Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Genealogies

Luke 3:23 KJV
And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,

My daily visits with the Lord are not meant to be purely devotional. I want to learn from the Lord to be a better handler of His Word, the Sword of the Spirit. In that light I saw this in my Scofield Reference Bible today.

"In Matthew, where unquestionably we have the genealogy of Joseph, we are told (Mat_1:16); that Joseph was the son of Jacob. In what sense, then, could he be called in Luke "the son of Heli"? He could not be by natural generation the son both of Jacob and of Heli. But in Luke it is not said that Heli begat Joseph, so that the natural explanation is that Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli, who was, like himself, a descendant of David. That he should in that case be called "son of Heli" ("son" is not in the Greek, but rightly supplied by the translators) would be in accord with Jewish usage.

The conclusion is therefore inevitable that in Luke we have Mary's genealogy; and Joseph was "son of Heli" because espoused to Heli's daughter. The genealogy in Luke is Mary's, whose father, Heli, was descended from David. "

I don't even remember where I first learned that one of the genealogies is Joseph's and the other is Mary's but I have always just accepted that. And then over the years there have been times when as I preached I have told that to the congregation. On one or two occasions I can remember trying to figure out which one is which and having a little problem because Mary is not mentioned in either genealogy, and Joseph is mentioned in both.

Here is an explanation as to which one is which and why.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous10:59 AM

    Pastor, what I also like is in 1 Timothy 1:4 where Paul tells us not to concern ourselves with genealogies, rather to focus on Christ. And then in Ephesians 1:5 he backs it up by telling us once we are saved, we're adopted into His family (the only genealogy that matters: a child of Jesus Christ!).
    --Darrell Otto

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