Our Sunday school class had another excellent discussion this week. A panel of five women in our class researched and taught on the five women named or referred to in Jesus’ genealogy—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary.
Here are some of the takeaways from our discussion. It’s nothing new, but we may not have seen it before.
Jesus includes women
One of the striking things about Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew’s Gospel is its inclusion of women. In a time and culture when men unquestionably were the head of the family and carried the family name forward, five women appear in Jesus’ genealogy.
Each of the many men named in Jesus’ genealogy had at least one wife, but only five women are named or referred to among the many women represented by those men. And it’s not any five women.
Those women—already named above but who deserve to be named again—are:
• Tamar (Genesis 38),
• Rahab (Joshua 2 and 6),
• Ruth,
• Bathsheba—referred to as “the wife of Uriah” (2 Samuel 11-12; 1 Kings 1-2), and
• Mary.
When so many women go unnamed and unseen, these five women were named and still are seen—in Jesus’ genealogy, no less.
Jesus includes women with ‘questionable histories’
Tamar tricked her father-in-law into having sex with her and devised a scheme so he couldn’t avoid his responsibility to her. Judah thought she was a prostitute and impregnated her, something his sons couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
According to the Book of Joshua, Rahab was a prostitute. And further compromising her purity, she was a Canaanite—gasp.
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Ruth, well, there’s some disagreement among scholars as to what “uncovered [Boaz’s] feet and lay down [next to them]” means. Whatever it means, Ruth was at the threshing floor in the middle of the night with a man who wasn’t her husband … yet.
David took Bathsheba, who didn’t have the choice to deny the king. He added insult to injury by killing her husband. Well, he ordered her husband to be put directly in the line of fire without protection.
Mary was pregnant and wasn’t married.
In the Hebrew culture of the Old and New Testaments and during the Victorian age, 1950s America and the purity culture of 1990s/2000s America, all of these women would have been considered scandalous. None of them would have been held up as models. None of them would have been granted leadership.
Each is included in Jesus’ genealogy—without judgment.
Jesus didn’t need Mary
Jesus didn’t need Joseph in order to be born. Jesus, being fully God, also didn’t Mary. And yet, Mary was chosen to carry, birth and raise Jesus.
Take some time to sit with the idea that Jesus didn’t need Mary, but he wanted Mary to be part of his genealogy. I can’t tell you what you should think about that, but I can tell you you should give it some thought.
There’s another side to the idea Jesus didn’t need Mary—a side that stings. When Jesus was told his mother and brothers were waiting to speak to him, Jesus essentially disowned them: “‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (Matthew 12:46-50).
Mary, though put in the supremely awkward position of being pregnant without having had sex with anyone, though being disowned publicly by that child she carried, stayed with Jesus during his crucifixion, taking public shame on herself anew. My, what Mary teaches us.
Jesus’ ministry looks like his family
My dad’s paternal grandmother raised him from about age 4 until she died a couple of months before he turned 13. “She was the influence in my life,” Dad says.
Throughout the 26 years Dad was the president of the New Mexico Baptist Foundation, he cared for and ministered to numerous single senior adult women for years at a time. I remember many of those visits well.
Is it possible Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary influenced Jesus’ ministry?
Mary and Joseph and others in Jesus’ family probably told him about Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Did they tell him all about them? Even if his family didn’t talk about the whole story, the Scripture he knew sure did.
As for Mary, Jesus didn’t need anyone to tell him what they thought about her. Doubtless, she was whispered about and maybe scorned more loudly.
Whatever Jesus heard or knew about the women in his family, the women in his ministry look a lot like them—the woman at the well, the Syrophoenician woman, the woman who bled, Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery, to name a few.
I can’t help but wonder if a significant part of Jesus’ ministry to and with these women was informed by the women in his ancestry. Just as he included Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary in his family—despite their “questionable histories”—he cared for women others in his time despised or threw away.
Our story, our ministry
As we take in the wonder of the Nativity this year, let’s make sure we take in the whole story.
As we take in the whole story, we can ask how Jesus’ story resembles our own.
As we learn from Jesus’ story, we can be willing to allow our story to shape our ministry.
Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed are those solely of the author.
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