Why does Matthew’s genealogy leave out some kings?

The passages

Matthew 1:8

Joram begat Ozias (Uzziah).

And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias;

Matthew 1:11

Josias begat Jechonias and his brothers, about the time of the exile to Babylon.

And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:

1 Chronicles 3:10–16

Chronicles lists Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah between Joram and Azariah (Uzziah), and Jehoiakim between Josiah and Jeconiah.

And Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abia his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his son, Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, Amon his son, Josiah his son. And the sons of Josiah were, the firstborn Johanan, the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. …

2 Chronicles 26:1

The people make Uzziah king in place of his father Amaziah.

Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah.

Matthew 1:17

Matthew sums up his list in three sets of fourteen generations.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

The objection

Matthew says “Joram begat Ozias”, but 1 Chronicles shows three kings between them, Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah, and 2 Chronicles names Amaziah as Uzziah’s father. Matthew also says “Josias begat Jechonias”, though Jeconiah was Josiah’s grandson, the son of Jehoiakim. So Matthew’s fourteen generations from David to the exile leave out kings that Chronicles includes.

The answer

Matthew leaves these kings out on purpose, and his first readers could see it, for the full list stood in 1 Chronicles 3. In Hebrew and Greek usage ‘begat’ and ‘son’ mark descent, not only the next generation: Matthew’s first line calls Jesus “the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), and Isaiah tells Hezekiah that “thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget” would serve in Babylon, though they lived generations later (Isaiah 39:7). Old Testament lists also skip names: Ezra 7:3 calls Azariah “the son of Meraioth”, though 1 Chronicles 6:7–10 lists six generations between them. So ‘Joram begat Ozias’ means that Uzziah was descended from Joram, and ‘Josias begat Jechonias’ that Jeconiah was descended from Josiah; both are true.

Matthew shortened the line to fit his three sets of fourteen (Matthew 1:17), a pattern that made the list easy to remember, and he does not claim that each name is the son of the one before.

Why these kings?

Matthew does not say why he left out Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah. Gill mentions the suggestion that they were descendants of Ahab, whose house was under judgment, through Joram’s marriage to Ahab’s daughter, or simply that they were bad kings; others think Matthew only needed to shorten the list. Jehoiakim, a puppet king set up by Pharaoh (2 Kings 23:34), may have been passed over for similar reasons.

“Jechonias and his brethren”

Josiah’s sons were Jehoiakim and his brothers, so Gill took the ‘Jechonias’ of Matthew 1:11 to mean Jehoiakim, and Adam Clarke noted Greek manuscripts that read ‘Josias begat Joakim, and Joakim begat Jechonias’, though most textual scholars take that reading as a later correction. Others take ‘brethren’ in the wider sense of kinsmen, since Zedekiah, Jeconiah’s uncle, is called “his brother” in 2 Chronicles 36:10.

From the classic commentators

Ozias was not the immediate son of Joram: there were three kings between them, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, which swell the fourteen generations to seventeen: but it is observed that omissions of this kind are not uncommon in the Jewish genealogies.Adam Clarke, Commentary on Matthew 1:8 (1810–1826)

Nor does this omission at all affect the design of the Evangelist, which is to show that Jesus, the true Messiah, is of the house of DavidJohn Gill, Exposition on Matthew 1:8 (1746–1763)