Matthew 1:7 Commentary and Bible Study

When we consider the immutability and reliability of the decrees of God, and at the same time the apparent fragility and instability of the twists and turns of history that bring about God’s intended outcome, we are amazed. How can God by such apparent hap hazard and slight means bring about something so sure and so certain? These events teach us to look at history in a new light, and they teach us to look at the events of our own lives in a different way. At times the plan of God seems to hang on a thread, but that thread proves capable of carrying the weight of the Lord’s eternal purposes. We give thanks to God for his providences in our lives whether they come about by careful and considered means, or by means that seems to be wholly fortuitous. Solomon took Israel to its greatest position in all its history, but for a time departed from the living God and muddied his kingly line by taking seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. He went after Ashtoreth and Milcom and built a high altar to Chemosh, the gods of his foreign wives. Following his death, by the judgment of God, the kingdom of Israel was divided during the reign of his son Roboam (Rehoboam), and the tribe of Judah from whom the Christ would come retained only a part of the land, becoming a territorially very small nation. Like many other kings of Judah that followed, Abia (Abijah), Rehoboam’s son, ‘walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father’ (1 Kings 15:3). ‘Nevertheless,’ God’s purpose for the future birth of the Christ remained firm, and ‘for David’s sake did the LORD his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem’ (1 Kings 15:4). Asa and Josaphat (Jehoshaphat) loved the Lord, but Joram (Jehoram) walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. But again, ‘the LORD would not destroy Judah for David his servant’s sake, as he promised him to give him alway a light, and to his children’ (2 Kings 8:19). At this point Matthew’s genealogy skips several generations and moves to Ozias (Uzziah), the great, great grandson of Joram. The term ‘son’ is used here in the broader sense of descendant. Uzziah for most of his life served the Lord and led Judah to develop new weapons of war, but at the end of his life he usurped the place of the priest and was struck by God with leprosy. His son Joatham (Jotham) also did what was right in the sight of the Lord and became mighty, ‘because he prepared his ways before the LORD his God’ (2 Chronicles 27:6). Achaz (Ahaz) lived like the kings of Israel and worshipped idols, and was therefore delivered over to Syria and to northern Israel by the Lord. God continued to discipline the kings of Judah, when they sinned in severe ways, which, at times, seemed to threaten their line, even though the Messiah would come from them. During his reign Israel and took two hundred thousand from Judah into captivity which might have fatally destroyed the tribe (2 Chronicles 28:8), but God commanded Israel to release the prisoners from Judah, and after this God brought further troubles on Ahaz from other nations. His son Ezekias (Hezekiah) was a godly king who turned the nation back to the Lord, and he saw a remarkable deliverance of God when one hundred and eighty-five thousand men of the Assyrian army besieging Jerusalem were destroyed by the hand of God. In spite of his father’s godly example Manasses (Manasseh) his son was a wicked king. It seems impossible that the kingly line could survive when he was punished by God by being bound in fetters and carried to Babylon, and yet he humbled himself and prayed to God and the Lord brought him back to Jerusalem again. His son Amon did not follow his father’s example of repentance, and returned to idol worship, and Amon was slain in his house. The next king Josias (Josiah) was crowned as a boy, and loved the Lord and purged idol worship from the land. During his reign the book of the law was found in the temple where it had been out of use, and triggered further reforms. Only one more of Judah’s last four kings are named, who are referred to as Jechonias (Jehoiachin) and his brothers. Jehoiachin was in fact the grandson of Josiah, and his father and uncles also reigned for a time. Judah was finally punished by God by being carried into exile in Babylon for seventy years. Even here however, the eye of the Lord continued to watch over his purposes, and not to forget his promises to Abraham and to David.