Skip to content

Commentaries
English
Matthew
  
6and Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.7Solomon begot Rehoboam, Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa.8Asa begot Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah.9Uzziah begot Jotham, Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah.


In his youth, Solomon was educated at the hand of a priest. He grew up in godliness asking God for an obedient heart filled with wisdom. When he was crowned king, he built a beautiful temple in Jerusalem, a planned center of the Jewish civilization throughout the ages. He cut many valuable cedar logs in Lebanon for this building. Solomon imposed upon the people payment for the costs of those magnificent buildings. The people suffered from exorbitant taxes for such a costly life. He had 700 wives and about 300 concubines. To complete the mischief, each one of his wives carried with her an idol from her country, and they drew Solomon to worship the idols to satisfy his wives (1 Kings 11).
At the time of David and Solomon, a strong Israeli state arose but only lasted for 100 years before division began. It happened at the time of "Rehoboam" the tyrannical son of Solomon. The country of the fathers was divided in 932 BC, and the ten tribes were unified into the new kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was Samaria. The tribe of Judah, however, remained faithful to the Davidic royal family, and the Jewish kingdom in the Jerusalem region was formed from this tribe. As for the names of the kings in the genealogy of Jesus, they refer to those who ruled this small kingdom in Jerusalem and its suburbs.
At the time of this division, God sent his prophets to the northern kingdom. Some of those prophets were Elijah, Amos and Hosea. They worked towards stopping the idol worship that entered into the nation in the name of God and to turn Israel from the worship of images, holy trees, and from the slaying of children. They called all the gods vanities and proclaimed one almighty God emphasizing that there is but one God. They suffered from the pervading atheism and threatened the ungodly with God’s judgment and vengeance. At the same time, they proclaimed the coming of the humble and just God who would come to unify the two separated brothers and to establish peace in Jerusalem.
However, the tribes in the northern kingdom did not obey the prophets. They continued their idol worship and shameless parties and consequently atheism and corruption prevailed. God allowed the Assyrians to attack Israel with incredible power. The Assyrians besieged and destroyed Samaria. They captured the wealthy and the chiefs and took them into exile 1,500 km from their homes, into Mesopotamia. They melted away among the nations and the history of Israel had ended in 722 BC. The Assyrians took other Gentiles and housed them in Galilee, Samaria, and North Palestine in place of the captured, so these people mixed together with the rest of the people of Israel and formed a mixed religion. This prompted the southern Jews to despise and reject the northern Jews as being unclean because they intermarried with Gentiles. However, the statement "Joram begot Uzziah" does not mean that Joram is the father of Uzziah; it means that Uzziah is a descendant of Joram. There were three kings between Joram and Uzziah whose names were not mentioned in the genealogy (1 Chronicles 3:11, 12). They were Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah. The deletion of these three kings was a divine extermination according to the promise mentioned in (Exodus 20:3-5; Deuteronomy 29:18-20). The people also did not recognize their rule over them, but rose against them and killed them. They did not bury them in the sepulchers of the kings (2 Chronicles 22:8, 9; 24:25; 25:27, 28) and excluded them from the royal list of ancestors. Matthew did the same in his Gospel writing because it would be presented to the Jews. Not mentioning their names produces no effect on the validity of the genealogy. The Jews were unable to object to this since omitting some names from genealogy records was familiar to the Jews (compare Ezra 7:1-5 with 1 Chronicles 6:3-15).
Jesus loved the despised and lived by his own choice in Nazareth, in the kingdom of the north, which caused him rejection on the part of the Jews of Jerusalem. At the time of Jesus, Herod, the king, repaired the temple, which was the second temple in Jewish history. Christ and his apostles did not reject this house that was built of stone. They called the people who gathered in the temple to commit themselves to the true God and devote themselves as living stones to build a spiritual house (themselves) into that which God would dwell by his Holy Spirit.

Prayer
O Lord Jesus Christ, Your kingdom is not of this world. You are the true humble king. All other leaders have sinned, fought, shed blood, and laid up treasures; but you lived holy and died for the sake of truth to redeem me from shame. Please accept me and plant me into your spiritual temple that I may truly be the eternally devoted house of God.
Question
When did the division take place in the kingdom of the Old Testament, and from which group does Jesus descend?