In this episode, we will look at the royal genealogy of Jesus the Messiah. Abraham, David and Jesus Christ become the recurring words used throughout Matthew’s first chapter. We will discover that these names will recur throughout his gospel and will underscore the theme Matthew established in chapter one, that is, that all the promises made to Abraham and David were fulfilled in Jesus.

Surprisingly, we will read about four of his grandmothers of non-Israelite descent. All of which were later praised by jewish and christian theologians for realizing and acting on God’s will, while at the time bearing a communal stigma of sexual misconduct. Matthew reminds his readers of the background of these well-known women because of the faith Jesus’ mother had when she accepted the will of God for her life and because of the stigma she bore in relation to the nature of his birth. Matthew emphasizes the foreign influence into the line of Jesus so that he can later introduce the idea that foreigners would be fully embraced within the kingdom of God.