It is the goal of Matthew 1 to show that Jesus had a legitimate claim to the throne as David’s descendant. And the emphasis indeed falls on David. Already Matthew 1:1 gives pride of place to David when it announces the “record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.” The following genealogy is then supposed to prove this. And the summary of the genealogy confirms that this is the very point of the genealogy, as it mentions both David and Abraham again (Matthew 1:17). It strikes the reader that in the list of kings here, the only one who actually receives the title king is David (Matthew 1:6).

In addition, the whole genealogy in chapter 1 has a distinctly Davidic mould with its mention of the number fourteen in Matthew 1:17. Matthew in his counting of the generations can arrive at this number only by intentionally leaving out the names of three kings in Matthew 1:8 (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah). The number fourteen is very significant. In an ancient practice called gematria, letters of the alphabet were given a numerical value. In the case of the Hebrew language, the sum total of the Hebrew letters of the name David when added together is fourteen (d = 4, v = 6, d = 4)! Matthew's genealogy shows that the whole Jewish history has so much to do with David: the first period, from Abraham to David, reaches its climax with the reign of king David. The second period, from David to the Babylonian exile, is viewed as a period of decline because of the loss of the Davidic reign. But the third period is a time of renewed hope again as Matthew refers to his subject as the long awaited son of David…. Clearly, the name David is the key to the pattern of Matthew’s genealogy.¹