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.
