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posted by loren @ 2:23 PM
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2 Comments:
As it turns out, Joseph and Mary had a common ancestor closer than David. This was Zerubabbel, provincial governor of Judah under the rule of the Persian Empire (Matt. 1:13; Luke 3:27; Haggai 1:1).
The last verse of Haggai seems to predict the Messiah as an extention of Zerubbabel:
Haggai 2:23
In that day, saith the LORD of Hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet, for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of Hosts.
A descendent of both Solomon and Nathan, he would have two sons, one in the royal, cursed, line, and one in the blessed line.
The "throne of David" would no longer be of this world! Jesus, whose kingdom is of Heaven, sits on the throne of God!
Hi Henry,
I'm glad you brought that up. You are correct, of course, in saying that Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel appears in both genealogies. However, are these the same people, or just a pair of people with the same names?
Matthew records that Shealtiel was the son of Jeconiah, the king of Judah who was carried away captive into Babylon. But Luke's Shealtiel was the son of a different man, named Rhesa. Also, the two genealogies, before and after this pair, are completely different everywhere between David and Jesus, having no other names in common.
Besides that, if the son and grandson of Jeconiah were anywhere in Jesus' maternal genealogy at all, the curse would still have applied to Him by birth, and He could never have been king of Israel. So obviously the answer cannot lie in that direction.
What I think is far more likely is that, in the earliest years of the captivity, Jeconiah became a symbol of a lost homeland to the Jews who went into captivity with him. There he had a son and named him Shealtiel, which means "I have asked God", and this became a sign of hope and favor to everyone who went captive with him (Jeremiah 24:5-6). Thus another man of the captivity, named Rhesa, also had a son, and named him after the king's son.
Therefore, these two sons were contemporaries. And when the royal son Shealtiel also had a son, and named him Zerubabbel, the lesser Shealtiel, in turn, named his son after the royal son.
It is not uncommon for famous names in a genealogy to be repeated in this such ways. For example, Jacob the patriarch had a son named Joseph, and later we would see this name combination reappear. Another man named Jacob is mentioned towards the end of Matthew's genealogy, and his son, Joseph, was the husband of Mary, to whom was born Christ.
I did some study on this question in some other books, and you'd be surprised how elaborate some of the theories run. But as rule, I think the plain words of the Bible spell things out pretty plainly, and the the simplest answer will usually be the most plausible after all.
Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon.
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