Which son of Zerubbabel was Jesus’ ancestor: Abiud, Rhesa, or one of the sons named in Chronicles?

Zerubbabel had at least seven sons (1 Chronicles 3:19–20), so there is nothing strange in two family lines coming down from him through different sons, just as Matthew and Luke trace David’s line through two different sons, Solomon and Nathan. Neither Gospel says that Zerubbabel had only one son.

That Abiud and Rhesa are missing from Chronicles is less of a difficulty than it looks. Men in Israel often had more than one name, and the same king is Jehoiachin in 2 Kings 24:8 and Jeconiah in 1 Chronicles 3:16. Genealogies also skip generations: Matthew leaves out three kings between Joram and Ozias (Matthew 1:8), so his ‘Zorobabel begat Abiud’ may mean that Abiud was a later descendant. Luke’s Rhesa may not be a personal name at all. Rēšāʾ is Aramaic for ‘the head’, and some older scholars took it as a title, ‘Zerubbabel the prince’; Smith’s Bible Dictionary records the conjecture that Rhesa ‘is no person, but merely a title’. Then Joanan, the name before Rhesa in Luke’s list, was Zerubbabel’s son, and Smith’s and Easton’s Bible dictionaries identify him with Hananiah. Joanan (Yo-hanan, ‘the LORD is gracious’) is Hananiah (Hanan-yah) with the same two parts reversed, just as Jehoiachin (Yeho-yachin) is Jeconiah (Yechon-yah). Hananiah is one of the sons listed in 1 Chronicles 3:19. These identifications are suggestions, but they show how the three lists can fit together.

Two different Zerubbabels

Some, among them the bible.ca answer to Shabir Ally (see further reading), hold that Luke’s Shealtiel and Zerubbabel are different men from Matthew’s, with the same common names. On that view their sons would of course differ, and the Zerubbabel of Chronicles could be either of them, or a third man.

Abiud as Meshullam

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia suggested that Abiud, ‘father of Hud’, was a later name of Meshullam, Zerubbabel’s eldest son, taken after the birth of a son named Hud, and that ‘Rhesa’ was his title as head of the exiles. Adam Clarke, more simply, took Abiud to be the eldest son and Rhesa the youngest.

No ancient source says which of Zerubbabel’s sons Matthew’s Abiud and Luke’s Rhesa (or Joanan) were, and Christian scholars hold the identifications above loosely. Whether Rhesa is a name or a title is also debated.