Why does Joseph's lineage in Matthew 1 matter if Joseph wasn't Jesus' biological father? Professor Diane Jacobson reveals how this apparent contradiction actually unlocks the key message of Matthew's Gospel. Through adoption, Jesus becomes the son of David, demonstrating that God's family extends far beyond bloodlines to include all who are claimed and named as God's own.

The Joseph lineage Bible passage also features five remarkable women - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary - whose stories of survival, courage, and faith show how God works through unexpected people. From foreign women to those with questionable reputations, these ancestors reveal that Jesus came for everyone, including those society might reject. This conversation transforms a seemingly boring genealogy into a profound theological statement about divine inclusion.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Luther Seminary – Where Professor Diane Jacobson taught Old Testament studies
• Book of Faith Initiative – ELCA program promoting biblical study and literacy (directed by Diane Jacobson)
• Enter the Bible Course on the Book of Ruth by Diane Jacobson

Mentioned in this episode:

Stepping Up to Supervision

And welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible Podcast where you can get answers, or at least reflections, on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston.

I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker and we have a returning guest today that we're just so delighted to have back with us, Professor Diane Jacobson, who is a friend and former colleague here at Luther Seminary. Diane was the first woman teaching Bible at any Lutheran seminary in the United States, and she taught Old Testament here at Luther Seminary for many years. She left only to become the director of the Book of Faith.

initiative, which was an initiative of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to promote biblical study and biblical literacy. And she is well known to former students here at Luther Seminary for teaching a class called, Harlots and Heroines. And I'm guessing that that class will come up in our discussion today, but we'll come back to that. Diane, thank you so much for coming back to be on our podcast.

Great pleasure. Great to

here.

So we have a listener submitted question. As usual, those who have heard this podcast before, we encourage questions. We try to answer as many as we can. You just have to go to enterthebible.org to submit your question and we try to get to as many of them as we can. So the question for today is, is Joseph's lineage, that is Joseph in the New Testament, Mary's husband, is Joseph's lineage crucial?

if he's not Jesus' biological father. Now, just a quick background. So there's two genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels. One, a shorter one is in Luke chapter 3, but the one that we're going to concentrate on for today is in Matthew chapter 1. In fact, it's the way that the whole book of Matthew begins. And it starts with Abraham and goes through to Joseph. It says at the end, Jacob the father of Joseph,

the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born who is called the Messiah. So if we understand, if we believe that Joseph was not Jesus' biological father, why does it matter that the genealogy goes to Joseph? So how would you begin to address that question, Diane?

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate the person on asking the question because a lot of people don't notice. Right. That means he was being careful and it's a really, really important question. So I commend the person for asking it. And part of the deal is thinking about what a genealogy is for. I mean, we're sort of obsessed with genealogies in our

day and time, know, so so exact. Yeah.

DNA testing and all that right

I'm X percent Neanderthal

And exploring your roots. TV show exploring your roots, right? We do seem to be really fascinated with.

And genealogies are so you can prove something, often about power, but not always. But who's related to who? How does this work? I mean, they become really important. And this genealogy, proving that Jesus is the son of David seems like crucial. And so this question comes up, but it doesn't work.

There are, before I talk about it not working, there are two other things that you might notice in the genealogy when you read it. Usually it's father to son to father to son, the father and son. And in this genealogy in Matthew, there are five women hidden in the middle of all of this. And they are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah, that she was not mentioned by name.

and of course Mary. And so you already know from that that this genealogy is peculiar because it's got these weird women, which is why my course, Harlots and Heroines, we'll come back to that in a second. The other thing that you probably wouldn't notice is that it ends in verse 17.

with talking about the genealogy being divided into groups of 14. ⁓ And you think, ⁓ wow, that's sort of interesting. Why 14 will seven school? But the letters of David's name, if you read them as numbers, add up to 14.

Interesting.

David is really crucial to this. Although the other thing you notice if you're good at math is that there actually aren't 14 names in each of these.

Never count!

I just I took his word for it that there I go believe in the Bible again

Toh!

Right. Which is to say that there are all these hints that there's something peculiar about this genealogy. ⁓ And I think the way you start to get into it is look at the passage right after the genealogy that talks about Joseph. And it talks about Mary being engaged to Joseph. This starts in verse 18.

Ha ha!

It says her husband, Joseph, a righteous man, being a righteous man, didn't want to treat her cruelly. ⁓ And then an angel appears to him in a dream and says, Hey, she's pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Marry her, don't have relationships and she's going to have a baby and you're going to name him Emmanuel, God with us. And when Joseph wakes from his sleep,

He does as the angel commanded him and he takes the child and names him Jesus. And when Joseph does that and takes the child and names him, that reminds me of Pharaoh's daughter taking the child and naming the child. And you realize it's an act of adoption. And all of a sudden the light comes on. Joseph,

Jesus is the son of David by adoption. So do you believe this is legitimate or not? Is adoption real or not? Do you accept that or not? Does one have to be related by blood to be part of God's family? And then again, a light might come on. Who does Jesus come for?

He comes for Jews and Gentiles alike. Are Gentiles as much the people of God as the Jews are? They are by adoption. So Matthew takes the traditional language of the genealogy and turns it on its head and uses it to include the notion that the genealogy includes outsiders.

Hmm. Well, that's beautiful. That's just crucial. I've got more to say, but do you want to pause for a second?

Yeah, that takes something that, you know, could be like a problem in the text in the sense of like, but you know, do we believe in the virgin birth? Do we not? Right? Kind of like takes it out of the realm of like the kind of mundane questions that we might ask of the text as something much deeper and more beautiful. That's great.

Well...

Key to the entire book!

Right. Yeah.

who are the children of God includes all kinds of people you don't expect.

So then to call Jesus son of David, you're saying is through adoption. Perhaps. I mean, perhaps, perhaps Mary was a descendant of David too, right? We don't, we don't know that. Or perhaps she was a- It doesn't say that.

Yes.

genealogy.

That's not the point of genealogy, whether we believe that is true or not.

Yeah, yeah. seem to recall, I should have looked this up before we started recording, but I think an early church father wondered this as well. And so there was something kind of apologetic written that Mary was also, right? Mary was also a descendant. Fix that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like your take on it, Diane. I like that being included in God's family through adoption. Yeah. That's lovely.

That's how we're gonna, that's how

And there's a great quote from Martin Luther, know, God forbid I shouldn't quote Martin Luther. ⁓

Never an episode shall pass without Diane quoting Martin Luther.

That speaks to this in a way, and it speaks to the fact, I think the clue that this is about inclusion of the other, occlusion of the foreigner is with the women. in Tell Mary, they're all foreign women. And then they also all look like they have questionable sexual relations and mysteries like Mary.

Talk more about that to ya.

Well, history is so-

Right, right, right.

This is

the faith. Hence I called my course, Harlots and Heroines. That's what they are. And this is Luther's quote, but Christ our Lord wanted to be born from the blood of various nations, for he had Rahab, Ruth and Tamar as mothers, since he was not ashamed of these women.

And indeed, Egyptian, Canaanite, and Moabite women are listed in his genealogy. The same thing can be said of David and the other kings who were born of the same mothers, for with God there is no respect of persons. Isn't that a great?

That's a- Good job, Luther.

Yeah, that's lovely.

So you look at these stories of these women and you think, ⁓ they can't be legitimate. Just like you say, this genealogy can't be legitimate. They can't possibly be legitimate. Look at the way they act. And like all women and others without power in scripture, their main way of acting is through tricksterism. They become tricksters.

and they sort of point out the truth to these guys who think they know the truth. Each one of their stories kind of turns that upside down and says, you think you get it? No, you don't get it.

and

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about each of those women. ⁓

was

gonna say, remind us what the...

Yeah, each of them could be its own podcast episode, I know, for those of our readers who don't, probably Ruth is more familiar, Beth Sheba might be more familiar, but Tamar in particular, Tamar comes up in Genesis 38, right? 38. And she is a Canaanite woman, if I'm remembering right. And she's married to actually Judah, Judah, is the ancestor of David, who's

tribe, Joseph and probably Mary came from.

Sun Marys Tamar.

Did I say that? I thought I said, yeah, so Judah's son marries Tamar. I think you said Judah's I'm sorry, Judah's son marries Tamar. sorry. Oh, good. And then he dies and then his second son marries Tamar and he dies. And then by law, she's supposed to be the wife of the third son, but Judah doesn't want to lose his third and last son. he, he refuses or he, he kind of strings her along. So do you want to pick up there?

I'm to marry Tamar, but Jew

She stands at the gate where he's going to visit his Canaanite friend. And the gate is called the gate of seeing, the gate of eyes, which is really funny. And she dresses as a prostitute and he pays her and has relationships with her. She ends up bearing a child from that encounter. And he finds out that she is going to have a child.

Mm-hmm.

and says she needs to be burned at the stake or whatever. And because she's clearly committed adultery and she sends him his iPhone, she's identifying things that he left her and says, who do these belong to? And he says, my goodness. Yeah, she was the woman at the gate that he has relationship and he says to her,

You are more righteous than I am. It's this remarkable, everything that looks one way is actually the other way. So you retame our story and it's a perfect lead in to the genealogy in Mary's story. What looks like a woman who has been misbehaved and had relations, turns out, you know, to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit.

something else is going on there and God is doing something.

Oh,

I know one there. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Rahab, at the beginning of Joshua, she is actually a prostitute in the city of Jericho. And when the spies from Israel come to spy out the city, they visit her house.

Right. A lot of visiting of prostitutes in the Bible that you maybe wouldn't have expected.

There was seen as the problematic one. And what most of these stories do is show, wait a minute, she is protecting her family. She's trying to make sure her family does well. And she also professes faith in God. You know, she says, I know that your God is the God and I wanna do this. I wanna do what is right.

So help me figure out how to do what is right. So again, this woman who seems to be a prostitute is the one who points most clearly to God. It's just a profound thing. She actually recites a creed basically, and she hides the spies and she feeds them and she instructs them and she helps them escape. So she becomes

As much as any of the guys that are talked about about the taking of the Holy Land, she's really instrumental in this, foreign woman who looks like a prostitute. It's just astonishing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ruth. Ruth may be the most familiar of the four. And I know we could, again, do a whole episode on Ruth, but she's a Moabite, not an Israelite.

They're bad guys, right? We don't like the mobites.

If you look at all the quotes in scripture about Moabites, they are the terrible, horrible people. And so when she's called a Moabite, we don't know as contemporary readers to be horrified that, you know, this guy goes and marries a Moabite or

Yeah, they're neighbors. They're neighbors to the Israelites. Yeah, there's a lot of, I would say a love-hate relationship, but it's more hate than love. yeah, so at the beginning of the book of Ruth, Elimelech and his wife Naomi live in Bethlehem, the house of bread, but the house of bread is empty. And so they are refugees, right? Much as we see today, when you don't have food where you live, you travel somewhere else.

to get sustenance. And so they go to Moab and their two sons marry Moabite women, one of whom is Ruth. And then the husband and eventually the two sons die.

The Spartans natives are consumption and disease, so you're not really surprised when they go.

surprised that they die. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And one of the daughters-in-law, Orpa, well, Naomi says, back to your homes and to your kin. And so Orpa does that. But Ruth speaks this wonderfully just loyal, beautiful vow to Naomi. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your God shall be my God and your people my people. And nothing will part us except death itself.

So it's just a, I'm not doing it justice, but it's a beautiful vow.

Well, it's also a vow that's usually done by people who want to be loyal to the new king. It's reminiscent of those, speaking of which I did Ruth for Enter the Bible.

Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, good.

chapter, our course on Ruth. Yes, that was Diane's work.

it is. It is a gorgeous loyalty oath. Yes. So it's a loyalty oath just the same way that somebody being loyal to a king. But this is from a Moabite woman to an Israelite widow. It's not supposed to be important and it's cultural.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, on the face of it, the story is kind of about ordinary people, right? Two widows, one a foreigner. If you think about the vulnerable people that are talked about over and over, Widows, orphans, foreigners. Ruth is two of those things and maybe, who knows, maybe an orphan, but Naomi is also a widow, of course.

And so they go back to Bethlehem together and Ruth provides for her mother-in-law by gleaning in the field.

instead of being a prostitute.

instead of being, yeah, say a little more about that.

played with in the text because the next of kin and the other people who are talking to Boaz assume that this born woman who comes in the field is fair game. And Boaz says, ⁓ she's here to glean. And so she chooses a different thing. And then when Boaz and Ruth end up sleeping together, is she acting like a

Harlot or not? Yes and no. Really, she proposes to Boaz and says, you need to act as next of kin so that the children of Lemelech are not cut off from the genealogy. And so all the same things that are going on with those other stories of the women in the genealogy are going on in Ruth's story too.

all those same questions about genealogy and who's whose child and how do foreigners do and what's prostitution and what isn't and how legitimate are these children. It's just, it's just remarkable.

And then of course Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of King David himself. brings us to the last woman mentioned. I keep looking over here because I have the Bible in my desk. But I guess not the last woman, Mary is the last woman mentioned, but the fourth one is the wife of Uriah and the mother of Solomon.

And that's about a sheba, but because she's got a little more questionable character, think that's why she's not graced with a name in the genealogy. She doesn't have that same kind of story. But of course her story is kind of ironic too, because she's bathing in the, at the top of the roof and David looks down on her.

Thanks for watching!

Interesting.

You just wonder, is she being a temptress or is this right? And it's got some of those same things running around in this story.

The Bible, especially I would say the Old Testament, just an observation, seems a lot less squeamish about sex than we are. I'm just naming that.

It certainly faces it as a reality of life and important for continuation of life and complicated.

Exactly. It's a lot less moralistic maybe, I don't know, but it's interesting. So it sounds to me like what you're saying, Diane, is that these women's stories and the question of having the lineage come in, be defined through Joseph himself, these are all asking that same question, who belongs, who is in, who is out, and the answer or the

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

implication here is that the people who belong and the categories of people who belong are much bigger than you probably think, right? That that's kind of the through line between both of those threads, both having Joseph be the one with the lineage and then the way that Matthew weaves in these sort of unexpected women into that story.

I think you've got it exactly correct. And of course, the irony of it being a genealogy, you think you know everything about and it seems boring. The irony of that being the key that unlocks this is just phenomenal.

It's a-

Yeah. My guess is when people do like, you know, read the whole Bible covered or covered, may very well skip over the genealogy here as they do probably in Genesis. Lots of genealogies, right? And it's easy to skip over them, but in this one in particular, those kinds of details that you've pointed out, Diane, are really significant. And say something about, yeah, who, I like how you put it, Katie, who's in, who's out.

Yeah, whose story gets told. so given these four mothers, you know, and we haven't even touched on the men really in this genealogy, but given the four mothers, Jesus' ancestry tells something about his story and who is included in that story as well.

Yeah. And you mentioned Luke at the beginning and Luke doesn't do it through genealogy. The irony is I think Luke does it with Mary singing the Magnificat. And she makes many of these same points about who's in and who's out and how power works through her song. It just gives you a clue about how differently Matthew and Luke operate.

Mm-hmm.

Wow, that's, that is wonderful. Thank you so much. What a rich conversation. Wow. This is great. was not expecting to have so much spiritual food for thought out of a genealogy. Friends, that's why we enter the Bible. There's really cool stuff there that you never would have expected. So thank you. Thank you for being with us, Diane. And thank you.

Thank you, Diane.

Ha ha!

Ha

Thank you, especially to those of you who have joined us ⁓ this episode of Enter the Bible, whether you are listening on your favorite podcast app or you are watching on YouTube.

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