Jesus’ family tree includes scandal because God wanted us to see the kind of Savior he was sending. In Matthew 1, the genealogy of Jesus names four women with complicated stories: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Their stories involve injustice, foreign roots, and sexual sin. Matthew could have left them out. Instead, he put them on display to show that God’s grace reaches outsiders and sinners, and that Jesus came for people exactly like them, and like us.
Why Matthew Starts With a Family Tree
Most of us love the Christmas story in Luke 2, with its angels, shepherds, and manger. Far fewer of us slow down for Matthew 1, which can feel like the part of the Bible you skim on the way to something more interesting. But Matthew opens his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus on purpose.
Matthew 1:1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
In the ancient world, your family line was your résumé. It established your identity, your rights, and your honor. Matthew wants his Jewish readers to see right away that Jesus is the promised son of Abraham, through whom all nations would be blessed (Genesis 12:3), and the son of David, the rightful King. He even arranges the list into three sets of fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17) to show that history has been moving toward this moment.
Then Matthew does something no one expected. Genealogies normally traced fathers, not mothers. Yet Matthew names five women, and four of them come with stories most families would rather forget.
Tamar: The God Who Sees the Hidden Story
Tamar’s story in Genesis 38 is one of the most uncomfortable chapters in the Bible. She married into Judah’s family, but her first husband died, and his brother refused to give her a child. Judah promised her his youngest son but never intended to keep his word, leaving her childless and without a future in a culture where that meant shame and poverty.
Desperate, Tamar disguised herself and confronted Judah’s neglect in a shocking way, becoming pregnant by Judah himself. When the truth came out, Judah admitted who was really at fault.
Genesis 38:26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.
The Bible doesn’t celebrate the deception. It exposes Judah’s injustice and shows that God saw the woman everyone else had abandoned. Through her son Perez, Tamar became an ancestor of Jesus. God doesn’t turn away from the parts of our stories we try to hide. He steps into them.
Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba: Grace for Outsiders and Sinners
The next names are just as surprising. Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute in Jericho, a city God was about to judge. Ruth was a widow from Moab, a nation that was barred from Israel’s assembly (Deuteronomy 23:3). And Matthew doesn’t even name Bathsheba. He calls her “Uriah’s wife” (Matthew 1:6), a pointed reminder of David’s adultery and the murder he arranged to cover it up.
Yet each of these women became part of the line of the Messiah. Rahab hid Israel’s spies and confessed her faith in Israel’s God before she knew much about him (Joshua 2:11). Ruth gave up her homeland to follow the Lord, speaking some of the most famous words of loyalty in Scripture.
Ruth 1:16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David, and Bathsheba became the mother of Solomon. Their presence in the genealogy shows that God’s family has never been limited to insiders with spotless records. Faith comes before we clean up our lives, and grace keeps writing the story when we’ve made a mess of it.
What Jesus’ Family Tree Means for Us
Matthew’s genealogy isn’t just about the past. It’s a preview of the gospel. Jesus didn’t come from a polished, respectable family line. He came through a family full of broken people because he came to save broken people. As the angel told Joseph a few verses later, Jesus would “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
Paul explains why that matters for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider to God’s family.
Galatians 4:4-5 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.
Jesus entered our family tree so that we could be adopted into his. Whatever your past looks like, it doesn’t disqualify you from God’s grace. If you’d like to learn more about putting your faith in Jesus, check out How can I become a Christian?
The Takeaway
Why does Jesus’ family tree include scandal? Because the genealogy of Jesus shows the heart of Christmas. By naming Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, Matthew shows that God welcomes outsiders and redeems sinners. Jesus was born into a broken family line so he could bring broken people into God’s family.
