3 And Judas begat

Phares and Zara of begat Esrom, and Esrom begat Aram;

Thamar, and Phares

▲ And Aram begat dab bezat Naasson, and Naasson begat Salinon;

Aminidab, and Amini

5 And Salmon begat

Booz of Rachab, and
Ruth, and Obed begat

Booz begat Obed of

Jesse ;

As recorded by St. Matthew.

ix.

55

Jacob, on whom also it was entailed in preference SCT.
to Esau, though his elder brother; and Jacob
begat Judah and his eleven brethren, who be-
came the heads of their respective tribes.

b

And as Judah was the person to whom that extraordinary promise was made, that his descendants should continue a distinct tribe, with some form of government amongst them, till Shiloh, that is, the Messiah, came (Gen. xlix. 10.) and as it was from him that Christ descended, we shall confine ourselves to the line of his posterity. We therefore add that Judah begat Pharez, and at the same time Zarah his twin-brother, of Thamar, who had been his son's wife; and Pharez begat Esrom, and Esrom begat Aram; And Aram begat Aminidab, and Aminidab begat 4 Naasson, who was prince of the tribe of Judah when the people were numbered and marshalled at mount Sinai (Numb. i. 7. x. 14.) and Naasson begat Salmon.

And, after their settlement in Canaan, Salmon 5 begat Boaz of Rahab, who had been a native of that country, but entertained the spies at Jericho, and, afterwards embracing the Jewish religion, had the honour to be thus incorporated with this noble family; and Boaz their son begat Obed of Ruth, the Moabitess, who had so resolutely chosen to adhere to the God and people of Israel; and Obed, in a very advanced age, 6 And Jesse begat begat Jesse: And Jesse begat, besides several 6

David

b Till Shiloh, that is, the Messiah, came.] This sense of Jacob's prophecy is so beautifully illustrated and so strongly asserted by the learned Dr. Sherlock, bishop of London, in his Discourses on Prophecy, Dissert. 3. page 317, &c. that, if I was writing on this passage of the Old Testament, I should bave little to do but to refer my reader to it.

Of Rahab.] It is not indeed expressly said she was Rahab of Jericho, commonly called the harlot; but I think there can be no room to doubt it, as we know she was contemporary with Salmon, and may conclude that she (this Rahab) was, as all the other women mentioned in this list, a remarkable person. Now there was no other of that name, especially ofthis age, of whom the compiler of this table could (so far as we can judge) suppose his reader to have any knowledge.

d Boaz begut Obed of Ruth the Moabitess.] The son of a Moabite, by an Isfaelitish woman, could never be allowed to enter into the congregation of the Lord; that

elder

is, at least he was rendered incapable of
being a prince in Israel, and perhaps even
of being naturalized by circumcision; which
may be the meaning of the phrase, Deut.
xxiii. S. (See Mr. Lowman's Hebrew Go-
vernment, p. 130, & seq.) But it evidently
appears, from this celebrated instance, that
this precept was not understood as exclud-
ing the descendants of an Israelite by a
Moabitish woman from any hereditary ho-
nours and privileges; otherwise, surely,
Salmon, the son of Naasson, prince of
Judah, would never have married Rahab,
one of the accursed people of Canaan; nor
would the kinsman of Boaz have wanted
a much better reason than he assigned
(Ruth iv. 6.) for refusing to marry Ruth
when she became a widow.

e Obed, in a very advanced age, begat
Jesse.] That Salmon, Boaz, and Obed,
must each of them have been about an

hundred years old at the birth of his son
here recorded, hath been observed by many
and is well accounted for by Dr. Whitby in
particufar: Annot, on ver, 4.
1 Jehoram

E 2

Mat.

I. 3.

56

ix.

· The genealogy of Christ from Abraham,

SECT. elder children, David, the celebrated king of David the king, and Israel, who was favoured with the title of "The Solomon of her that David the king begat man after God's own heart," and had an express had been the wife of 1. 6. promise that the Messiah should descend from Urias;

Mat.

him; (compare 2 Sam. vii. 12-16. and Acts
ii. 30.) And David the king begat Solomon of
Bathsheba, who had before been [the wife] of
Uriah the Hittite: and, though that holy man,
in this unhappy affair, acted in a way most un-
worthy his character, yet God, on his deep
repentance, graciously forgave him, and entail-
ed the promise on his seed by her.

7 And Solomon be

gat Roboam, and RoAbia begat Asa;

boam begat Abia, and

7 And, to go forward therefore with the genea-
logy according to this line, Solomon begat Reho-
boam, from whose government the ten tribes
revolted under Jeroboam the son of Nebat; and
Rehoboam begat Abijah; and Abijah begat Asa,
8 whose reign was so long and prosperous: And 8 And Asa begat Jo-
Asa begat the good Jehoshaphat; and Jehoshaphat saphat, and Josaphat
begat Jehoram, who unhappily dishonoured the begat Joram, and Jo-
ram begat Ozias;
holy family by an alliance with Athaliah the
daughter of Ahab, 2 Kings viii. 18.

And (to omit Ahaziah, the son of that wicked woman, whose impieties and cruelties rendered her so infamous, 2 Chron. xxiv. 7. the ungrateful Joash, her grandson, who murdered Žechariah the prophet, the son of his great benefactor Jehoida, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, 21, 22. and Amaziah, his son, who succeeded him) Jehoram, at the distance of the fourth generation, may be 9 said to have begat Uzziah the leperf. And Uzziah begat Jotham; and Jotham begat that wicked Ahaz, who, instead of being reformed by the chastising hand of God, trespassed yet more and more against him, 2 Chron. xxviii. 22. and Ahaz begat the religious Hezekiah, that 10 distinguished favourite of heaven: And Hezekiah begat Manasseh, so remarkable once for his enormous wickedness and afterwards for his humble repentance; and Manasseh begat that infamous and hardened sinner, Amon; and Amon begat Josiah, that eminently pious prince,

f Jehoram may be said to have begat Uzziah. It is undeniably evident, from 2 Chron. chap. xxii. and following, that three princes are here omitted. If this table was taken from any public records ainongst the Jews, the Evangelist does not scem responsible for the exactness of it: but, if he himself drew it up, I think it

whose

11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethey were carried away

thren, about the time

to Babylon.

12 And after they

As recorded by St. Matthew.

ix.

Mat.

57

whose heart was so early and so tenderly im- SECT.
pressed with an apprehension of God's approach-
ing judgments: And Josiah begat Jehoiakim and
his royal brethren, Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, who I. 11.
both of them were kings of Judah, the former
predecessor to Jehoiakim, and the latter the
successor of his son : and about the time of the
Babylonish captivity, Jehoiakim begat Jehoia-
chin, otherwise called Jeconiah, who was so
long the prisoner of the Chaldeans.

And, after the Babylonish captivity commenced, 12 were brought to Baby this Jeconiah begat Salathiel; and Salathiel

lon, Jechonias begat

Salathiel,

The successor of his son.] On the death of Josiah the people took Jehoalaz, otherwise called Shallum, though a younger brother, and made him king in his father's stead (2 Kings xxiii. 30, 51.) but PharaohNecho, in three months time, deposed him and carried him captive to Egypt, according to the prediction of the prophet concerning him, (Jer. xxii. 10-12. compared with 2 Kings xxiii. 33, 34.) And, having thus deposed him, he made Jehoiakim, the elder brother, who was formerly called Eliakim, king in his room. But this Jehoiakim was soon subdued by the king of Babylon, who, after his conquest, suffered him for a while to continue on the throne; but, on his revolt to the king of Erypt again, he was slain by the Chaldeans (2 Kings xxiv. 1, 2), and thrown out unburied, as Josephus tells us, (Antiq. lib. x. cap. 6. [al. 8.] § 3. Havercamp.) agrecable to what the prophet had foretold, Jer. xxii. 18, 19. xxxvi. 30. After his death his son Jehoiachin, by some called Jehoiakim the Second, was put in his place; and this is he who is elsewhere called Jeroniah, 1 Chron. ii. 16. and Coniah, Jer. xxii. 24. But, after a reign of three months, he was taken captive and imprisoned by Nebuchadnezzar, 2 Kings xxiv. 8-16. (according to the prophecy, Jer. xxii. 24-26) and after thirty-seven years released, 2 Kings xxv. 27. In the mean time, upon his being deposed, his uncle Zedekiah, the third son of Josiah, was raised to the throne; but, after a reign of eleven years, his eyes were put out and he was carried captive to Babylon, Jerusalem and the temple being destroyed, 2 Kings xxiv. 17, 18. xxv. 7. I have traced and stated the matter thus particularly, chiefly because it is a key not only to the paraphrase on this text, but to much of the book of Jeremiah, which, as it is plain that several chapters of it are displaced, cannot be well understood without a very exact knowledge of the preceding history.

Jehoiakim begat Jeconiah. I here

begat

follow the reading of the Bodleian and
other manuscripts, (notice of which is
taken in the margin of our Bibles) Iwalag
de εyernore Tov Iwaxsile Ιωακειμ δε εγεννησε
TOV Iεy over. And this indeed seems ab-
solutely necessary, to keep up the number
of fourteen generations; unless we suppose
that the Jeconiah here is a different per-
son from that Jeconiah mentioned in the
next verse, which seems a very unreason-
able supposition, since it is certain that
throughout this whole table, each person is
mentioned twice, first as the son of the
preceding and then as the father of the
following.---I am obliged to the candid
animadversion of Dr. Scott for the small
alteration I have made in my reading of
this verse from what was published in the
first edition.

I cannot

i Jeconiah begat Salathiel.]
take upon me certainly to determine whe-
ther Salathiel was the son of Jeconiah by
descent or adoption. It is certain that
Luke (chap. iii. 27.) derives Salathiel from
David by Nathan, and not by Solomon,
whose line might possibly fail in Jeconiah.
And this would be most evidently con-
gruous to Jerem. xxii. 30. where it is said
that Jeconiah should be written childless, as
we render it: But, as the dispersion of
Jeconiah's seed is there threatened, and at
least seven sons of his are reckoned up else-
where, 1 Chron. iii. 17, 18, (supposing
Assir, as the word significs, to be only a
kind of surname of Jeconiah the captive) a
greater number than one could suppose so
unhappy a prince would adopt in his im-
prisonment, I should rather think the word,
translated childless in the fore-cited pro-
phecy, signifies (as the Seventy suppose,
who have translated it) xxnpuxlov, naked,
stripped, or rooted up; and the more so, be-
cause it seems harsh to suppose yYO E
should signify only be adopted: Yet I own
it is something strange that Salathiel, who
on this supposition was a descendant of
Solomon, should be adopted by Neri, a de-
scendant of Nathan, a younger and much

inferior

58

ix.

The genealogy of Christ,

SECT. begat Zerubbabel*, that illustrious instrument Salathiel, and Salathiel of restoring and settling the Jewish common- begat Zorobabel; wealth on their return from the captivity:

Mat.

begat Eliakim, and Ebegat Abiud, and Abiud liakim begat Azor; ; 14 And Azor begat Achim, and Achim begat Eliud;

Sadoc, and Sadoc begat

15 And Eliud begat Eleazer, and Eleazer

1. 13. And Zerubbabel begat Abiud'; and Abiud begat 13 And Zorobabel 14 Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor: And Azor begat Zadok; and Zadok begat Achim; and 15 Achim begat Eliud: And Eliud begat Eleazar and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat 16 Jacob: And this Jacob begat Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, that blessed virgin, of whom was born, by the immediate power of God, Jesus, who is commonly called Christ, as he was indeed God's Messiah, or anointed One; 16 And Jacob begat the great Sovereign and Prophet and High Mary, of whom was Joseph the husband of Priest of his Church, completely furnished for born Jesus, who is callthe discharge of all those offices by a most ed Christ. plentiful effusion of the Spirit which was given, not by measure, to him.

17

begat Matthan, and Matthan begat Jacob;

17 So all the gene

to David are fourteen

This is the genealogy of his reputed father so that we see, as it here stands, that all the rations from Abraham generations, in the first interval or class of this generations; and from illustrious family, from Abraham to David, when we may look it as in its rising state, are

upon

inferior branch of David's family; or that
it should be said by Jeremiah that none of
Jeconiah's seed should rule any more in Judah,
if Zerubbabel, their first ruler after the cap-
tivity, was at farthest but his great-grand-

son.

fourteen

David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations;

be not allowed, I see not how the known difficulty here can be removed unless by acknowledging that the books of Chronicles (the author of which is unknown) may have suffered by the injuries of time, so that the present reading of some passages may be incorrect; which is very consistent with owning the plenary inspiration of those books. By allowing this we should fairly get rid of two parts in three of the seeming contradictions in the writings of the Old Testament, (I speak on an accurate review of them,) and should be free from the sad necessity of such evasive criticisms, as are more likely to pain a candid heart than to satisfy an attentive and penetrating mind. The omission of a word or two in a genealogical table, and sometimes the This mistake of a letter or two in transcribing, especially with regard to names or num bers, occasions many inextricable difficulties where, in the original reading, all might be perfectly clear.

On the whole, I submit so difficult a question to the determination of abler judges, and content myself with thus hinting at what I found most material on either side. If the two genealogies do not speak of different persons that were named alike, I should conjecture that Salathiel, the son of Neri, might marry the daughter of Jeconiah, and might possibly, on that account, be also adopted by him. The attentive reader will see that this hypothesis at least softens the difficulties inseparable from either of the former.

k Salathiel begat Zerubbabel.] illustrious person, Zerubbabel, is so often said to have been the son of Salathiel, or Shealtiel, which is so nearly the same, (and accordingly the Syriac here reads Schaltiel) see Ezra iii. 2, 8. v. 2. Hag. i. 1, 12, 14. ii. 23. that I incline more and more to think, with Brennius, that the Zerubbabel mentioned, 1 Chron. iii. 17 -19, as the son of Pedaiah the brother of Salathiel, was a different person from this. As the name Zerubbabel signifies a stranger in Babylon, it is no wonder that it should be given to several children born in the captivity.--If this solution

rations; and from the

carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are

fourteen generations.

LUKE III. 23. And Jesus himself began to be about thir

As recorded by St. Luke.

ix.

59

fourteen generations: and after these, in the SECT.
next class, from David to the Babylonish cap-
tivity, when it was seated on the throne, and may Mat.
be reckoned as in its flourishing state, we may 1.17.
compute them as amounting to the same num-
ber; and, to consider them as they are repre-
sented here, they may again be counted fourteen
generations: and, in like manner, in the fast
class, from the Babylonish captivity to Christ,
when by degrees it sunk into obscurity, and
manifestly was in its declining state, then also
we may reckon them as fourteen generations.

LUKE III. 23.

Luke

But, though we have thus given the legal III. 23. ty years of age, being genealogy of Christ from Abraham, as derived (as was supposed) the from Joseph his reputed father, we shall yet add son of Joseph, which another that ascends to Adam; and this is the 24 Which account which Luke hath given us in his gospel ;

was the son of Heli,

where, after he had spoken of the baptism of Jesus
when he was beginning [his public ministry,] and
was about thirty years of age, he traces his de-
scent in the line of Mary", whose father Heli
adopting Joseph, whom he made his son-in-law,
the descent of Joseph may on that account be
reckoned from him, and so is in effect the same
with that of Mary. Christ therefore, being born
of Mary after her espousals, may be considered,
upon this account, to be (as at that time he com-
monly was reckoned) the son of Joseph, who, by
adoption, or rather by the marriage of his
daughter, was the son of Heli", The son of
Mat-

They may be counted fourteen generations.] I express it with this latitude, as it is manifest that three persous are omitted in the second class between Jehoram and Uzziah, ver. 8. and it is only by counting them as here represented that they make fourteen generations. And if, according to the reading of the Bodleian, Jehoiakim be introduced in ver. 11, and considered as the last of this class, (which seems the better reading, as Jeconiah does not appear to have had any brethren,) Jeconiah will thus be reserved for the third class, which otherwise would waut one person to complete the number.

n In the line of Mary.] I am aware that Mr. Le Clerc and many other learned men have thought that Joseph was begotten by Heli, and adopted by Jacob: but I much rather conclude that he was adopted by Heli, or rather taken by him

for his son upon the marriage of his
daughter, and that Heli was the father of
Mary; because an ancient Jewish Rabbi
expressly calls her the daughter of Heli;
and chiefly, because else we have indeed
no true genealogy of Christ at all, but only
two different views of the line of Joseph
his reputed father; which would by no
means prove that Christ, who was only
by adoption his son, was of the seed of
Abraham and of the house of David. Yet
the apostle speaks of it as evident that
Christ was descended from Judah, Heb.
vii. 14. in which, if this gospel were (as
antiquity assures us) written by the direc-
tion of Paul, perhaps he may refer to this
very table before us. (See Mr. Whiston's
Harmony of the four Evangelists, Prop. xvi.
p. 175, & seq.)

• Joseph, who by adoption, or rather by
the marriage of his daughter, was the son

of