Section 1:1–17

A list of Jesus’ ancestors

Matthew began his book by listing the names of Jesus’ ancestors. He did this to show that Jesus came from the family line of King David and Abraham. By doing this, Matthew showed his readers that the Messiah had come and that he was Jesus.

In this list, Matthew divided the names into three groups of fourteen. In order to get fourteen names in each of the three groups, Matthew omitted several names. (Omitting names to achieve numerical groups was a common practice at that time.) So sometimes the word “father” actually refers to the grandfather. As a result, it may be better in some languages to translate the word “father” with a more general term such as “ancestor.”

Here are some other possible headings for this section:

The ancestors of Jesus
-or-
Matthew wrote/gave ⌊the list of⌋ the family line of Jesus

There is a parallel passage for this section in Luke 3:23–38.

Paragraph 1:1

In this paragraph Matthew introduced the list of family names.

1:1a

This is the record of the genealogy: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the record of the genealogy also means the “list of the ancestors” (as in the Good News Translation).

In Greek, there is no verb in 1:1. Many languages will need to supply a verb here as the Berean Standard Bible has done. For example:

This is the list of ancestors of Jesus Christ (God’s Word)
-or-
Here are the names of the ancestors of Jesus Christ

of Jesus Christ: In the phrase Jesus Christ, Jesus is a personal name and Christ is a title. The title Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah.” The words Christ and Messiah have the same meaning.

Make sure that your translation does not imply that the word Christ is the surname of Jesus.

To make it clear that Christ is a title, you may want to:

• Put the title before the name. For example:

Christ Jesus

• Translate it as Messiah. For example:

Messiah Jesus
-or-
Jesus the Messiah

• Indicate in some other way that Christ is a title. One way to do this in English is to use the article “the” before a title. For example:

Jesus the Christ

Christ: The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah.” “Messiah” refers to the person whom God had appointed and promised to send as king and savior. The words Christ and Messiah have the same meaning.

Here are some other ways to translate this:

• Transliterate Christ and indicate in some way that it is a title. For example:

the Kristi

• Transliterate Christ and include a phrase that explains the meaning. For example:

Karisiti, the appointed one
-or-
Cristo, the Savior whom God promised to send

• Use a title or a descriptive phrase in your language that has the same meaning as Christ. For example:

Messiah
-or-
Promised Deliverer
-or-
The Rescuer-King whom God sent

If you do not indicate the meaning of Christ in the text, you may want to include a footnote to explain the meaning of Christ. Or you may want to explain the meaning in a glossary. For example:

The word/title “Christ” refers to the King and Savior whom God had promised to send.

See also Christ in the Glossary.

1:1b

son of David: The phrase son of David here means that Jesus was a “descendant of David.” It does not mean that David was the earthly father of Jesus. There were many generations between David and Jesus. (Notice that in 1:6, this same David is referred to with his title: “David the king.”)

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

a descendant of ⌊King⌋ David
-or-
he descended from ⌊King⌋ David

The Jews of that time commonly referred to the promised Messiah as the son of David. Since many of the first readers of this book were Jewish, they would recognize this phrase. They would understand that Matthew was claiming that Jesus was that Messiah.

You may want to include a footnote to explain this. A sample footnote is:

God promised hundreds of years before Jesus that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David (Isaiah 9:6–7, 11:1–5; Jeremiah 23:5).

son of Abraham: There are two ways to interpret the phrase son of Abraham and who it refers to:

(1) It refers to Jesus Christ. For example:

Jesus…a descendant of King David and of Abraham (New Living Translation (2004))

(Berean Standard Bible, New Living Translation (2004), Contemporary English Version, God’s Word, Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)

(2) It refers to David. For example:

David came from the family of Abraham (New Century Version)

(New Century Version, Good News Translation)

It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1). This interpretation has the most support from commentators. Some English versions are ambiguous, so it is not possible to tell which interpretation they follow.

Just as in the phrase “son of David,” the phrase son of Abraham means that Abraham was an ancestor of Jesus.

Here are some other ways to translate this phrase:

⌊and also⌋ a descendant of Abraham

-or-

⌊he also⌋ descended from Abraham

General Comment on 1:1b

If it is more natural in your language to mention the oldest ancestor first, you should list Abraham first. For example:

he was a descendant of Abraham and of David.

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