Bible Commentaries

Matthew 1:13. None of the members of the genealogy after Zerubbabel, whose son Abiud is not named in 1 Chronicles 3:19 f. along with the others, occurs in the O. T. The family of David had already fallen into a humble position. But even after the exile, the preservation and, relatively, the restoration of the genealogies remained a subject of national, especially priestly, concern; comp. Joseph, c. Apion. This concern could not but be only all the more lively and active in reference to the house of David, with which the expectation of the Messiah was always connected.

Matthew 1:16. Ἰακὼβ … Ἰωσήφ] In Luke 3:24, Joseph is called a son of Eli. This variation, also, cannot be set aside. As in the case of most great men who have sprung from an obscure origin, so also in the case of Jesus, the ancestors of no reputation were forgotten, and were given by tradition in varying form. The view, however (Epiphanius, Luther, Calovius in answer to Grotius, Bengel, Rosenmüller, Paulus, Gratz, Hofmann, Olshausen, Ebrard, Lange, Arnoldi, Bisping, Auberlen), that Luke gives the genealogy of Mary, and consequently that in Luke 3:24 Joseph is entered as son-in-law of Eli, or Eli as maternal grandfather of Jesus (Spanheim, Wieseler, Riggenbach in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1855, p. 585 ff., Krafft), is just as baseless and harmonistically forced an invention as that of Augustine, de consen. ev. ii. 3; or of Wetstein, Delitzsch, that Joseph was the adopted son of Eli; or that of Julius Africanus in Eusebius i. 7, that Matthew gives the proper father of Joseph, while Luke gives his legal father according to the law of Levirate marriage (Hug), or conversely (Schleiermacher after Ambrose and others). The contradictions which our genealogy presents to that of Luke are to be impartially recognised. See a more minute consideration of this in Luke after ch. 3.

It is well known that the Jews (the Talmud, and in Origen, c. Celsum, i. 32) call Jesus the son of Pandira[354] or Panthera. See Paulus, exeget. Handb. I. p. 290; Nitzsch in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1840, 1; Keim, Leben Jesu, I. p. 368; Ewald, Gesch. Christi, p. 187, ed. 3.

ἄνδρα] is to be rendered husband, and not (Olshausen, after Theophylact, Grotius) betrothed. For when the genealogist wrote, Joseph had been long ago the husband of Mary; and the signification of ἈΝΉΡ is never that of sponsus.

ἐξ ἧς] see on Galatians 4:4.

ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός] if the assumption of Storr (Zweck d. evangel. Gesch. u. d. Briefe Joh. p. 273), that this addition expresses the doubt of the genealogist, an unbelieving relative of Jesus, is a pure imagination, and completely opposed to the standpoint of the evangelist, who adopted the genealogy, still we are not to say, with Olshausen (comp. Gersdorf, and already Er. Schmidt), that λέγεσθαι here means to be called, and also actually to be. This would be to confuse it improperly with ΚΑΛΕῖΣΘΑΙ. See Winer, p. 571 [E. T. 769]. The genealogical source, which found a reception in our Matthew, narrates in a purely historical manner: who bears the name of Christ (Matthew 4:18, Matthew 10:2, Matthew 27:17); for this name, which became His from the official designation, was the distinctive name of this Jesus. Comp., besides, Remark 3, after Matthew 1:17.

[354] פַּנְדִירָא. Epiphanius, Haeres. 78. 7, thus (Πάνθηρ) terms the father of Joseph. John of Damascus, de fide Orthodox. iv. 15, removes this name still further back in the roll of ancestors. The Jewish book, Toledoth Jeschu, calls the father of Jesus, Joseph Pandira. See Eisenmenger, p. 105; Paulus, exeget. Handb. I. p. 156 f.; Thilo, Cod. apocr. I. p. 526 f.

Matthew 1:17. This contains the remark of the evangelist in accordance with (οὖν) this genealogical tree, contained in Matthew 1:2-16. The key to the calculation, according to which the thrice-recurring fourteen links are to be enumerated, lies in Matthew 1:11-12. According to Matthew 1:11, Josiah begat Jechoniah at the time of the migration to Babylon; consequently Jechoniah must be included in the terminus ad quem, which is designated by ἕως τῆς μετοικεσίας Βαβυλῶνος in Matthew 1:17. The same Jechoniah, however, must just as necessarily again begin the third division, as the same begins with ἀπὸ τῆς μετοικεσίας Βαβυλῶνος. Jechoniah, however, who was himself begotten at the time of the migration, did not become a father until after the migration (Matthew 1:12), so that he therefore belonged as begotten to the period ἕως τῆς μετοικ. Βαβυλ., but as a father to the period ἀπὸ τῆς μετοικ. Βαβυλ., standing in his relation to the epoch of the μετοικεσία as a twofold person. It is not so with David, as the latter, like every other except Jechoniah, is only named, but not brought into connection with an epoch-making event in the history, in relation to which he might appear as son and father in a twofold personality. He has therefore no right to be counted twice. According to this view, the three tesseradecades are to be thus divided,[355]—

[355] Comp. Strauss, 2d ed.; Hug, Gutachten; Wieseler in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1845, p. 377; Köstlin, Urspr. d. synopt. Evang. p. 30; Hilgenfeld, Evang. p. 46; also Riggenbach in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1856, p. 580 f., Leb. Jes. p. 261. So early as Augustine, and at a later date, Jansen and several others, count Jechoniah twice; so also Schegg; substantially also Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, who only express themselves awkwardly in saying that the time of the Exile is placed ἐν τάξει γενεᾶς.

I. 1. Abraham; 2. Isaac; 3. Jacob; 4. Judah; 5. Perez; 6. Hezron; 7. Ram; 8. Aminadab; 9. Naasson; 10. Salma; 11. Boaz; 12. Obed; 13. Jesse; 14. David.

II. 1. Solomon; 2. Rehoboam; 3. Abijah; 4. Asa; 5. Jehoshaphat; 6. Joram; 7. Uzziah; 8. Jotham; 9. Ahaz; 10. Hezekiah; 11. Manasseh; 12. Ammon; 13. Josiah; 14. Jechoniah (ἐπὶ τῆς μετοικεσίας, Matthew 1:11).

III. 1. Jechoniah (μετὰ τὴν μετοικεσίαν, Matthew 1:12); 2. Salathiel; 3. Zerubbabel; 4. Abiud; 5. Eliakim; 6. Azor; 7. Zadok; 8. Achim; 9. Eliud; 10. Eleazar; 11. Matthan; 12. Jacob; 13. Joseph; 14. Jesus.

In the third division we have to notice that in any case Jesus also must be counted, because Matthew 1:17 says ἕως τοῦ Χριστοῦ, in keeping with Matthew 1:1, where Ἰησοῦς Χριστός is announced as the subject of the genealogy, and consequently as the last of the entire list. If Jesus were not included in the enumeration, we should then have a genealogy of Joseph, and the final terminus must have been said to be ἕως Ἰωσήφ. Certainly, according to our Gospel, no proper γενεά existed between Joseph and Jesus, a circumstance which in reality takes away from the entire genealogical tree its character as a genealogy of Jesus in the proper sense. The genealogist himself, however, guards so definitely against every misinterpretation by the words τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη Ἰησοῦς, that we distinctly see that he means to carry the descent of Jesus beyond Joseph back to David and Abraham, only in so far as Joseph, being husband of the mother of Jesus, was His father, merely putatively so indeed, but by the marriage his father in the eye of the law, although not his real parent. After all this, we are neither, with Olearius, Bengel, Fritzsche, de Wette (who is followed by Strauss, 4th ed., I. p. 139), Delitzsch, Bleek, and others, to divide thus: (1) Abraham to David, (2) David to Josiah, (3) Jechoniah to Christ; nor, with Storr (Diss. in libror. hist. N. T. loca, p. 1 ff.), Rosenmüller, Kuinoel, Olshausen: (1) Abraham to David, (2) David to Josiah, (3) Josiah to Joseph; nor are we to say, with Paulus, that among the unknown links, Matthew 1:13-16, one has fallen out owing to the copyists; nor, with Jerome, Gusset, Wolf, Gratz, to make Jechoniah in Matthew 1:11 into Joiakim, by the insertion of which Ewald completes (see on Matthew 1:11) the second tesseradecade, without counting David twice; nor, with Ebrard, Lange, Krafft, to insert Mary as an intermediate link between Joseph and Jesus, by whose marriage with Joseph, Jesus became heir to the theocratic throne. The latter is erroneous on this account, that it contradicts the text, which does not speak of succession to the theocratic throne, but of γενεαί, the condition of which is ἐγέννησε and ἐγεννήθη.

We must assume that the reason for the division into three tesseradecades was not merely to aid the memory (Michaelis, Eichhorn, Kuinoel, Fritzsche), which is not sufficient to explain the emphatic and solemn prominence given to the equal number of links in the three periods, Matthew 1:17; nor even the Cabbalistic number of the name David (דוד, i.e. 14; so Surenhusius, Ammon, Leben Jesu, I. p. 173), as it is not David, but Jesus, that is in question; nor a reminiscence of the forty-two encampments in the wilderness (Origen, Luther, Gfrörer, Philo, II. p. 429, after Numbers 33), which would be quite arbitrary and foreign to the subject; nor a requirement to the reader to seek out the theocratic references concealed in the genealogy (Ebrard), in doing which Matthew would, without any reason, have proposed the proper design of his genealogical tree as a mere riddle, and by his use of ἐγέννησε would have made the solution itself impossible: but that precisely from Abraham to David fourteen links appeared, which led the author to find fourteen links for the two other periods also, in which, according to Jewish idiosyncrasy, he saw something special, which contained a mystic allusion to the sytematic course of divine leading in the Messiah’s genealogy, where perhaps also the attraction of holiness in the number seven (the double of which was yielded by the first period) came into play. Comp. Synops. Soh. p. 132. 18 : “Ab Abrahamo usque ad Salom. quindecim sunt generationes, atque tunc luna fuit in plenilunio, a Salomone usque ad Zedekiam iterum sunt quindecim generationes, et tunc luna defecit, et Zedekiae effossi sunt oculi.” See also Genesis 5:3 ff; Genesis 11:10 ff., where, from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, ten links in each case are counted. It is altogether arbitrary, however, because there is no allusion to it in Matthew, when Delitzsch (in Rudelbach and Guericke’s Zeitschrift, 1850, p. 587 ff.) explains the symmetry of the three tesseradecades from this, that Matthew always makes a generation from Abraham to David amount to eighty years, but each of the following to forty, and consequently has calculated 1120 + 560 + 560 years. To do so is incorrect, because γενεαί receives its designation from ἐγέννησε, it being presupposed that γενεά denotes a generation.

REMARK 1.

It is clear from πᾶσαι that the evangelist supposed that he had the genealogical tree complete, and consequently was not aware of the important omissions.

REMARK 2.

Whether Mary also was descended from David, as Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. xxiii. 45. 100, Irenaeus, iii. 21. 5, Julius Africanus, ap. Eusebium, i. 7, Tertullian, and other Fathers, as well as the Apocrypha of the N. T., e.g. Protev. Jacobi 10, de nativ. Mariae, already teach,[356] is a point upon which any evidence from the N. T. is entirely wanting, as the genealogical tree in Luke is not that of Mary. Nor can a conclusion be drawn to that effect, as is done by the Greek Fathers, from the Davidic descent of Joseph; for even if Mary had been an heiress, which, however, cannot at all be established (comp. on Luke 2:5), this would be quite a matter of indifference so far as her descent is concerned, since the law in Numbers 36:6 only forbade such daughters to marry into another tribe, Ewald, Alterth. p. 239 f. [E. T. p. 208], Saalschütz, M. R. p. 829 f., and in later times was no longer observed; see Delitzsch, l.c. p. 582. The Davidic descent of Mary would follow from passages such as those in Acts 2:30, Romans 1:3-4, 2 Timothy 2:8, comp. Hebrews 7:14, if we were certain that the view of the supernatural generation of Jesus lay at the basis of these; Luke 1:27; Luke 1:32; Luke 1:69 prove nothing, and Luke 2:4 just as little (in answer to Wieseler, Beitr. z. Würdig. der Evang. p. 144); we might rather infer from Luke 1:36 that Mary belonged to the tribe of Levi. The Davidic descent of Jesus, however, is established as certain by the predictions of the prophets, which, in reference to so essential a mark of the Messiah, could not remain without fulfilment, as well as by the unanimous testimony of the N. T. (Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8; Hebrews 7:14; John 7:41; Revelation 5:5; Revelation 22:16), and is also confirmed by Hegesippus (in Eusebius iii. 20), according to whom, grandsons of Jude, the Lord’s brother, were brought, as descendants of David (ὡς ἐκ γένους ὄντας Δαυίδ), before Domitian. To doubt this descent of Jesus, and to regard it rather as a hypothesis which, as an abstraction deduced from the conception of Messiah, had attached itself to the Messianic predicate Song of Solomon of David (comp. Schleiermacher, Strauss, B. Bauer, Weiss, Schenkel, Holtzmann, Eichthal), is the more unhistorical, that Jesus Himself lays down that descent as a necessary condition of Messiahship; see on Matthew 22:42 ff.; besides Keim, Gesch. Jesu, I. p. 326 ff., also Weiss, bibl. Theolog. § 18, and Ewald, Gesch. Chr. p. 242 ff. ed. 3.

[356] In the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, on the other hand, the tribe of Levi is definitely alluded to as that to which Mary belonged. See pp. 542, 546, 654, 689. In another passage, p. 724, she is represented as a descendant of Judah. Comp. on Luke 1:36, and see Thilo, ad Cod. apocr. p. 375. Ewald’s remark, that the Protevang. Jacobi leaves the tribe of Mary undetermined, is incorrect, ch. 10. b. In Thilo, p. 212, it is said: ὅτι Μαριὰμ ἐκ φυλῆς Δαβίδ ἐστι.

REMARK 3.

As the evangelist relates the divine generation of Jesus, he was therefore far removed from the need of constructing a genealogy of Joseph, and accordingly we must suppose that the genealogy was found and adopted by him (Harduin, Paulus, Olshausen, and most moderns), but was not his own composition (older view, de Wette, Delitzsch). Add to this that, as clearly appears from Luke, various genealogical trees must have been in existence, at the foundation of which, however, had originally[357] lain the view of a natural γένεσις of Jesus, although the expression of such a view had already disappeared from them, so that Matthew 1:16 no longer ran Ἰωσὴφ δὲ ἐγέννησεν Ἰησοῦν, and in Luke 3:23, ὡς ἐνομίζετο was already interpolated. Such anti-Ebionitic alterations in the last link of the current genealogical registers of Jesus are not to be ascribed, first, to the evangelists themselves (Strauss, Schenkel); nor is the alteration in question which occurs in Matthew to be derived from a supposed redactor who dealt freely with a fundamental gospel document of a Judaistic kind (Hilgenfeld). The expression ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστύς in Matthew 1:16 rather betrays that the genealogical written source passed over into the Gospel in the shape in which it already existed; neither the author nor an editor would have written ὁ λεγόμενος (comp. Matthew 1:1; Matthew 1:18), or, had they made an alteration in Matthew 1:16, they would not have allowed it to remain.

[357] It must be admitted that the genealogies owe their origin to the view that Joseph’s paternal relation was real, and that their original purpose bore that Joseph was the actual, and not merely the putative, father of Jesus, because otherwise the composition of a genealogical tree of Joseph would have been without any motive of faith. But we must also grant that the evangelists, so early as the time when they composed their works, found the genealogies with the definite statements announcing the putative paternal relationship, and by that very circumstance saw it adapted for reception without any contradiction to their belief in the divine generation of Jesus. They saw in it a demonstration of the Davidic descent of Jesus according to the male line of succession, so far as it was possible and allowable to give such in the deficiency of a human father, that is, back beyond the reputed father. The circumstance, however, that Joseph recognised Jesus as a lawful son, presented to him in a miraculous manner, although he was not his flesh and blood (Delitzsch and others), assuredly leads, in like manner, only to a γενεά which is not real.

Matthew 1:18. Τοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ] provided with the article, and placed first with reference to Matthew 1:16. “The origin of Jesus Christ, however, was as follows.”

μνηστευθείσης] On the construction, see Buttmann, neut. Gram. p. 270 f. [E. T. 315]. On the betrothal, after which the bride still remained in the house of her parents without any closer intercourse with the bridegroom until she was brought home, see Maimonides, Tract. אִישׁוֹת; Saalschütz, M. R. p. 728 ff.; Keil, Archaeol. § 109.

γάρ] explicative, namely, see Klotz, ad Devar. p. 234 ff.; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 86 ff.

πρὶν ἤ] belongs as much as the simple πρίν to the Ionic, and to the middle age of the Attic dialect; see Elmsley, ad Eur. Med. 179; Reisig, ad Soph. Oed. Colm. 36; it is, however, already found alone in Xenophon (Kühner, ad Anab. iv. 5. 1), as also in Thucydides, v. 61. 1, according to our texts (see, however, Krüger in loc.), but is foreign to the Attic poets. With the aorist infinitive, it denotes that the act is fully accomplished. Klotz, ad Devar. p. 726. Comp. Acts 2:20; Acts 7:2; Mark 14:30; John 4:49; Tob 14:15.

συνελθεῖν] Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Erasmus, Maldonatus, Jansen, Bengel, Elsner, Loesner, and others understand it of cohabitation in marriage. The usage of the language is not opposed to this. See the passages of Philo in Loesner, Obss. p. 2; Joseph. Antt. vii. 9. 5; Diodorus Siculus, iii. 57, Test. XII. Patr. pp. 600, 701. Just as correct, however, in a linguistic point of view (Kypke, Obss. p. 1 f.), and at the same time more appropriate to the reference to Matthew 1:20; Matthew 1:24, is the explanation of others (Luther, Beza, Er. Schmid, Lightfoot, Grotius, Kypke, Kuinoel, Fritzsche, de Wette, Arnoldi, Bleek) of the bringing home and of domestic intercourse. Others (Calvin, Wetstein, Rosenmüller, Olshausen) combine both explanations. But the author in the present case did not conceive the cohabitation in marriage to be connected with the bringing home, see Matthew 1:25.

εὑρέθη] Euth. Zigabenus (comp. Chrysostom and Theophylact) appropriately renders it: ἐφάνη. Εὑρέθη δὲ εἶπε διὰ τὸ ἀπροσδόκῃτον. Εὑρεθῆναι is nowhere equivalent to εἶναι. See Winer, p. 572 [E. T. 769].

ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχειν or φέρειν, to be pregnant, very often in the LXX., also in Greek writers, Herodotus, iii. 32, Vit. Hom. ii.; Plato, Legg. vii. p. 792 E.

ἐκ πν. ἁγ.] without the article, see Winer, p. 116 [E. T. 151]. רוּהַ יְהֹוָה or רוּחַ קֹרֶשׁ יְהֹוָה, πνεῦμα, πν. ἅγιον, πν. τοῦ Θεοῦ, is the personal divine principle of the higher, religious-moral, and eternal life, which works effectually for the true reign of God, and especially for Christianity, which rules in believers, and sanctifies them for the Messiah’s kingdom, and which, in reference to the intellect, is the knowledge of divine truth, revelation, prophecy, etc., in reference to morals is the consecration of holiness and power in the moral life of the new birth with its virtues and world-subduing dispositions, bringing about, in particular, the truth and fervour of prayer, the pledge of everlasting life. Here the πνεῦμα ἅγιον is that which produces the human existence of Christ, through whose action—which so appeared only in this, the single case of its kind—the origin of the embryo in the womb of Mary was causally produced (ἐκ) in opposition to human generation, so that the latter is thereby excluded. It is not, however, that divine power of the Spirit (Luke 1:35), which only concurs in the action of human generation and makes it effectual, as in the generation of Isaac and of the Baptist, and, as the idea is expressed in the Sohar Gen. (comp. Schmidt in the Bibl. f. Krit. v. Exeg. d. N. T. I. p. 101): “Omnes illi, qui, sciunt se sanctificare in hoc mundo, ut par est (ubi generant), attrahunt super id Spiritum sanctitatis et exeuntes ab eo illi vocantur filii Jehovae.” Theodore of Mopsuestia (apud Fred. Fritzsche, Theodori Mops, in N. T. Commentar. p. 2): ὥσπερ γὰρ (τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον) κοινωνόν ἐστι πατρί τε καὶ υἱῷ εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς δημιουργίαν, οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς παρθένου τοῦ σωτῆρος σῶμα κατεσκεύασε.

ἐκ πνεύμ. ἅγ., moreover, is added, not as an object to εὑρέθη, but from the historical standpoint, to secure at once a correct judgment upon the ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα (ἐθεράπευσε τὸν λόγον, Euth. Zigabenus).

REMARK.

As regards the conception of Jesus by a virgin, we have to notice the following points in their exegetical bearing:—(1) Mary was either a daughter of David (the common view), or she was not. See on Matthew 1:17, Remark 2. In the first case, Jesus, whose divine generation is assumed, was, as Matthew and Luke relate, a descendant of David, although not through an unbroken line of male succession, but in such a way that His mother alone conveyed to Him the Davidic descent. But if Mary were not a daughter of David, then, by the divine conception, the possibility of Jesus being a descendant of David is simply excluded; because, on that view, the Davidite Joseph remains out of consideration, and this would be in contradiction not only with the statements of prophecy, but also with the unanimous testimony of the N. T. (2) As it is nowhere said or hinted in the N. T. that Mary was a descendant of David, we must assume that this is tacitly presupposed in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. But as a consequence of this supposition, the genealogical trees would lose all their importance, in so far as they are said to prove that Jesus was υἱὸς Δαυείδ (Matthew 1:1). Joseph’s descent from David, upon which in reality nothing would turn, would be particularly pointed out; while Mary’s similar descent, upon which everything would depend, would remain unmentioned as being a matter of course, and would not be, even once, incidentally alluded to in what follows, say by θυγάτηρ Δαυείδ, as Joseph is at once addressed in Matthew 1:20 as υἱὸς Δαυείδ. (3) Paul and Peter (Romans 1:3-4; Acts 2:30 : ἐκ σπέρματος, ἐκ καρποῦ τῆς ὀσφύος; comp. 2 Timothy 2:8) designate the descent of Jesus from David in such a way, that without calling in the histories of the birth in the first and third Gospels, there is no occasion for deriving the Davidic descent from the mother, to the interruption of the male line of succession, for which Galatians 4:4[358] also affords neither cause nor justification. Nowhere, moreover, where Paul speaks of the sending of the Son of God, and of His human yet sinless nature (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:3; Php 2:6 f.), does he betray any indication that he presupposes that divine conception.[359] (4) Just as little does John, whose expression ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, although he was so intimate with Jesus and His mother, leaves the question as to the how of this ἐγένετο without a direct answer, indeed; but also, where Jesus is definitely designated by others as Joseph’s son, contributes no word of correction (John 1:46, John 6:42; comp. John 7:27),—nay, relates the self-designation “Song of Solomon of a man” from Jesus’ own mouth (see on John 5:27), where the context does not allow us to refer ἀνθρώπου to His mother. (5) It is certain, further, that neither in Nazareth (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22), nor in Capernaum (John 6:42), nor elsewhere in the neighbourhood (John 1:46), do we meet with such expressions, in which a knowledge of anything extraordinary in the descent of Jesus might be recognised; and in keeping with this also is the unbelief of His own brethren (John 7:3),—nay, even the behaviour and bearing of Mary (Mark 3:21; Mark 3:31; comp. on Matthew 12:46-50; see also Luke 2:50 f.). (6) We have still to observe, that what is related in Matthew 1:18 would obviously have greatly helped to support the suspicion and reproach of illegitimate birth, and yet nowhere throughout the N. T. is there found the slightest whisper of so hostile a report.[360] If, moreover, in the narratives of the first and third evangelists, angelic appearances occur, which, according to the connection of the history, mutually exclude each other (Strauss, I. p. 165 ff.; Keim, Gesch. Jesu, I. p. 362 ff.),—namely, in Matthew, after the conception, in order to give an explanation to Joseph; in Luke, before the conception, to make a disclosure to Mary,—nevertheless that divine conception itself might remain, and in and of itself be consistent therewith, if it were elsewhere certainly attested in the N. T., or if it could be demonstrated as being an undoubted presupposition, belonging to the conception of Christ as the Son of God.

[358] Certainly, in Romans 1:4, Paul expressly refers Christ’s relation to God as His Son to His πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης, not to His σάρξ. See on Romans 1:3. The supernatural generation is not a logical consequence of his system, as Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 315, thinks. If Paul had conceived the propagation of sin as taking place by means of generation (which is probable, although he has not declared himself upon the point), he cannot, in so thinking,—after the history of the fall (2 Corinthians 11:3), and after Psalm 51:7,—have regarded the woman’s share as a matter of indifference.

[359] We should all the more have expected this origin to have been stated by Paul, that he, on the one side, everywhere ascribes to Christ true and perfect humanity (Romans 5:15; 1 Corinthians 15:21, al.), and, on the other, so often gives prominence to His elevation above sinful humanity; for which reason he also designates the σάρξ of Christ—which was human, and yet was not, as in other men, the seat of sin—as ὁμοίωμα σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας (Romans 8:3), with which Hebrews 2:14; Hebrews 2:17 also agrees.

[360] The generation (nay, according to Luke 2:5, the birth also) before the marriage was concluded is necessarily connected with faith in the divine generation. The reproach of illegitimate birth was not raised by the Jews until a later time (Origen, c. Celsum, 1:28), as a hostile and base inference from the narratives of Matthew and Luke. Thilo, ad Cod. Apocr. I. p. 526 f. They called Jesus a Mamser [i.e. one born in incest]. See Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. I p. 105 ff.

Taking into account all that precedes, it is clear, in the first place, that the doctrine which became dominant in the church, in opposition to all Ebionitism, of the birth of Jesus Christ from a virgin, is indeed fully justified on exegetical grounds by the preliminary history in Matthew and Luke; but that, secondly, apart from the preliminary history, no glimpse of this doctrine appears anywhere in the N. T.,—nay, that elsewhere in the N. T. it has to encounter considerable difficulties of an exegetical kind, without, however, breaking down before physiological or theological impossibilities (in answer to Strauss). Exegetically, therefore, the proposition of faith, that in Jesus the only-begotten Son of God entered as man into humanity, cannot be made to depend upon the conception, which is recorded only in Matthew and Luke,[361] but must also, irrespective of the latter, remain fast and immutable in its full and real meaning of the incarnation of the divine Logos, which took place, and takes place, in no other; so that that belief cannot be made to depend on the manner in which Jesus was conceived, and in which the Spirit of God acted at the very commencement of His human existence. And this not merely for exegetical, but also for dogmatical reasons, since the incarnation of the Son of God is by no means to be subjected to the rule of universal sinful origin (John 3:6) in fallen humanity (by which His whole redemptive work would be reduced to nothing); and which indeed must also—considering the supernatural conception—be conceived as exempted on the mother’s side from this rule of traducianism.[362]

[361] The comparison with heathen παρθενογενεῖς, called παρθένιοι in Homer, such as Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Romulus (see the literature in Hase, Leb. Jesu, § 27 a), should have been here left entirely out of consideration,—partly because they belong, for the most part, to an entirely foreign sphere of life, have no analogies in the N. T., and amount to apotheoses ex eventu (Origen, c. Celsum, 1:37); partly because so many of the παρθένιοι are only the fruits of the lust of the gods (see Homer, Ilias, 16:180 ff.). Far too much weight has been attached to them, and far too much has been transferred to them from the Christian idea of the Son of God, when the thought is found expressed in them that nothing can come forth by the way of natural generation which would correspond to the ideal of the human mind, Olshausen, Neander, Krabbe, Schmid, bibl. Theol. I. p. 43; Döllinger, Heidenth. u. Judenth. p. 256.

[362] Comp. Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube, § 97, p. 64 ff., and Leben Jesu, p. 60 ff. Too much is asserted, when (see also Gess, Pers. Christ. p. 218 f.) the limitation is imposed upon the divine counsel and will, that the freedom of Jesus from original sin must necessarily presuppose the divine conception in the womb of the Virgin. The incarnation of the Logos is, once for all, a mystery of a peculiar kind; the fact is as certain and clear of itself as the manner in which it took place by way of human birth is veiled in mystery, and is in no way determinable à priori. This is also in answer to Philippi’s assertion (Dogmatik, IV. 1, p. 153, ed. 2), that the idea of the God-man stands or falls with that of the birth from a virgin,—a dangerous but erroneous dilemma. Dangerous, because Mary was not free from original sin; erroneous, because God could also have brought about the incarnation of the Logos without original sin in some other way than by a birth from a virgin.

Matthew 1:19. Ἀνήρ] Although only her betrothed, yet, from the standpoint of the writers, designated as her husband. The common assumption of a proleptic designation (Genesis 29:21) is therefore unfounded. It is different with τὴν γυναῖκά σου in Matthew 1:20.

δίκαιος] not: aequus et benignus. So (after Chrysostom and Jerome) Euth. Zigabenus (διὰ τὴν πρᾳότητα καὶ ἀγαθωσύνην), Luther, Grotius, Kuinoel, Fritzsche, B.-Crusius, Bleek. For δίκαιος, like צַדַּיק, means generally, he who is as he ought to be (Hermann, ad Soph. Ajac. 543; Kühner, ad Xen. Memor. iv. 4. 5; Gesen. Thes. III. p. 1151); therefore rightly constituted, and, in a narrower sense, just, but never kind, although kindness, compassion, and the like may be in given cases the concrete form in which the δικαιοσύνη expresses itself. Here, according to the context, it denotes the man who acts in a strictly legal manner. Δίκαιος down to δειγματίσαι contains two concurring motives. Joseph was an upright man according to the law, and could not therefore make up his mind to retain Mary, as she was pregnant without him; at the same time he could not bring himself to abandon her publicly; he therefore resolved to adopt the middle way, and dismiss her secretly. Observe the emphasis of λάθρα.

δειγματίσαι] to expose; see on Colossians 2:15. Here the meaning is: to expose to public shame. This, however, does not refer to the punishment of stoning (Deuteronomy 22:23), which was to be inflicted; nor to a judicial accusation generally (the common view), because δειγματίσαι must mean a kind of dismissal opposed to that denoted by λάθρα; comp. de Wette. Therefore: he did not wish to compromise her, which would have been the result had he given her a letter of divorce, and thus dismissed her φανερῶς.

λάθρα] secretly, in private, i.e. by means of a secret, private interview, without a letter of divorce. This would, indeed, have been in opposition to the law in Deuteronomy 24:1, which applied also to betrothed persons (Maimonides, Tract. אישוֹת, c. 1; Wetstein in loc.; Philo, de leg. spec. p. 788); but he saw himself liable to a collision between the two cases,—of either, in these circumstances, retaining the bride, or of exposing her to public censure by a formal dismissal; and from this no more legal way of escape presented itself than that on which he might with the more propriety lay hold, that the law itself in Deut. l.c. speaks only of married persons, not of betrothed. De Wette thinks, indeed, of dismissal by a letter of divorcement, but under arrangements providing for secrecy. But the letter of divorce of itself, as it was a public document (see Saalschütz, M. R. p. 800 ff.; Ewald, Alterth. p. 272 [E. T. p. 203 ff.]), is in contradiction with the λάθρα.

On the distinction between θέλω and βούλομαι,—the former of which expresses willing in general, the action of the will, of the inclination, of desire, etc., in general; while βούλομαι denotes a carefully weighed self-determination,—see Buttmann, Lexil. I. p. 26 ff. [E. T., Fishlake, p. 194 ff.], partly corrected by Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 316. Observe the aorist ἐβουλήθη: he adopted the resolution.

Matthew 1:20. Ἰδού] as in Hebrew and in Greek writers, directs attention quickly to an object brought into view. Very frequent in Matthew.

κατʼ ὄναρ] in somnis, Vulg., Virg. Aen. ii. 270; ἐν ὀνείροις, Niceph. Schol. in Synes. p. 442. Frequent in later Greek, but not in the LXX. and Apocrypha; rejected by Photius, p. 149. 25, as βάρβαρον; amongst the old writers, commonly only ὄναρ. See Phrynichus, ed. Lobeck, p. 423 f.; κατά serves to designate the manner and way, and yields the adverbial meaning, in a dream, ὄψις ὀνείρου ἐν τῷ ὕπνῳ, Herod. i. 38. The appearance of the angel was an appearance in a dream; see Kühner, II. 1, p. 413. It might denote the time, if, as in Joseph. Antiq. xi. 9. 3, κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους, or καθʼ ὕπνον (Genesis 20:6), had been employed. Express visions in dreams in the N. T. are related only by Matthew. Comp. besides, Acts 2:17.

υἱὸς Δ.] The reason of this address (nominative, see Kühner, II. 1, p. 43) is not difficult to see (de Wette); it is highly natural in the case of the angel, because he has to bring news of the Messiah. B.-Crusius says too little: Joseph is so addressed as one favoured by God, or, as he for whom something miraculous was quite appropriate. Fritzsche says too much: “ut ad Mariam ducendam promtiorem redderet.” The former neglects the special connection, the latter imports a meaning.

τὴν γυναῖκά σου] apposition to Μαριάμ: the Mary, who is thy wife: in which proleptic designation there lies an element stating the cause. This view (in answer to Fritzsche, who explains: Mary, as thy wife) is required by Matthew 1:24.

ἐν αὐτῇ) not for ἐξ αὐτῆς, but also not to be translated, with Fritzsche: per eam, as ἐν with persons is never merely instrumental, and as the context (Matthew 1:18 : ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ. πν. ἁγ.) demands a different rendering; but, quite literally, in utero Mariae, that which has been begotten in her.

The neuter places the embryo still under the impersonal, material point of view. Comp., first, Matthew 1:21 : τέξεται δὲ υἱόν. See Wetstein, and on Luke 1:35.

ἐκ πν. ἐστιν ἁγίου] proceeds from the Holy Ghost as author, by whom, accordingly, your suspicions are removed. Observe the emphatic position, which lays the determining emphasis upon πνεύματος, in opposition to sexual intercourse. Upon the distinction between ἐνθυμεῖσθαι with the genitive (rationem habere alic. rei) and the accusative (“when he had considered this”), see Kühner, ad Xen. Memorabilia, i. 1. 17; Krüger on Thucyd. i. 42. 1.

Matthew 1:21. Τέξεται δέ] and she will bear. “Non additur tibi, ut additur de Zacharia, Luke 1:13,” Bengel.

Καλέσεις … Ἰησοῦν] literally: thou wilt call His name “Jesus.” Comp. LXX. Genesis 17:19; 1 Samuel 1:20; Matthew 1:23; Matthew 1:25; Luke 1:13; Luke 1:31; Luke 2:21. Exactly so in Hebrew: קרא אֶת־שְׁמוֹ. The Greeks, however, would say: καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτὸν (or also αὐτῷ) Ἰησοῦν; Matthiae, p. 935 [E. T., Kenrick, p. 675 ff.]; Heindorf, ad Plat. Phaedr. p. 238 A.

καλέσεις] the future serves in classical writers to denote the softened idea of the imperative. Bernhardy, p. 378; Kühner, II. 1, p. 149. In the LXX. and in the N. T. it is especially used of divine injunctions, and denotes thereby the imperative sense apodeictically, because it supposes the undoubted certainty of the result; comp. Winer, p. 296 [E. T. 396 f.]. So also here, where a divine command is issued. When Fritzsche would here retain the proper conception of the future, it becomes a mere prediction, less appropriate in the connection; for it is less in keeping with the design of the angelic annunciation, according to which the bestowal and interpretation of the name Jesus is referred to a divine causality, and consequently the genus of the name itself must, most naturally, appear as commanded.

αὐτός] He and no other.

τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ] The people of Israel: because for these first, and then also for the heathen, was the Messiah and His work intended, John 4:22; Romans 1:16; Galatians 3:14. As certainly, moreover, as the manner and fashion in which the promised one was to accomplish the salvation, and by means of His redemptive work has accomplished it, is to be conceived as being present to the eye of God at the sending of this news, as certainly must Joseph be conceived as regarding it only in its national definiteness, consequently as referring to the theocratic liberation and prosperity of the people (comp. Luke 1:68 ff.), along with which, however, the religious and moral renewal also was regarded as necessary; which renewal must have presupposed the antecedent forgiveness of sin (Luke 1:77). ἁμαρτιῶν, therefore, is to be taken, not as punishment of sin, but, as always, simply as sins.

αὐτοῦ, not to be written αὑτοῦ (for the angel speaks of Him as a third person, and without any antithesis): His people, for they belong to the Messiah, comp. John 1:11; on the plural αὐτῶν, see Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 114 [E. T. 130].

Matthew 1:22-23. No longer the words of the angel (in answer to Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Paulus, Arnoldi), but of the evangelist, who continues his historical narrative, and that with a pragmatic observation, which serves to advance his object. Comp. Matthew 21:4, Matthew 26:56ἵνα is never ἐκβατικόν: so that (Kuinoel and older interpreters), but always τελικόν: in order that; it presupposes here that what was done stood in the connection of purpose with the O. T. declaration, and consequently in the connection of the divine necessity, as an actual fact, by which the prophecy was destined to be fulfilled. The divine decree, expressed in the latter, must be accomplished, and to that end, this, namely, which is related from Matthew 1:18 onwards, came to pass, and that according to the whole of its contents (ὅλον). The prophecy itself is Isaiah 7:14 according to the LXX., without any essential variation.

ἡ παρθένος corresponds here to הָעַלְמָה, which denotes an unmarried young woman of nubile years, not also a young woman (for which Proverbs 30:19 is erroneously appealed to by Gesenius and Knobel). See Hengstenberg, Christol. II. p. 53 ff. On the other hand, בְּתוּלָה means virgin in the strict sense of the word. The evangelist, nevertheless, interpreting the passage according to its Messianic destination, understands the pregnant Mary as a real virgin. Here we have to observe that such interpretations of O. T. passages are not to be referred to any principle of accommodation to the views of the time, nor even to a mere occasional application, but express the typical reference, and therewith the prophetic meaning, which the N. T. writers actually recognised in the relative passages of the O. T. And in so doing, the nearest, i.e. the historical meaning of these passages in and of itself, did not rule the interpretation, but the concrete Messianic contents according to their historical definiteness a posteriori—from their actual fulfilment—yielded themselves to them as that which the Spirit of God in the prophecies had had in view as the ideal theocratic subject-matter of the forms which they assumed in the history of the time. Comp. Riehm in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1869, p. 272 f. [E. T., Clark, Edin. 1876, p. 160 ff.]. The act by which they saw them Messianically fulfilled, i.e. their Messianic contents become an accomplished fact, was recognised by them as lying in the purpose of God, when the declaration in question was spoken or written, and therefore as “eventum non modo talem, qui propter veritatem divinam non potuerit non subsequi ineunte N. T.,” Bengel. This Messianic method of understanding the O. T. in the New, which they adopted, had its justification not merely in the historically necessary connection in which the N. T. writers stood to the popular method of viewing the O. T. in their day, and to its typological freedom of exposition, but as it had its justification also generally in the truth that the idea of the Messiah pervades the whole of the prophecies of the O. T., and is historically realized in Christ; so also, in particular, in the holy guidance of the Spirit, under which they, especially the apostles, were able to recognise, both as a whole as well as in details, the relation of prophecy to its N. T. fulfilment, and consequently the preformations of Christian facts and doctrines, as God, in conformity with His plan of salvation, had caused them to take a beginning in the O. T., although this result was marked by varying degrees of certainty and of clearness of typological tact among the individual writers. Although, according to this view, the N. T. declarations regarding the fulfilment of prophecies are to be presupposed as generally having accuracy and truth on their side, nevertheless the possibility of erroneous and untenable applications in individual instances, in accordance with the hermeneutical licence of that age, is thereby so little excluded, that an unprejudiced examination upon the basis of the original historical sense is always requisite. This way of estimating those declarations, as it does justice on the one side to their importance and ethical nature, so on the other it erects the necessary barrier against all arbitrary typological hankering, which seeks to find a connection between prophecy and fulfilment, between type and antitype, where the N. T. has not attested the existence of such. Comp. also Düsterdieck, de rei prophet. natura ethica, Gottingen 1852, p. 79 ff. In reference to types and prophecies generally, we must certainly say with the N. T.: τούτῳ πάντες οἱ προφῆται μαρτυροῦσιν κ.τ.λ., Acts 10:43, but not with the Rabbins: “Omnes prophetae in universum non prophetarunt nisi de diebus Messiae,” Sanhedrin, f. 99, 1. As regards Isaiah 7:14,[363] the historical sense is to the effect that the prophet, by his promise of a sign, desires to prevent Ahab from begging the aid of the Assyrians against the confederated Syrians and Ephraimites. The promise itself does not indeed refer directly, by means of an “ideal anticipation,” to Mary and Jesus (Hengstenberg), but neither also to the wife of the prophet (Gesenius, Knobel, Olshausen, Keim, Schenkel, and others; comp. also Tholuck, das A. T. in N. T. p. 43, ed. 6), nor to any other mother elsewhere of an ordinary child (Stähelin, H. Schultz), but to the mother—who at the time when the prophecy was uttered was still a virgin—of the expected theocratic Saviour, i.e. the Messiah,[364] the idea of whom lives in the prophetic consciousness, but has attained its complete historic realization in Jesus Christ. See especially Ewald on Isaiah, p. 339 f., ed. 2; Umbreit in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1855, p. 573 ff.; Bertheau in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theologie, 1859, 4; Drechsler on Isaiah, l.c.; Delitzsch; Oehler in Herzog’s Encykl. IX. p. 415; Engelhardt, l.c. That we might, however, from the consideration of the fulfilment of the prophetic oracle, accomplished in the birth of Jesus from a virgin, find in the word עלמה the mother of the Messiah designated as a virgin, follows, as a matter of course, from the meaning of עלמה, which by no means excludes the idea of virginity, and was not first rendered possible by the ΠΑΡΘΈΝΟς of the LXX., by means of the “subtleties of Jewish Christians” (Keim), and this all the less that even ΠΑΡΘΈΝΟς also in Greek does not always denote virgin in the strict sense, but also “nuptas et devirginatas.” See Ellendt, Lex. Soph. II. p. 210. Matthew might also just as well have made use of νεᾶνις, which Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus employ.

On the article, Bengel appropriately remarks: “ex specula divinae praescientiae singularem demonstrandi vim habet;” she who is present to the prophet’s eye is intended.

καλέσουσι] they will call. The LXX. incorrectly gives ΚΑΛΈΣΕΙς. The evangelist generalizes the third person singular of the original Hebrew into the plural.

ἘΜΜΑΝΟΥΉΛ] עִמָּנוּ אֵל, God is with us, which symbolical name, according to the historical sense in the prophet, derives its significance from the saving by divine help from the destruction threatened by the war in question, but, according to its Messianic fulfilment, which the evangelist now sees beginning, has the same essential meaning as the name Jesus. The ΚΑΛΈΣΟΥΣΙ ΤῸ ὌΝΟΜΑ ΑὐΤΟῦ ἘΜΜΑΝΟΥΉΛ corresponds to the ΚΑΛΈΣΕΙς ΤῸ ὌΝΟΜ. ΑὐΤΟῦ ἸΗΣΟῦΝ (Matthew 1:21), and therefore the translator of the Gospel has added the interpretation of the significant name. The Fathers of the church (Hilary, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Lactantius), and expositors like Calvin, Flacius, Maldonatus, Jansen, Schegg, interpreted it of the divine nature in Christ. In the divine nature of the Lord as the Son of God is found the divine help and safety, which make up the meaning of the name (Jerome), its dogmatic foundation in the developed Christian consciousness, as the latter is certainly to be assumed in the evangelists Matthew (Matthew 1:20) and Luke (Luke 1:35), according to whom, as a consequence of the superhuman generation, the superhuman character, not merely the Messianic vocation, is to come forth.

[363] Comp. H. Schultz, alttest. Theolog. II. p. 244 ff.; Engelhardt in the Luther. Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 601 ff.

[364] Hofmann has corrected his earlier explanation (Weissagung und Erfüllung, I. p. 221) in point of grammar (Schriftbeweis, II. I, p. 85), but not in accordance with the meaning. He sees in the son of the virgin mother the Israel which does not arise in the way of a natural continuation of the present, but in a miraculous manner, to which God again turns in mercy. In the person of Jesus this Israel of the future of salvation takes its beginning; while that which in Isaiah was figurative language, is now realized in the proper sense. With greater weight and clearness Kahnis (Dogmatik, I. p. 345 f.) remarks: The Virgin and Immanuel are definite but ideal persons. The latter is the Israel of the future according to its ideal side; the Virgin, the Israel of the present and of the past according to its ideal side, in accordance with which its vocation is, by virtue of the Spirit of God, to give birth to the holy seed; this Israel will one day come to its true realization in a virgin, who will be the mother of the Messiah. Substantially similar also is the view of W. Schultz in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1861, p. 713 ff., who understands by the Virgin the quiet ones in the land, the better portion of the community who are truly susceptible of the working of the Lord. But the whole style of expression, and the connection in the context farther on, are throughout not of such a character that in the Virgin and her son, ideal, and indeed collective persons, should have been present, first of all, to the prophet’s view. I must continue, even after the objections of Hengstenberg, Tholuck, W. Schultz, H. Schultz, and others, to regard Ewald’s view as the right one.