How Can Jesus Have so Many 'Unsavory' Ancestors?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, I’m fascinated by the genealogy of Jesus. One would think that from Abraham and Sarah through David to Joseph and Mary, the lineage would have been pure, at least ethnically, if not morally. Yet it’s far from that. Rahab, the Canaanite harlot is in that line as the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth the Moabite, who became the grandmother of David, whose adulterous affair with and marriage to Bathsheba produced Solomon and Nathan. What’s your take on this?”

Tom: Dave, there is a tendency to think that because Jesus is the King of kings, the Messiah, and so on, that—I’m talking fleshly here—that in that lineage, they would be kept pure and free from sin and certainly not the kind of…I mean, here we have Israelites marrying pagans.

Dave: Yeah, well, not only that, but a “hooker”…

Tom: Right, Rahab…

Dave: Yeah, well, Tom, of course…

Tom: Well, what does that say to us?

Dave: Well, if we just lean back for a moment and think rationally: how are you going to have a pure, sinless line for Jesus? Because men are sinners…

Tom: Right…

Dave: …beginning with Adam. Adam and Eve wouldn’t be a good starting point, would they? If you’re going to have a pure line for Jesus, and they’re the mother and father of all of us. So they’re all sinners. And sinlessness is not going to come by means of a sinless ancestry for the Messiah. And, of course, that’s one of the problems, as you know, being a Catholic: the Immaculate Conception. Now a lot of people think that means the virgin birth. The Immaculate Conception meant that Mary, in order to have a sinless Son, Jesus, the Messiah, she had to herself be without sin. But in order to be without sin, she would have to be conceived without sin. But now, if she had to be without sin in order to conceive Jesus without sin, then of course, her parents would have had to be without sin in order to conceive her without sin, and the Catholic Church is stuck. You’ve got to take it all the way back.

So, Jesus is God. His body, I believe, from Scripture, was created by God. It says, “A body hast thou prepared me.” In the womb of a virgin. So Mary does not need to be sinless in order for Jesus to be sinless. He is God. And, you know, in The Berean Call we’ve had a little bit of a controversy over this—various people…you know, “Where did He get His genes?” and “Where did He get His blood?” and so forth, but obviously, Jesus couldn’t have had a sinless ancestry, because the scripture says, “All have sinned.”

Now, what this person is referring to, it’s the grace of God, because He chose Israel. They were to be His holy people. They were not to intermarry with the nations around them. And yet, beginning in Egypt, we see on the one hand, God’s standard. And no one can live up to it—you keep the Ten Commandments perfectly, “you will have eternal life,” but no one can live up to it. Then we see God’s grace and His mercy. So the Scripture tells us that there were Egyptians, in fact, that were part of Israel. Some Egyptians—we don’t know how many—must have slain that Passover Lamb and applied the blood to the doorpost, and the lintel, and so forth—ate the Passover. Because it says “a mixed multitude went out of Egypt altogether” and then you don’t hear any more about them. They were all treated as Israelites as far as I know.

So then, God says, “A Moabite shall not enter into the congregation unto the tenth generation.” And yet, here comes Ruth, the Moabitess. She becomes the grandmother—or is it great-grandmother?

Tom: Grandmother…

Dave: Grandmother of David. Amazing! So, it’s God’s mercy, His grace. He sets His standards, but we can’t keep them. And He provides forgiveness for our sins.

Tom: Yeah, well, also in these examples, Ruth and Rahab, they turned to the God of Israel. So you know, for example, in Ezra, we find—they recognize that the priest and many among the Israelites had married pagan wives. And they repent of that. But each case—as you look at Ezra, you find that they’re looking at each particular case and there were some of these pagan women who had turned to the God of Israel. But some, like the wives of Solomon, they didn’t.

Dave: Well, Tom, we have the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew, while we’re talking about it, through Joseph. Well, Joseph was not the father. But the kingly line comes—and he’s the head of the house.

Tom: Comes through Solomon…

Dave: And in Luke, we have the genealogy through Joseph’s father-in-law, that is, through Mary. Now, both sides. Now, why is it there? Because the Scriptures said the Messiah must be of the seed of David. So we have to have that to establish who Jesus was. Now in AD 70 (we were talking about it earlier), when the Temple was destroyed, the city was destroyed, the genealogical records were destroyed. So Jesus had to come when the genealogical records were still here and we have the record of them.

No one could come today and declare that he is of the seed of David. You couldn’t possibly trace yourself back like Matthew and Luke do. So on the one hand, you say, “Well, that’s kind of boring stuff. Like the begats and begottens of the Old Testament,” but…”Solomon begat Rehoboam, and so forth,” and “begat this…” but it is essential to identify Jesus, and so Paul, in Romans 1 says, “I am an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he promised before by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his Son Jesus, made of the seed of David, according to the flesh.”

That brings us back to what we’re talking about. “According to the flesh,” but He is God himself, who took this body in the womb of this virgin.