1:8 begat. At this point, “begat” should be understood in an ancestral, rather than immediate paternal, sense. Three names have been omitted between Jehoram and Uzziah—Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah (II Chronicles 22:1,11; 24:1,27). The apparent reason for doing this was as a memory device, having three groups of fourteen generations from Abraham to Christ (Matthew 1:17). Some have attempted to justify placing gaps of several thousand years in the genealogies of Genesis 11 on the basis of this three-generation gap in Matthew’s genealogy. Such reasoning is indefensible, however, because Matthew’s short gap is easily filled in from other Scriptures (see also I Chronicles 3:11,12). The only basis for the arbitrarily assumed huge gaps in Genesis is the supposed need to conform to the secular chronologies proposed by evolutionary archaeologists.

1:11 begat. Jehoiakim is omitted here between Josiah and Jeconiah (II Chronicles 36:4), who is also called Coniah and Jehoiachin. See note on Matthew 1:8.

1:11 Jechonias. It was Jeconiah whose sins caused God to cut his seed off from ever sitting on David’s throne (Jeremiah 22:24-30). Yet God had also promised that David would “never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel” (Jeremiah 33:17). Thus, Jeconiah’s royal line of descendants is listed here to show the legal right of Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, to David’s throne (Matthew 1:16), even though neither Joseph nor any others of Jeconiah’s seed could ever have the spiritual right to the throne. That right must be carried through Mary’s ancestry (see note on Luke 3:23).

1:16 of whom. Note that Matthew was careful here not to say that Joseph “begat” Christ, departing from the formula used for the other ancestors of Jesus. Thus, Matthew shows that Jesus had the legal right to the throne of David, since Joseph was his foster father. The spiritual right to be king of Israel had to come from David by another route altogether.

1:16 Christ. The name “Christ,” meaning “anointed,” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew messiah. Christ was not part of Jesus’ name (though He is frequently called Jesus Christ), but His title. He is Jesus the Christ, properly speaking.