Luke 3:23 Commentary and Bible Study

Although it is not explicitly stated by either of the Gospel writers, it is generally accepted that Matthew presents the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, and Luke Jesus’ genealogy through Mary. See Hendriksen’s imagined debate and his conclusion in favour of this position in his comments on Luke 3:23-38. The reason that he and other give for taking this position are as follows. Matthew writes for Jews for whom Jesus’ descent through Joseph (his legal father) from David and from Abraham was most important, but Luke writes for Gentiles and therefore traces Jesus’ ancestry back to the first man Adam, in common with all men. He wants to show Christ’s true humanity. This can hardly be done by tracing Jesus’ ancestry back through Joseph, for Luke stresses the virgin birth, and gives us an account of the birth of Christ from Mary’s perspective. His readers would not then understand him to prove the humanity of Christ by tracing his lineage back through Joseph from whom he was not descended physically. Since Matthew presents Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, if Luke did the same, Joseph would have two different fathers. It is said that if Luke presents the genealogy of Jesus through Mary then the word ‘son’ must be used inconsistently in two different senses in Luke 3:23, because while Jesus was the supposed son of Joseph, he must have been the grandson of heli (and this is what the words ‘of heli’ mean which are in reference to Jesus, not Joseph), but even if this is so (see below), both writers have gaps in their genealogies and therefore both use the word son in more than one sense, and the word ‘son’ is not present in the Greek of Luke; he simply says ‘of heli’. Luke explicitly states that Jesus was only supposedly the son of Joseph. Having said that, would he then give great attention to tracing Joseph’s lineage?Both Matthew and Luke’s genealogy have a common ancestor in David. Matthew traces the lineage of Joseph through Solomon, while Luke traces Mary’s ancestry through David’s son Nathan. The fact that Jesus was descended from David is confirmed by Paul (Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8). God promised David that his throne would be established forever and that a physical seed would come from him in the person of the Messiah (2 Samuel 7:12-16) – through Joseph, legally, and through Mary, physically. That promise appeared to fail at the time of the captivity, for Judah never had another earthly king. (Jeremiah 22:28-30 pronounces Coniah (aka. Jehoiachin, aka Jeconiah) childless, but the text explains this as being only in the sense that no man of his seed would prosper, and he would not have a son reigning after him. He did indeed have a son, see 1 Chronicles 3:17.) But God had promised through Amos that this would not be the end of David’s line. ‘In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old’ (Amos 9:11). James quotes these words as fulfilled in Christ (Acts 15:16-17) for the purpose of gathering in the elect Gentiles. God’s promises cannot fail, but the fulfilment comes in a very different form to that which man expects. The kingdom that extended this promise was not an earthly kingdom, but an eternal kingdom with a king who would be immortal and rule for ever: the Lord Jesus Christ.Matthew skips generations and has evidently selected from the genealogy in order to produce his memorable sets of fourteen names (Matthew 1:17). Luke has more names and therefore more generations, but his list of names differs from the Old Testament genealogies also. Luke goes back another twenty generation from Abraham to Adam, a period when Genesis tells us lifespans were considerably longer.The inclusion of the words ‘as was supposed’ in reference to Jesus being the son of Joseph make it clear that Luke is not contradicting what he has said earlier about the virgin birth. Why is Joseph even mentioned if this is the genealogy of Mary? The explanation given by ancient writers is that Joseph is mentioned in what is Mary’s genealogy, because he is the legal father of Jesus. In this case it is possible to apply ‘of heli’ to Joseph, rather than to Jesus.The Lord Jesus was about thirty years old. Although there was no requirement according to the law that it should be so in Jesus’ case, that was the age at which the levites began to serve in the temple (Numbers 4:3 and throughout the chapter).