. 17:11-14; Psa. 89; 132; Isa. 9:6-7). Jeremiah identified the coming Messiah as a branch of David.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

Jeremiah 23:5

The same prophecy also appears in Jeremiah 33:15 and Psalm 132:17, where "Branch" and "bud" are alternative translations of the same Hebrew word. Similarly, Isaiah spoke of the Messiah as a branch from the root of Jesse, David’s father (Isa. 11:1). Building on these earlier prophecies, Zechariah simply speaks of the Branch (Zech. 3:8; 6:12).

Even in much older prophecies, there are glimpses of Christ's ancestry. A student of the Messianic prophecies should view them as an unfolding picture, indefinite at first but giving fuller information in each succeeding revelation.

From the Human Race

God first announced Christ soon after Adam and Eve, the parents of the human race, fell into sin. Satan, the angelic prince whose pride had already made him an enemy of God, had taken the form of a serpent and approached Eve, tempting her to eat luscious forbidden fruit, the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was the only food that God had denied the man and woman when He placed them in the Garden of Eden. But, at Satan's urging, Eve ate the fruit, then persuaded Adam to eat also. Later, when God sought fellowship with Adam and his wife, He found them in hiding, ashamed of their disobedience. He called them to Himself and immediately pronounced judgment on all three wrongdoers—on Adam, Eve, and Satan. He said to Satan,

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:15

This decree is known as the Protevangelium, which signifies "first announcement of the gospel." The serpent's seed includes all who follow Satan's path of rebellion against God (John 8:44). The woman's seed is denoted "it," but a more precise translation is "he."¹ Thus, the One who would someday come to battle Satan is an individual man. He would be a man born of woman, a member of the human race. He would Himself suffer injury, but He would crush Satan.

The prophecy foresees Christ's death on a cross to deliver us from the curse of sin and death. We will return to the Protevangelium later to draw out an implication of great significance. Here, it is enough to say that the prophecy clearly specifies that Christ would arise from human lineage.

From Abraham

Isaac laid upon an altar

About two thousand years after Adam and Eve fell into sin, God chose a particular man, Abraham, to be the progenitor of Christ.

1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

11 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

15 And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,

16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:

17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

19 So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba.

Genesis 22:1-19

This chapter records that when Abraham was an old man, the Lord required him to fulfill a difficult command. He told Abraham to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him on a mountain in the land of Moriah.² Despite the task he was setting out to perform, Abraham proceeded without any delay. He left the very next morning and took Isaac directly to the appointed place, where he laid his son upon an altar. But before he could plunge a knife into his son, the Lord called out from heaven and ordered him to stop. The Lord in mercy then provided a ram to die instead of Isaac.

As a reward for courageous obedience (v. 16), the Lord declared that Abraham would have an illustrious "seed" (singular masculine in the Hebrew³) who would overcome "his" enemies (v. 17) and bring great blessing to all nations (v. 18). Thus, the seed of Abraham is evidently one man, like the seed of the woman. But who is he? It must be understood that Abraham's reward was a kind of reciprocity. What Abraham was willing to do out of love for God, God was no less willing to do out of love for Abraham and for the whole world. The phrase, "thy son, thine only son," applied to Isaac no less than three times (vv. 2, 12, 16), is an important clue to the larger significance of Abraham's ordeal. The prophetic message is that just as Abraham gave his son, his only son, to die for God's sake, so also God the Father would give His Son, His only begotten Son (John 3:16), to die for man's sake. The seed who would bless all nations is, therefore, the Son of God. The New Testament teaches that the man who is both Abraham's seed and God's Son is Jesus (Gal. 3:16).

A strong intimation that Abraham's seed would come to die appears in the conversation between Abraham and Isaac as they climbed the mountain. Abraham must have been filled with dread of what he must do, but he was not in despair, for God had promised him that He would raise up a great nation from Isaac. Therefore, Abraham believed that God would not leave Isaac dead, but would restore him to life. When he departed from his servants, he said, "I and the lad will . . . come again to you" (v. 5). The New Testament affirms,

17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:

19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

Hebrews 11:17-19

As Isaac walked along with his father, he at first had no glimmer of his father's intentions. He asked, "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (v. 7). His father answered, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering" (v. 8). Abraham was not expecting God to excuse him from sacrificing his son. Besides, the animal that God later gave as a substitute for Isaac was not a lamb. In Hebrew, "lamb" is seh, denoting a very young sheep, whereas "ram" is ayil, specifying a mature, horned male.⁴ Lest we miss the distinction, the text openly informs us that the ram in the thicket possessed horns (v. 13). What, then, did Abraham mean when he said that God would provide a lamb? The lamb he was thinking of was Isaac. Notice the word order in the Hebrew. "God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."⁵ "My son" is juxtaposed to "offering." Thus, Abraham was indirectly and gently telling Isaac that God wanted the burnt offering to be "my son," Isaac himself.

The true purpose of their journey together must have settled like winter's cold upon Isaac's heart. Yet when they came at last to the place of sacrifice, Isaac submitted willingly. He probably could have resisted. His ability to carry the wood for his father indicates that he was well grown. Also, he was bearing the heavier load, so perhaps he was the stronger of the two. Yet he willingly lay on the altar. No doubt he shared his father's confidence that God would soon raise him from the dead.

When Abraham declared that God would provide a lamb, he was speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the meaning of the utterance transcended his own thoughts. He was referring to his own son. Yet the Holy Spirit was referring to Christ. The utterance pointed to Christ as the Lamb who would come to die for the sins of the world.

After he had offered the ram upon the altar, Abraham realized that the incident was prophetic. He called the place of sacrifice Jehovah-jireh, which means, literally, "Jehovah sees" (v. 14).⁶ The writer, probably Moses, connects this name with a common saying in his day, "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen" (v. 14). Actually, the word for "seen" here is the very word incorporated in the name Jehovah-jireh and translated "provide" in Abraham's earlier promise, "God will provide himself a lamb."⁷ Another way to translate Jehovah-jireh is, "God will provide." The name must refer to the lamb that God would someday provide as a burnt offering. Since, after mentioning this provision (v. 14), the text immediately focuses on the seed who would bless all nations (vv. 16-18), the provision and the seed are unmistakably the same person. Abraham's seed would be the Lamb, and the Lamb would bless all nations through His sacrificial death.

The prophecy that "it [the lamb] shall be seen" was fulfilled when Christ hung on a cross. No death is more of a public spectacle than crucifixion. Christ was seen by the religious leaders of His day, by many of His own followers, by jeering masses, and, in the eye of imagination, by everyone down through history who has read the vivid accounts of His last hours.

Land of Moriah

The writer of Genesis 22 states that the mountain of sacrifice was located in "the land of Moriah" (v. 2). A mountain by the same name, in Jerusalem, was the site of Solomon's Temple (2 Chron. 3:1). Thus, some scholars argue that the Genesis account was written more than a thousand years after Abraham to legitimize the Temple then in existence. But if they are correct, why does the writer give the name Moriah to the surrounding territory rather than to the mountain of sacrifice itself, and why does he leave us with only an extremely vague picture of its location?

The name of Mt. Moriah doubtless expresses an ancient belief that this was where Isaac was sacrificed. A tradition linking the Temple site with the events of Genesis 22 was current when Josephus wrote his Antiquities.⁸ In harmony with this tradition, the mountain of sacrifice was less than three days removed from Beer-sheba (v. 4), about the same distance away as Jerusalem. But perhaps the actual place where Abraham went was the hill later known as Calvary. Calvary, a lower eminence adjacent to Mt. Moriah, was where Jesus was crucified.

From Isaac and Jacob

The Old Testament narrows down Christ's line of descent still more. When speaking to Isaac, Abraham's second son, God said,

And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 26:4

God later transferred the same promise—the promise of a special seed from whom all mankind would derive benefit—to Isaac's second son, Jacob.

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 28:14

From Judah

The Messianic line passed from Jacob to his fourth son, Judah. The first announcement of Judah's place in this exalted heritage came when Jacob gathered his sons to hear his last blessing upon them.

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

Genesis 49:10

A clearer translation of "unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be" is, "To him shall be obedience of peoples."⁹ The meaning of the obscure word "Shiloh" has been endlessly debated. A similar word in Akkadian suggests that it is a poetic term for "ruler."¹⁰

We find an explanation for the term in the prophecies of Ezekiel.

25 And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end,

26 Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.

27 I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.

Ezekiel 21:25-27

Ezekiel prophesied that the Lord would take the crown from the present king of Israel, a wicked prince, and withhold it from any successor "until he come whose right it is." The prophet is apparently referring to the same ruler foreseen in Genesis 49:10, but instead of using the unusual word "Shiloh," he paraphrases it "he whose right it [the crown] is."

However Genesis 49:10 is translated, the general idea is clear. The kingly line would arise in Judah, and from this line would come a man who has the right to rule all nations. Other Old Testament prophecies refer to that man as the Messiah.

From Jesse and David

The first Israelite king from the house of Judah was David, son of Jesse. When David asked the Lord for permission to build Him a temple, the Lord refused, but rewarded his devotion by making an everlasting covenant with him and his descendants.

And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.

2 Samuel 7:16

The psalmist's elaboration of this covenant is more explicit.

His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me.

Psalm 89:36

Unlike similar prophecies, this one is unique in stating that both David's seed and his throne would be perpetual. Later, we will show why the distinction is important.

"His seed [singular¹¹]" who would possess an eternal kingdom is Christ. The expectation that Christ would descend from the line of David is a recurrent theme in the literature of Old Testament prophecy. As we showed at the outset of this section, several prophets identify the coming Messiah as a branch of King David.

Consensus of the Early Church

The royal pedigree of Jesus is affirmed throughout the New Testament. The Gospels furnish two genealogies of Jesus, one in Matthew (Matt. 1:1-17) and one in Luke (Luke 3:23-38), and both trace His ancestry to David. Throughout His ministry, Jesus allowed others to call Him the son of David (Mark 10:47 et al.). Paul said that Jesus sprang from David's line (Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8). In the Book of Acts, which chronicles the early expansion of the church, the first reference to Jesus as the son of David occurs in an excerpt from one of Paul's sermons during his first missionary journey (Acts 13:23). The kingly descent of Jesus must therefore have been a teaching of the church from the very beginning.

Extrabiblical Evidence

According to the critics, the two genealogies of Jesus are merely fabrications to satisfy early believers that Jesus was a son of David in keeping with prophecy. Yet, the critics can hold this view only by ignoring the evidence that the Jews knew their lineages.

The historian Josephus, member of a priestly family, said that he obtained his own genealogy from public records.¹² He said also that catalogs of priestly marriages were kept in Jerusalem and other principal cities.¹³ If the ancestry of priestly families was so fully documented, perhaps genealogical tables existed for other Jewish families as well. Without such tables, the Jews would have had nothing to sustain their keen, even fanatical, interest in genealogies (1 Tim. 1:4; Titus 3:9). Because of its importance to the nation, the nonpriestly family most likely to possess records of descent was the family of David. The Gospel writers surely would not have falsely represented Jesus as David's descendant if opponents of the church had ready access to records proving otherwise.

Even the Babylonian Talmud acknowledges that Jesus belonged to the family of David. The Talmud, an ancient source preserving the oral traditions of the Pharisees, is unfriendly to Christianity. Yet on the authority of Ulla, a rabbi from the late third century, the Talmud says that the Sanhedrin took pains to give Jesus a fair trial because He was "near to the kingship."¹⁴

The standard Jewish edition offers a looser translation: "connected with the government [or royalty, i.e., influential]."¹⁵ But this translation and its bracketed interpretation are outrageously inaccurate and biased, as well as being impossible both historically and contextually. The Talmud elsewhere is wholly sympathetic to the Sanhedrin. Here, it is hardly suggesting that the Sanhedrin was pliable to undue political pressure. Moreover, the Sanhedrin in Jesus' day was not under any king but Caesar. The immediately superior authority was Pilate, a Roman governor. The only king in the area was Herod of Galilee, who was no friend of Jesus (Luke 13:31-32). When Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, Herod mocked Him and returned Him to Pilate for execution (Luke 23:7-12).

Just before citing Ulla, the Talmud says that for forty days a herald went out and cried: "'Any one who can say anything in his [Jesus'] favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover."¹⁶ If Jesus had powerful allies in the government, why was it so difficult to find anyone to testify on His behalf? It is evident that Jesus was near to the kingship not in the sense of having friends in high places, but in the sense of having a legitimate claim to the throne.

Two Valid Genealogies

The two genealogies of Jesus that we find in the Gospels are dismissed by critics. Their main argument against accepting them as genuine is that although both place Jesus in the line of David, they differ otherwise.

The reason they do not present the same list of names is that prophecy lays out two requirements for the lineage of Christ. The promise of perpetual endurance applies to both David's "seed" and David's "throne" (Psa. 89:36). Therefore, He must be both a physical descendant of David and a legitimate successor to David. Jesus fulfilled the two requirements. That is, He was not only in the blood line of David; He was actually the rightful king. His proper claim upon the throne of Israel explains why He was so readily applauded at His Triumphal Entry, why the people hailed Him as "the son of David" (Matt. 21:9), why the authorities felt so threatened by Him, why Pilate questioned Him so closely as to whether He was the king of the Jews (John 18:33), and why the inscription on the cross read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews" (John 19:19).

To show that Jesus fulfilled both requirements of prophecy concerning the lineage of Christ, Matthew gives Jesus' place in the royal succession,¹⁷ and Luke gives His physical ancestry.¹⁸ Jesus' only parent was Mary, since He was miraculously conceived in His mother when she was still a virgin betrothed to Joseph. Joseph was His legal father only (Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38). Therefore, the genealogy in Luke traces His ancestry through Mary's side of the family.

Our interpretation of Matthew's genealogy—that it presents the royal succession culminating in Jesus—squares with two important considerations.

1. His genealogy follows the line of actual Jewish kings.
2. The Gospel of Matthew is distinctively the Gospel of the Kingdom. In reporting Jesus' ministry, he emphasizes Jesus' intention to set up a kingdom in fulfillment of Jewish hopes (Matt. 4:17; 5:17-19 et al.). He presents the Transfiguration as Jesus "coming in his kingdom" (Matt. 16:28). His purpose throughout is to spotlight Jesus in His kingly role. Therefore, the genealogy he provides shows Jesus as the king.

Matthew links names in his genealogy with the term "begat." This seems to exclude any shifts in the blood line, such as we would expect in a line of kings. But the Greek term is gennao, whose meaning is not limited to biological conception.²⁰ It can mean "bring forth" or "produce."²⁰

Our interpretation of Luke's genealogy—that it presents Jesus' blood line through Mary—has three important considerations in its favor.

1. Luke elsewhere intimates that Mary herself was of Davidic descent. In the genealogy, he speaks of Joseph as Jesus' "supposed," or "nominal," father (Luke 3:23). But in his account of the angel's announcement to Mary that she had conceived a child without the aid of a man, Luke remembers the angel saying, "The Lord God shall give unto him [Jesus] the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32). The implication is that whereas Joseph was His supposed father, David was His real father—that is, His real grandfather on His mother's side.
2. Some have argued that Luke gives Joseph's genealogy to illustrate the claim, twice stated, that Joseph belonged to the house of David (Luke 1:27; 2:4). But the genealogy Luke provides is elaborate and lengthy. All the detail seems pointless if it is the genealogy of a man who was merely Jesus' supposed father.
3. Luke carries the ancestry of Christ far beyond David all the way to Adam, father of the human race (Luke 3:38). Evidently, he wishes to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of God's promise to Adam and Eve in the Protevangelium—the promise that their posterity would produce a conqueror of Satan. Luke's genealogy succeeds in identifying Jesus as an offspring of Adam and Eve only if it gives His biological descent. In other words, the genealogy must be the blood line of Mary.

The probable source of the birth narrative in each Gospel is another circumstance supporting our interpretation of the two genealogies. Matthew's account, stressing Joseph's part in the events attending the birth of Jesus, must come from Joseph or his side of the family. The motherly perspective that informs Luke's account (Luke 2:19, 51) indicates that the source is Mary.

Yet, our assertion that Luke gives Mary's blood line appears to stumble on a serious difficulty. The parent of Jesus that he explicitly places in the line of descent is not Mary, but Joseph (Luke 3:23). The difficulty is, however, merely superficial, due primarily to familiar English translations. The KJV says, "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli." The meaning that a reader naturally draws from the "which" inserted after "Joseph" is that Joseph descended from Heli. The same inference is encouraged by the added words "the son." But the original Greek is rather more vague. It says, "And himself was Jesus about years thirty beginning, being as was supposed son of Joseph, of Heli."²¹ After "Joseph," all the entries in the list are identical in construction. It reads, "of Heli, of Matthat, of Levi," etc. Each name follows the untranslated word tou. The same word does not precede "Joseph." Nor is anyone besides Jesus said to be either the son or supposed son of his predecessor. The phrase, "being as was supposed son of Joseph," is therefore obviously parenthetical. Luke’s intended meaning is that although Jesus was regarded as the son of Joseph, his first noteworthy male ancestor in his mother’s line was actually his grandfather Heli.