Matei 1:5

The presence of the names of four women in this genealogy has been commented upon as manifesting the grace of our Lord in associating Himself with the special needs of man. The first, Thamar, brings out the sin of man; the second, Rahab, the faith that lays hold upon the grace of God; the third, Ruth, that grace manifested in setting aside the claims of the law; and the fourth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba) the grace which, through chastisement, can even bring blessing out of failure in God's people.

"Phares begat Ezrom and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab" (vers. 3-5). And who and what was she? A Gentile, and once a harlot! But Rahab is taken out of all her belongings — separated from everything that was her portion by nature. And here she is, in this gospel of Jesus written for the Jew — for the very people who despised and hated Him because He would look upon a Gentile. Rahab was named for heaven already, and no Jew could deny it. She was visited of God; she was delivered outwardly and inwardly by His mighty grace, brought into and made a part of Israel on earth — yea, by sovereign grace part of the royal line out of which the Messiah must come.

And who can doubt that it was Rahab's faith brought her into the genealogy, as sin had brought Tamar? Without faith she had died with those shut up in Jericho, a cursed woman of a cursed race. Faith removed that curse from her; faith brought her in among the people of God, if it did not attract to her the heart of Salmon, so as in the most direct way to account for those words being in the genealogy, "Salmon begat Boaz of Rachab."

The second name is that of Rahab, drawn out of the obscurity in which in the Old Testament her later history is involved, and brought forward in strange connection with a princely family of the house of Judah. As wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz she takes her place here in the genealogy of the Lord; and we may surely say, in view of the epistle to the Hebrews, and the epistle of James, that salvation by faith is the lesson of her history. Thus we have the second great principle of the gospel proclaimed in her.

She married Salmon (Matt. 1:5), who was the son of Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah, (1 Chron. 2:11): the leader of the tribe that had marched first through the wilderness. (Num. 10:14). And so she was brought directly into the royal line of Israel, into one of the most honoured families of all, and became an ancestor of the promised Messiah, and is one of the four women mentioned in the genealogy of our Lord.

Nahshon's sister, Elisheba, (our Elizabeth), was wife of Aaron the chief priest. What a place for a poor Canaanite harlot to be brought into! Daughter-in-law to the royal prince of Israel, niece by marriage to the chief priest, mentioned by name in the genealogy of the Messiah, where even the names of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel are passed over.

Against this Ruth, with all her loveliness and with all her goodness, there was lying a ban which did not lie in the same way against the others. She was a Moabitess, and against these there had been levelled an express statute of the law. "An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever." (Deut. 23:3.)

It is striking that it was to this devoted, to this lovely woman that the law applied — not to Rahab, nor even to Tamar — God having thus proclaimed in an unmistakable way the law's character: not bringing it in to condemn, where men's minds would have gone with it, the sinner and the harlot, but introducing it as that which would have excluded the piety of a Ruth. Emphatically was it thus taught, that it was man as man that was shut out from God, not in his sins merely, but in his righteousness, and that if we stand on that ground all "our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."

But the law does not keep Ruth out. Moabitess as she is, she does enter into the congregation of the Lord. The law is set aside in her behalf, and instead of her descendants being excluded to the tenth generation, her child of the third generation sits upon Israel's throne.

Ruth, loving as she was, yet to a Jew was from a source peculiarly odious. She was a Moabitess, and thus forbidden by the law to enter the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation. Even the Edomite or the Egyptian was held in less abhorrence, and their children might enter in the third generation (Deut. 23:3-8). Thus was given a still deeper testimony that grace would go out and bless the very worst of the Gentiles. Whether the Jews like it or not, God has Rahab, the once immoral Gentile, and Ruth, the meek daughter of Moab, brought, not only into the nation, but into the direct line from which the Messiah was to arise.

Obed (servant), the son of wealthy Boaz, by his name, at any rate, and perhaps also by an obedient and dedicated life of piety bore a quiet witness, not only to his coming grandson David who "served his own generation by the will of God" (Acts 13:36), but to David's Son and David's Lord, Whose service to God is unequalled and incomparable. The scripture record shows that in Obed's posterity his name became "famous in Israel"; for besides this brief record in Ruth, his name occurs nowhere else but in 1 Chron. 2:12, as the grandfather of David, and in Matt. 1:5 and Luke 3:32 as the ancestor of the Messiah of Israel. But what illustrious honour for the son of a Moabitess is this association with the Anointed of Jehovah in His pedigree!

The inclusion of four women in the genealogy of Matthew 1 (indicating the subjective work of God in the heart) has often been remarked as magnifying the sovereignty of God's mercy. Is it too much to say that the features of those vessels of mercy are to be seen morally in the generation of "others also" with whom Paul desired Timothy to walk? Righteousness — Tamar (cf. Genesis 38:26). "Love" — Ruth; "Faith" — Rahab; "Peace" — the wife of Solomon the man of peace.

Every woman that is named is one that nature would have studiously excluded from the record; but grace made them most prominent in it. Thus the truth taught thereby ought never to be forgotten, and the Jew who wanted to know the claims of Jesus to be the Messiah might learn here what would prepare his heart and conscience for such a Messiah as Jesus is. He is a Messiah come in quest of sinners, who would despise no needy one — not even a poor publican or a harlot.