Matthew includes the deportation as a turning point in his genealogy, because things were never the same, even after the return from exile of a remnant of the Jews. Far more of them stayed behind in Babylon. Matthew is stressing God’s judgment on the people of Abraham and the line of David, even though God did extend grace to his people in the return under Cyrus, and the temple was eventually rebuilt. By mentioning the name Christ
for the first time in Matthew 1:17, he points to the fact that the judgment of the deportation on the sins of God’s people could only be fully taken away by Christ.
Matthew begins the third part of his genealogy by mentioning not a person, but a fact. It is striking that in Matthew 1:11–12 the monotonous rhythm of the births is interrupted: and Josiah the father of Zechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel.
The modern reader of the Bible often exhibits the propensity to regard the exile in Babylon as a short period, an intermezzo in Israel’s history. However, this is incorrect. Although Cyrus gave permission to rebuild the temple, and although afterwards a number of Jews continued to live around the area of Jerusalem, a large section of the people remained in Babylon and the diaspora (the Galut) never ended.
Matthew formulates the history in such a way that the Babylonian exile becomes representative of all the history that follows. He does not mention the return. In fact, he notes emphatically that the history of the generations continues after the deportation to Babylon,
that is, in Babylon itself. Zechoniah lived in Babylon until his death and fathered his son Shealtiel there.
In his summary of the genealogy in Matthew 1:17 the evangelist also does not count the generations constituting the third part from the return under Cyrus, but from the deportation to Babylon until the incarnation. By dividing his genealogy in this way, Matthew emphasizes the significance of the deportation, just as the prophets in the Old Testament did. The deportation denoted the great judgment over Israel’s sins. It caused a crisis in the history of Abraham (land) and David (king). That judgment was mitigated by the later rebuilding of the temple, and by the return of a Jewish population to Jerusalem and Judea, but it still had not truly come to an end.
The prophet Isaiah had already made it clear that the judgment over Israel’s sins could only be taken away by the One sent by the Lord. In Matthew 1:17 Matthew therefore uses the name Christ for the first time not as a proper name, but as an indication of his office.1
11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.