After the return from exile, the Old Testament does not record the descendants of those who returned. However, the Jews kept careful track of their family lines, especially in the royal house. Matthew’s genealogy is probably based on these records. Luke confirms this when he mentions that Joseph had to be counted for the census in Bethlehem, the city of David (Luke 2:4–5). Even Jesus’ opponents did not doubt his descent from David. The people in the last section of Matthew’s genealogy were not historically important, which fits with the fact that Jesus was to have a humble birth (see Matthew 1:23).
From the time of Zerubbabel there is no further connection with the history recorded in the Old Testament, but given the fact that the Jews so carefully preserved their genealogies, and in particular royal genealogies, it can be accepted that this list is based on authentic genealogies of the line of David. See also, for example, how Luke 2:4–5 mentions that Joseph had to be counted in Bethlehem, the city of David. Furthermore, the Davidic ancestry of Jesus was never once doubted by his opponents.1
In the final verses of this genealogy we therefore find a number of persons from a time in which the descendants of David did not play a prominent role in history and were in fact largely disregarded. But this was in and of itself a sign that the time when the divine child would be born was approaching. He would not, after all, enter the world as a mighty son of a King, but as a humble, rejected Son of an unknown virgin (see Matthew 1:23).2
12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,