Saturday 13th December
Read Matthew 1:17
“Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.” (NIVUK)
The links built into Matthew’s genealogy to focus us on David and Abraham are intricate and complete.
We have already observed that fourteen is the sum of the letters of David’s name. One would logically expect that somehow Matthew will have inserted Abraham in his genealogy using gematria (the practice of signalling significance through the numbers associated with the Hebrew letters). The number required for Abraham is 41. Astute readers will have noted that three times fourteen is 42 – so we should expect 42 names in Matthew’s list… Have a closer look.
Respected scholar J. Richard Middleton points us to some of the more, what we would consider, obscure links. He draws our attention to the subtle changes in the names of those in the first panel from Abraham to David. All legitimate variations of the spelling, but not common variants. He writes: “When the numerical values of the Hebrew consonants behind Matthew’s Greek spelling of the fourteen names from Abraham to David (Matthew 1:2-6a) are added up, their sum is 574. That turns out to be exactly the numerical value of Abraham (41), the first name in the list, multiplied by the numerical value of David (14), the last in the list. The numbers would have been different (and would not have matched) if Matthew had kept the original spelling. Matthew clearly wanted to emphasize the names Abraham and David for his readers at this point in the genealogy.”
Matthew expects a lot from his readers!
