Articles
The Importance of Genealogies
When reading our Bible, one of the things a modern reader cannot help but notice is some of the glaring differences of the ancient styles of writing compared to our current day sensibilities. One such difference in the Book of Genesis is the prevalence of genealogies – the listings of ancestors and descendants of the family of God. While genealogies are a hobby of some today who are interested in their personal history, and perhaps even some historians of particular civilizations and dynasties, the vast majority of people would say they have no particular use for the knowledge of who Abraham’s great-great-great-great grandfather is. This can lead some to wonder why Genesis – and indeed multiple other books of both the OT and NT – would include such lengthy discussions of dead men’s names that seem to break up the more interesting narrative stories. So what is the purpose of genealogies?
Briefly, there’s one thing we can confidently say genealogies are NOT; the lists of genealogies in Genesis and other Biblical books of history are not preserved so that we can gain an accurate timeline or age of the Earth. As mentioned in our earlier discussion of the age of the earth, the Bible is truthfully not interested in preserving every detail of history so that we might put a convenient number on the number of years since the days of creation. Indeed, the original ancient audiences of these books would have themselves been largely uninterested in such ideas; their conceptions of time were far less stringent than ours and, while Israel would need to know months and years for festivals and jubilees, few cared like we do today about the particulars of how long ago events had taken place. When we attempt to use genealogies for dating purposes, we are showing our ignorance of the real purposes of these passages .
In truth, the genealogies are often not even complete listings of people – and, in fact, sometimes skip known people to make a larger point! For an easy example of this, look at the New Testament genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. By and large, most people know the purpose of this particular genealogy: this demonstrates that Jesus is the fulfilment of the prophesies to Abraham and David as the seed that would strike down the would bless all nations and the seed that would reign as king over the Kingdom of God. Yet if you compare it to the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 3:11-12, you’ll notice that Matthew 1:8 skips over three generations Jehoram and Uzziah. These are not inconsequential people, those are the Kings of Judah! This is not, however, a glaring inconsistency as the skeptic might claim; in fact, the skipping of generations is drawn attention to at the end of the genealogy! Matthew notes his genealogy is divided into three sections: fourteen names between Abraham to David, fourteen names from David to captivity, and fourteen names from captivity to Jesus. Some generations are skipped, and David listed twice, to make this arrangement. This would lead us to think that this genealogy would serve as a memory device: three sections of fourteen names that could be memorized to demonstrate Jesus’ fulfillment and lineage of the line of Abraham and David. The names were not comprehensive, but demonstrative of Matthew’s point: Jesus was the fulfilment of the Old Testament narrative, prophesies, and promises!
As another example of this idea of skipping generations for the point of ease of memorization, consider Numbers 3:19-38 (credit to Kaiser’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics here). We are told there the four sons of Kohath, who is Moses’ grandfather if generations are not skipped, gave rise to the families of the Amramites, Isharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites, of which the males alone numbered 8,600 one year after the Exodus. Kaiser points out that, if no generations are skipped, Kohath had 8,600 male descendants in two generations, of which 2,750 were between the ages of 30 and 50. This is obviously ludicrous and impossible. Again, this demonstrates that genealogies were not designed to be direct, linear trackings of time. They served literary purposes in their overall context!
An important note in this, for those who might be flabbergasted at this suggestion (I understand, I thought much the same on reading this idea the first time!). We often translate these genealogies as “X became the father of Y,” and to us modern readers that implies a direct line of father-son relationships. In truth, though, the word most often used here is “beget.” To beget someone can indeed mean a direct lineage between parent and child, but it can also mean “became the ancestor of.” Again, the note in Matthew 1:8 of “Jehoram (or Joram) became the father of Uzziah” does not mean that Jehoram was Uzziah’s father; 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 shows us that there were three generations between these two men! So it’s important to understand these things in light of these realities; to a ancient reader, Eric Gass was my father. So too, however, was Albert Gass (my grandfather) and Andrew Gass (my great-grandfather), and so too would be John Smith Gass, my multiple-great-grandfather who first came to settle in the American wilderness (alright, I may be projecting a desired hypothetical there!).
This helps us better to understand what’s happening in the two lengthy genealogies of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11: in fact, these two genealogies are best understood in relation to each other! Both generations have a list of ten which ends with a father who has three son (Noah in 5, Terah in 11). Both these lists are both designed to show us that 1) mankind was fulfilling God’s mandate of “be fruitful and multiply,” and 2) the specter of death was reigning over all of these men. In fact, another way to see the intentional design is in comparing Cain’s lineage in ch. 4 and Seth’s in ch. 5. Cain’s lineage end in the seventh generation with Lamech (the horrendous murderer and polygamist), while Seth’s lineage has a seventh generation of Enoch (the faithful walker who is taken by God!). Given that the number seven represents perfection or completeness throughout the entire Bible, we can see these two genealogies are designed to contrast the lineages of the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman! Lamech is the epitome of selfish evil, while Enoch the epitome of righteous faith. Again, the generations are not serving as pure history (and are not claiming to do so); they are compact lists designed to be easily memorable AND still make a point in the overall narrative.
All of this is said to bring home a point: the genealogies are difficult reading for us in the modern era. We’re not naturally interested in these things, and the potentially most interesting thing to us (answering our pesky questions of how old the Earth is!) is not even addressed by these passages. Yet there are still important reasons for us to read and understand these things. First and foremost is that God preserved these things for us through His inspiration, which by itself should be enough to persuade us! Second, there are interesting and important facts that appear only in genealogies (for example, Ward points out in Growth of the Seed that we learn that Joab was David’s nephew, perhaps explaining why he was put up with for so long, and that Uriah was one of David’s Mighty Men, demonstrating an even greater betrayal in his murder of Uriah). Lastly, however, these genealogies serve important narrative functions in these OT and NT books; if we don’t take the efforts to understand them, we’re missing out on important narrative information which is often referred to in later passages. So take some time, learn some history! Let’s be honest, isn’t that always good advice?
