Matthew’s Mixed-Up Math (A Christmas Bible Study)

Copyright © 2021

from the manuscript of
The Curious Corners of Christmas

by
Jim Kerwin

Popping the Wig

Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to introduce readers to the glorious Christmas Incarnation story (never mind starting the entire New Testament!) with a genealogy? A genealogy! Really? It’s like putting a pre-converted, bah-humbugging Ebenezer Scrooge in charge of Christmas party activities, like putting the Grinch, still pinched with “a heart two sizes too small,” in charge of gift distribution.

Who thought it was a good idea to start with a genealogy? Well, the Apostle Matthew did, for one. And he did so under the Divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so God thought it was a good idea, too! I’d say that trumps any complaints or criticisms. Fair enough, Lord. But why did You start with a genealogy?

If there’s any wisdom gained from the perspective of maturity (which is a nice way to say “old age”), some of it comes from interpreting truth through the filter of life’s experiences. It’s a good thing that this phenomenon happened to apply to the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1, or I would still be wondering why the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the New Testament starts with such a (seemingly) stultifyingly boring kickoff.

One day the light dawned, because the Spirit seemed to apply one of those life-experience filters to the whole matter. I had it backwards (which happens more often than I’d care to admit). I finally saw what God was doing in the New Testament’s first chapter. It turns out that Matthew was an inspired, wise, and (maybe even) crafty fellow—he introduced the Christmas story and instantly grabbed his original readers’ attention by popping his wig!

Wise Counsel (for a Future Bible Teacher)

I had better explain about “popping the wig” (lest you think I have flipped my lid). Yes, I really was young enough once upon a time to be a wet-behind-the-ears rising high-school freshman. My folks had recently moved our family across the country and finally settled in a new-to-us home. The school district was new to us, too, so my father accompanied me and helped me through the enrollment process a few days before the school year began.

My class schedule, all college-prep courses, had but one elective slot, just one class for which I could choose the subject myself. Based on past experience and some musical training, I was going to sign up for choir. I thought that Dad, who had been paying for my music lessons for six years, would have been on board with this, but he had other counsel:

“If I were you, I don’t think I would go with choir this year. You’d be better off spending your freshman-year elective by taking a speech class. You can always take choir in your sophomore through senior years.”

So, I signed up for speech class, and did very well in it, even representing my high school in a district competition (and later even judging other speech contests).

Types of speeches, and even sometimes subjects for speeches, were assigned. And (other than regular cases of “stage fright,” suffered by many students) the common flaw in almost all the early speeches was the introduction: “My speech today is about…” whatever. Boring! And the instructor pointed out that boring puts people to sleep. So we studied how to kick off speeches with attention-grabbing openings.

Wig-Popped = Attention Grabbed

The day after we covered attention-grabbing openings, the good-looking senior girl in the class stood up and did the seemingly unthinkable. She stood before the class and said (in her best imitation of the “this will be a boring speech” tone of voice), “My speech today is about…”

I’m certain I wasn’t the only one sitting in the classroom thinking, “Oh, no! We were just told yesterday not to do that!” Yes, perhaps she was cute, but apparently not too bright.

At least I thought that until her very next word and action, for after a dramatic pause, she cried, “Wigs!” and she yanked off the wig she was wearing to reveal a nearly bald head. Then, as the resident fashion-plate, she began to share about how she used wigs in her modeling sessions, how wigs are made, and when she started to use them. Normally I have no interest in wigs, but she had my full attention that day. She had “set us all up” with boring (“My speech today is about…”) and then caught us completely unaware by popping her wig right there in the classroom. I don’t remember any other speech given in that class during the year (mine included), but I remember that one!

Genealogies: Boring, Right?

Assuming you are not one of the statistically few Christians who actually read through the entire Bible regularly, missing out on the Bible’s genealogies might seem like a small mercy. And if you are a regular through-the-Bible reader — genealogies and all — sometimes you might fall behind on your reading and need to double-up on your daily portions in order to “catch up.” It happens to the best of us. But woe unto you if that catching up happens in 1 Chronicles chapters 1-9, nine straight chapters filled with genealogies and lists of names! Take a deep breath, ratchet up your determination, and plow through those “begats.”

But one day decades ago, I realized that one of the guiding verses of my life applied to genealogies, too: All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching… (2 Timothy 3:16). That meant that “all” included genealogies, so I had better start taking God seriously and give a closer look at those “lists of ‘begats’” that punctuate the Scriptures at key points, if I wanted to be “adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17).

I wish I could share with you the many things the Lord has opened from “boring” genealogies over years of study.² However our focus here is Matthew’s Christmas story, the Incarnation, his genealogy, and his “mixed-up math.”

Know Your Audience (and Which Wig to Pop)

Matthew’s Gospel was originally written with an intended Jewish readership in mind. Jewish lineages (and therefore genealogies) were important to his audience, especially in post-Exilic Palestine, a people longing for the coming of their liberating Messiah. Seen from that perspective, Matthew pops his wig in his first four opening words (in Greek;³ there are eight in English) — [This is] the Book of the Genealogy of Messiah Jesus.

For a regular, contemporary Bible reader, this is “old hat.” But imagine the effect of those opening words on a First-Century Jewish reader. “Wait — what?! Messiah has come? You know His name and His genealogy? When did this happen? How do you know?”

My fishermen friends tell me (and I take their word for it) that you don’t bait the fishhook with what you’d like to eat; you bait the hook with what the fish finds appealing. That makes sense. So Matthew (who has been well taught to “fish for men” by his Master) baits his hook with a juicy genealogy. It serves as a family-tree outline of Jewish history from Abraham to Matthew’s point in time. And for good measure, this crafty angler laces the bait with a unique flavor, while setting up a “mixed-up math” conundrum that his careful readers will be certain to find — and find his calculations objectionable. Once they “bite” on that, the barb will be set and Matthew can “reel them in.”

The “Unique Flavor”: Women

In the process of laying out Messiah’s family tree while summarizing Israel’s history in a mere 272 words,⁴ Matthew manages to spice up the genealogy with a surprisingly high ratio (comparatively speaking) of women.

Now, women do get mentioned in Old Testament genealogies, but only very occasionally, and generally only if they were quite extraordinary in some way, or if they were an integral part of the narrative. But Matthew brings up no fewer than five in his brief 15-verse overview:

• Tamar (Matthew 1:3), the Canaanite daughter-in-law/wife of Judah.⁵
• Rahab (v. 5), another Canaanite woman, the “scarlet woman” of Jericho, whose fear and respect for Jehovah was so great that she was spared and is found (along with Sarah, Abraham’s wife!) in the list of faith champions in Hebrews 11:30-31.⁶
• Ruth (also v. 5) “the Moabitess”,⁷ who chose to seek refuge under the “wings” of “the Lord, the God of Israel” (Ruth 2:11).

Those are three of the five females Matthew includes. Think of these three from a Jewish perspective for a moment — all three were Gentiles, that is, non-Israelites. Matthew, as we have said, is writing for Jewish readers. Every Jew who knew King David’s lineage knew of these three Gentile women,⁸ so they probably had ceased to think of them as particularly non-Jewish. Nevertheless, by the time Matthew wrote this list,⁹ one of the most controversial aspects of the Gospel (to the Jews, at least) was that it proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was open to Gentiles by faith in Jesus. A thoughtful Jewish reader might come back to this Messianic genealogy and realize afresh that Gentile blood flowed through great King David’s veins (and therefore the veins of Messiah). God had this seed of Gentile inclusion lying there dormant all along!

Now what about the other two women?

• When Matthew lists Woman #4, is he blushing over David’s one great shame¹⁰ when he fails to mention her name? Matthew puts the matter delicately: “and Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah”¹¹ (Matthew 1:6 nkjv¹²). We have noted Matthew’s subtle reminders that Messiah is descended, in part, from Gentiles. In the story of David and Bathsheba we are also reminded that His lineage is from sinners. Even though King David was the epitome (in most respects) of “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22), he was stained with adultery and murder.
• The fifth and final woman is Mary, a name which would have meant nothing to Matthew’s contemporary Jewish readers.¹³

The Mixed-Up Math

Have you ever double-checked Matthew’s math? If you had, you might have been surprised. After 15 verses of genealogy (Matthew 1:2-16), Matthew gives us an interesting summation of his lists:

This is one of those places where the apostle’s personality peeks out of the text. Matthew (or Levi, as he is known in two other Gospels¹⁴) was a “numbers guy.” Before being called by Jesus he had been in… how shall we put this delicately?… “accounting.” (Specifically, he had been a tax-collector, especially despised in his time among his people because he collected taxes for the Roman overlords.) His mind effortlessly dealt with calculations, sums, and balances.

This mathematician is also a crafty “fisherman,” so he sets up a way to get his audience to re-read the list they’ve just read: “Hey, did you notice that there are three groups of 14 in that genealogy?”

“Really? Let’s look at that again.” And so his genealogy-loving Jewish readers go back looking for the names of 42 men in three groups of 14. That’s when they find Matthew’s “mixed-up math,” his seeming accounting error. And when they find it, the barb on the hook is set, and Matthew reels in another fish.

Reader, I wonder: Have you ever bothered to go back and count through the three groups of 14? The math should be fairly simple, as long as we understand Matthew’s basic rules:

• You can’t count a name twice. That is to say, if a name is included in one group of 14, it can’t be included in the 14-count of the following group.
• Matthew’s break points are clearly defined in v. 17:
  • King David ends the count of Group 1;
  • King Jeconiah (who was carried away into Babylonian captivity) ends the count of Group 2; and
  • Jesus “who is called the Messiah” ends the last group of 14.

This should be a fairly straightforward enumeration. Let’s count up the men of Matthew’s Group 1 (verses 2-6a):

1. Abraham
2. Isaac
3. Jacob
4. Judah (mentioned with Tamar)
5. Perez
6. Hezron
7. Ram
8. Amminadab
9. Nahshon
10. Salmon (mentioned with his wife Rahab)
11. Boaz (mentioned with his wife Ruth)
12. Obed
13. Jesse
14. “David the king”

That’s 14. Matthew’s math checks. Moving on to the second half of verse 6¹⁵ and Group 2, we find King David mentioned (but not counted again) as the father of…

1. Solomon (by “her who had been the wife of Uriah” — Bathsheba)
2. Rehoboam
3. Abijah
4. Asa
5. Jehoshaphat
6. Joram
7. Uzziah
8. Jotham
9. Ahaz
10. Hezekiah
11. Manasseh
12. Amon
13. Josiah
14. Jeconiah

Well, so far, the tax-collector-turned-Apostle gets an “A” in first-grade math as we finish up verses 6b-11. King Jeconiah gets carried off to captivity in Babylon. Matthew’s books are in order, so to speak. But why drag readers through this recount? Watch for it as we count through the last list of men in Group 3. Starting with verse 12, we find that deposed King Jeconiah (not counted again) “begets”…

1. Shealtiel
2. Zerubbabel
3. Abihud
4. Eliakim
5. Azor
6. Zadok
7. Achim
8. Eliud
9. Eleazar
10. Matthan
11. Jacob
12. Joseph (“the husband of Mary”)
13. Jesus “who is called the Messiah.”

That ends verse 16 and Group 3. Only 13 men.

Check My Math (and Matthew’s)

Don’t believe me? Open up your own Bible (any translation) to Matthew chapter 1 and do the count yourself. I’ll wait here patiently. Oh, and just a reminder about the rules: nobody gets counted more than once and no one can “straddle” two groups. When you come back from your own enumeration, we’ll proceed together….

There are only 13 men in that last group, right? I told you so! And so the Apostle’s genealogy-loving readers would have quickly concluded: “Matthew, you’ve made a mistake. Your math is mixed up, defective. There are only 13 names in the last group.”

“No,” says Matthew, smiling, “the count is accurate and certified, on my honor as a former accountant. Count through that last group again. You’ll get 14.”

So his careful, but frustrated, readers re-count and double-check. “There are only 13 men in that last group!”

“Only 13 men? Agreed. But there are 14 names. Read that last group again, especially the fine print.”

“The only way you can achieve 14 names in the final group is by including this Mary woman in the count!”

Understanding the “Fine Print”

Ah, exactly! That’s why there is “fine print,” so to speak, in Matthew’s Greek phrase immediately following Mary’s name. As we review verse 16, this is what we discover:

Let’s briefly parse and dissect Matthew’s “fine print”:

• There is something that slips by in English, but nearly jumps out in Greek. That simple pronoun whom in English doesn’t clearly convey the gender of the word as it does in the Greek. That prepositional phrase ex hēs — from whom or out of whom — is clearly feminine, only matching the female name Mary.
• Throughout this genealogy, Matthew has been using the common Greek verb gennáō (γεννάω) — to procreate, bring into being, become the father of,¹⁶ or cause to be born (or beget, if you’re a King James fan). And throughout the genealogy, Matthew employs the aorist active indicative conjugation of the verb (ἐγέννησεν / egénnēsen), perhaps most simply translated as fathered. That is to say, “Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob,” etc.
• Here in verse 16, however, while Matthew employs the same verb — gennáō (γεννάω) — he uses it in the aorist passive indicative (ἐγεννήθη / egennḗthē): was born.

Up to this point in the genealogy, all of the other “beget-ings” are the typical father-son relationships: “A” fathered “B.” But in his “fine print,” in Matthew’s use of the feminine pronoun and corresponding passive verb — “Mary, out of whom was born Jesus” — the Apostolic author signals a profound change. The fishing-hook’s barb is ready.

So how would his genealogy-loving readers respond?

“Matthew, You Can’t Do That!”

Now the complaint would have to switch from “There are only 13 names in the third group” to “Matthew, you can’t do that! Yes, it’s a bit odd that you’ve referenced so many women, famous and infamous, in this short genealogy you’ve shared; but there are precedents in the Scriptures, so we’ll allow that. But you can’t count a woman in a genealogy separate from her husband just to reach your arbitrary quota of 14, much less in the line of Messianic lineage that you present.”

How might Matthew have responded to such a protest? Given the verses which follow the genealogy, it seems like he must have had a lot of practice! “Fellows, normally I’d agree with you one-hundred percent. But this case of Messiah is so unusual that the only way to lay out the genealogy is to count Mary. You see, Messiah had no earthly father. Let me explain.” And so Matthew does exactly that, through the words of Matthew 1:18-25:

Imagine the sputtering response: “‘With child by the Holy Spirit’? What does that mean, Matthew? We know that the Scriptures speak of God’s Spirit from the opening of the book of Genesis.¹⁷ We sing of Him in the Psalms,¹⁸ and the Prophets¹⁹ mention Him frequently. But surely, as you’ve already presented us with the likes of Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba, this Mary must have been just another loose woman, lying about her sin or — worse! — blaspheming by attributing her out-of-wedlock pregnancy to God!”

“Indeed,” Matthew responds, “Joseph was more than a little puzzled about Mary’s claims and what to do about his relationship with her.”

“Well, then, Matthew, Joseph had some common sense, but not enough of it! Breaking this engagement was the least of his responsibilities! We think the most scriptural response is that she should have been stoned to death.²¹ At the very least, she should have been humiliated publicly!”

“Perhaps,” says Matthew, “Joseph was of a different spirit. Perhaps he thought about the peculiar circumstances of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, and how God used them despite their backgrounds. Nevertheless, breaking the engagement with a formal divorce and sending her away secretly was definitely his focus as the ‘baby bump’ became harder to hide. But then an angel appeared to him.”

Matthew still has the full attention of his listeners and readers. “It’s rather fitting, don’t you think, that this ‘Joseph, son of David,’ this descendant of Jewish royalty, named after Israel’s famous ‘dreamer of dreams,’²² should receive a special dream from God about such a momentous situation? (It’s not the only dream from God that our Joseph had; two more followed many months later, as I’ll share by and by.²³) Think about what the angel, the messenger from God, communicated to Joseph:

• “‘Don’t break the engagement vow, despite how things appear.
• “‘What Mary has told you is true! The Child, the Son, in her womb was conceived by God’s Holy Spirit.
• “‘This is all part of God’s plan to save His people from their sins.
• “‘You, Joseph, will have the privilege of bestowing on the Child the God-ordained name of Jesus, Yeshua — Savior!’”

The Apostle’s listeners respond with hesitancy: “Matthew, it’s tempting to consider all of this, however ‘over the top’ it may seem. God does speak in dreams. He has spoken through angels. That’s all recorded in Scripture. But there’s no Bible-based confirmation that such a conception could happen.”

There’s a twinkle in Matthew’s eye. “You’re sure of that, are you? Good, faithful sons of the covenant that you are, I know you’re familiar with the many Messianic prophecies in the book of the great Prophet Isaiah. Have you considered the prophetic nature of this passage as well?” And then he points them to what we now designate as Isaiah 7:13-14:

Matthew allows himself a wry smile. “‘The virgin shall be with child and bear a son.’ A pregnant virgin? Isn’t that impossible by definition? The only way that this particular prophecy could be fulfilled is by an act of God. God did the impossible by means of His Holy Spirit. That’s the reason for the ‘mixed-up math’ and the ‘fine print’ in my genealogy that you read and re-read. How else could such a lineage be written?

“And consider the import of the name Immanuel and what it means: God With Us! How could the Child born be God With Us unless he had been conceived by God’s Holy Spirit!?

“Besides, have you considered how this fulfills one of the first prophecies the Lord ever made? When He curses the Serpent in the Garden, He declares to him:

“It was the Woman’s seed — not the seed of a man — who would overthrow the adversary and his machinations. That’s been ordained since the time of the Fall.²⁴ It seems that the Lord had to do that without the help — or seed — of any man.”²⁵

“Matthew, we’ve never thought about these things, or seen Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy in this light. But don’t keep us in suspense. What did Joseph do?”

Matthew has “popped his wig” and set the barb of his fishing hook with his “mixed-up math.” From this point he begins the patient process of reeling in his potential catch. “Now that I’ve explained my admittedly unique genealogy of Messiah, complete with its ‘mixed-up math’ (as you call it) and the ‘fine print,’ and now that we’ve touched on the circumstances leading up to His birth, let me share His ministry and teaching with you. In fact, let’s continue the story months after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king….” And so Matthew continues the narrative of the Messiah in his Gospel.

Wise Matthew. All-wise God! “All scripture” — genealogies included! — “is given by inspiration of God.” Why start Matthew’s Gospel — and the New Testament — with a unique genealogy? Something very special was needed to meet the challenge of arresting the attention of Jewish readers, in order to share Messiah’s Holy-Spirit conception, leading to the birth of the Son of God — Immanuel, God With Us — all without the agency of man. It’s anything but boring; in fact, it’s of eternal consequence.

Now that you understand what a vital part Matthew’s “wig” and “math” are to the Christmas story, remember the purpose of his masterful genealogy in your Yuletide recounting of and meditation on the Incarnation!

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Endnotes:

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