Matthew’s genealogy contains fathers with the addition of four mothers (five if we include Mary) which I began discussing last post. The commentaries do not have a satisfactory explanation.
The problem is
that commentators tend to be looking for what’s wrong or ‘irregular’ about these
women (or what’s positive about them; or what’s in common with them). But whilst,
yes, there are Gentile associations the women are not clearly all Gentiles
– and yes, there is some sexual ‘misconduct’ but Bathsheba herself is
powerless to stop David ‘taking’ her.
So previously I
suggested that the theme for all five cases was the tradition’s complete refusal
to shame the women due to their belonging to (and clinging to) the
Messianic line, since the promised anointed one himself (Messiah Jesus) takes
on (and takes away) shame according to Matthew.
But this is
only half correct, or I should say, this is only half the story.
As the four
preceding mothers in the genealogy are really references to four short Bible stories,
it is necessary to examine each
story. Scholars have
often wondered what links all four women, at the expense of seeing the
links between all four ‘ancestral dramas’, and how they pre-empt aspects in the fifth story about
Joseph and his wife Mary.
I’ll translate Mt 1:18–25 and then discuss
the story links:
Mt 1:18-25
The genesis of the Messiah happened like this (that is, how he became adopted 'son of David'):Mary his mother being promised to Joseph but prior to coming to live with him was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.Joseph her husband being a righteous man and not wanting to shame her publicly planned to divorce her privately.But when he had decided on this behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to him saying, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take home Mary as your wife because her child is conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”This all happened for the scripture to be fulfilled, spoken by the Lord through the prophet:‘Behold the virgin will be pregnant and she will give birth to a son and they will call his name Emanuel which translates as "God is with us".’When Joseph awoke from his sleep he did just as it was commanded to him by the angle of the Lord and he took home Mary as his wife, and he was not intimate with her before such time as she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
Some notes (mainly from
Keener’s commentary):
- Joseph would be required to divorce Mary because
Jewish law, Greek law, and Roman law “all demanded that a man divorce his wife
if she were guilty of adultery.” To not divorce her “would violate law and
custom.”
-Joseph must take on even more shame: adultery also
put the betrothed husband to shame but Joseph’s decision to accept Mary’s
pregnancy now means people would assume he is the father who got her pregnant
(no outsider’s are privy to Joseph’s dream). And if he tried to explain his
compassion this would be seen as weakness: “Mediterranean society viewed with
contempt the weakness of a man who let his love for his wife outweigh his
appropriate honor in repudiating her.”
-Joseph by abstaining from sex with Mary forfeits
any right to ever make a claim against Mary’s pending virginity, that is, he is
accepting her as she is without requiring proof.
According to Basser this abstinence was commanded
by the angle of the Lord, which seems a very fair assessment of the story since
Joseph is said to have done just as the angel commanded him.
Now let’s
review all five stories...
1st Story: Judah
and Tamar
2nd Story: Joshua’s
Spies and Rahab
3rd Story: Boaz
and Ruth
4th Story: David
and the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba)
5th Story: Joseph and Mary
Some of the
earlier stories were already linked (pre-Matthew): so for example, Rahab’s and
Ruth’s stories are clearly conversion stories (stories 3 and 4) - both women express
eagerness to convert to the God of Israel (Ruth swears an oath of allegiance to
Naomi’s God; Rahab displays belief in the story of the miraculous deliverance
of Israel from Egypt by “the LORD God” who is “God on heaven and earth.”
Tamar’s and
Ruth’s stories (1 and 3) both require a man to continue (honor the name and
inheritance of) a woman’s deceased husband’s line by marrying the widow. (Gen
38:8; Ruth 4:9–10). Note that the elders in Ruth 4:12 say “And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom
Tamar bore to Judah.” Also in both stories it is not the parents who name
the respective sons (the midwife name’s Tamar’s son; the women neighbours name
Ruth’s son).
Stories 1, 2,
and 4 are all linked through the ‘trickster’ theme (prevalent throughout
Genesis to explain how the blessed line or ‘seed’ passes to the younger son rather
than to the eldest son). Thus Tamar tricks Judah; Rahab tricks the King (of
Jericho) to save her enemies (who in turn save her family); Bathsheba uses
Nathan’s words to trick the elderly David into giving her son Solomon the
throne (instead of his eldest son, Adonijah) when David
is mentally and physically feeble (compare when Rebekah helped Jacob trick an
elderly Isaac).
Stories 1 and 3
are single story units, whereas stories 2 and 4 are two-part stories (with
other events narrated in between) and both begin during a war.
Now there is something
that links all five stories, but before I noticed it I first noticed
a chiastic (inverted) structure for the set of five (though it is perhaps more
‘inverted’ than ‘chiastic’):
Story
1: Judah and Tamar
|
Story
5: Joseph and Mary
|
Judah
discovers (when it becomes public knowledge) that Tamar is pregnant (father
unknown)
|
Joseph
discovers (when it becomes public knowledge) that Mary is pregnant (father
unknown)
|
Tamar
at risk of public shaming and at risk for her life (for her ‘sin’ of illicit
sex)
|
Mary
at risk for public shaming and possibly for her life (for her ‘sin’ of adultery)
|
Judah
at first acts self-righteously / hypocritically
|
Joseph
at first acts rightly/righteously (according to the law)
|
by
promising Tamar a third marriage (sending her back to her father’s house
indefinitely as a widow)
|
by
deciding to send her away (to remain living in her father’s house as a
divorced woman)
|
by
calling her to public trial to condemn her act (of prostitution) yet without
really intending to listen to her story
|
by
not calling her to public trial to condemn her act (of adultery) yet without
really intending to listen to her story
|
Judah
then is confronted with the truth (by Tamar) and confesses that “she [Tamar]
is in the right, more than I, since I refused to give her to my son” (Gen
38:26)
|
Joseph
is then confronted with the truth (by God in a dream) and his actions prove
that he truly is “a righteous man” (Mt 1:19) …
|
Judah
begins to act more rightly/righteously:
|
Joseph
immediately obeys a direct command (from God in a dream)
|
Judah
has no more sex with her (but presumably provides a home for her and his
sons?)
|
Joseph
takes Mary home as his wife but has no sex with her (before the birth);
|
Tamar
gives birth to twins, becoming a mother of the Messianic line
|
Mary
gives birth to a son, the Messiah
|
Several interesting contrasts and parallels emerge,
allowing for the fact that some may be purely coincidental. But note especially
the concluding verses:
“and he was not again intimate with her. Now
when she gave birth…” (Gen 38:36b–37a)
“and he
was not intimate with her before she gave birth to a son…” (Mt 1:25)
Similarly there are parallels between stories 2 and
4:
Story
2: Joshua’s Spies and Rahab
|
Story
4: David and the wife of Uriah / Bathsheba
|
A
woman is living in a house without a husband (Rahab supports herself by
prostitution);
|
A
woman is living in a house without a husband (Uriah’s wife is left home while
her husband is at war);
|
she
risks her life by attempting to hide the presence of enemy spies (from being
public knowledge)
|
she
tries to hide her pregnancy (from being public knowledge) / later she risks
her life by siding against David’s eldest son
|
she
tricks/outwits the king (by her own words)
|
she
tricks/outwits the king (by using Nathan’s words)
|
she
successfully negotiates a deal to save her family
|
she
successfully negotiates a deal to get her son on the throne
|
becomes
a mother of the Messianic line
|
becomes
a mother of the Messianic line
|
Whilst these links are all interesting, the ‘moral’
of these stories (or the ‘point’) according to Matthew must be simpler…
Readers will find the best interpretative key/theme
for all five stories within each of the ‘pivotal’ story-moments, and each pivotal
moment hinges on the male characters’ consideration of right action:
Story 1: Judah’s treatment of Tamar suddenly
changes when he realises he is the father of her child. He finds his compassion
through contrition. He suddenly can see that his treatment of Tamar had been wrong
which enables him to bestow her with righteousness: “it is she who is right,
over me” (Gen 38:26).
Story 2: The spies believe they are called to
destroy Rahab’s city and everyone in it. But when they receive unexpected
compassion from Rahab, and when they find themselves listening to someone who
speaks like a true child of Israel, their perspective changes. They then act
differently by taking into account what Rahab has shown (taught?) them: compassion.
By kindly saving her they are acting toward Rahab and her family as
though she and her family were righteous.
Story 3: When Boaz first meets a young foreign widow
he acts with compassion. Ruth immediately “finds favour in his [Boaz’s] eyes”
(Ruth 2:3–13). And when Ruth basically throws herself at him one night while he
is sleeping…again he chooses to perceive her actions favourably as something due
to her extreme loyalty (rather than judge her). In other words he acts rightly
by acting with compassion which humbly bestows righteousness on her
(‘the other’). Boaz immediately makes plans to act beneficially for Ruth (she
still spends the night but they remain chaste and Boaz protects her from public
shame by sending her home just before dawn). Boaz only marries her after going to
the rightful ‘kinsman redeemer’ (who refuses to marry Ruth).
Story 4: The wife of Uriah is portrayed as the blameless
victim (thus already righteous). David is confronted with his own wrongful
actions (for forcibly taking Uriah’s wife and killing Uriah) and he confesses
his sin, which is explicitly named as having acting without compassion (2
Sam 12:6, 13). But it is too late for him to rectify it, and his kingdom
suffers the same kind of corruption sown by David. In the second part of the
story when David is old and frail the passive wife he ‘stole’ now takes this opportunity
to get the throne for her son.
Story 5: Joseph only truly acts rightly when he
accepts the state of Mary as being ‘divinely so’, and by letting go of his
preconceived notions of righteousness and by accepting and including Mary’s ‘shame’
within himself.
So all five stories are about men being challenged
concerning what it means for them to act rightly; each story teaches them something
about acting with compassion. Also seeing ‘the other’ (the
female) as righteous required humility from the men.
According to Matthew the ‘sermon in the genealogy’ teaches
about the necessary ‘conversion’ (or transformation) underway concerning what it means for men to act with righteousness and/or perceive ‘the other’ as
righteous. The sermon teaches both on an individual level (for the male
characters and to the male readers) as well as on the level of the ‘people
group’ that is, concerning the true people of God. As is common elsewhere ‘Israel’
(or the true ‘people of God’) is portrayed as ‘young woman’.
So Tamar (like Israel) is bestowed righteousness through
eyes of compassion. Like God’s people, Rahab is treated as righteous and she receives
compassion because she acts with compassion. Ruth is transformed into a new
bride, pure and holy because of a compassionate ‘redeemer’. Bathsheba is
regarded as blameless and her powerlessness to refuse David eventually brings a
power reversal. Mary’s ‘shame’ becomes her honor.
Right action, like righteousness itself, comes as a
divine gift, arising from compassion.
--
Notes on
the Messiah’s Wholly Miraculous Conception
I see four main
reasons for the assertion that the Messiah’s conception was wholly miraculous.
Firstly, Matthew’s
genealogy supposes that the final birth (Jesus) is like the first birth
(Isaac), that is, both are fulfilled promises and miraculous.
Secondly, Mary’s
miraculous conception was already hinted to the writer by
Gen
38:36b–37 (see above) but
even more so by Gen 3:15 (about ‘the seed of the woman’ who will overcome the
serpent; this verse is already treated as Messianic in the LXX/Greek version). Matthew’s
Jesus does refer to the early chapters of Genesis (Gen 1:27 and/or Gen 5:2) when
debating on whether men should divorce women (Mt 19:2–11), so it seems to me to
be a viable choice for Matthew to have also considered Gen 3:15 as text that
might imply a miraculous conception. Matthew prefers to quote Isa 7:14 (rather
than Gen3:15) because Isa 7:14 also provided an important name for Jesus,
Emmanuel (“God With Us”) which is theologically laden with significance for the
whole of Matthew.
A third reason
is summarised by Herman C.
Waetjen, “The Genealogy as the Key to the Gospel According to Matthew,” Journal
of Biblical Literature, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Jun., 1976): 205-230:
A fourth reason
is that Matthew seems to have known the Gospel of Mark (which displays
ignorance of who Jesus’ father was) and Matthew cannot leave such questions (rumors)
unanswered.
These seem, to
me, to be the main reasons for Matthew’s assertion that the Messiah was holy conceived,
and wholly adopted.
In 4 of the 5 stories the male character who learns something about righteousness from the female character is also named in the genealogy. Does this suggest that Matthew understand Salmon to be one of the spies who encountered Rahab?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this suggestion. The idea that Salmon was one of the spies dates to the 19th century (e.g. William Smith; Bishop Arthur Hervey; and James Morison -- the earliest mention I know is from Pilalethes in 1820) I would be interested to know how far back the suggestion may go...perhaps back to the first century..? Perhaps I'll add a post on this issue...
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