Why does this genealogy of Jesus begin with Abraham?
It has to do with a promise from God. That promise goes back to around 2100 B.C. when a man named Abram (Abraham) was lamenting the fact he did not have a child. God then told Abraham: “…[Your relative Eliezer] will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” Scripture continues- [God] took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15: 4-5).
The situation took a turn when Abraham did not wait for the promise and rather had a child, Ishmael, with his wife’s maidservant, Hagar, at age 86. Yet God did not cancel the promise. When Abraham was 99 years old, God supported the promise: “…You will be the father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4). Added to the promise was giving Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan.
God kept His promise. Regarding becoming the father of many nations, Abraham’s first son Ishmael fathered twelve sons who became patriarchs of twelve tribes, listed in Genesis 25:12-17 and in I Chronicles 1:29-31. They settled to the southwest of what would become Israel, near the eastern border of Egypt. (Makes sense to me since their mom was an Egyptian.) There is mention of his descendants later on in Scripture, for example, Isaiah 42:11 states: “Let the desert and its towns raise their voices; let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice…” Kedar was Ishmael’s second son, and the name here surely refers to that tribe there over one thousand years later. A statement by Josephus (Josephus, A.J. 1.12.4) suggests some of those tribes became nomadic.
Then at age one hundred, Abraham has a son, Isaac, who was the heir promised to Abraham by God. And Isaac would become a “father” of the great Hebrew nation, later called Israel. And key for us all, Isaac would carry on what scholars call the Abrahamic covenant, which involved not only a great nation, yet also an everlasting covenant, which I will discuss after noting the promise of the land of Canaan.
The Hebrew nation eventually settled into the land of Canaan for many years after their four centuries in Egypt. But Hebrews over the centuries did experience the collapse of the northern kingdom, Israel, in 722 B.C., the exile in 586 B.C., the ransack of Jerusalem and Judah by the Romans in 70 A.D., and the subsequent banishment from their homeland for 1878 years, due to sins. By God’s mercy, Israel was miraculously re-established in the 20th century, and Hebrews occupy territory in that land today.
Yet in addition to all of these promises, God was making an even greater promise as He was establishing a covenant with Abraham. In Genesis 17:7 and in Genesis 17:19, God calls the covenant which went through the line of Isaac an “everlasting covenant.” Sounds like it could be a simple metaphor for a long lasting covenant. Yet I think there is more to that phrase. The promise was also foreshadowing the Messiah! The event of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son illustrates this.
The bottom line: God made a covenant with Abraham, and though several promises were involved, the eternal promise involved the Messiah. And who was the Messiah? Matthew is saying Jesus is the Messiah, by calling him Jesus Christ. (Messiah is the same word as Christ, the former being Hebrew and the latter being Greek. They both mean Anointed One.) Thus for a genealogy of Jesus, starting with Abraham is totally fitting because, first, the Messiah had to come into the world at a historical time and place as a Hebrew. Second, the covenant God made with Abraham involved a promise which would carry through another covenant, a temporary one between God and the Hebrews mediated through Moses, and then finally find fulfillment in the “everlasting” covenant which is offered by Jesus. God worked to prepare people for the Messiah all those years ago by making a gargantuan promise to Abraham of an everlasting covenant. As Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
Hunter
Question for pondering:
What has Jesus promised us?
