Mothers Of Messiah-The Known And Unknown Series

Introduction: some of the women who are in the line of Jesus, the Messiah, are well-known. Some are mentioned only by name and others aren’t mentioned at all. Regardless, the Lord knows each one of them—by name—and allowed each one to be part of His plan to bring salvation to a lost and dying world. He allowed them to be mothers of the Messiah!

Text, Matthew 1:1-6, KJV: 1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; 3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 4 And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; 5 And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; 6 And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;

A couple of notes: first, the King James Version renders the names according to the Greek spelling of the names of each person. “Judas” is the same as “Judah” in the Old Testament, for example, just as “Booz” is the same as “Boaz”. Second, I’ll refer to these Old Testament (OT) people by their OT names. Some translations and versions already do this.

Matthew begins his Gospel with a link to the OT. The Scofield Reference Bible notes mention this, explaining these very first words in the New Testament connect with the Old Testament. Note also that Matthew begins with Abraham, not Adam. Luke 3 has the lineage back to Adam.

And Matthew also covers a great deal of time in this first section of the Messiah’s genealogy. Abraham lived to be 175 years of age (Genesis 25:7) and Isaac 180 (Gen. 35:28). Jacob lived to be 147 (Gen. 47:28) so their lifetimes combine for 502 years of human history! In addition, their wives are relatively well-known and have a good amount of “coverage” in the OT. Sarah and her adventures with Abraham are well documented, as is the joy she experienced when Isaac was born. Rebekah left her homeland and became Isaac’s wife, giving him two sons, Esau and Jacob. Then Jacob left his home environment to stay with Rebekah’s brother Laban back in her original dwelling place. All of this is found in Genesis 12-35.

While Jacob was back in his uncle’s land, he married sisters, Leah and Rachel; later, each of these women gave their handmaids or servants to Jacob as wives too. Jacob was blessed with 12 sons and at least one daughter. Of these people, only one wife—Leah—and only one of her children—Judah, the fourth son—were selected to be in the line of the Messiah. Jacob blessed Jacob in Genesis 49:10, telling him the “scepter” would not depart from him and that was true: the two best kings Israel ever had, David and Solomon, were both descended from Judah.

Judah’s story, how his sons were born, is one of the more unusual stories in the Bible (see Genesis 38). He left his family for a number of years (there is some debate over when this took place) and lived in the land of Canaan. He married a Canaanite woman (her name is not given) and with her had three sons. Tamar (“Thamar”, verse 3) was actually his Canaanite daughter-in-law and eventually had these twin boys (Phares and Zara, known as Pharez and Zarah in Genesis 38:27-30). Pharez became the one whose children would include the Messiah!

The wives of Pharez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab and Nahshon (verse 3 has the New Testament spellings of their names) are never given, but these women still had an important part in the lineage of the Messiah. Some, if not all, lived through the Egyptian Captivity and some survived the entry into Canaan. Salmon, son of Nahshon, certainly did: he married Rahab, a resident and former prostitute of Jericho. This means there were at least two different Canaanite women who were mothers of the Messiah! Salmon and Rahab had at least one son, Boaz, who had a very interesting story about how he met his wife. Verse 5 states Boaz married Ruth, a woman of Moab who became a believer in the God of Israel and that they had a son named Obed. Their whole story is covered in the Book of Ruth, a beautiful story of God’s love.

The name of Obed’s wife isn’t given in Scripture, nor is the name of Jesse’s wife who bore David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons but each of these ladies can rejoice that they were in the line of the Messiah! Again, how much insight or knowledge of this they might have had is never revealed but one day, they surely will be rewarded. No matter how well known, or unknown, every person can and does have a part in accomplishing God’s purpose on this earth.