As I study the genealogy of Jesus found in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, I am struck again by one particular name that I have always found difficult to explain. Among the 42 men whose names appear in this list, we have five women named or identified in someway, including Mary, the mother of Jesus. There is generally no difficulty with the inclusion of Tamar, Bathsheba (who is identified only as “Uriah’s wife”), and Ruth, even though the OT accounts of these women force us to ask why Matthew would include them and not any of the wives of the patriarchs, but that is a question for another day. Instead, it is the inclusion of Rahab as the wife of Salmon and mother of Boaz that has always caused me to scratch my head.
Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab, Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered King David.
Matthew 1:5-6a
Is this Rahab the one that is mentioned in the book of Joshua? The famous prostitute from Jericho who, out of genuine a fear of the Lord, hid the Israelite spies, secured deliverance and protection for herself and her family, and joined the Israelite people? Biblical commentators almost universally say, “Yes.” For example, Michael Wilkins, in the NIVAC volume on Matthew writes, “Rahab was a Gentile and a prostitute of Jericho, who protected the two spies sent by Joshua to reconnoiter the land promised to the people of Israel.Only here do we find Rahab featured in David’s ancestry, a fact not recorded elsewhere in Scripture nor anywhere else in Jewish writings.” Now the fact that this is the only place where Rahab is mentioned in the lineage of David is not entirely surprising,since women were not generally included in Hebrew genealogies. What is interesting, and it has always puzzled me, is how Rahab could be married to Salmon, David’s great-great-grandfather. Let me try to explain why this puzzles me so much.
According to the genealogies found in Ruth 4 and 1 Chronicles 2, Salmon (or Salma) was the father of Boaz who was the father of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. Working backward from the birth of David, we get approximate dates of 1240-1170 BC for Salmon. Even if Rahab was a young woman at the time of the fall of Jericho in 1405 BC, she would have been almost 200 years old when Salmon was born!
Some interpreters have suggested that Salmon, Boaz, Obed, and Jesse were each more than 90 years old when his son was born. This would certainly give us the amount of time necessary to reach from the fall of Jericho to the birth of David, but it seems unlikely that these men had such longevity, especially since Psalm 90:10, which was written by Moses, says “The days of our lives are seventy years”or maybe “by reason of strength…eighty years.” It just seems like a stretch to assume that David’s immediate ancestors had such great longevity, when he himself only lived to 70 years (2 Sam. 5:4).
Another solution suggested by commentators is that Matthew’s genealogy contains a gap of several generations between Salmon and Boaz. William Hendriksen suggests this in his New Testament Commentary on Matthew where he says, “Matthew evidently did not deem it necessary to mention a representative of each passing generation….The evangelist is interested in Christology, not in chronology.” This is clearly true, as Matthew omits several generations from David to the exile in v.6-11 and from the exile to the birth of Christ in v.12-16. Hendriksen concludes by saying, “In order to achieve this goal neither he nor the inspired author of the book of Ruth deemed it necessary to mention every link in the chain of ancestry.”
Still other possibilities exist. It may be that the Rahab mentioned in Matt. 1:5 is someone else entirely from the woman we know from the city of Jericho. If she is, then she is entirely unknown to us apart from this one reference. This would be very strange, since each of the other women that Matthew mentions are clearly identified elsewhere in Scripture. Maybe it is as Craig Keener suggests, that Matthew has simply inserted Rahab’s name here as a “way of drawing attention to and emphasizing his point by working another prominent Gentile woman into the narrative.” If so, then Matthew was probably counting on his Jewish audience being so familiar with the OT record that they would know that she didn’t“fit,” but would understand his point about the gospel mission to the Gentiles being fundamental to the purpose of Christ’s coming to earth.
So, what is the correct explanation of the presence of Rahab in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus? I don’t know that we can answer with certainty. This question may have to wait until heaven, when we can ask Matthew himself. In any case, Hendriksen is correct when he says that Matthew’s aim is that “in harmony with prophecy, Jesus Christ may be recognized as David’s son and David’s Lord,” and that all other questions have only secondary significance.