Bible Synapse
How does the curse on Jeconiah fit Jesus’ descent from him?
Hard question · Genealogies · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Write this man childless: none of his seed shall prosper sitting on David’s throne and ruling any more in Judah.
Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not? O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.
Jehoiakim shall have none to sit upon the throne of David.
Therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.
Matthew’s line runs from Josiah through Jechonias to Salathiel.
And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel;
God will give Jesus the throne of his father David.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
The objection
Jeremiah says of King Jeconiah, “Write ye this man childless”, for “no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David”, and of his father Jehoiakim, “He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David.” Yet Matthew traces Jesus’ line through Jeconiah, and Luke says God will give Jesus “the throne of his father David”. How can a descendant of these kings be David’s heir?
The answer
The curse concerns the throne, not children, and the verse explains its own words: Jeconiah is to be recorded as ‘childless’ because “no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah” (Jeremiah 22:30). He did have sons (1 Chronicles 3:17–18), but none of his descendants reigned as king in Judah: his grandson Zerubbabel led the return from exile as “governor of Judah” (Haggai 1:1), not as king. Jehoiakim’s sentence was fulfilled the same way, for his son Jeconiah reigned three months before being taken to Babylon (2 Kings 24:8–15).
Jesus was not Jeconiah’s physical descendant: Matthew’s list is Joseph’s, and Matthew is careful to say that Jesus was born of Mary, not begotten by Joseph (Matthew 1:16, 18). Jesus received the legal right of David’s royal line through Joseph, his legal father, while the curse fell on Jeconiah’s natural offspring; and if Luke traces Mary’s line, Jesus is descended from David by blood through Nathan, outside Jeconiah’s line (see below on Luke’s Salathiel). Peter, too, presents Jesus’ reign on David’s throne as the rule of the risen Christ exalted at God’s right hand (Acts 2:30–36).
Other answers Christians give
The sentence lifted
Some see the sentence reversed after the exile. Jeremiah 22:24 says God would pull Coniah off his hand though he were a signet ring, while Haggai 2:23 tells Zerubbabel, Jeconiah’s grandson, that God “will make thee as a signet”. The Talmud records Rabbi Yohanan’s view that exile atoned for Jeconiah, citing the list of his sons in 1 Chronicles 3:17 (Sanhedrin 37b).
His own sons
Others read the sentence as aimed at Jeconiah’s own sons, none of whom reigned, with ‘in his days’ governing the whole verse.
Still open
Christians differ over which of these answers is best, and they can be combined. Luke’s list also names a Salathiel and a Zorobabel (Luke 3:27), though there Salathiel is the son of Neri, not of Jeconiah; most commentators take them to be the same men as Matthew’s, though some think them different men with the same names, and if they are the same, the Mary-line answer needs one of the others alongside it. All agree that Jeremiah’s words were fulfilled in the history of Judah.
From the classic commentators
Write him down, record him in the family registers, as childless, i.e., as a man with whom his race becomes extinct. This is more definitely intimated in the parallel member … This does not exclude the possibility of his having sons; it merely implies that none of them should obtain the throne.C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on Jeremiah 22:30 (1866–1891)
for his son Jeconiah reigned but three months, which is reckoned as nothing, and could not be called sitting upon the throneJohn Gill, Exposition on Jeremiah 36:30 (1746–1763)
Sources
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on Jeremiah 22, at HelloAO
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Jeremiah 22, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Jeremiah 36, at Bible Hub
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37b, at Sefaria