The Root and Branch of Jesse, and the Son of David.

A Jewish friend recently asked me how Jesus (Yeshua) could be “a true descendant of King David and King Solomon, and from the tribe of Judah.”  Below is my response to her.  It grew so long, I thought it would make a good blog post as well. 

I assume you're speaking of the blood curse on Jehoiachin from Jeremiah 22:30.  Jehoiachin was the legal successor from David, but Jehoiachin was so wicked that God declared that none of his children would ever sit on the throne. 

This presents a problem for Jews as well, since The Messiah has to be David's heir, but because of Jehoiachin, none of David's blood descendants from the male line can ever sit on the throne of David, and The Messiah must reign from the throne of David. 

First, in good Jewish fashion, I must tell you another story which will inform this one. 

In Numbers 27, verses 1-11, we read the story of the daughters of Zelophehad.  Zelophehad had five daughters and no sons, and his daughters realized that because of this, his portion of the inheritance of the land would be lost, since it must pass to a male heir.  Moses wisely rules that if the daughters marry men of their tribes, they can receive their father's inheritance of land.  This establishes a legal precedent:  a female can be legally the equal of a male, even if there are no male heirs, if she marries within the tribe.  Once she does, the land belonging to her father and the land belonging to her husband both belong to their family.

Does that make sense?

Ok.  So we go to the New Testament, and we trace the genealogy of Yeshua.  We have to know something about the gospels at this point, too:  Matthew was of the Tribe of Levi.  Matthew's gospel is VERY Jewish.  Written by a Levite to a Jewish audience.  Matthew has a genealogy of Yeshua in his first chapter, and this genealogy begins with Abraham.  Why?  Because Abraham was the first Jew, and in a sense, nobody before Abraham matters.  Matthew wants to focus on Yeshua's Jewishness.  So he traces the lineage from Abraham through David through Solomon through Jechoniah (with the special footnote that Jechoniah was the king at the time of the exile to Babylon.   That means that Jechoniah and Jehoiachin are the same person).  Matthew is aware of the blood curse on Jehoiachin, but he continues to trace the male lineage all the way to Joseph, the husband of Mary.  Hold that fact in your mind for a moment:  Mary's husband, Yeshua's legal father, was a descendant of David through Jehoiachin.

Now we look at Luke's gospel.  Luke has a genealogy as well, but it is a bit different in some respects.  Luke was a physician, and much of his book focuses on the humanity of Yeshua.  Luke, for instance, gives us the best birth narrative, because being born is a very human thing.  Mark, for example, gives no birth narrative, and that fits with Mark's theme as well.

Anyway, Luke focusses on Yeshua's humanity.  So he starts his genealogy with Adam, because Adam is the first man.  And he goes through Abraham, to David, but then he turns and goes through Nathan, another son of David by Bathsheba, rather than Solomon. It is at that point the two genealogies diverge, and they are different until they come back to Joseph.  But here is another problem:  Both genealogies claim to belong to Joseph, the legal father of Yeshua. 

We find, however, that it’s just an interesting coincidence.  One Joseph is the son of a man named Heli (Luke 3:23) and the other Joseph is the son of a man named Jacob (Matthew 1:16).  It is very likely (for this and other reasons) that Mary was the daughter of a man named Joseph, and she also married a man named Joseph.  This has been speculated on for the last 2000 years… some of the ancient church fathers wrote about this.  There is likely an error in the Greek text of Matthew which is fixed when we turn to the Hebrew text of Matthew (another story for another time, but Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, possibly making versions in both languages… Matthew was the Levite after all!).  In Matthew’s Hebrew gospel, Joseph is the “strong man” or “guardian” of Mary (Matthew 1:16), which possibly means adoptive father.  Regardless, she was also a biological descendant of David, through the non-corrupted line.



Let me make this as clear as possible:  No legal descendant of David after Jehoiachin could sit on the throne of David.  But the Messiah MUST come from this line, to have legal claim to the throne AND be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David.  Messiah MUST come from David’s line, and He MUST sit on the throne of Israel forever. 



Yeshua is LITERALLY the only person in the world with legal claim to the throne of David, because of this.

God accomplishes this using Torah.  The daughters of Zelophehad story from Numbers makes clear that Mary is legally allowed to inherit David’s throne for her son if she marries within the tribe.  But her child cannot have the blood of Jehoiachin in his veins, because of the blood curse God pronounces in Jeremiah 22:30.  But since the Word of GOD is perfect, and cannot be broken, God accomplishes this very thing with a VIRGIN BIRTH. =)  Yeshua has all the legal rights which He inherits from His legal father, Joseph, but none of Joseph’s blood.  He is a direct biological descendant of David through Mary, His only human parent, and because of the Torah story of the daughters of Zelophehad, Yeshua has legal right to inherit everything she was to receive from her father as well. 

Now here’s where it all comes together:  Thanks to the story of the daughters of Zelophehad, a woman who marries within her tribe can inherit land and title from her father.  In this case, Mary’s father is David, several generations back.  Joseph is the direct male descendant of David through the male line, and if Jehoiachin hadn’t messed it up, Joseph would have been on the throne of Israel.  But Joseph was not Yeshua’s BIOLOGICAL father, only his legal one.