Skeletons in the Closet

Most anyone sitting down to read the New Testament will take a glance at the first chapter of Matthew and quickly skim over the long list of names, many of them pretty hard to pronounce anyway.  But Matthew might have been up to something here that deserves a second look.  If you read over the list of names, there are four women in the list, in brackets.  Let’s take a look at them:

First there was Tamar, who we meet in Genesis 38.  She married one of Judah’s sons, who died before they had children.  It’s a complicated story, but Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to seduce Judah to have his child, the child that would be part of the genealogical line leading eventually to Jesus.  Respectable people would have considered this to be a “skeleton in the closet” of Jesus genealogy, but Matthew makes sure he lists Tamar right there for the world to read.

The next bracketed woman in the list is Rahab.  Now the Rahab we meet in the book of Joshua was described as a harlot in the city Jericho, not your society lady.  This may not be the same “Rahab” listed in Matthew, as there is a Jewish tradition that Rahab married Joshua, and the Rahab in Matthew had a child by Salmon to be part of Jesus genealogy.

The next is Ruth, a very decent person, but she came from Moab [east of the Dead Sea, and often an enemy of the Israelites]; she would likely have been avoided by good self-respecting Jews.

The fourth woman mentioned is Bathsheba, but she is not mentioned by name but is noted in the account as “the wife of Uriah”, which makes the mention even more scandalous, as it reminds us of the whole sordid incident: Uriah, husband of Bathsheba, was murdered by order of King David by having the soldiers retreat from him in battle.  At the time, Uriah's wife was pregnant by David through an adulterous affair.  This is not the kind of story most self-respecting people would like to tell about their families, but Matthew airs it prominently in the genealogy of Jesus.

Why would Matthew take great pains to drag out these skeletons in the closet?  Could it be that there was a lot of tongue wagging going on about Jesus’ own mother before he was born?  Joseph was all set to wed Mary and discovered that she was already pregnant, and certainly not by him.  He was set to call the whole thing off, but was assured by an angel of the real and amazing story.  Nevertheless, you can bet the local gossips had a lot to say about the situation, and Joseph and Mary probably had to put up with quite a bit from the mean tongues around them.

Joseph and Mary knew the miraculous pregnancy and the awesome responsibility that was to be theirs, but you can bet the local gossips had their own explanations.  Could Matthew have subtly been reminding people that situations that self -respecting people would call “skeletons in the closet” became an integral part of the family tree of Jesus the Messiah?

And what about us? Who among us doesn’t have a few skeletons in the closet? Do we think we could be of no use to God because of things in our past? Matthew reminds us that God used all these people, skeletons and all, to be part of the family tree of Jesus. So if any of us has a skeleton that is bugging us, talk to God about it; God can handle it.