Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 1-4.

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I want to start by taking note that in his genealogy of Christ, Matthew mentions each of the women who the Old Testament talks about who are in His genealogy.  In fact, he mentions that Judah had two sons by Tamar, even though only one of them was part of Jesus’ genealogy.  Another interesting point is that while Matthew mentions Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth by name, he refers to Bathsheba as the wife of Uriah.  He does not do that to downplay Bathsheba in favor of her first husband.  Rather, he highlights all of David’s sin, not just his adulterous affair with Bathsheba.  The next thing I want to note is verse 25 in chapter one.  The wording seems odd if Joseph and Mary never consummated their marriage.  The phrase could say, “he took his wife, but he knew her not.  And he called the son she bore Jesus.”  Saying that Joseph “knew her not until she had given birth to a son” suggests to me that he did so after Jesus was born.

Finally I want to touch on the fact that Joseph decided to take Mary, his wife, and Jesus, his son (Jesus was Joseph’s son because Joseph was by this point raising Him as his adopted son) to Nazareth rather than returning to Bethlehem.  Matthew casually mentions that a key motivating factor in Joseph going to Nazareth was that he learned that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod.  What is not mentioned is that Archelaus had slaughtered a large number of Jews shortly before Joseph left Egypt, something he would have likely heard about during his trip back (I want to note that Archelaus was an Idumean, not a Jew).  Unlike his father Herod, Archelaus was never king, and Matthew’s wording seems to indicate that he was aware of this distinction.  The important point here is that  some of the people Matthew was writing to would have known about what Archelaus had done and the fact that he was never king.  Which means that Matthew did not need to explain the significance of Joseph being afraid of Archelaus.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.