urpose of Matthew's genealogy is further brought out by its
symmetrical arrangement into three groups of fourteen generations
each--an arrangement not arrived at without some free manipulating of
the links. The sacred number is doubled in each case, which implies
eminent completeness. Each of the three groups makes a whole in which a
tendency runs out to its goal, and becomes, as it were, the
starting-point for a new epoch. So the first group is pre-monarchical,
and culminates in David the King. Israel's history is regarded as all
tending towards that consummation. He is thought of as the first King,
for Saul was a Benjamite, and had been deposed by divine authority. The
second group is monarchical, and it, too, has a drift, as it were, which
is tragically marked by the way in which its last stage is described:
'Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time that they were
carried away to Babylon.' Josiah had four successors, all of them
phantom kings;--Jehoahaz, who reigned for three months and was taken
captive to Egypt; his brother Jehoiakim, a puppet set up by Egypt,
knocked down by Babylon; his son Jehoiachin, who reigned eleven years
and was carried captive to Babylon; and last, Zedekiah, Josiah's son,
under whom the ruin of the kingdom was completed. The genealogy does not
mention the names of these ill-starred 'brethren,' partly because it
traces the line of descent through 'Jeconias' or Jehoiachin, partly
because it despises them too much. A line that begins with David and
ends with such a quartet! This was what the monarchy had run out to:
David at the one end and Zedekiah at the other, a bright fountain
pouring out a stream that darkened as it flowed through the ages, and
crept at last into a stagnant pond, foul and evil-smelling. Then comes
the third group, and it too has a drift. Unknown as the names in it are,
it is the epoch of restoration, and its 'bright consummate flower' is
'Jesus who is called the Christ.' He will be a better David, will
burnish again the tarnished lustre of the monarchy, will be all that
earlier kings were meant to be and failed of being, and will more than
bring the day which Abraham desired to see, and realise the ideal to
which 'prophets and righteous men' unconsciously were tending, when as
yet there was no king in Israel.

A very significant feature of this genealogical table is the insertion
in it, in four cases, of the names of the mothers. The four women
mentioned a