Descendant of Ruth and Bathsheba?
Daily Scripture
Matthew 1:5-6, Ruth 1:14-16, 4:13, 16-17, 2 Samuel 11:2-5, 26-27
Matthew 1
5 Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.
Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.
Obed was the father of Jesse.
6 Jesse was the father of David the king.
David was the father of Solomon,
whose mother had been the wife of Uriah.
Ruth 1
14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth stayed with her. 15 Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is returning to her people and to her gods. Turn back after your sister-in-law.”
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to abandon you, to turn back from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.
Ruth 4
13 So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. He was intimate with her, the Lord let her become pregnant, and she gave birth to a son.
16 Naomi took the child and held him to her breast, and she became his guardian. 17 The neighborhood women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They called his name Obed. He became Jesse’s father and David’s grandfather.
2 Samuel 11
2 One evening, David got up from his couch and was pacing back and forth on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3 David sent someone and inquired about the woman. The report came back: “Isn’t this Eliam’s daughter Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers to take her. When she came to him, he had sex with her. (Now she had been purifying herself after her monthly period.) Then she returned home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
26 When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband Uriah was dead, she mourned for her husband. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David sent for her and brought her back to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. But what David had done was evil in the Lord’s eyes.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Matthew added two more surprising women into his genealogy of Jesus. (Of course, he also included Mary at the end of the list—we’ll read that tomorrow.) He mentioned Ruth almost in passing. But Ruth was a Moabite, welcomed in Israel despite Deuteronomy 23:3 saying that “those people” couldn’t belong to “the LORD’s assembly.” Matthew didn’t even name Solomon’s mother, who “had been the wife of Uriah,” perhaps because the tragic story in 2 Samuel had made Bathsheba’s name familiar.
- The book of Ruth “contains no clue to its authorship. The setting is that of the period of the Judges (Ruth 1:1), but its writing belongs to a later date.” * Ruth’s story showed that Israel’s God welcomed non-Israelites too. “The people of Moab were ancient enemies of the people of Israel, so Ruth’s willingness to live in Bethlehem, and the Bethlehemites’ acceptance of her, are unexpected and remarkable.” ** How does that likely show why Matthew included her in Jesus’ ancestry?
- Hebrew historians didn’t directly describe “motivation.” But Bathsheba’s story was about King David’s guilt, not hers: “There is no suggestion that Bathsheba intended to attract David’s attention. The text gives no support to the idea that she was a seductress…. David’s sex with Bathsheba is adultery under the menace of power.” *** Later giving birth to King Solomon, she continued David’s royal line, which led to Jesus. How did Matthew’s genealogy honor her innocence?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank you that Matthew’s genealogy subtly showed that even when we miss the mark, we cannot permanently derail your purposes. Thank you for working through people of every nation and gender to lead to Jesus. Amen.
GPS Insights
Darren Lippe
Darren Lippe serves as a Couples Small Group co-leader & Men's Group Leader, while volunteering in a variety of other capacities at Resurrection. He and his wife, Doris, first met in a Resurrection Single Adult Sunday School class in 1997 and were married in what is now the Student Center. They are empty nesters with 2 college-aged sons, Matthew and Jacob.
If God’s Greatest Mission Ever can proudly utilize a wrongdoer like King David, or a guy as unfocused as King Solomon, or even a disliked Moabite, like Ruth, then just imagine the amazing hopes & dreams He must have for our lives?
When I was growing up, I was a big fan of Superman comic books, partly because he grew up in Smallville, Kansas. I loved the stories of Superman’s origin on Planet Krypton, as Kal-El with his parents Jor-El & Lara. Through the years, a lot of prequels have delved into developing a detailed back-story for Superman’s ancestors. Interestingly, his direct relations were mostly righteous & virtuous & the only imperfect ancestors were described as distant relatives or grifters. I readily sympathize with the creators’ temptation to create a lineage that was ideal & flawless. That’s what makes today’s passage so fascinating.
Aside: I like the comic depicting Adam & Eve looking at their Ancestry.com report. Adam says, “Man, that was a waste of money.”
First off, God inspires Matthew to document Jesus’ heritage to the best of Matthew’s knowledge. God, in His wisdom, didn’t want to create a vacuum that allowed humans to create Jesus’ family tree on their own. We can easily imagine how we’d get carried away creating a legend of the attributes of Jesus’ ancestors like their intellectual brilliance, their renowned courage, their amazing strength, & their movie star good looks.
Aside: How can you tell if a relative is really, really into genealogy? Don’t worry. He’ll tell you.
Secondly, it’s interesting that God doesn’t finagle with Jesus’ lineage Himself. Like a Kentucky Derby horse breeder, God could have created an idyllic family tree with all sorts of brilliant Jewish theologians, brave leaders, & righteous women. (For example, God could have ensured that one of Jesus’ ancestors was an amazing heroine, like Deborah, from the Book of Judges. She would have been an epic choice.)
Aside: A genealogist observed that each subsequent generation of his family was having fewer children. He was becoming bit concerned about his receding heir line.
Thirdly, it’s astonishing to read the stories of those God did choose to include in Jesus’ family tree. The narratives of these ancestors include scandalous stories, questionable moral judgments, tales of oppression, & even included people from cultures who were despised by the Jewish believer. That’s God for you; ala, a poor speaker like Moses being selected to be the spokesperson for the Hebrew people, or Jonah to be a prophet to the very people he detested, or even Jesus’ birth in a manger as opposed to a palace. Once again God zigs just when we think He is going to zag.
So what are we to make of this surprising family tree?
This Advent season is the perfect time to set aside our imagined limitations, be it being born on the “wrong side of the tracks,” or our own follies & foibles from our past life, or our genetic disposition that gives us prematurely gray hair (or lack thereof), & instead look with hope at the potential & possibility of what God has in store for us in 2025. It’s going to be an epic year!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to get back to reading about Superman’s family tree. Wow. I had no idea that Superman had an older brother back on the Planet Krypton who was born on December 25th. He was named No-El.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Mrs. M. Beeching, article “Ruth, Book of” in The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition. Intervarsity Press, USA, 1996, p. 1031.
** Linda Day, introduction to Ruth in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 410 OT.
*** Bruce C. Birch, study notes on 2 Samuel 11:2 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 486 OT.
