scandalous unions

"The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."
Matthew 1:1


This week in a study group we talked about the four women (or five including Mary) who Matthew lists in his "record of the generations" of Jesus the Messiah: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah or Bathsheba. Check it out - do you remember Tamar and Judah from Genesis 38? Tamar who posed as a cult prostitute in order to get pregnant by her father-in-law Judah? Or the Canaanite prostitute Rahab who protected 2 Israelite spies in her place of business and was thus later spared when Jericho ws destroyed, who married into Israel? Ruth's story is a beautiful one - how a Moabite widow of a Jewish boy from Bethlehem gets her kinsman redeemer (actually it has a risqué twist in the story too). And there at the end of Ruth we read a genealogy, a line of people (that Matthew seems to quote) that begins with Tamar's son, includes Rahab and Ruth and ends with David... who took the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and fathered Solomon by her (she was bathing in full view of the king, whose behavior was far, far worse).

Why does he list these four and not Sarah, Rebekkah, Leah and Rachel, for example? or Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel and Hannah? Apparently it's not to point to exemplary women among Jesus' ancestors, or to highlight other miraculous births...

- Perhaps it's to acknowledge that there's a history of God being at work in the midst of scandalous unions and pregnancies; and that God was at work in what appeared to be a scandalous union as Joseph apparently got Mary pregnant before consummating their marriage. ("isn't this [just] the carpenter's son?")
- Perhaps as he begins the genealogy with Abraham he's calling attention to proselytes; these people beginning with Abraham who came out of the "nations", from outside the family or covenant, and united themselves to God and God's people.
- Or maybe it's simply that including the Gentiles / the nations has always been a part of God's plan of restoring all things (cf. Genesis 12:1-3; 17:5-7)...

It is Jesus who ties together all of Israel's history, from the call of faithful Abraham, to its high point when David was the king, to it's low point of the Babylonian deportation - it all was pointing to and comes together in the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.


May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely,
your spirit, your mind, and your body,
for the coming of our Lord and Messiah Jesus.
God is faithful and he will do it.

Mark