The Mamzer Messiah
Nathan confronting David for his adultery with Bathsheeba, and betrayal of Uriah.
Let us first read the first seventeen verses in Matthew: 1
Matthew 1:1-17
The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah
1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, 4 and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
Is there a time in your life where you’ve been an outsider? The feelings of shame and even fear that come with rejection can be at times almost palpable, like your heart is trying to pump too much blood through your system just to stay alive. Your lungs expand and your heart races. Or on the other side you feel like the wind has been knocked completely out of you leaving you gasping for breath. The isolation that comes from not having a group of people can be so damaging and overwhelming, and yet God tends to work in and through those spaces and people.
When we first open the Gospel of Matthew we see an outsider people, filled with outsiders, written by an outsider, who followed an outsider. It’s probably more correct to articulate that it’s full of mamzers, or children born of illegitimate means. In English, mamzer is often translated as “bastard.” Why start the genealogy of Jesus with a line of “bastards?”
Matthew starts this way because he knows what it feels like to be an outsider. As a tax collector he would have been hated by his own people because he would’ve been seen as siding with the enemy and oppressing the people of Israel through heavy Roman taxation. Many of these tax collectors would have also been asking for a little extra to skim off the top and fill their own pockets. Shunned by his own community, but certainly not included in the Roman community either, Matthew would have been isolated and alone. That is until one day a man came along and said, “Follow me.”
Even as one of the disciples of Jesus, there probably were times where Matthew still felt like and was treated like an outsider. And so when he pens his Gospel, he writes from an outsider Jewish perspective to his fellow countrymen and women. His message? Let me show you who God has worked through to bring the kingdom of heaven to bear on earth through the Mamzer Messiah.
He could have started his gospel with verses 1 and 17 to say that Jesus was the Messiah the Son of David, the son of Abraham, but he includes forty-two generations filled with dark stories and mamzers, so we must pay attention to this.
There are two things that are extremely important to a Jewish genealogy: patriarchy and purity. It was simply cultural to trace the genealogy through the men of the family, so you wouldn’t expect to find any women in a genealogy. The purity might also be the greatest strength of a genealogy since God commanded his people to not inter-marry with the Gentiles. You might expect the genealogy of the Messiah, the coming king, to be rich in purity and strong men, yet this isn’t really the case. Of course there are some of the most important patriarchs like Abraham, Isaiah, Jacob, and King David, but there are some other stories we need to consider as well, like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheeba and Uriah, and Mary.
Over the next several posts we will consider the mamzers that make up the family history of Jesus Christ and see what God is attempting to say through Matthew. We should be comforted that Jesus is the Messiah of the outsiders, and we should be convicted by the fact that God’s heart is for the outsiders and our hearts should bleed for them too.
