The Complete Family Tree of Jesus

This is the complete family tree of Jesus Christ. And you're going to be shocked when you see who's in it.

Most of you already know that his lineage begins with Adam and Eve. But there's something that you've probably never realized about these two. See if you can catch it.

After they ate the forbidden fruit, they had three sons. But as you know, their firstborn son, Cain, killed their secondborn, Abel, out of jealousy. So God banished Cain for his sin and he went and had a bunch of kids somewhere else, most likely with one of his sisters.

This left Adam and Eve with their youngest son, Seth. But check out what Eve says about this third son. "God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed." What's interesting is the name Seth actually means appointed. And another Hebrew word for appointed is Messiah or Christ in Greek. And it's from Seth that we get the next seven generations before Noah, who also had three sons, who we'll get to in just a sec.

But first, there's something else that's interesting about what Eve says about Seth. She says that Seth is a "new appointed seed." Most people just read over this thinking that this is just a fancy way for Eve to say that God gave me another kid. But it's actually way deeper than that.

Most people know about the tree God told Adam and Eve not to eat from. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But there was another tree called the tree of life that gave eternal life to anyone who ate of it. And they were allowed to eat of this tree. But instead they chose the other one which brought death to humankind. But God made a promise that a seed would come from Eve who would somehow break this curse of death. So when Eve had Seth, she called him the appointed seed because she believed that Seth was going to bring eternal life back to the world. But instead, humankind only became more evil.

Again, you've probably heard about Noah and the flood, and you probably know that God flooded the earth to punish mankind for being so evil. But there's actually a much deeper reason for why God flooded the earth. Something that's actually kind of creepy depending on how you look at it.

Notice what the Bible says right before the earth gets soaked. "The sons of God took the daughters of men as wives." The Bible says that this was the action that pushed God over the edge and caused him to make it rain. Many good scholars believe that the sons of God is referring to the descendants of Seth, meaning that these guys' sons were intermingling with these guys' daughters. But many other good scholars believe that the sons of God is actually referring to angels who left the spiritual realm to take human as their wives, producing a half-breed human called the Nephilim. I've already shared which belief I hold in a previous video I did on the book of Genesis. But no matter which view you take, the problem is still somewhat the same. The bloodline of the appointed seed was being contaminated. And so God flooded the earth to preserve the uncontaminated seed of Noah and his three sons and their wives.

Of course, the Bible says that from these three sons of Noah were born the nations of the world. For example, Japheth had a son named Javin, who the Greeks are descendants of. And Ham has a son named Misraim, which is just the Hebrew word for Egypt. But Shem has a son named Arfaxad. And Arfaxad has a great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson named Terah. The interesting thing about Terah is that the book of Joshua says that he was an idol worshipper and so was his dad Nahor. In fact, the Bible gives no indication that anyone was worshiping the one true God at the time. Even though the Bible says that their great-granddad Noah was still alive during their lifetimes and could have taught them about the God who just flooded the earth. And maybe he did, but they just didn't listen. Apparently, people back then lived a lot longer than you and I ever will.

Now, I just want to take a sec to point out something super important. All of these people so far have been listed in the family tree of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Luke. But the Gospel of Luke only contains one of the family trees of Jesus. The other one can be found in the Gospel of Matthew. But there's a few problems with these two family trees.

The first is that Matthew only records a fraction of Jesus' descendants. Like all the people we've just covered are not even mentioned. In fact, Luke almost records double the names that Matthew does. The second issue is that the two family trees sometimes list the same names, but other times list completely different names. And yet, they somehow lead to Jesus' earthly dad, Joseph, who he's technically not even related to.

I was honestly super frustrated to learn about all of this because if Matthew or Luke made a mistake with the family tree of Jesus, what does that mean for my faith as a Christian? Plus, there's a verse in the Gospel of John that might indicate that the family tree of Jesus didn't stop with him. The only way for us to find the answers to any of these questions is to continue on our journey through the family tree of Christ and see if maybe there's something I'm missing.

Take a look at Terah's three sons, Haran, Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham, and Nahor. Out of these sons, God spoke to Abraham and promised him that he and his descendants would be a blessing on the earth instead of a curse. Sounds like the curse might start to be reversed, right? But it gets even more interesting. God then promises Abraham that all of this would happen through his descendants. But wait a minute. If you look at this word "descendants" in Hebrew, it's actually the word "seed." The same word used in the Bible to describe a seed that can be planted to grow a tree. And the same word God used to describe the Savior who would come from Eve.

But there's only one problem. Abraham's wife Sarah couldn't have kids and was getting pretty old. Sarah was actually the daughter of Terah. She had the same dad as her husband, but a different mom. So instead, Abraham had a kid with his Egyptian slave, Hagar, who was a descendant from the line of Misraim. And their son's name was Ishmael. There are so many things wrong with this one action. Lack of trust in God, unfaithfulness to his wife, not to mention slavery. This demonstrates that even someone like Abraham, who was close to God at the time, still had serious flaws.

So God gave a special blessing to Ishmael and his descendants. Many believe that the Arab people today are the descendants of Ishmael. And that would make sense since there's so many Arabs in the world today. But God's promise wasn't supposed to come through Hagar. It was supposed to come through his wife Sarah. And it finally did when they had Isaac.

But here's where it gets interesting. You've probably heard the story of how God asked Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering to God on a mountain. But there's something about this story that 99% of you watching have probably never heard before. When Abraham arrived at the mountain, the Bible says that he laid the wood for the burnt offering on his son Isaac. But this word "wood" is actually the Hebrew word "ets," which means tree. In fact, throughout all of the Old Testament, the word "ets" is used to describe most wooden objects, including wood itself. So, the Bible is literally saying that Isaac carried his tree up the mountain that he would be sacrificed on. This was a foreshadowing of the future son who would carry a different type of tree up a mountain for a different type of sacrifice.

But Isaac was spared and eventually got married to a woman named Rebecca who was the granddaughter of Abraham's brother Nahor. And they had two sons named Esau and Jacob. Esau being the oldest and Jacob being the youngest. But there seems to be an interesting pattern happening in this family tree. Out of the three sons born to Adam and Eve, the youngest brother, Seth, is chosen to be blessed to bring forth the seed that will break the curse of death. Out of Noah's three sons, Shem, who also was not the firstborn, was chosen. Out of Terah's three sons, Abraham, who, you guessed it, wasn't the firstborn, was chosen. Then the secondborn, Isaac, and now the same pattern continues. God promises to bless Jacob instead of the oldest son, Esau. What's the Bible trying to tell us?

What's interesting about this situation is that even though God promised to give the blessing to Jacob, it seems like Isaac was still pretty bent on giving the blessing to Esau. It was clear that Esau was dad's favorite. And this would have been very common at the time. It was just expected that the firstborn would get the father's blessing and inheritance. But God flips that expectation upside down. It seems like God often entrusted the least likely underdog with his power. This is one of the ways God reminds us that he is in control despite what box your culture or tradition might try to put you in.

One of the least likely people to be chosen to carry on God's promises was Jacob's fourth son, Judah, who was the youngest of Jacob's least favorite wife, Leah. I would have thought the promise would go to Joseph, the firstborn of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel, and the one who God used to become the second in command in Egypt, so that he could save his family from famine. But no, it's Judah, a guy who gets caught in one of the biggest scandals in the entire Bible. This is not someone you would trust to babysit your kids. And yet, this is the same Judah whose descendants become the tribe of Judah, the same tribe Jesus comes from, which is why he's often referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah.

So, here's what he did. Parents be advised. A woman named Tamar was first married to one of Judah's sons who died. So, she married the next son of Judah who also died. So, Judah promised that when his youngest son was old enough, she could marry him. But he lied. So Tamar pretended to be a prostitute to get her father-in-law Judah to lay with her. And Judah did. And they had descendants together. And from their line eventually came Salmon, who married a questionable woman named Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who helped Joshua and the children of Israel take over the city of Jericho. I think it's important to note that the generations that came after Tamar and before Rahab were the ones who lived through the Exodus of Egypt. I was also kind of shocked to learn that Moses, although an amazing man of God, was not part of the family tree of Jesus. God used Moses to bring forth the law of God. But God's going to use Jesus to bring forth something even greater.

So Salmon and Rahab have a kid named Boaz who marries an unlikely woman named Ruth. And there's actually an entire book in the Bible about their love story. But eventually these two love birds have a grandson named Jesse who is more important than you might think. This is because the prophet Isaiah promised that "there shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots." There's our tree metaphor again. The Bible then goes on to describe a king who will rule through the power of the spirit of God. This seems to be describing the seed who was promised to Adam and Eve and then to Abraham. Up until this point, no one human had even come close to fulfilling this promise. But now we're told that this seed is going to be like a root coming from one of Jesse's kids.

But as you probably already guessed, God chooses Jesse's youngest son, David. This is the same David who defeated the giant Goliath and became the most famous king to ever rule the nation of Israel. But what most people don't realize about David is that many people who lived during his reign probably would have thought he was the seed promised to break the curse. I mean, after all, he was a man after God's own heart who was rapidly growing the kingdom. But what's crazy to me is that out of David's seven wives, God chose to have the true seed come from his wife Bathsheba. This was the woman who David committed adultery with before killing her husband Uriah to hide his actions. In fact, the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew doesn't even mention her name. She's just listed as Uriah's wife. Yikes. So even though David was a great king, he definitely wasn't the promised seed. This is why God made David a promise that the seed would come from one of his descendants and that this seed would be a king whose throne God would establish forever.

But now here's where we have to come back to our two family trees. One in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the Gospel of Luke. From Abraham to David, these two family trees are identical. But after David, things get a little messy. Matthew records that David has a son named Solomon, who was the heir to David's throne. He's the guy who God gifted with wisdom and was the one who wrote the book of Proverbs. But here's what's strange. The Gospel of Luke doesn't mention King Solomon in the family tree of Jesus at all. Instead, he mentions a different son of David that we hardly know anything about, Nathan. Then he lists a bunch of names leading to Joseph. These names are mostly unrecognizable except for Zerubbabel. This was the guy who led the children of Israel back into the promised land after they were taken captive in Babylon. But the Gospel of Matthew also lists Zerubbabel on the family tree. However, the names in this family tree from David to Zerubbabel are recognizable for those who know their Bible. These are the kings of Judah who descended from King Solomon. But the rest of the names listed after Zerubbabel in Matthew are unrecognizable to us today because the Bible doesn't record this part of history. But here's what's strange. They also lead to Joseph. So the names listed in Luke lead to Joseph and the names listed in Matthew also lead to Joseph. What's going on? Was there some sort of mistake made?

Here's the thing. The Jewish people were meticulous recordkeepers. So, it would have been highly unlikely that a mistake was made when people could look up well-known family tree records of the day.

Let's first look at why Matthew's family tree of Jesus has like half the names of the Gospel of Luke's. And it has to do with King David. The ancient Israelites along with many different ancient groups at the time used something called Gematria to communicate certain ideas in their historical writings. Gematria is the system the Jews had for assigning a number to a person's name in Hebrew. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet was assigned a number. So you could add up the letters in someone's name to get the number of that person's name. And when you add up the letters in the Hebrew name for David, you get the number 14.

So what does that have to do with Jesus' family tree? Take a look at how the family tree of Jesus begins in Matthew's gospel, "the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Then all of the names for the family tree of Jesus are listed. But now look closely at what Matthew says after he's listed all of these names. "So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David until the captivity in Babylon are 14 generations. And from the captivity in Babylon until Christ are 14 generations." Notice the number 14, the same number for the name of David. Matthew created a custom genealogy to communicate to his readers that Jesus was the seed king promised to come from David. This is because Matthew's gospel was primarily written to the Jewish people. This is the reason why he started his family tree with Abraham instead of Adam. Abraham is considered to be the founding father of the Jewish people. But Luke's gospel was written primarily to non-Jews, which is why his family tree does connect all the way back to Adam, the founding father of all the nations of the world.

But this still doesn't explain why both family trees lead to Joseph. Joseph wasn't literally Jesus' dad. He was only his father legally. But the Bible tells us that Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary, the woman who became Joseph's wife. This is why many scholars believe that even though Mary is not listed in Luke's family tree, this family tree is actually following the lineage of Mary, the only parent on Earth that Jesus is literally related to. And Mary's name isn't mentioned because no women are mentioned in Luke's family tree. This is why Luke even says in his genealogy that "Jesus was the son of Joseph, as was supposed." And although there are many great explanations by great scholars as to why Zerubbabel and his father Shealtiel appear in both family trees, I personally think it was just a coincidence that these two names appear in both. It's possible for people to have the same name. This is pretty cool because these two family trees show that Jesus is the heir to the throne of David both legally and physically.

But did Jesus' family tree just stop with him? To understand the answer, we need to look in the Gospel of John. But first, I want to remind you that Jesus is the promised seed to Adam and Eve, Abraham and David. He's the promised root of Jesse. Seed, root. Why does God choose to use multiple plant metaphors to describe Jesus? It all goes back to the tree of life. God offered mankind a tree that would give them eternal life, but instead they chose a tree that brought the curse of death. So God had to plant a new seed to grow a new tree of life. But this seed would first have to die and go into the ground before it could sprout and bring eternal life to all of mankind, breaking the curse of death, past, present, and future.

Look at who Jesus says would come from him, the new eternal vine. "I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit." Jesus created a new family tree that is not dependent on blood or human legalities. This new family has its root in the love of Jesus and lasts for all eternity. To find out exactly who this Jesus is and what he did for you and I, check out this video here to see everywhere that Jesus went on an app.