and Solomon begat Roboam, and Roboam begat Abia, and Abia begat Asa,
This line of Matthew's list names three kings after Solomon: Rehoboam, Abijah, and Asa, whose name some translations spell Asaph. The verse opens the stretch of the genealogy that runs from David's throne down to the fall of the kingdom. Why did God keep these men in the family record of His Son?
Matthew and Luke trace two different lines down from David. The difference turns on two of David's sons, Solomon and Nathan.
Though Solomon is in the official genealogy of Christ (Matt. 1:6-7), Christ actually descended through Nathan, the son of David. So God's promise to Israel stands, but apart from Solomon's line. The one exception is that officially Christ is Messiah through Joseph, who was not His father by birth. The wisdom of God shows clearly and beautifully when we compare the two lists. Matthew's begins with Abraham and ends with Christ as the official son of Joseph. Luke's goes backward from Joseph to Adam.
Read the previous verse and this one together. Only one man in the list carries a royal title, and it is not Solomon.
David alone has the title, the king (verse 6). Solomon's name is there, but there is no kingship attached to it. The unbelieving Jew, as he tries to reject prophecies about the Messiah, has always made a strong point of this, that the promises given to David about a son were all fulfilled in Solomon. According to them Solomon is the king, and higher than David in his rule and dominion. How striking, then, that the Holy Spirit gives the name simply Solomon, without adding "the king" to it. David is the king and no other can have the title, until his son comes.
One writer divides the genealogy into parts. The second part starts here, and he reads it as a slide downward from its very first name.
The second begins at once with one in whom departure from God showed itself. His heart went after other gods than the One Only God, who had shown him special favour. After this there is a general history of decline. Three descendants of the apostate murderess Athaliah are blotted out of the list altogether. The Babylonian captivity ends the story in this part, and that captivity was the giving up of the nation as the openly acknowledged people of God.
Rehoboam set aside the sons of one wife in favour of Abijah, the son of the wife he preferred.
Deuteronomy 21:15-17 had warned against such an arrangement. A man "must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn." Perhaps Rehoboam did not know this scripture, but he ought to have. A king in Israel was responsible to get himself a copy of the law and read it all the days of his life. Still, the grace of God rose above the failure of Rehoboam, for Abijah is confirmed in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 1:7.
The last name in the verse belongs to a king whose reign started well.
How very sad that such an excellent reign should be spoiled towards the close. When Baasha, the king of Israel, interfered with him, he relied on the king of Syria. He did not seek the help of the Lord, as he had done when the Ethiopians came against him. The Lord sent Hanani the seer to reprove him for what he had done. Instead of humbling himself and confessing his failure, "Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in the stocks in prison." Within a very short time a disease struck his feet. The physical weakness expressed the moral weakness, "yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians."
Why preserve such a line at all? A promise depended on it, and an enemy worked to put it out.
For this future Son to be "the offspring of David," David's line had to continue until He appeared. This is why God had promised David a lamp for him and for his sons always. How was this lamp to keep shining in the royal house? How was it to pass through man's poisoned air and moral darkness without being put out? If it went out, David's true Heir could never appear. Satan understood this. If he could succeed in putting out the lamp, all of God's counsels about the just Ruler over men would come to nothing.
- Line. Matthew records the official line through Solomon. The actual descent ran through Nathan, David's other son.
- Title. Only David carries the title "the king" here. Solomon's name stands with no kingship attached, and the title waits for the Son still to come.
- Decline. The second part of the genealogy opens with a heart that went after other gods, and it ends in Babylon.
- Grace. Rehoboam broke the law over his own heir, yet grace kept that son, Abijah, in the family record of the Lord Jesus.
- Lamp. Satan aimed to put David's lamp out. God kept it burning, so the true Heir could come.
and Asa begat Josaphat, and Josaphat begat Joram, and Joram begat Ozias,
Verse 8 names three kings — Asaph, Jehoshaphat and Joram — and then makes a leap. "Joram the father of Uzziah" skips three generations of Judah's royal line. Why did the Spirit of God leave them out?
The last king named in this verse appears under more than one name in Scripture, and his story carries a warning.
Uzziah is a solemn example of a man who walked well until he grew "strong," and of a man not chosen by God who tried to do the work of a priest. His history shows the truth that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." He is called AZARIAH in 2 Kings 14:21; 2 Kings 15:1-27; 1 Chronicles 3:12; and OZIAS in Matthew 1:8-9.
Compare this verse with the Old Testament records. Three reigns are missing between Joram and Uzziah.
Ozias (Uzziah) is placed here as the son of Joram. But look at 1 Chronicles 3:11-12, where the name Azariah stands where Matthew has Ozias, as it does in 2 Kings 14:21 too. You will see that three kings are left out: Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. The Old Testament genealogies contain such gaps elsewhere. In 2 Chronicles 22:9 Ahaziah is called the son of Jehoshaphat, though he was really his grandson. Compare the generations in 1 Chronicles 6:3-15 with Ezra 7:1-5, and you will find seven names left out in Ezra.
Some treat the gap as a slip by the writer. Kelly answers that charge by pointing to Ezra, a priest whose standing depended on an exact family record — and who still left out seven names.
A priest in that line had to prove his descent strictly. A flaw in it would destroy his right to serve. If even there a name could rightly be left out, the same can be true of the Lord's genealogy. All the more so, since this gap is not in a part that Scripture passes over in silence. It sits in the middle of the historical records, where the youngest child could supply the missing names at once. So the omission was not careless or ignorant. It was intentional.
All three missing kings descend from Athaliah. She was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and Jehoshaphat brought her into David's line as a wife for his son Joram.
Here we see the principle of the second commandment worked out in practice: "I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." The names of Ahab and Jezebel are sadly familiar to us all. Jehoshaphat married his son Jehoram to their daughter Athaliah. He was a good man himself, yet he brought down on his own descendants, to the third generation, the curse that rested on the house of Ahab. For three generations we read of wholesale massacres in cold blood.
Writers give more than one reason for the gap. Kelly points to the shape of the list itself.
The Spirit of God was pleased to arrange the ancestry of our Lord into three divisions of fourteen generations each. There were in fact more than fourteen generations between David and the captivity. So some had to be dropped to make the three sets match, and only fourteen are recorded.
Jehoshaphat stands in this verse as a good king. Willis names the price of the alliance he made.
If we turn to the first chapter of Matthew, we find that these three kings, Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah, are blotted out of "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."... The shame of it, the tragedy, the eternal loss to this great and good man — and all for the sake of being friends with the world. David brought blessings on his family for four generations; Jehoshaphat brought a curse.
Athaliah's revenge nearly ended David's line.
Athaliah, enraged at the early death of her son, king Ahaziah, set out to destroy the whole royal family, and came terribly close to success. But it could not be complete... One young child was left, and Jehoshabeath saved him by hiding him in the house of the Lord. The light was covered over for a time, but it was not put out.
The same list that erases three kings keeps names no family would boast about.
We may notice that the Holy Spirit mentions in this genealogy the grievous sins committed by the people whose names are given. This magnifies the sovereign grace of God. He could give a Saviour in connection with sins like those of Judah, with a poor Moabite woman brought in among His people, and with crimes like those of David.
- Gap. "Joram the father of Uzziah" jumps three reigns — Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah. A comparison with 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 shows it.
- Deliberate. The missing names sit in the best-known part of Israel's history. Any child could supply them. The omission was intentional, not careless.
- Cause. All three kings descend from Athaliah, daughter of Ahab. Cutting them out carries out the second commandment's warning about the third and fourth generation.
- Warning. Jehoshaphat was a good man himself. Yet his alliance with the world brought his family a curse where David had brought blessing.
- Grace. The line was nearly wiped out, yet the light was not put out. The same genealogy that blots out three kings keeps sinners in, magnifying the grace that could give a Saviour through such a line.