In Genesis 38, we read about Judah’s adultery with his daughter-in-law, who posed as a prostitute. The result of that illicit encounter was twin sons. One of which is Perez. If you look at Matthew chapter 1, you will see his name in the genealogy of Jesus. How strange is that? God chooses Abraham from amongst a city of moon-god worshippers. He chooses Isaac over Ishmael. He chooses Jacob, the deceiver, over Esau, and remarkably, he Chooses Judah over Joseph. I surely would have chosen Joseph, the most Christ-like figure in the Old Testament. But, no, God chooses Judah. Judah was the brother who decided to sell Joseph rather than kill him because there was no profit in murder. He was the brother who married the Canaanite woman. He was the father of two sons by her, Er and Onan, who were so wicked that God killed them. He was the one who negotiated a price with a prostitute for sex; he was the one who was willing to stone his daughter-in-law for immorality while he hid his role in the pregnancy. He was everything he shouldn’t be and nothing he should have been. On the other hand, Joseph was everything he should have been and nothing he shouldn’t have been. Yet God chooses Judah!
Now, let’s look at the women in the line of Christ. In Matthew 1, there are references to only four women in the line of Christ. One might not expect to find any of these women there. They are Tamar, whose story is told in Genesis 38, and who presented herself to her father-in-law as a prostitute to trick him into impregnating her. Rahab is the prostitute of Jericho, who hid the spies at the time of the Israelite conquest. Ruth, the Moabitess, was the descendant of the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter that took place in a cave after they fled unwillingly from the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But, Ruth, the Moabitess, ended up with a book in the Bible named after her. Then we meet Bathsheba, the one who had an adulterous relationship with King David while her husband was out to war. Her name is not mentioned, but the text tells us that her son, Solomon, was born of her, the wife of Uriah! An interesting thing about the genealogy of Matthew is that it lists women at all. The Old Testament genealogies don’t include women. But the New Testament writers want us all to know that women count.
Why these women? Martin Luther said so that “no one should be presumptuous about his righteousness or wisdom, and no one should despair on account of his sins.”1 But there is another critical condition applies to all of these women. They are all Gentiles! The lineage to Jesus from the earliest days does not include only Jews. You see, as Boice says, “… the church of Jesus Christ is called his bride, and that we, for the most part, are Gentiles.”2 Boice continues with this and concludes, “I am glad these women are included. In Ephesians, Paul writes that the Gentiles were ‘foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). And so we were! But in the inclusion of these gentile women in Jesus’ family tree we discover that the mercy of God is not limited to one nation, but is for all who will identify with God’s work of redemption through the Savior.”2 The New Testament writers tell us that we too are chosen to be children of God. You and I are often what we shouldn’t be and seldom precisely what we should be, but God still chooses us. How strange is that?
1 Luther’s Works, vol. 7, 11. See the ending of the previous chapter of this volume.
2 James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 902.