Bible Fact · Matthew 1:5 — 'Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth.'
Five Women in the Genealogy of Jesus
The Fact
Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1–17) is unusual in the ancient world for including five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba (referred to as 'the wife of Uriah'), and Mary. In first-century Jewish culture, genealogies almost never included women. The inclusion is therefore deliberate and theologically loaded. Each woman's story involves an element of moral complexity, social marginalization, or non-Jewish ethnicity: Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to obtain her rights (Genesis 38); Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute in Jericho; Ruth was a Moabite foreigner; Bathsheba was the wife of a Hittite whom David sinned against; Mary was an unmarried girl who conceived before marriage. Matthew includes them precisely to signal that the Messiah's line runs through the unexpected, the scandalous, and the outsider — and that God's grace operates through broken human stories to accomplish his purposes.
Context
Jewish genealogies were typically patrilineal — tracing the male line. The deliberate inclusion of these five specific women challenges the assumption that divine lineage requires moral or ethnic perfection.
Significance
The five women in Jesus's genealogy are Matthew's theological declaration: grace is not reserved for the respectable. The Messiah came for the outcast, the foreign, and the scandalous.
Reflection
God wrote his story of salvation through broken, unexpected people. What does that say about whether he can use your story — with all its complications — for his purposes?