Five Blossoms on the Lord’s Family Tree: Why Matthew Starts with a Scandalous Genealogy

Most people treat Matthew 1:1–17 like the credits before the movie starts—something to fast-forward through so we can get to the angels and shepherds. But the Holy Spirit never wastes ink. Those forty-two generations are not filler; they are a blazing neon sign shouting, “Grace! Grace! Grace!”  

Matthew could have opened with a thunderclap of glory: “Behold, the King!” Instead, he begins with a family tree that looks more like a police blotter. And right there, in a list dominated by men, the Spirit deliberately plants five women—five shocking blossoms—to preach the gospel before the gospel is even explained.

Here they are, with the lessons God wrote in blood and history:

1. Tamar – The Rejected Daughter-in-Law Who Became a Mother in Israel (v. 3)  

Genesis 38 is ugly: Judah withholds his son, Tamar is cheated of her rights, and she resorts to deception dressed as a prostitute. Judah himself pronounces, “She is more righteous than I.” From that sordid night come Perez and Zerah—direct ancestors of the Messiah. The first woman in Jesus’ line reminds us: God’s Savior enters the world through broken marriages, broken promises, and broken people.

2. Rahab – The Canaanite Harlot Who Hung the Scarlet Cord (v. 5)  

She ran a brothel on the wall of Jericho. She was under the ban of total destruction. Yet by faith she confessed the true God, hid the spies, and tied a scarlet thread in her window. That thread became a sign of atonement centuries before the Lamb was slain. A Gentile prostitute became David’s great-great-grandmother. If Rahab is in the family, no one is too pagan, too immoral, or too far outside the covenant for God to save.

3. Ruth – The Cursed Moabitess Who Became David’s Grandmother (v. 5)  

Deuteronomy 23:3 declares that no Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord “even to the tenth generation.” Ruth was generation one, yet by generation four she is the grandmother of King David. How? She abandoned Chemosh for Yahweh and said, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The Law’s curse was swallowed up by electing love. The gospel was leaping over national borders long before the Great Commission.

4. Bathsheba – “The Wife of Uriah” (v. 6)  

Matthew will not even dignify the adultery by calling her “Bathsheba.” He calls her “the wife of Uriah”—the man David murdered. From the ashes of that horrific sin came Solomon, the immediate heir to the throne. The worst chapter in David’s life became a link in the chain leading to Christ. God is so sovereign over evil that He can take murder and adultery and produce the Prince of Peace. Repentant sinners, take heart: your worst failures are not stronger than His redeeming power.

5. Mary – The Virgin Who Needed No Human Father (v. 16)  

Every previous link said, “Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob…” until suddenly: “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus.” The chain of human begetting stops cold. The four women before her—scandalous, Gentile, sinful—prepared the world to believe the ultimate scandal: a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son. The Seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15) has arrived without the seed of a man. Immanuel has come.

The Point of the Crooked Tree

Jesus did not hide His family skeletons in the closet; He nailed them to the front door. Why? So that every Tamar, every Rahab, every Ruth, every Bathsheba who trusts in Him can say, “If they are in the line, then there is room for me.”

The Lion of Judah did not spring from a pristine, perfect pedigree. He grew on a tree with some very crooked branches—yet every branch was held firmly in the hand of a sovereign God who works all things according to the counsel of His will.

Your past does not disqualify you. Your nationality does not exclude you. Your failures do not frighten Him away. The same grace that grafted five unlikely blossoms into the royal line has grafted you, by faith, into Christ Himself.

So come, all you who are weary and heavy-laden with shame, regret, and sin. The Root of Jesse has blossomed, and His name is Jesus. He is not ashamed to call you brethren.

DMMC 

12-9-25