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Fitting In: The Women of Matthew's Genealogy of Jesus in Relation to the Gospel

Thomas Richardson

Appropriately placed at the beginning of the traditional New Testament canon, the Gospel According to Matthew contains an extensive genealogy which connects Jesus to a powerfully Jewish ancestry. Placing the genealogy at this point in the collection of scripture is intriguing because Matthew can be seen as serving as a transition from the Jewish tradition to the teachings of Jesus. This genealogy itself is quite fitting as Matthew is renowned for its emphasis on Jesus in the Jewish realm. The genealogy goes all the way back to Abraham, underscoring just what kind of stock Matthew is portraying Jesus to have come from and perhaps foreshadowing the influence Jesus will have in the future. Included in the genealogy, however, are a few names that could strike a reader as slightly odd. Four women from the Hebrew Bible are mentioned in the otherwise highly male-dominated list, including Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba). Each has a story filled with controversy, but in the book that tells the story of the Sermon on the Mount, controversy does not seem inappropriate. The four were harlots and heroines, crucial to the story of the Israelites in their revolutionary ways. The four Hebrew Bible heroines embody the spirit of their descendant, Jesus—as he is presented in Matthew—in their righteousness in relation to the Law, and in their special relationship with the Israelites.

Great literature bends the rules and stretches the truth in order to effectively prove a point. The author of the Gospel of Matthew (who will be called Matthew) craftily does this in the very first chapter of the book. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman makes a case for Matthew's use of the genealogy as strictly a literary device by emphasizing the use of fourteen generations. The genealogy is making the insinuation that divine intervention has taken place with every fourteenth generation in the history of Israel. "Their greatest king, their worst disaster, and now their ultimate salvation" (Ehrman 94) has come in the pattern of fourteen generations, which would truly be a celestial coincidence, but it is most likely a method of connecting Jesus fundamentally to the history of the Jewish people. As Ehrman points out, there are tremendous fallacies in the historical accuracy of the genealogy in relation to the names found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and so from the outset the genealogy cannot and should not be viewed as history—it serves a more deeply literary purpose. That being said, the Old Testament women included in the genealogy must, in their own unique ways, reflect the ideas of Matthew's Gospel and have a connection to Matthew's Jewish messiah, Jesus.

Tamar is the first woman named in the genealogy and embodies the spirit of Jesus in Matthew in multiple ways. Living in a system that gives women no authority, Tamar uses her power to do what she feels is just and to continue the Israelite family. The law of central focus in Genesis 38 is the levirate marriage law. Tamar is married to the dreadful Er (son of Judah), who is quickly killed by God. Er's early departure leaves Tamar without any children, but with the levirate law in effect she becomes the wife of Onan. The levirate law is an obligation to continue the family line, but Onan wants to eschew his obligation. Letting his semen fall on the ground, Onan is making the statement that he does not want to have anything to do with producing children for his deceased brother. Susan Niditch goes into detail about Onan's economic motivations and says that "God…condemns this selfishness and kills Onan" (25). Onan has let his self-love get in the way of his lawful and moral duty to his brother, to God, and to Tamar who, as a woman, can only gain social standing through her motherhood. After Onan's death, Judah does not give Tamar to his third son, Shelah, because he feels that after the death of Er and Onan, Tamar herself is the cause (De Groot 24). With the men failing to uphold the law and continue the line, Tamar takes matters into her own hands. Tamar poses as a prostitute and tricks Judah into having sex with her, in order to ensure a child of the lineage. Tamar is definitely going outside the normal protocol, but she is doing what she can with her sexual power to create a child under the law the authority has established. When Judah realizes what exactly has transpired he sees the error of his ways. He has been duped by a woman, but only for his shortcomings. Judah says "She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah" (Gen. 38.26). It is very interesting that a man living in a system for men would praise Tamar, who very cleverly tricked him. However, Judah is right. Tamar went above and beyond to righteously follow the law that even the men could not follow.

Tamar reflects the Jesus of Matthew in her righteousness in respect to the Law and in her commitment to furthering the lineage. The Law does not give her, as a woman, any authority, but she uses sexual power to fulfill the spirit of the law to which the men are constantly not adhering. This looks a lot like the attitude that Jesus takes on in Matthew. Jesus is a radical, but he is not radically trying to destroy the laws of the people who Matthew's genealogy presents as so deeply close to him; instead, he is radically attempting to get his followers to go beyond the actions of the Jewish leaders. Bart Ehrman describes it this way: as Jesus is fulfilling the laws and prophecies, "Jesus in Matthew also requires his leaders to fulfill the Law, in fact, to fulfill it even better than the Jewish leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees" (102). In order to do this, Ehrman believes that the followers of Jesus have to understand not just the fine print of the Law, but the intrinsic spirit of the Law (103). Just as the Jesus of Matthew would like, Tamar gets the spirit of the law of levirate marriage and that spirit is to continue the line. Wim Weren summarizes Tamar's actions: "By making creative use of the possibilities offered by the levirate law, she manages to keep the history of Israel from coming to an end with Judah" (Weren). Tamar is a heroine of the Israelites as she continued the line and a reflection of the Jesus of Matthew, her descendant, by making it happen with the spirit of the Law at heart.

It is slightly peculiar that Rahab would be included in the genealogy because, as Weren points out, there is no real evidence that Rahab was a mother of anyone, let alone Boaz, who himself plays a part in the history of the Israelites. Therefore, the inclusion of Rahab, the second woman mentioned, has to be a literary device of Matthew to highlight someone who has contributed greatly to the ideals that Matthew wants to underscore in his Gospel. The story of Rahab, then, has its connection to Matthew in its connection to the Jewish people and the divine destiny of the Israelites. In the book of Joshua, Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who ends up being a heroine for the Israelites because of the strength she recognizes in their God. Two Israelite spies are dispatched by Joshua and they make it to the house of Rahab to "spend the night." When Jericho's king tells Rahab to hand over the spies, she hides them because she knows of and is afraid of the power of the God of the Israelites. She says that she knows that God has given the Israelites the land and she also cites the parting of the Red Sea, knowing that it is in her best interest not to try and stop them from doing God's will (Josh. 2.9-12). She successfully keeps the spies safe and thus gets the blessing of those men and ultimately God. When the Israelites come through to take the city in the sixth chapter of Joshua, Rahab and her family is indeed spared of all harm.

Rahab is not really righteously dealing with laws like Tamar and does not even have any known connection to Israelites before the encounter with the spies, so the fact that Rahab is included does not seem as warranted as Tamar's inclusion on the surface. However, when Rahab is put in the genealogy it throws the whole story back into perspective with the idea of Jewish destiny in Matthew's genealogy, as discussed by Ehrman. The genealogy as well as most of the Gospel of Matthew shows that "history has proceeded according to divine providence" (Ehrman 94) and Rahab's story definitely shows examples of divine providence. The entire reason that Rahab saves the spies in the first place is her knowledge of the intentions of the divine. She knows what God has done for Israel in the past and knows that it is God's plan for the Israelites to take control of that land. Her participation in aiding the Israelites shows that she accepts the ultimate will of God and that she wishes to receive the same treatment. Rahab is a catalyst in the Israelites' course of history and so Matthew places her in the genealogy to emphasize that Jesus is the third part of the divine intervention that happens every fourteen generations. She is another harlot, another heroine, craftily placed by Matthew into the genealogy of Jesus, the Jewish messiah.

Matthew includes in his genealogy of Jesus a woman from one of the most moving stories in the Hebrew Bible, Ruth. Though Ruth often draws parallels from the story of Tamar, Ruth more than any of the other women in the genealogy deserves recognition in the Gospel of Matthew as she exemplifies many of the key ideas of Matthew's book. Seen as subversive, Ruth also uses her sexual power to get what she needs from the authority, but in the end it is understood that she has not done any of her subverting for her own personal gain and the lineage continues to one of Jesus' most famous ancestors.

Ruth is a Moabite, not an Israelite, who marries the son of Naomi during the family's time in Moab. After the time in Moab which claims the lives of Naomi and Ruth's husbands, Naomi (childless) wants to return home. Ruth will not separate from her mother-in-law and vows to stay with her and assimilate. Ruth makes a commitment early on to the people of Israel in making a commitment to her mother-in-law by saying, "Wherever you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1.16). Upon arrival, Naomi has nothing to her name and Ruth steps in to help her, even in her need for a redeemer in property, for Naomi is too old to have children. Ruth then begins work gleaning in the fields of Boaz, a close relative of Naomi's deceased husband. Naomi knows that Boaz is probably her best hope for redeeming land and providing an heir, though that heir cannot possibly come through Naomi directly. Naomi sends Ruth, a faithful partner to Naomi and by proxy a faithful child of Israel, to trick Boaz into getting involved with her and agreeing to participate in the land deal as well as a levirate marriage, even though Ruth is not technically an Israelite. All works according to plan and Naomi then gets an heir through Ruth, who becomes the great-grandmother of David. The elders that oversee the land redemption deal praise Ruth for her actions and compare her to previous heroines in Israelite history, Rachel and Leah.

The first important point to take away from the story of Ruth in relation to the Gospel of Matthew is Ruth's heritage. Ruth is a Moabite and it is fair to say that her origin "is in the gutter" (Dowsett 521). The Israelites have despised the Moabites from time immemorial, and as Rosemary Dowsett says, "Ruth might almost as well have carried a placard 'Shameful Woman'when she accompanied her broken mother-in-law to Bethlehem" (521). It is hard to conceive of a more fitting woman to place in the genealogy of Jesus in the book that includes the Beatitudes. She is mourning, meek, pure in heart, and her entire people has been the brunt of revilement. This does not take away her Jewish connection, however. In fact, it only strengthens her connection to Matthew. She has been the very bottom of society in the minds of typical Israelites, but she receives a gift of something approaching the status of the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus speaks of in Matthew, a strong Jewish lineage. Through the course of her beautiful story of unity with her Israelite mother-in-law, the Moabite Ruth gains virtual citizenship in the Israelite community and the status of a woman as worthy as the matriarchs of being mentioned in the long and proud genealogy. Ruth may get special treatment in the story because justice seems to be set higher than the actual letter of the law (Bellis 209). That idea would most definitely line up with the "spirit of the law" attitude of Jesus in Matthew. Weren describes the actions of Ruth (and Naomi) as "taking risky steps to build the house of Israel" (Weren). Ruth goes out of her way to aid in the continuation of the lineage of the Israelites and is rewarded by God and by Matthew.

Serving as another reflection of Jesus' link to the destiny of the Israelites in Matthew's genealogy is the inclusion of the Wife of Uriah, or Bathsheba. Her role in the Hebrew Bible is rather controversial, but it seems that through it all she remains faithful to her husband and God remains faithful to her. King David spots Bathsheba bathing on her roof after her period from his perch at the palace. He immediately decides he wants to have an affair with her and he has sex with her. It is debated whether or not the sex was consensual or if David is responsible for a rape, but the abrupt nature of the affair points to rape. Bathsheba becomes pregnant and David has to think of some way to make it appear as if no adultery took place. He tries everything he can to send Uriah, a loyal soldier in David's army, back to sleep with his wife to make the pregnancy appear to have been caused by Uriah, but to no avail. David then has Uriah killed in combat, which causes Bathsheba to mourn. When her mourning concludes, David makes Bathsheba his wife and the baby they had conceived was born. "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord" (2 Sam. 11.27) and God killed the child. Now part of a proper marriage, David and Bathsheba have another child, Solomon, which God loves and who is eventually crowned king.

One of the key facts of Matthew's genealogy of Jesus to consider in Bathsheba's case is that she is presented as "the Wife of Uriah." This might be an attempt to distance her from the controversial nature of the story as someone who might have committed adultery. It is then connecting her more with her husband who "unlike David—displays fidelity to his commission and his fellow soldiers" (Levine 340). He is committed to Israel, and as a mourning wife who had no intention of participating in an affair with David, Bathsheba is also part of the spirit of Israel. She is, for better or worse, connected to the destiny of Israel, as well, as it relates to Jesus' genealogy. David is who Ehrman is referring to in the genealogy as "the greatest king" (94), but of course it can only mention Solomon as David's son because God killed the first child for David's neglect of the Law. It is significant that "the Wife of Uriah" is mentioned alongside David because even though Jesus comes from the line of the "greatest king," he had a foremother who represents a greater moral ancestor in relation to the Law of God. Bathsheba made no mistake in having sex with David, for David was the adulterer, but she then had a child in a legal setting and contributed to the continuance of the lineage with respect to the Law.

There are countless ways to approach the reasoning behind Matthew's inclusion of those four women of Hebrew Bible fame (or infamy) in the genealogy of the most important character in the New Testament. One of the most popular theories is that the importance of the women lies in their sexual activities, in their subversiveness, or a combination of the two. That theory would be much more appealing if every woman mentioned in the Hebrew texts (or New Testaments texts, for that matter) were not introduced by their sexual status, or if so many of them did not act as tricksters. It is much more intriguing to look at Matthew as a careful writer with a handle on his literary devices. The Gospel of Matthew is famous for its emphasis on Jesus' Jewishness with the genealogy at the beginning accentuating that on a very basic level. Another well-followed genealogy theory deals with the fact that none of the women involved are Israelites themselves. That opens the genealogy up to the possibility that it is meant to show that Jesus' teachings and life are open universally. That, though, does not fit in with Matthew's Gospel, specifically. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba all contributed to Jesus' Jewishness according to Matthew's genealogy and each one of them embodies some other facet of Matthew's Gospel. Tamar and Ruth go out of their way to ensure a future for the Israelite lineage with respect to the Law and a willingness to do what it takes to ensure the spirit of the Law, a spirit just like Jesus hopes for in his followers in Matthew. Rahab and Bathsheba are especially connected to the divine plan of God for the Israelites that Matthew has constructed from Abraham all the way to Jesus. Whether the genealogy can possibly be factual or not, there is no lying about the righteousness of female Hebrew characters Matthew craftily chooses as characters in his book, as they are perfectly fit to be in such a powerful Jewish lineage.

Works Cited

Bellis, Alice Ogden. Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes: Women's Stories in the Hebrew Bible. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994.

De Groot, Christina. "Genesis." The IVP Women's Bible Commentary. Ed. Catherine Kroeger and Mary Evans. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2002.

Dowsett, Rosemary. "Matthew." The IVP Women's Bible Commentary. Ed. Catherine Kroeger and Mary Evans. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2002.

Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.

Levine, Amy-Jill. "Matthew." Women's Bible Commentary. Ed. Carol Newsome and Sharon Ringe. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998. 13-29.

Niditch, Susan. "Genesis." Women's Bible Commentary. Ed. Carol Newsome and Sharon Ringe. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998. 13-29.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Weren, Wim J.C. "The Five Women in Matthew's Genealogy." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 59.2 (1997): 288-306.