Week Four

Before we go further with this story of the first Christmas and leave the genealogies of Jesus I want to take a minute to consider something very unusual. Open your Bible to Matthew 1 and focus upon Tamar's three names in verse 3 and Rahab and Ruth in verse 5. Also look at the words “the wife of Uriah” (who we know was Bathsheba) in verse 6. It is astounding that these four women were included in the line of Christ. Jewish genealogies were only concerned with the male line. As we saw last week even the name Mary is not mentioned in her own genealogy in Luke. But Matthew made an exception to highlight four different women who are in the direct line of the Messiah.,

This was highly irregular. Add to this the fact Jewish men were forbidden to marry a woman who was not Jewish. At least three of these women were not Jews. Tamar and Rahab were Canaanites. Ruth was a Moabite, and Bathsheba, married to a Hittite, may have been one herself. These women came from pagan backgrounds, yet they are in the bloodline of the Messiah. Astounding. I hope you will take some time this week to dig deeper into each of these women's background stories.