If you asked 1,000 Christians why they love the Bible, you’d probably hear a lot of different reasons. But I doubt many people would say, “Because of all those really long lists of hard-to-pronounce names.”
For this article, I’ll assume that most of your experience with biblical genealogies has been reading them … efficiently. It’s still worth asking:
- Why are genealogies included in the Bible?
- What value do they add?
- How can they help me live and love like Jesus today?
This isn’t going to be a deep dive into every genealogy in the Bible. Instead, we’re going to do a case study on one of the most famous genealogies in Scripture and visit a few others along the way.
A Case Study: Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus
The New Testament writer Matthew was a bit of a genealogy maverick. Why? Because he seemed to have a good understanding of the rules of biblical genealogies: why they matter, and when and how to use them. But did he follow all of those rules? Sometimes.
Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is one of the best places to see how biblical genealogies worked—and how Matthew changed the game with the way he introduced Jesus.
Biblical and Modern Genealogies Aren’t the Same
Modern genealogies are more like biological records that precisely document every known ancestor of a person (like a family tree). That’s not really what biblical genealogies were for.
In biblical times, ancestry defined status, land rights, and leadership claims. In other words, genealogies answered a very practical question: “Why do you belong here?”
When Matthew begins his story of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17, he doesn’t start with a miracle, a sermon, the casting out of a demon, or the gathering of disciples. Instead, he starts with a list of names.
To modern readers, that might seem like an odd way to begin a biography. But in the ancient world, it made perfect sense.
Matthew introduces Jesus by showing where He came from and why He belongs as the central figure of the whole book.
How Biblical Genealogies Worked
Ancient genealogies weren’t meant to list every single ancestor.
Keep this in mind as we move forward: Ancient genealogies weren’t meant to list every single ancestor. Writing instruments were expensive and difficult to maintain, so genealogies were almost always selectively written for a purpose. Names could be skipped or arranged in meaningful ways.
We actually see this in Matthew 1. Matthew moves directly from Joram (also called Jehoram) to Uzziah (also called Azariah), even though the Old Testament records three additional generations in between (1 Chronicles 3:11-12).
Matthew intentionally compresses the list to highlight a pattern he wants readers to notice—which we’ll talk about later.
This isn’t a case of the Bible being full of errors; it’s a sign that people used genealogies differently than we do today.
One way biblical authors used genealogies was to establish someone’s identity. Before we look at how this plays into Matthew’s writing, we’ll look at a few other biblical name lists.
Genealogies Tell You Who Belongs Where and Why
In Ezra 2, after Israel’s return from exile in Babylon, some families claimed to be priests. Back then, people didn’t get an academic degree and apply for a spiritual leadership role. They had to come from a specific family line. So the officials checked their genealogy, treating it like their job resume.
In this case, those families weren’t in the record, so they couldn’t serve as priests.
Other genealogies, like the ones in 1 Chronicles, helped reconnect a scattered nation to its past. After the return from exile, people needed to know where they had originally come from and how they fit into the story of Israel.
Lists like these functioned almost like a passport, property deed, resume, and inheritance claim all in one. They helped determine who belonged where, who should inherit land, and who had authority.
All of this helps us understand something important: Genealogies were selective records designed to establish identity, inheritance, and authority.
Thankfully, we know that our identity before God today isn’t secured by paperwork, heritage, or status, but by grace through Jesus.
Speaking of Jesus, now that we’ve got a better understanding of how ancient genealogies worked, let’s get back to Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.
What Matthew Does With His Genealogy of Jesus
Matthew arranges his genealogy to explain how Jesus fits into the whole story of the Bible and fulfills all of God’s promises.
He organizes the list of Jesus’ ancestry into three groups connected to key moments in Israel’s history:
Each of those three groups has 14 people listed, which can be split further into two groups of seven. Seven was an important number representing wholeness or completeness in ancient Jewish culture. Matthew structures his list so that there are six sets of seven generations leading up to Jesus.
So what does that make Jesus? The firstborn of the seventh generation of sevens.
Matthew’s point is super clear: Jesus was the culmination of the story that had begun generations earlier. Everything in God’s story had been moving toward Him and eventually found fulfillment in Him.
This is all quite impressive, but there’s more to what earns Matthew his maverick genealogist status.
Who Matthew Includes
Ancient readers expected genealogies to follow a predictable pattern: lists from father to son, generation after generation, highlighting the key men who carried the family line forward. We see several of these kinds of genealogies throughout the Bible.
Matthew mostly follows that pattern. But then he does something unusual. He includes women.
In the ancient world, women rarely appeared in legal genealogies because they typically didn’t hold property or inheritance rights. Occasionally, women appeared in narrative genealogies, but usually only if they were incredibly powerful or respected.
So who does Matthew include?
- Tamar: a Canaanite woman who disguised herself as a prostitute
- Rahab: a Canaanite woman who was a prostitute
- Ruth: an immigrant widow from the rival nation of Moab
- Bathsheba: an Israelite woman abused by a national hero, King David
- Mary: a Jewish woman who became pregnant before marriage
Why would Matthew include them? After all, if you’re trying to grow a movement, you don’t typically want to highlight controversial, uncomfortable stories.
What Matthew’s Genealogy Reveals
Matthew’s genealogy answers the question: Who belongs in Jesus’ family?
The answer?
- Shepherds who lived off the land
- Kings who lived in palaces
- Enslaved people
- National heroes with skeletons in their closets
- People pretending to be sex workers
- People who were actually sex workers
- Desperate immigrants from hated nations
- Victims of abuse
- And (please don’t miss this!) a bunch of relatively anonymous people who are named, but their story is unknown.
In other words, Jesus’ family has always been bigger and more surprising than people expected. That may be one reason Matthew begins his gospel this way, to show us something about the kind of kingdom Jesus brings.
It’s an upside-down kingdom, where “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16 NIV).
Why Matthew Begins With a Genealogy
Matthew intentionally places this genealogy right at the beginning of his gospel to help us get to know Jesus. It tells us who and what came before Jesus, with generations of people, stories, and promises leading up to this moment. And it tells us what to expect from Jesus.
The fact that Matthew includes all kinds of people in Jesus’ genealogy prepares us for the rest of the account, where Matthew shows Jesus welcoming all kinds of people into His family.
This family is one where people from every background can belong. This idea gets echoed in a different genealogy of Jesus found in the Gospel of Luke, which has some big differences but a similar main idea.
Why Are Matthew’s and Luke’s Genealogies Different?
Luke’s genealogy of Jesus looks different from Matthew’s. Why?
Most modern readers expect the two genealogies to match exactly. After all, modern genealogies exist to list every known biological ancestor.
But biblical genealogies don’t follow modern rules.
Matthew begins with Abraham, tracing Jesus’ ancestry through the royal line of Israel’s kings. Matthew shows us that Jesus fulfills God’s promises to ancient Israel and is from the line of King David.
Luke’s genealogy traces Jesus all the way back to Adam, the first human in Scripture. Luke presents Jesus as the savior of all humanity, not just one nation.
Both genealogies follow ancient, respected patterns of writing genealogies, and both say something important about who Jesus is. They simply organize the story differently.
Remember, there wasn’t an expectation in Jesus’ day that every genealogy had to include the precise genetic ancestors of the person to be considered valid or meaningful.
Why Read Genealogies?
Genealogies invite us to treat people the way Jesus treats His family: like they belong.
Now we know why lists of names in the Bible matter. But hopefully you’re asking, “How do these genealogies actually help me live and love like Jesus?” Here’s a simple place to start. Matthew and Luke’s genealogies invite us to treat people the way Jesus treats His family: like they belong.
These easy-to-skip lists aren’t just there to fill space, build your Bible reading endurance, and give you ideas for unique baby names. They’re doing a lot of work, and when we slow down to read them, we can usually find something that can help us get to know God better.