The economy of modern-day Bethlehem is deeply linked to tourism as people flock from all over the world to visit the birthplace of Christ. However, before Jesus' birth, the city's claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of David, the shepherd boy who became Israel's greatest king.
The first chapter of Matthew's gospel painstakingly lists Jesus' genealogy through King David and all the way back to Abraham, the founding father of the nation of Israel.
So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.
— Matthew 1:17 ESV
Ok.
Fourteen. Fourteen. Fourteen.
Got it.
And we hurry on to verse 18, because we haven't got a clue.
Matt clearly wants to emphasise something here, but the meaning of the fourteen thing is completely lost on us. What's he saying?
To emphasise that Jesus isn't just one member in an ongoing family, but actually the goal of the whole list, [Matthew] arranges the genealogy into three groups of 14 names—or, perhaps we should say, in to six groups of seven names. The number seven was and is one of the most powerful symbolic numbers, and to be born at the beginning of the seventh seven in the sequence is clearly to be the climax of the whole list. This birth, Matthew is saying, is what Israel has been waiting for for two thousand years.
— Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone Part 1, p.3
The promises God gave to Abraham and David about the future of Israel, and the deportation (or exile) that caused every promise to be questioned, have led to this moment, and this birth.
Matthew is painting a picture to his Jewish audience that their long-awaited Messiah has arrived.
But a virgin-birth—Mary was "with child from the Holy Spirit" (see Matt. 1:18)—is extremely weird and somewhat hard to accept. So Matthew does something interesting with his genealogy by inserting the names of four women into his otherwise all-male list. We have Tamar (v.3), Ruth (v.5), the wife of Uriah (v.6), and Mary (v.16). All of whom have unusual stories. Therefore, Mary's story is just the latest in a history of surprising ways God works towards his goal.
