Christmas through female lenses

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham… 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. Matthew 1:1-17

Most Christians very understandably skip over the genealogies, or family-trees, of the Bible. Both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels contain such a genealogy, attached to the Christmas story (Matthew 1 and Luke 3). They differ from one another, and are obviously selective, and they consist simply of lists of Hebrew names, forty-four in Matthew and seventy-six in Luke, names that most of us don’t really know how to pronounce. So why bother too much with them?

Well, Matthew presents us with something that, once we have noticed it, is quite striking. Such ancient lists tend to be entirely male, with women only mentioned, if at all, as wives or mothers. (Luke’s list, for example, includes no women at all.) But Matthew, intriguingly, includes four women, wives or mothers indeed, but women who play a prominent part in the history books of the Old Testament.

This raises the question: Why did the Holy Spirit prompt Matthew to include them? We can only speculate, of course. But there are real gospel lessons to be drawn from them. You could even say that their inclusion takes us right to the heart of Christmas.

Who were these four women?

The first is Tamar, who we meet in Genesis 38. This chapter tells one of the nastiest, most unsavoury stories in the whole Bible, a story of gross sexual misconduct on the part of Judah son of Jacob (or Israel, as he came to be known).

The story is too complicated to sum up briefly, but suffice to say that Tamar is deceived by Judah and treated by him as a prostitute – an act in which she colludes in order to show him up and expose his hypocrisy. How much we should blame her and how much sympathise with her – well, perhaps that’s for each of us to think about (remembering of course Jesus’ words about not judging others).

But… Tamar appears in the family-tree of Jesus the Messiah! Is there anything we can learn from that…? The New Testament tells us that Jesus was perfect, but there’s no doubt that his family tree was well tainted. So perhaps that can encourage us if we happen to have any skeletons in our family’s cupboard - or indeed in our own past?

The second woman is Rahab, who appears in Joshua 2 and 6. A citizen of Jericho, she gives refuge to two Israelite men sent by Joshua to spy out the land before he attacks it.

Most Bible translations describe her as a prostitute, and people have been known to snigger over what the Israelite men were doing in such a woman’s house. But the writer makes no comment about that, and Rahab is portrayed in a heroic light and eventually declares her allegiance to the God of Israel.

And… Matthew includes her in his family-tree of Jesus! She is the mother of the good man Boaz, thus the great-grandmother of none less than King David himself.

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, as the whole Bible repeatedly teaches us, God uses some amazing human raw material; we never know what surprising people he has up his sleeve!

The third woman is Ruth, who of course has a whole Bible book to herself. She is a Moabitess, a “pagan”, a member of a nation whose people were historical enemies of Israel. She marries into Israel, and is depicted as a model of honesty, loyalty and devotion to God. But guess what…? Her second marriage is to Boaz, and she thus becomes the grandmother of… King David!

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, we know from the New Testament that the good news of Jesus is for gentiles as well as Jews, and we now take that for granted – but it’s quite something to find one in the family tree of the Jewish Messiah! If that doesn’t warn us against prejudice of any kind, I really don’t know what will.

The fourth woman is given no name, but we all know who she is. She is described as “Uriah’s wife”, the woman King David took into his harem and who gave birth to King Solomon. She is Bathsheba. (One book I read suggests that Matthew doesn’t name her because he finds her too distasteful. Well, who knows?)

David, of course, is the chief offender of the two – as is powerfully portrayed in Psalm 51 (though one might be justified in wondering what Bathsheba was doing by bathing on the roof of her house in full view of the royal palace). Whatever, the result was a grubby affair which resulted in the death of an innocent man (2 Samuel 11). Yet, “Uriah’s wife” is included in the family-tree of Jesus!

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, it’s a lesson that comes across to us from all manner of Bible characters, great and small, not just David and Bathsheba: God loves and uses sinners. Isn’t that a truth to reflect on when we ourselves feel the weight of our own sins?

By allowing a dull New Testament passage to take us back into the Old Testament there is much we can be blessed and challenged by. I think too there is still more – but I’ll have to leave it for next time. Please join me after Christmas!

Thank you, Father, that human beings are never “just names”, but real, live, flesh and blood men and women, like the four women Matthew sees fit to include in his genealogy, people loved by you. Help me to remember that with every person I ever meet. Amen.

May God bless us all this Christmas time!