The genealogy of Jesus

The Women in Jesus' Genealogy

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary

Ancient genealogies almost always listed only fathers, so it is startling that Matthew names five women in the line of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba), and Mary. Four of them carry stories of scandal, sorrow, or foreignness, and all of them are touched by surprising grace. Matthew seems to name them on purpose, to announce from the first page that the King of Israel comes through a line marked by mercy toward outsiders and sinners, a gospel in miniature.

And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;Matthew 1:5 (KJV)

Why naming women at all is remarkable

In the world of the ancient genealogy, women were rarely mentioned. The line was traced from father to son, and to include a mother was unusual enough to make a reader stop. Matthew includes not one but four women in the stretch before Mary, and then Mary herself. That is a deliberate choice, and it invites us to ask what these particular women have in common.

It is not that they were the most honored mothers in Israel's history. Matthew passes over the great matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah, whom we might have expected. Instead he chooses four women whose stories involve scandal, foreign blood, or heartbreak, and who each, in her own way, shows grace breaking into an unlikely place. From the very start, the family tree of Jesus is telling us what kind of Savior he will be.

Tamar: grace where there was wrong

The first woman named is Tamar, and hers is a hard story from Genesis. Wronged and left without a future by Judah's family, she took a desperate and morally tangled course to claim the child that was owed her, and Judah himself, confronted, confessed that she was more in the right than he was.

And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;Matthew 1:3 (KJV)

Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar. Matthew does not clean up the story or hide the mother's name. He records that the royal line runs straight through this painful, irregular episode. The point is not to excuse anyone but to show that God can weave his purposes even through human failure and injustice, and that no story is too tangled for grace to redeem into the line of the Messiah.

Rahab: grace across the border

The second woman is Rahab, and Scripture is plain about who she was: a Canaanite of Jericho, a harlot, a woman of the very nation Israel was sent to drive out. Yet she believed that Israel's God was the true God, hid the spies, and was spared when the city fell. The letter to the Hebrews praises her faith, and the letter of James her works.

And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;Matthew 1:5 (KJV)

Salmon begat Booz of Rachab. An outsider, a foreigner, a woman with a shameful trade, is not on the edge of Jesus' family but in the trunk of the tree, the mother of Boaz. Matthew is announcing, before Jesus is even born, that this King belongs to the Gentile as well as the Jew, and that faith, not pedigree, brings a person into the family of God.

Ruth: grace to the loyal stranger

The third woman is Ruth, a Moabitess, from a people long at odds with Israel. Widowed and poor, she clung to her mother-in-law Naomi and to Naomi's God with the famous words, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. In the fields of Bethlehem she found refuge under the wings of the God of Israel, and a redeemer in Boaz.

And Booz begat Obed of Ruth, the same verse tells us, and Obed was the grandfather of David himself. A foreign woman's loyalty and a kinsman's redemption stand at the root of the royal house. Ruth's whole story is a picture of the gospel: an outsider brought in, a helpless one redeemed, and through that redemption the line of the King preserved. The great-grandmother of David was a Moabite convert, and God was not ashamed to build his throne on her faith.

Bathsheba: grace over the deepest failure

The fourth woman Matthew will not even name outright, and the way he refers to her makes the point sharper. He calls her simply her that had been the wife of Uriah, so that we cannot read the verse without remembering David's great sin.

And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;Matthew 1:6 (KJV)

David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias. Behind those words lies the worst chapter of David's life: the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. Matthew does not gloss over it. He lets the shadow fall across the royal line at its highest point, the great King David himself. And yet from this marriage, born out of repentance and mercy, came Solomon and the line of Christ. It is the loudest possible statement that the family of Jesus is a family of forgiven sinners, and that grace runs deeper than our worst failures.

Mary: grace made flesh

The four women prepare us for the fifth, and everything about them changes when we reach her. Where the others came into the line through scandal, sorrow, or foreign birth, Mary comes in purity and obedience, a young woman who answered the angel, be it unto me according to thy word.

And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.Matthew 1:16 (KJV)

Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. All the irregular threads of the earlier women converge here, in a birth more irregular than any of them and yet wholly holy: a child born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit. The women of the genealogy have been preparing us to see that God works through the unexpected, the outsider, the one the world would overlook. Now the greatest surprise of all arrives. The King is born of a humble girl, by the grace and power of God alone.

What the women prove about the King

Matthew's five women are not a footnote. They are a sermon preached in a list. Together they announce that the Messiah comes for the outsider, for the foreigner, for the woman, for the sinner, for the brokenhearted, and that God delights to bring his greatest gifts through the least likely people. Two of them at least, Rahab and Ruth, are Gentiles, so the door to the nations stands open in Jesus' own family before he is born.

There is also a tender dignity in it. In a world where women were seldom named and rarely counted, Matthew writes these four into the founding document of the King, and then crowns the list with Mary, whose yes to God brought the Savior into the world. The genealogy honors them, and in honoring them it tells us how God sees. He does not measure worth as the world measures it. The overlooked, the wounded, the foreign, and the faithful are not on the margins of his story but woven into its very center, into the bloodline of his own Son.

The grace that runs through these women is the same grace that runs to us. If Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba belong in the family of Jesus, then no past is too shameful, no birth too foreign, no failure too great to be redeemed and taken in. The genealogy of the King is, from its first page, an invitation to everyone the world writes off. That is the kind of Savior he is.

A note for all readers: the genealogy of Jesus has been studied lovingly across the whole church for two thousand years. Where there are real questions, such as how Matthew and Luke relate, this page presents the main faithful explanations without claiming a certainty the text does not give. What both genealogies agree on is the heart of the matter: Jesus is the promised Messiah, the son of David and son of Abraham, and the Savior of all humanity from Adam onward.

Continue: The genealogy in Matthew · Son of David, son of Abraham · From Adam to Christ · The genealogy of Jesus