In Matthew’s birth narrative, Matthew tells the lineage of Jesus through 3 sets of fourteen generations. The first set  (v.2-6) begins with Abraham and ends with David. The second set (v.6-11) begins with David and ends with Jeconiah. And the last set (v.12-16) begins with Jeconiah and ends with Jesus. Clearly in retelling a birth narrative, Matthew is trying everything he can to make a connection between Jesus and the office of the Jewish Messiah. Matthew intentionally starts and stops each section of generations with prominent figures in the Jewish community. The effect of this is that it personally connects Jesus directly to Abraham, David and Jeconiah. This is important because as the narrative continues we learn that Jesus is not the son of any man in actuality but sent directly from God by the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus was not “born of man” so to speak, Matthew demonstrates that his human father Joseph is from direct lineage of David and Abraham.

Also something I found interesting in this particular section is the strong emphasis to make sure that he pointed out fourteen generations even though there are not fourteen generations. Several times in the genealogy, Matthew omits people in the genealogy on purpose to keep the fourteen generation theme consistent. I think this is important because fourteen is a multiple of seven, and seven in Jewish culture represented completeness. Once again pointing to the case that everything is complete through Jesus because he is from God. Genealogies were very important in establishing a proper aretalogy. In this section, both Luke and Matthew are trying to demonstrate that Jesus is from God. Luke even takes his genealogy of Jesus further all the way to Adam! It is clear form the genealogy stories that the important thing that Matthew wants us to understand is that Jesus is from God.

In the birth story, Matthew tries to make as many parallel to Jesus and the Jewish people as possible. Just as Moses’ mom and to predict him from a king trying to kill all the male infants, so Mary must protect Jesus from being killed as an infant. Just as God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, so he brings Jesus and his family out of Egypt. Matthew tries to use as many parallel as possible to prove the Jewishness and Divinity of Jesus. No one man could have this much in common with huge figures such as Moses and David unless he was from God, seems to be Matthew’s whole premise.