Day 1: Matthew 1:1-16

In the Gospel of Matthew the story of Jesus starts with a list of his ancestors. Not very exciting. Mark starts with the fiery preaching of John the Baptist, Luke begins with an angel appearing to John’s father Zechariah, and John’s Gospel, ever the oddball, opens with a commentary on the Eternal Word before the beginning of time.

But Matthew, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, first lists the ancestors of Jesus going back through King David and then on to the Patriarch Abraham. But there is something very interesting in Matthew’s list; it’s the inclusion of five women. And not just any five women, but women who all were social outcasts in their own time. All, save Mary the mother of Jesus, were also Gentiles, non-Jews. Why would Matthew include these less than stellar examples of women in his genealogy? Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

The first one listed is Tamar. You can find her story in Genesis 38. Tamar, through no fault of her own, was put in a desperate position when her first two husbands, both sons of Judah, died without giving her any children, and her father-in-law, Judah, sent her back to her parents’ house to live. In the culture of that time this would have been a huge dishonor. It was Judah’s responsibility to care for her and to have his third son marry her to give her a family, but he had no intention of doing so. So she dressed up as a prostitute and convinced Judah to sleep with her and she became pregnant with twins. These are the sons of Judah mentioned in Matthew 1:3.

The next woman listed is Rahab; her story is found in Joshua 2. Rahab was a prostitute in the city of Jericho, and when Joshua sent spies to check out the city she hid them and helped them escape. In return, the two Israelite spies promised that she and anyone in her house would be saved when the attack happened. Many scholars believe that Rahab would have been a child prostitute, probably sold into the trade by her parents, because when she gathers her family into her house for protection the Bible lists her father, mother, and brothers, but no one else. Tradition says that her eventual husband was one of the two spies, and they became ancestors of David and Jesus.

Next we find Ruth, who more people may be familiar with because of the book bearing her name. Ruth was from Moab, which was an enemy of the Jewish people. Her husband, a Jewish man, died when she was still young. She finds herself in a foreign country, with foreign customs, trying to survive and take care of her mother-in-law. The story of how Naomi instructs her to go to Boaz at night, during the harvest celebration, when they were all drinking, wearing her best dress and best perfume, and lie down at his feet is a lot more suggestive than most people care to admit. Ruth was trying to catch a husband, and not in the most prudent way. Boaz tells her to leave before anyone sees her there, because he knows it would ruin her reputation if she was found slinking around the party all gussied up. He does end up marrying her and they become the great-grandparents of David.

Bathsheba is the next grandmother of Jesus we find, and most people have heard her story before. She was brought before David, the king of Israel, because he saw her bathing on her rooftop. She was put into a terrible situation, if she refused the king’s advances she could be put to death, if she acquiesced, she would be betraying her husband. David slept with her and she became pregnant. We know the story of how David tried to cover it up, and eventually ended up having her husband killed. That child died at birth. But her next son Solomon followed his father as the King of Israel and grandfather of the Messiah.

And then we have Mary, the unwed teenage mother of Jesus. Whispers and questions about whether this pregnancy was the result of her cheating on her fiance or proof that her and Joseph had not remained pure during their engagement had been fueling Nazareth’s gossip for months. Their reputation in their hometown was shot. 

Not the greatest examples of womanhood that the Bible has to offer. Why would these women be included here alongside Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Zerubbabel? Well, first, none of those men were without their own flaws. But, secondly, I believe that God wanted to show us that it doesn’t matter how your story begins. It doesn’t matter what has happened to you in your past. Each of these women were put in impossibly hard situations. They all made choices that we can look at and critique from the comfort of our air conditioned homes, but God redeemed each of their stories. He took those whom the world would have rejected and despised and cast aside, and he wove their stories in with his own. 

What a beautiful picture of why Jesus was born. That he came to earth to bring beauty from the ashes, to give life to the dying, to redeem each one of us no matter what our past holds. These “mothers of Jesus” are representative of all of us. And they are listed here to remind us that the love of God is for all of us, and that he can redeem your story!